US Supreme Court gelds Voting Rights Act

[kentonio]

Aren't states allowed to request or sue for removal from pre-clearance restrictions anyway, if they have actually sorted their issues? I thought New Hampshire did that a while back?

[Imran Siddiqui]

I think this decision was probably a reasonable compromise. It is by no means the fault of the SCOTUS that congress is incapable of doing its job properly; in that sense it is acting as the check that it should. The VRA should someday go away, and certainly should be reconsidered regularly based on current facts; and entitlement perpetuation is very much a thing, and one of the worst parts of democracy/republic/whatever kind of government we have. I have no doubt that parts of the VRA should be maintained, but I think anyone who claims we're still in 1965 is highly confused.

Honestly I wouldn't mind judicial oversight of ALL redistricting; create a special judicial commission to oversee redistricting as a full time job, and perhaps some of the crap we have to deal with now, racially motivated or not, would go away...

Bingo x1000

I mean, to evaluate communities by how they were in the late 1960s is ridiculous (that's almost 50 years ago). The formula should have been updated a long time ago to capture the realities of the situation. SCOTUS basically indicated that it was highly discriminatory to assume that states, counties, cities that were targeted 50 years ago should always be targeted from here until the end of time because Congress was too lazy to update the standard for who was in preclearance.

The Court just told Congress to update the formula - VRA's preclearance still stands when that occurs. And yes, oversight of ALL redistricting or voting changes probably would have passed muster, FWIW.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Yes. While there are certainly still racist issues in the South, it is not like other parts of the country don't have the same issues.

I believe this is a good ruling. Congress needs to act and recognize the changes that have occurred in the South since the VRA was first passed. If, on application of current data, Southern States still need regulation then there is nothing to prevent it. The real question here is if some of the sanctimonious northern and western states might need some as well. Simply freezing things in time from 50 years ago is ridiculous.

Let's also be clear that the VRA also covers counties and cities. It is strange to me that the entire state of Georgia is covered (including Atlanta - which has had African American mayors for the last 30 years, IIRC) while not a single county or city in Illinois is subject to the preclearance requirements.

[Imran Siddiqui]

It's not fair to assume things haven't changed in Mississippi since 1970 or so.

Indeed:



That 1965 number, btw, is one of the factors used to extend the VRA on Mississippi. That is why an updated formula is required (however; saying that, some parts of MS may still fall under that new formula).

[giblets]

The Court just told Congress to update the formula - VRA's preclearance still stands when that occurs. And yes, oversight of ALL redistricting or voting changes probably would have passed muster, FWIW.

That's not going to get through Congress anytime soon. Instead of an imperfect formula we just get nothing.

[PLATO]

That's not going to get through Congress anytime soon. Instead of an imperfect formula we just get nothing.

No...instead of an unfair formula we get nothing. Of course, we could all call our Congressmen and ask them to get off their butts.

The formula as is now is not "imperfect", it is flawed and out of date to the point of being unconstitutional.

[Dinner]

That's not going to get through Congress anytime soon. Instead of an imperfect formula we just get nothing.

And that's the problem. It's pretty telling that this was a strict party line vote because Congress has repeatedly updated the voting rights act, last time in 2006, and they spent 15 months documenting thousands of cases of voter suppression efforts as well as out right discrimination so it is extremely clear voting rights are still threatened. Hell, the reauthorization in 2006 got 98 votes in the senate and 2/3rds in even the house. Give how just last election Republicans went to extraordinary lengths in their attempts to prevent non-whites from voting this is just ****ing criminal. The right wing majority couldn't even name the constitutional grounds for invalidating section 4 of the voting rights act and instead just whined that they didn't like the formula congress came up with which the four liberal justices correctly pointed out is not a legal justification for throwing out a law especially when it is clear that to this day conservatives continue to attempt to systematically deny people the right to vote simply because of their race.

[Imran Siddiqui]

That's not going to get through Congress anytime soon. Instead of an imperfect formula we just get nothing.

So Congress being unable to get its **** together is no reason for the SCOTUS to tolerate an unconstitutional law.

[Dinner]

Also the right wing claim that section 2 can some how make up for the lose of section 4 doesn't hold water at all. Post 1964 conservatives ran a virtual guerrilla war against minority voting rights (which continues today as heavily documented in the 2006 reauthorization of the voting rights act and as demonstrated by the Republican voter suppression efforts in 2010 and 2012) and under section 2 you have to wait until their new voter suppression tactics take effect before stopping them (that means conservatives will get immediate benefit from their disenfranchisement efforts for at least one election cycle if not more before the court can take action to end their criminal wrong doing) where as under section 4 areas which have a proven history of attempting to prevent non-whites from voting wouldn't even get to enact those changes until after it gets cleared by courts or by the Federal election commission. Section 4 stops conservative voter suppression efforts dead in their tracks while the best section 2 can do is limit the amount of time those efforts can take place but conservatives will still benefit from their disenfranchisement efforts so of course they will keep doing them.

[Dinner]

That's not going to get through Congress anytime soon. Instead of an imperfect formula we just get nothing.

I'd rather have an imperfect system for preventing these abuses than no system and now we have no system and right at a time where conservative attacks on voting rights are reaching a half century high.

[snoopy369]

Sorry, you guys are just barking up the wrong tree here. Assuming the finding is "this law isn't right, fix it", SCOTUS did the right thing. Congress may be incompetent but that's no reason to let them continue to be such. In this case, the party line vote is pretty sad IMO, because all nine justices should've been on board here with overturning it in part. Much of the reason for congress' incompetence is that they do the easy thing as much as possible; let's not let them do that here, make them actually do some work for a change.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Sorry, you guys are just barking up the wrong tree here. Assuming the finding is "this law isn't right, fix it", SCOTUS did the right thing. Congress may be incompetent but that's no reason to let them continue to be such. In this case, the party line vote is pretty sad IMO, because all nine justices should've been on board here with overturning it in part. Much of the reason for congress' incompetence is that they do the easy thing as much as possible; let's not let them do that here, make them actually do some work for a change.

Bravo!

I would also suggest that people actually read the decision. The Voting Rights Act went clearly above the Constitution at the time it was passed, but the SCOTUS said that extraordinary measures are sometimes necessary for a temporary time frame (Robert's opinion as relating to South Carolina v. Katzenbach, decided in 1966: "We recognized that it“may have been an uncommon exercise of congressional power,” but concluded that “legislative measures not otherwise appropriate” could be justified by “exceptional conditions.” Id., at 334. We have since noted that the Act “authorizes federal intrusion").

In Katezebach: "We explained that “[t]ests and devices are relevant to voting discrimination because of their long history as a tool for perpetrating the evil; a low voting rate is pertinent for the obvious reason that widespread disenfranchisement must inevitably affect the number of actual voters.” Ibid. We therefore concluded that “the coverage formula [was] rational in both practice and theory.”" The next two times it was renewed the low voting rate aspect of the two pronged test was updated - first to 1968 and then to 1972. When it was renewed in 1975, the Congress also added "English Only" requirements for places where more than 5% of the voters were non-English speaking. The coverage test has NOT BEEN UPDATED since the 1975 renewal. In the 1982 as well as 2006, the same requirements were renewed. That means that districts are being judges on 1972 voter registration and turnout numbers. How can that possibly justify the "exceptional measures" in the year 2013 for "legislative measures not otherwise appropriate"?!

[Sava]

Is English your third language? How can I make that argument if I never made that stipulation?

You could have just said "no".

I wasn't sure.

That's why I asked the question.

You incontinent bag of monkey dicks.

[Dinner]

Sorry, you guys are just barking up the wrong tree here. Assuming the finding is "this law isn't right, fix it", SCOTUS did the right thing. Congress may be incompetent but that's no reason to let them continue to be such. In this case, the party line vote is pretty sad IMO, because all nine justices should've been on board here with overturning it in part. Much of the reason for congress' incompetence is that they do the easy thing as much as possible; let's not let them do that here, make them actually do some work for a change.

They'll just not do it and we'll end up with millions of people disenfranchised especially since it is in the electoral interests of one party to ensure that happens.

[snoopy369]

Ensure. Not insure.

In any event, that has ****-all to do with the SCOTUS decision. If Congress fails to do it, then we have only Congress to blame... and honestly I don't think that it's likely for systemic voter suppression to occur nowadays. It's simply too easy for voting monitors, or even just random people, to tweet about it and get it shut down. If MS suddenly redistricts to massively disenfranchise black people, you'll see instantly 4 articles on fivethirtyeight.nytimes.com, 1000s of tweets, and general outrage until something is done about it in Congress, or somewhere else.