As we move into the post-VRA era, I’m wondering just what new laws the ‘redeemed’ jurisdictions are now going to come up with to deal with minority voters? I figure this might be a good job for a crowd-sourcing effort. What laws are we likely to see? One day voting between 9 am and 1 pm? Minority voter districts must be under sea level? Ideas?
I hinted at this in my post from earlier today: the VRA decision is the perfect complement to the GOP’s increasingly clear strategy of ignoring the 2012 election and doubling down on maximizing the white vote. But Josh Green really captures it when he calls the decision a ‘poison chalice‘ for the GOP, encouraging and giving more tools to the GOP in its quest to max out white voting and make the Democratic party the home of the overwhelming number of non-white voters and the white voters who feel at home in a truly multiracial party.
To paraphrase Bill Clinton’s famous words from 1996, the Court has built the GOP a mobility scooter to ride into the 22nd century.
The first African American attorney general will speak shortly about today’s Voting Rights Act decision. Watch.
John Fund, top player in the voter suppression and vote fraud bamboozlement racket, takes to National Review to announce that the court decision is “actually a victory for civil rights.”
I still remain generally hopeful, over the medium term, certainly the long term that the changing nature of the electorate will prove too strong to be bridled by Republican voter suppression efforts which will undoubtedly redouble in response to this wildly activist ruling by the Supreme Court. In the short term, it’s not so clear, though, particularly with regards to 2014. Indeed, the 2012 election and this decision fit together like two pieces of a puzzle. Read More
Quick reminder on which jurisdictions were covered by Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act — until today.
Andrew Ross Sorkin apologizes for suggesting he’d arrest Glenn Greenwald.
I still remain generally hopeful, over the medium term, certainly the long term that the changing nature of the electorate will prove too strong to be bridled by Republican voter suppression efforts which will undoubtedly redouble in response to this wildly activist ruling by the Supreme Court. In the short term, it’s not so clear, though, particularly with regards to 2014. Indeed, the 2012 election and this decision fit together like two pieces of a puzzle. Read More
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT): “I could not disagree more with this result or the majority’s rationale. … I intend to take immediate action to ensure that we will have a strong and reconstituted Voting Rights Act that protects against racial discrimination in voting.”
In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas writes that he would have struck down Section 5, too: “By leaving the inevitable conclusion unstated, the Court needlessly prolongs the demise of that provision. For the reasons stated in the Court’s opinion, I would find §5 unconstitutional.”