A famous question posed to prospective African-American voters in the segregated South was this beauty: “How many bubbles in a bar of soap?”

Officially sanctioned bigotry like voter literacy tests aimed at discouraging African-Americans and other minorities from participating in elections in the South and Southwest only seems like ancient history. There are still plenty of people around who experienced it.

Their children — now well past voting age — literally grew up with those experiences, making for two generations of voters zealously protective of the voting rights guaranteed by civil rights-era legislation that scrapped literacy tests and poll taxes.

It’s a safe bet that none of them were celebrating what appeared to be the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to strike down the historic voting rights protections.

Ruling on a case rising from a tiny Travis County voting district, the court voted to exempt the Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 from seeking permission to move its one polling place from a garage to a school. The ruling made sense, but in it lies a clear message that the 1965 Voting Rights Act is teetering on the verge of judicial extinction.

The Voting Rights Act requires that state and local government units in eight states apply for U.S. Justice Department preclearance of changes in election law and procedure. Also covered are parts of Virginia, California, Florida, New York, North Carolina, South Dakota, Michigan and New Hampshire.

“The preclearance requirement applies broadly … to every political subdivision in a covered state no matter how small,” U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.

“Some of the conditions that we relied upon in upholding this statutory scheme … unquestionably improved. Things are changed in the South. Voter turnout and registration rates now approach parity. Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels.”

All that is true enough, but experience in Texas with the unprecedented makeover of congressional districts in 2003 — done by a compliant Texas Legislature at the behest of then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay — shows that the willingness of majority parties to engage in partisan hanky-panky hasn’t died, nor is that willingness showing signs of even the faintest of illness.

Some argue that a proposal to require voter identification in Texas is a revival of the poll tax. While that might be a bit of hyperbole, the viewpoint is understandable given the state’s history of stepping on minority voter rights.

With due respect to the chief justice, things are better but not so good that the need for federal oversight of Texas elections is — like voter literacy questions — a thing of the past.

Austin American-Statesman