Democrats Need To Go To War For Voting Rights
“Our country has changed,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his decision in Shelby County v. Holder. Congress had reauthorized the Voting Rights Act in 2006 by a 98-0 Senate vote and a gaping 390-33 tally in the House, but in 2013 the Supreme Court’s conservative justices voted 5-4 to strike down its key pre-authorization provision.
The result has been predictable ― systematic disenfranchisement of voters across the South and beyond, undoubtedly contributing to the defeat of Democratic gubernatorial candidates in Florida and Georgia (the latter is still being contested), and perhaps even enabling Ted Cruz in Texas to keep his Senate seat.
Now that Democrats have reclaimed the House and key governor’s mansions, and flipped hundreds of state legislative seats, we have a chance to do something about it. It’s time for them to go all-in on the universal right to transparent and accessible voting.
Re-reading the Roberts decision the day after the 2018 midterms is brutal. He blithely assures America that the days of Jim Crow are over and that the “current conditions” in no way resemble those of 1965. He writes that “while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.” Because of that perceived mismatch, he claimed, he and his four colleagues took the “gravest and most delicate duty” of the Supreme Court and struck down a law as unconstitutional. He said that racism was still bad, of course, but that Congress would have to come up with some new rubric to protect the franchise of voters of color.
Congress, or rather the Republicans who have maintained control of at least one chamber of Congress since 2013, has not developed a new rubric. Instead, Republican lawmakers and officials, especially those in the very states governed by the VRA, have touted the nonexistent threat of voter fraud in order to systematically re-disenfranchise voters of color through a variety of means.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-voting-rights-house-democrats_us_5be333f9e4b0dbe871a61b88
= new reply since forum marked as read
