Today's post about election reform is an attempt at trying to deal less with peripheral issues but to stay on one point while raising questions that beg answers in future posts, and from newly elected congressional representatives as well. So -- if you're willing -- come read what is offered! Thanks.
TIME to be BOLD: START WITH VOTING RIGHTS!
As you probably did, I read and saw narratives this past week that both disturbed and perturbed me. Of course, with Trump as our illegitimate President, we have to absorb something every day that attempts to corrode our beliefs about our “representative” democracy! Let me take you back about five years to something very disturbing that appeared in 2013, connecting directly to the voting results in certain states for African Americans.
Supreme
Court Invalidates Key Part of Voting Rights Act
The New
York Times
“WASHINGTON — The
Supreme Court on Tuesday effectively
struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by a 5-to-4 vote,
freeing nine states, mostly in the South, to change their election laws without
advance federal approval. The law had applied to nine states — Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia,
Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia (emphasis
added).
The court divided
along ideological lines, and the two sides drew sharply different lessons from
the history of the civil rights movement and the nation’s progress in rooting
out racial discrimination in voting. At the core of the disagreement was
whether racial minorities continued to face barriers to voting in states with a
history of discrimination.
Justices Antonin
Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined the
majority opinion. Justice Ginsburg was joined in dissent by Justices Stephen G.
Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
‘Our country has
changed,’ Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. ‘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.’
The majority held
that the coverage formula in Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), originally
passed in 1965 and most recently updated by Congress in 1975, was
unconstitutional. The section determined which states must receive clearance
from the Justice Department or a federal court in Washington before they made
minor changes to voting procedures, like moving a polling place, or major ones,
like redrawing electoral districts.
Section 5, which
sets out the pre-clearance requirement, was originally scheduled to expire in
five years. Congress repeatedly extended it: Congress renewed the act in 2006
after holding extensive hearings on the persistence of racial discrimination at
the polls, again extending the preclearance requirement for 25 years. But it
relied on data from the 1975 reauthorization to decide which
states and localities were covered.
The current
coverage system, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, is ‘based on 40-year-old facts
having no logical relationship to the present day.’
The decision
will have immediate practical consequences. Texas announced shortly after the
decision that a voter identification law that had been blocked would go into
effect immediately, and that redistricting maps there would no longer need
federal approval. Changes in voting procedures in the places that had been
covered by the law, including ones concerning restrictions on early voting, will
now be subject only to after-the-fact litigation.
Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsburg summarized her dissent from the bench, an unusual move and a sign of deep
disagreement. She said the focus of the Voting Rights Act had properly changed
from 'first-generation barriers to ballot access' to 'second-generation
barriers' like racial gerrymandering and laws requiring at-large voting in
places with a sizable black minority. She said the law had been effective in
thwarting such efforts. ‘The court errs egregiously,’ she concluded, ‘by
overriding Congress’s decision.’
Chief Justice
Roberts wrote that ‘Congress remained free to try to impose federal oversight
on states where voting rights were at risk, but, must do so based on
contemporary data.’ ‘Congress — if it is to divide the states —
must identify those jurisdictions to be singled out on a basis that makes sense
in light of current conditions,’ he wrote. ‘It cannot simply rely on the past.’
The Supreme Court
had repeatedly upheld the law in earlier decisions, saying that the
pre-clearance requirement was an effective tool to combat the legacy of lawless
conduct by Southern officials bent on denying voting rights to blacks.”
In spite of the view expressed in the article that, even in
2013, it would have been difficult to pass new Voter Rights legislation, in my
humble opinion, it should be the first priority of the new Democratic House of
Representatives to at least begin the process.
There must be more than just a forlorn or defeatist
attitude toward the possible loss of races that African Americans
(and others) experienced because of unfair voting rights blockages erected by
states that have continued along this path.
The point being this: certain states have not grown out of egregious
practices and laws that discriminate against certain minorities.
There is ample evidence that the same old Jim
Crow attitudes exist behind those restrictions, and that newer, more current restrictive
devices have been invented and put in place in certain states and localities to
maintain a white nationalism and local hegemony of “whites only” in political
offices. Restricting IDs to certain state-issued types, requiring exact addresses
contrary to tribal custom in certain states, holding out certain registrations
because of typos or other easily corrected errors, allowing voter registration
restrictions such as having no registration offices in a town or area, and most
egregious of all, in my opinion: allowing someone to run for national office
while at the same time holding a state office that controls voting (as in
Georgia).
The need for a newly crafted amendment or a new Voting Rights Act cannot
be ignored. This past Tuesday, we
experienced what happens when a Supreme Court is not checked and balanced by
legislative action. The invalidation of Section 4 of the VRA created and
allowed obstacles just too high for history to be made in certain southern states
(Georgia, Texas and Florida), although more counting is underway. The Times article reminds us in passing
that Congress did not bother to respond to an earlier invitation from SCOTUS in
2009 to amend the VRA:
“The Supreme
Court considered the constitutionality of the 2006 extension of the law in a
2009 decision, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District
Number One v. Holder. But it avoided answering the central question, and it
seemed to give Congress an opportunity to make adjustments. Congress, Chief
Justice Roberts noted on Tuesday, did not respond.”
In case you have forgotten, something also happened in 2010 to increase the likelihood that Congress would not respond to this invitation. The 2010 mid-term elections of Obama’s first term occurred and Republicans gained
control of the House; in 2012, they also captured the Senate and continued, in
every possible way, not only to denigrate President Obama personally, but to block
his legislation, budgets, and appointments, especially that of a more liberal
nominee, Merrick Garland, to the Supreme Court.
Let us fervently hope that this new House, with Democrats in
the majority, will not ignore the necessity
of acting with immediacy and purpose to offer an amended Section 4 to the VRA
that will ensure, not only the unacceptability of discrimination in registering
and voting, but the illegality of even so much as proposing any measure that
would deny the urgency and force of the 15th amendment that
guarantees our right to vote.
