A no-lose fix for the Voting Rights Act

[Byron In Exile]

Liberals never admit to bad ideas, instead, they double down on them...

Conservativi quoque.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

After re-reading the case and reflecting a bit more, it's clear that the decision was a disaster for the Left and their victory cackles are hollow --- and they know it.

Worse, conservative dooms-dayers who have never litigated a single National Voter Registration Act case have taken to the airwaves, describing the case as a disaster which invites illegal-alien voting.

In the last year, I've litigated five NVRA cases and worked on the preemption issues for years, and there is more to cheer in today's opinion than there is to bemoan. Those complaining about the opinion don't understand what the Left's goal was in this case: total federal preemption. On that score, Justice Scalia foiled them...

J. Christian Adams

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013...y_under_the_arizona_ruling.html#ixzz2XbGKAWdz

Now we see them begin to advocate for it openly. Great time to do that after we see what they are willing to use the IRS for...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Conservativi quoque.

And?

Et tu Brute?

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Stulte pinguis homo . . . .


Can we shoot him next?

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Liberals never admit to bad ideas, instead, they double down on them...

Libruls hate the military because the military has a history of expecting feral Democrats to perform to high standards, and they did. That's all changed since the 60s, but there was a time when a self respecting nigga or spick or greaser could strut his stuff with the best. Now they get fitted for a wooden leg at basic and his squad spit shines their shoes to the dulcet tones of HE AINT HEAVY, HE'S MY SOUL BRUTHA.

 

[Byron In Exile]

Stulte pinguis homo . . . .

Can we shoot him next?

Lol (ridens clare)... Si vultis.

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Volo.

 

[Dazzle1]

Michael Lind writes in Salon:

Thursday, Jun 27, 2013 04:45 PM EDT

A no-lose fix for the Voting Rights Act
Make Section 4 -- and federal pre-clearance of changes in electoral laws -- apply to all 50 states

By Michael Lind

By striking down Section 4 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and thereby gutting the act’s Section 5, the Supreme Court has presented defenders of voting rights in America with a challenge —and a historic opportunity. The challenge is the need to avert a new wave of state and local laws restricting voting rights in the aftermath of the Court’s decision. The opportunity is the chance that Congress now has to universalize Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, to make it apply to all 50 states.

Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 imposed a special coverage formula on jurisdictions with particularly bad histories of racial discrimination in voting, including nine states—Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia—and dozens of county and municipal governments, including the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan. Section 5 authorized the Justice Department to require “pre-clearance” of proposed changes in electoral laws in these jurisdictions. The pre-clearance requirement has been used in recent years to thwart attempts by the ethnocentric non-Hispanic White Right to engage in voter ID laws or redistricting plans that were evidently motivated by the desire to indirectly eliminate or dilute the votes of nonwhite citizens or poor citizens.

By striking down Section 4, the coverage formula, the Court gutted Section 5, the authorization of pre-clearance. Eliminating pre-clearance gives states whose legislatures are controlled by the bitter, desperate, demographically declining White Right a green light to try to enact voter restriction policies that are racially discriminatory in their effect and undoubtedly in their intent.

Is there anything that progressives, centrists and enlightened conservatives can do, to avert a new wave of voter restrictions at the state level, which, while racially neutral in appearance, have the intent and effect of reducing black and Latino electoral power, to the benefit of the ethnocentric White Right?

If I read the majority opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts correctly, Congress could enact a version of Section 4 that could be approved even by this mostly reactionary Supreme Court. Roberts criticized the recent reauthorization of the VRA for not updating it:



Congress should accept the Court’s challenge and rewrite the Voting Rights Act to revive Section 5 pre-clearance by enacting a version of Section 4 that passes this Court’s newly announced test.

The option of trying to revive a modified version of the old Section 4 would probably fail. For one thing, it is not clear how any modified list of states, short of the whole, could satisfy this Supreme Court, with its solicitude for “state sovereignty” (a concept more at home in the Confederate Constitution than in the U.S. Constitution).

Another problem is that even progressive Democrats might shy away from a vote that stamped the label “racist” on Alaska or Texas, as opposed to, say, California or Wisconsin. In the past, most recently in 2006, members of Congress avoided gratuitously insulting nine states — and several New York City boroughs! — by voting to renew all or part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Any new legislation that sought to name particular states as particularly racist would undoubtedly die in Congress.

Fortunately, there is an alternative: Congress can rewrite Section 4 to make it apply to all 50 states in perpetuity, thereby reviving — and universalizing — Section 5’s federal pre-clearance of state and local electoral law changes.

The rationale for universal federal pre-clearance of changes in state and local electoral laws is independent of the legacy of anti-black racism in the U.S. as a whole and the South in particular. In any ethnically diverse democracy that is also a federal system, the national government needs to be able to restrain the power of ethnic groups, including those that are national minorities but local majorities, from manipulating the electoral laws in sub-national jurisdictions to create tyrannical “ethnocracies” like the older White South.

Today, non-Hispanic whites are a minority in California, Texas and other states. By the middle of the 21st century, non-Hispanic whites will be a minority in the U.S. population as a whole, according to some projections. Who knows? Maybe in the future the outnumbered non-Hispanic white group, or other minority communities, will need to be protected against unjust attempts to dilute their votes by new, post-white majorities that prove to be as ethnocentric and undemocratic as non-Hispanic whites frequently were when they enjoyed majority status.

In other words, the rationale for congressionally authorized federal pre-clearance of changes in electoral systems at the state and local level would be compelling, even if there had never been any history of racism in the U.S. at all. The mere prospect of potential state and local majority tyranny in the electoral arena is rationale enough for a universal, permanent pre-clearance policy by the federal government.

It might be objected that this policy would not prevent similar majority tyranny at the federal level. That is true, but it is not a persuasive argument against federal pre-clearance. For most of American history, the greatest threats to enfranchisement of various minorities have been at the state and local level. The few exceptions — for example, Northern states that refused to enforce the federal fugitive slave act — merely underline the rule.

The federal government repeatedly has been forced to use not only the law but also military force to restrain local majority tyranny, during the Civil War and Reconstruction and again during the civil rights revolution. Conversely, state and local majority tyranny have flourished only when tolerated by the national majority. In the United States, the national majority has always been, and likely always will be, a more reliable champion of civil rights and voting rights than local majorities.

Universalizing Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, then, makes excellent sense on its merits. It would make for smart politics, too. Proposing to universalize Section 4 would be a no-lose proposition for progressives, centrists and non-racist conservatives.

If a law universalizing Section 4 were enacted, then the Northern and Western states would have nothing to fear — unless, of course, their state governments were trying to use devious methods to restrict or dilute the voting power of particular groups, like the disproportionately minority poor. But that is as it should be. Why should race-motivated voter ID laws or redistricting schemes to dilute minority voters by “packing” them in ghettoized electoral districts be subject to more federal scrutiny in the South than in the Midwest or West Coast or New England? The same level of federal scrutiny should be brought to bear everywhere in the United States.

If a law universalizing Section 4 were to die in Congress, it would almost certainly be killed by Republicans based in the former Confederacy. Their success in stopping universalization of Section 4 would be a Pyrrhic victory, further identifying the Republican Party in the national mind with the most benighted white reactionaries in the former homeland of slavery and segregation. This outcome would strengthen not only Democrats but also reformist Republicans making the case that their party must be freed from its Southern captivity.

The neo-Confederate opponents of such a proposed law could not complain that it imposed a double standard. After all, the new, universal Section 4, along with the revived pre-clearance system of Section 5, would apply to Massachusetts, New York and California, as well as to Texas, Mississippi and Alabama.

Would a universalized version of Section 4 be acceptable to this Supreme Court? Because all states would be treated equally, the argument that it treated some unfairly would be irrelevant. Opponents would have to argue that by permanently universalizing Sections 4 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act, Congress was exceeding its constitutional authority. That would be a hard argument to make, given the clear language of the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1870:



If universal, perpetual federal pre-clearance of changes in electoral laws by all state and local governments, to make sure they do not disadvantage particular minorities, is not “appropriate legislation” for defending “the right of citizens of the United States to vote” under the 15th Amendment, it is hard to imagine what “appropriate legislation” would be.

Justice Roberts has stated that Congress can pass a new version of the Voting Rights Act that reflects “current conditions.” Congress should take him up on his offer and rewrite the Voting Rights Act to make it apply to all 50 states and all local governments, forever.

Although I think there is enough protection in the current voting laws and believes that a photo ID should be a requirement, having one standard would solve the problem.

But the Dems want to allow voting fraud

 

[Byron In Exile]

Volo.

Iacula eum igitur. Et destinatum optime feri.

 

[Liar]

Which precisely illustrates the worthlessness of Lind's "solution." It bears no relationship in fact or fancy to the current "problem" of State discrimination with respect to minority voting rights.

Point of order, or something:

This sort of implies that you think there is no such problem. Am I reading you wrong, or are you saying that there's no State discrimination with respect to minority voting rights, alternatively that there is State discrimination with respect to minority voting rights, but that is not a problem?

 

[RobDownSouth]

Liberals never admit to bad ideas...

Libruls hate the military...

I love the smell of ascription in teh morning. It smells like...victory.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I love the smell of ascription in teh morning. It smells like...victory.

What I heard is you, Merc, Zumi, and others, wait patiently in line for a fat VETTEMAN turd to spread on your toast.

 

[richard_daily]

Especially not according to those who've spent their lives bringing us down, insisting they have a right to live at the expense of others.

I agree. CEOs and other plutocrats have morally and literally bankrupted this country.

 

[Wrong Element]

And just an OBTW, I'd love for Lind to visit any of the nine states fresh from the burden of preclearance and have him suggest to those legislatures that they are still "controlled by the bitter, desperate, demographically declining White Right" as they were in 1965.

Is this a serious statement?

 

[Byron In Exile]

Is this a serious statement?

Dic satius, num haec est praedicatio seria, Hector.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Colonel Hogan]

Point of order, or something:

This sort of implies that you think there is no such problem. Am I reading you wrong, or are you saying that there's no State discrimination with respect to minority voting rights, alternatively that there is State discrimination with respect to minority voting rights, but that is not a problem?

I think Justice Roberts can answer that question better than I can:

"The Voting Rights Act of 1965 employed extraordinary measures to address an extraordinary problem. Section 5 of the Act required States to obtain federal permission before enacting any law related to voting — a drastic departure from basic principles of federalism. And § 4 of the Act applied that requirement only to some States-an equally dramatic departure from the principle that all States enjoy equal sovereignty. This was strong medicine, but Congress determined it was needed to address entrenched racial discrimination in voting, "an insidious and pervasive evil which had been perpetuated in certain parts of our country through unremitting and ingenious defiance of the Constitution." South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 309 (1966). As we explained in upholding the law, "exceptional conditions can justify legislative measures not otherwise appropriate." Id., at 334. Reflecting the unprecedented nature of these measures, they were scheduled to expire after five years. See Voting Rights Act of 1965, § 4(a), 79 Stat. 438.

Nearly 50 years later, they are still in effect; indeed, they have been made more stringent, and are now scheduled to last until 2031. There is no denying, however, that the conditions that originally justified these measures no longer characterize voting in the covered jurisdictions. By 2009, "the racial gap in voter registration and turnout [was] lower in the States originally covered by § 5 than it [was] nationwide." Northwest Austin Municipal Util. Dist. No. One v. Holder, 557 U. S. 193, 203-204 (2009). Since that time, Census Bureau data indicate that African-American voter turnout has come to exceed white voter turnout in five of the six States originally covered by § 5, with a gap in the sixth State of less than one half of one percent. See Dept. of Commerce, Census Bureau, Reported Voting and Registration, by Sex, Race and Hispanic Origin, for States (Nov. 2012) (Table 4b).

At the same time, voting discrimination still exists; no one doubts that. The question is whether the Act's extraordinary measures, including its disparate treatment of the States, continue to satisfy constitutional requirements. As we put it a short time ago, "the Act imposes current burdens and must be justified by current needs." Northwest Austin, 557 U. S., at 203."

The legislatures in the many states, pass hundreds if not thousands of laws every term affecting citizens within their respective jurisdictions. Laws addressing public health and safety, taxation, trade and commerce, bond issues and infrastructure projects; the list goes on and on.

To my knowledge, not a single one of those proposed bills (with the obvious exception of the nine states subjected to preclearance) ever went to any branch or department within the federal government as a prerequisite to state enactment. To be sure, many state laws have faced Constitutional challenge and succumbed to or survived the process. But the sequence of events is hardly trivial: pass the law, take it to court (perhaps), live with the decision as adjudicated by the highest appellate review which can be attained.

If preclearance works so great for voting rights, they why not find a way to do it for every piece of legislation that every state ever thought about enacting or will presume to enact in the future?

Answer: Because it is a blatant violation of state sovereignty. Our nation is not founded on the principle that state actions require federal permission at every turn. Quite the opposite is true. State actions are presumed to be in harmony with the federal Constitution until proven otherwise.

The proof observed by the SCOTUS majority and to whatever extent it was also provided by the petitioners in Shelby County v. Holder is that the "problem" of institutionalized and pervasive state discrimination with respect to the voting rights of racial minorities has all but disappeared.

To whatever degree the problem still exists, it is nowhere near the degree that would justify the extreme remedy of preclearance. So says the Court, with which I concur.

 

[Colonel Hogan]

Is this a serious statement?

Yes. Would you like Lind to save you a seat?

 

[curiousbuttaken]

Typical, totalitarianism is always the solution to every problem. Let's put the fucking federal government fox in the chicken coop of the civil society. Fuck Lind.

Blatant suppression of the oppositions vote doesn't count if it happens at the state level then? The Republicans pushing these new restrictions ADMIT THAT THEY ARE FOR POLITICAL GAIN.

 

[curiousbuttaken]

Although I think there is enough protection in the current voting laws and believes that a photo ID should be a requirement, having one standard would solve the problem.

But the Dems want to allow voting fraud

If photo id's are not free, they are a poll tax. I would be OK with a photo id requirement if they were free and issued at birth and at naturalization ceremonies. Otherwise you are taking the right to vote away from citizens, simple as that.

 

[Byron In Exile]

If photo id's are not free, they are a poll tax. I would be OK with a photo id requirement if they were free and issued at birth and at naturalization ceremonies. Otherwise you are taking the right to vote away from citizens, simple as that.

Nomen tuum apparet sicut "curious butt aken"

 

[Byron In Exile]

Nomen tuum apparet sicut "curious butt aken"

/thread

 

[unregistered]

 

[Liar]

I think Justice Roberts can answer that question better than I can:



The legislatures in the many states, pass hundreds if not thousands of laws every term affecting citizens within their respective jurisdictions. Laws addressing public health and safety, taxation, trade and commerce, bond issues and infrastructure projects; the list goes on and on.

To my knowledge, not a single one of those proposed bills (with the obvious exception of the nine states subjected to preclearance) ever went to any branch or department within the federal government as a prerequisite to state enactment. To be sure, many state laws have faced Constitutional challenge and succumbed to or survived the process. But the sequence of events is hardly trivial: pass the law, take it to court (perhaps), live with the decision as adjudicated by the highest appellate review which can be attained.

If preclearance works so great for voting rights, they why not find a way to do it for every piece of legislation that every state ever thought about enacting or will presume to enact in the future?

Answer: Because it is a blatant violation of state sovereignty. Our nation is not founded on the principle that state actions require federal permission at every turn. Quite the opposite is true. State actions are presumed to be in harmony with the federal Constitution until proven otherwise.

The proof observed by the SCOTUS majority and to whatever extent it was also provided by the petitioners in Shelby County v. Holder is that the "problem" of institutionalized and pervasive state discrimination with respect to the voting rights of racial minorities has all but disappeared.

To whatever degree the problem still exists, it is nowhere near the degree that would justify the extreme remedy of preclearance. So says the Court, with which I concur.

Soo...... "voting discrimination still exists; no one doubts that" (Roberts) and "pervasive state discrimination with respect to the voting rights of racial minorities has all but disappeared" (Hogan).

So there IS a problem (that maybe no longer require preclearance)? Or is there NOT a problem?

And the rest of your wall-o-text is just saying you're not in favor of the (now invalidated) solution. Not what I was wondering about, that part was pretty clear. But fair enough.

 

[Liar]

This proves you can't read with comprehension. The Colonel made no such assertion.

Is there a problem with voting discrimination?