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The Supreme Court got it wrong......
Jul. 1st, 2013 07:13 pmIf you follow my blog, the title above may be confusing. I'm not talking about what happened on Wednesday last, but rather what happened the day before.
The Voting Rights Act got gutted.
Back in 1965, the Voting Rights Act was a bold step forward that have gone a very long way to ensure that people who had previously been denied the franchise illegally would have the right to vote. A dozen states across the South, as well as a number of counties, that had a history of voter suppression, had to have any substantive changes that they wanted to make to their voting process subject to preapproval by the Justice Department. This included things like numbers of polling places, voter registration regulations, and voter ID laws. This has been one of the most effective pieces of legislation for guaranteeing the right to vote in American history. What the Supreme Court threw out was the provision that determines which states and which counties had to get preapproval before making any changes. They've tossed back to our Congress (you know, the same Congress that couldn't get it together to get a farm bill through) to re-legislate new criteria on who has to get preapproval.
Tuesday night, the state of Texas moved ahead with immediate implementation of its voter ID law, something that the Voting Rights Act had prevented. Now it doesn't matter that in person voter fraud is almost unheard of. The institution of a voter ID law is nothing more than an attempt to disenfranchise people who because of their social marginalization do not possess such an ID. Think the poor, people who don't drive, youth, basically people who are likely to vote Democratic. Both Mississippi and North Carolina have similar plans in the works and if I'm not mistaken Virginia as well.
Those of us who are celebrating the actions of the court on Wednesday, striking down the third section of DOMA, giving us the federal recognition we have long sought after, must recognize that actions like the gutting of the Voting Rights Act affects us. An action against one marginalized community is an action against all marginalized communities. Look at how the court ruled. The four who dissented on the overturn of DOMA were four of the five Republican appointees – Scalia (Reagan), Thomas (Bush father), Roberts and Alito (Bush son). This is no accident.
We cannot rest. We cannot ignore. We cannot afford to keep our collective heads in the sand.
I hate to sound so radical, but we have no choice other than to work to make the Republican Party irrelevant. Where they have gained power, in state legislatures and statehouses they have worked diligently via gerrymandering, and now they're moving to more blatant voter suppression, to maintain themselves in power. You need only look at what has happened in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, all states with a long history of sending moderates and even progressives in statewide elections to the White House and the Senate, and all of which have been gerrymandered into Republican strongholds after the 2010 census. All three of those states have more registered Democrats than Republicans, and yet because of how districts have been drawn, the Democrats received more total votes and have fewer seats. Similar issues exist across the South.
The Voting Rights Act got gutted.
Back in 1965, the Voting Rights Act was a bold step forward that have gone a very long way to ensure that people who had previously been denied the franchise illegally would have the right to vote. A dozen states across the South, as well as a number of counties, that had a history of voter suppression, had to have any substantive changes that they wanted to make to their voting process subject to preapproval by the Justice Department. This included things like numbers of polling places, voter registration regulations, and voter ID laws. This has been one of the most effective pieces of legislation for guaranteeing the right to vote in American history. What the Supreme Court threw out was the provision that determines which states and which counties had to get preapproval before making any changes. They've tossed back to our Congress (you know, the same Congress that couldn't get it together to get a farm bill through) to re-legislate new criteria on who has to get preapproval.
Tuesday night, the state of Texas moved ahead with immediate implementation of its voter ID law, something that the Voting Rights Act had prevented. Now it doesn't matter that in person voter fraud is almost unheard of. The institution of a voter ID law is nothing more than an attempt to disenfranchise people who because of their social marginalization do not possess such an ID. Think the poor, people who don't drive, youth, basically people who are likely to vote Democratic. Both Mississippi and North Carolina have similar plans in the works and if I'm not mistaken Virginia as well.
Those of us who are celebrating the actions of the court on Wednesday, striking down the third section of DOMA, giving us the federal recognition we have long sought after, must recognize that actions like the gutting of the Voting Rights Act affects us. An action against one marginalized community is an action against all marginalized communities. Look at how the court ruled. The four who dissented on the overturn of DOMA were four of the five Republican appointees – Scalia (Reagan), Thomas (Bush father), Roberts and Alito (Bush son). This is no accident.
We cannot rest. We cannot ignore. We cannot afford to keep our collective heads in the sand.
I hate to sound so radical, but we have no choice other than to work to make the Republican Party irrelevant. Where they have gained power, in state legislatures and statehouses they have worked diligently via gerrymandering, and now they're moving to more blatant voter suppression, to maintain themselves in power. You need only look at what has happened in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, all states with a long history of sending moderates and even progressives in statewide elections to the White House and the Senate, and all of which have been gerrymandered into Republican strongholds after the 2010 census. All three of those states have more registered Democrats than Republicans, and yet because of how districts have been drawn, the Democrats received more total votes and have fewer seats. Similar issues exist across the South.
