Category Archives: Voting Rights Act of 1965

February 27, 2013 · 6:12 PM

Scalia: Voting Rights Act Is ‘Perpetuation Of Racial Entitlement’

 

Caricature - Antonin Scalia

Well, it’s a sure bet that Justice Antonin Scalia will not be on the “pro-voting rights” side of the judicial debate…

Think Progress

There were audible gasps in the Supreme Court’s lawyers’ lounge, where audio of the oral argument is pumped in for members of the Supreme Court bar, when Justice Antonin Scalia offered his assessment of a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. He called it a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.”

The comment came as part of a larger riff on a comment Scalia made the last time the landmark voting law was before the justices. Noting the fact that the Voting Rights Act reauthorization passed 98-0 when it was before the Senate in 2006, Scalia claimed four years ago that this unopposed vote actually undermines the law: “The Israeli supreme court, the Sanhedrin, used to have a rule that if the death penalty was pronounced unanimously, it was invalid, because there must be something wrong there.”

That was an unusual comment when it was made, but Scalia’s expansion on it today raises concerns that his suspicion of the Act is rooted much more in racial resentment than in a general distrust of unanimous votes. Scalia noted when the Voting Rights Act was first enacted in 1965, it passed over 19 dissenters. In subsequent reauthorizations, the number of dissenters diminished, until it passed the Senate without dissent seven years ago. Scalia’s comments suggested that this occurred, not because of a growing national consensus that racial disenfranchisement is unacceptable, but because lawmakers are too afraid to be tarred as racists. His inflammatory claim that the Voting Rights Act is a “perpetuation of racial entitlement” came close to the end of a long statement on why he found a landmark law preventing race discrimination in voting to be suspicious.

It should be noted that even one of Scalia’s fellow justices felt the need to call out his remark. Justice Sotomayor asked the attorney challenging the Voting Right Act whether he thought voting rights are a racial entitlement as soon as he took the podium for rebuttal.

A transcript of the oral argument will be available soon, and we will post Scalia’s quote in its full context. We will also post audio of Scalia’s words when they become available.

Here is the transcript.

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· 7:48 AM

How Do You Steal a Dream? Supreme Court hears suit to kill Voting Rights Act

I’m inclined to believe that this Supreme Court (The Rehnquist/Roberts Court) does not want to tarnish it’s legacy further and thus, will reach a just decision on the issue…

Greg Palast

Jim Crow is alive and well — and he has mounted a new attack on the law Martin Luther King dreamed of: the Voting Rights Act.

Today, February 27, the Supreme Court will hear a suit brought by Shelby County, Alabama, which challenges the right of the Department of Justice to review changes in voting procedure. Example: Attempts to cut the number of early voting days, to expunge “illegal alien” voters without any evidence, refusing Spanish-language ballots, have been blocked by the Department of Justice and courts because they have stopped Black and Hispanic citizens casting ballots.

Sixteen states are subject to this “pre-clearance” law, every one with a history of Jim Crow rules such as “literacy” tests — Blacks had to recite the Constitution, Whites “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

Dixie moans it’s been picked on unfairly, but the “pre-clearance” states, chosen by an arithmetic formula, include all or parts of the “Confederate states” of California, Arizona, Alaska and New York.

All those above the Mason-Dixon line are on the civil-rights hot-water roster because of a history of hostility to Hispanic citizens. In 2006, for example, the Republican Secretary of State of California rejected 42% of voter registration forms because the names were “unusual” and difficult to type into records! The names, like Chávez and Muhammad, were only “unusual” for Republicans.

New York’s mayor Michael Bloomberg is happy to pre-clear his city’s changes with the Justice Department and has told that to the Court. But once again, as Dr. King said in his Dream speech, in Alabama, the “Governor has his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification” — to nullify the 15th Amendment’s right to vote and to interpose himself between federal law and the enforcement of this basic American right.

And the Southland? In 2000, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris purged tens of thousands of African-Americans from voter rolls, labeling them “felons” when their only crime was VWB: Voting While Black. All — every one — were innocent. And again, in 2012, Florida Governor Rick Scott targeted 180,000 voters, mostly Latinos, as illegal “alien” voters. The Governor, when challenged by the Justice Department, cut the “alien” list to 198 but in the end, could only produce evidence against one.
If it were not for Section 5, the pre-clearance law, the purges, gerrymandering and other racially bent trickery rampant in Florida, Arizona (with its profiling and harassment of Hispanic voters) and Alaska with its bias against Native Americans would be so much worse. Without review — and the threat of review — Americans would once again lose the rights that the Constitution promises, won with the blood of our Fathers.

At the same time, we cannot ignore the Jim Crow and José Crow tactics that create long lines of voters of color in Ohio and other states.

Presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan signed massive expansions of the Voting Rights Act, tripling its reach. It is time to extend the law’s protections again — to Ohio, to Wisconsin, to everyone.

When every American is protected by the Voting Rights Act review of voting changes, then all of us may be secure that our votes will not be nullified by politicians abusing the voting system to seize office through tactics racist in effect, if not intent.

A half century ago this year, Dr. Martin Luther King shared his dream with America:

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’

“We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

King’s dream is the American Dream — which no Court should take away. It is a mighty stream which must touch all citizens in every state.

Without “pre-clearance,” the Voting Rights Act is an empty promise — with purged, blocked and intimidated voters having to protest after an election to the very officials elected by the vote thievery that put them in office.

If this Supreme Court removes “pre-clearance” Section 5 on the grounds that it does not apply to every state, then the solution is simple and just: apply pre-clearance to every state.  Every American deserves a review by Justice of laws which tell us who can vote — and who can’t.

As King admonished us, we must not be satisfied when we see Black folk, a half century after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, stand in line for six hours to vote whether in Miami or in Cleveland.

We petition the Court and Congress to let freedom ring.

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November 9, 2012 · 5:15 PM

Court to Review Key Part of Voting Rights Act

This case is to be heard in the winter of 2013 or the spring of that year.   Given the voter suppression efforts in the recent Presidential election, in my opinion, the plaintiff’s justification and argument for the upcoming lawsuit should be rendered moot.

The Wall Street Journal

The Supreme Court said Friday it would review whether a core provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act remains constitutional, signaling that the justices may be ready to end Washington’s aggressive supervision of locations that historically discriminated against minority voters.

The case comes from Shelby County, Ala., which maintains that the official racism that prompted the Voting Rights Act was eradicated long ago and can no longer justify what officials there consider intrusive federal oversight of local affairs.

Three years ago, the Supreme Court declined to invalidate the challenged provision, known as Section 5, which requires state and local governments with a history of voting discrimination to obtain approval from the Justice Department or a federal judge before changing election procedures. But the 8-1 decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, indicated that unless Congress amended Section 5 or found stronger ground to justify it, the provision might not survive future Supreme Court review.

The 2009 opinion, in the case of Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder, was widely viewed as a compromise between the court’s conservatives, who consider Section 5 an intrusion on state sovereignty, and its liberals, who credit the provision with ending widespread voter suppression.

A bipartisan vote had reauthorized Section 5 in 2006, but since then Congress has shown little interest in revisiting the legislation. Views of Section 5 now divide generally along party lines, with Democrats in support and Republicans critical.

After the 2009 decision, opponents of Section 5 wasted little time developing a follow-up lawsuit that sought to press the high court’s discomfort with the provision.

The 14th and 15th amendments, ratified soon after the Confederacy’s defeat in the Civil War, authorize Congress to protect individuals from mistreatment by state governments. The latter amendment specifically empowers Washington to prevent states from interfering with voting rights “on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.”

Congress made little use of that authority until 1965, when police in Selma, Ala., attacked voting-rights marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge with billy clubs and tear gas. The incident, known as Bloody Sunday, shocked much of the nation and inspired Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act. Section 5 was designed to stymie state and local authorities that routinely devised new impediments to minority voters as soon as an existing one was challenged.

The provision aimed particularly at Southern states with long histories of disenfranchising African-Americans. In 1975, Congress expanded the criteria to include language minorities, a formula that has remained largely unchanged through successive reauthorizations, the last in 2006 for 25 years. The legislation permits jurisdictions with a clean record of at least 10 years to seek exemption from Section 5, and increasing numbers of local governments have obtained these so-called bailouts.

Shelby County and other critics argue that it and other covered jurisdictions have made extraordinary progress since the 1960s and ’70s, and that the blatant discrimination they once enforced is long past. Minorities vote in numbers comparable to whites, they argue, and African-Americans now occupy many elective offices—including Rep. John Lewis (D., Ga.), who was one of the nonviolent marchers beaten on Bloody Sunday.

Critics say the Justice Department has used its preclearance powers too aggressively, blocking, for instance, several voter-identification laws.

Lower courts, however, rejected Shelby County’s arguments, finding that Congress relied on a voluminous record of evidence in reauthorizing Section 5 powers. The Justice Department argues that while Congress may not have unlimited authority to intervene in state election laws, Section 5 falls well within its constitutional authority to protect the right to vote.

The case is likely to be heard in winter or spring, with a decision by July.

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August 11, 2012 · 1:39 PM

Maddow: Republican voter suppression efforts are deadly serious

 

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow explains GOP voter suppression efforts. Photo: Screengrab via MSNBC.com.

The world needs to know what’s going on with Republicans blatantly trying to steal the election by suppressing certain groups who traditionally vote Democratic.

We tout our equality and fairness and most of all our Democracy to people around the world.   Democracy as we knew it no longer exists in this country and the GOP,  Big Money and The Supreme Court are to blame.

  • Most people on the Right scream about taking their country back.  It seems they want to take it back to a time when women had to use coat hangers and back alley quacks to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.
  • A time where Blacks could not vote and when some counties allowed them to vote only after giving the correct answers to questions like “how many bubbles are in a bar of soap?’ or “How many jellybeans in a huge jar”?
  • A time when gays and immigrants and even Jews were treated with contempt and disdain.

That’s what these people want to go back to but Progressives and Independents see it differently…

The Raw Story

Early voting is being stabbed to death in Ohio, and Republicans are holding the knives.

On Friday night’s episode of “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the MSNBC host explained that the state’s last three days of early voting, traditionally a time when churches and other urban community groups mobilize voters, have been canceled by Jon Husted, Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State. And that will mean longer lines in Democratic-leaning cities come election day.

President Barack Obama’s campaign has sued to overturn Husted’s decision, which he justified to a conservative radio host by saying, “We’re not 7/11.”

As if that weren’t enough, the times for polls to be open during early voting has also turned into a partisan meltdown, with Republicans supporting extended hours and weekend voting in conservative-leaning areas, but closing them early and restricting them to just five days a week in more liberal communities.

“Each county’s election board in Ohio’s 88 counties is evenly split between Republicans and Democrats,” Maddow explained. “In counties that tend to vote for the Republican candidate, like Warren and Butler counties, where John McCain won in ’08 by big margins — in those counties, Republicans and Democrats on the elections boards are voting together to allow early voting on nights and weekends. So that means more voting in Republican counties.

“But in the counties that tend to go Democratic, like Cuyahoga and Franklin and Summit, where Barack Obama won by huge margins in 2008, the Republicans on those election boards are voting against early voting on nights and weekends. And guess who gets the break for the tie votes in those counties?”

None other than Jon Husted.

“He is personally intervening to make sure there are fewer early voting hours on nights and weekends in Democratic counties, while there are more early voting hours on nights and weekends in Republican counties,” Maddow concluded.

This video is from MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” broadcast Friday, August 10, 2012.

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July 28, 2012 · 7:38 PM

Former FL GOP chair says ‘right-wing crazies’ want to suppress black vote

 

Former Republican Party Chair Jim Greer screenshot via YouTube

Just in case some folks may have thought the post below was merely a fluke…

The Raw Story

Former Florida Republican Party Chair Jim Greer testified in a lawsuit filed against his former party that “whack-a-do, right-wing crazies” wanted to suppress the black vote through Voter ID and tactics like current state Gov. Rick Scott’s efforts to purge voter rolls, according to reporting in the the Tampa Bay Times on Thursday.

“I was upset because the political consultants and staff were talking about voter suppression and keeping blacks from voting. It had been one of those days,” he testified in the 630-page affidavit that spans two days of deposition about a fundraising meeting with party general counsel Jason Gonzalez, political consultant Jim Rimes and Eric Eikenberg, Crist’s chief of staff. Rimes denies the discussion concerned voter suppression to the Times, and Eikenberg did not return the paper’s phone calls.

Greer claimed that the 2010 criminal fraud charges filed against him and other Republicans were part of internal party power scheming designed to push out him and former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, among others.

Crist now classifies himself as a moderate, and criticized Gov. Rick Scott’s “shameless” tactics that suppress voting rights, including requiring photo IDs, preventing felons from voting and purging voter rolls “unconscionable” on Wednesday.

Greer also testified that the party’s budget committee was made up of “whack-a-do, right-wing crazies” who wanted to push Crist and Greer out over political disagreements. including outrage over Crist’s appointment of an African-American judge and anger at Crist hugging President Barack Obama in 2009. “My phone lit up with people wanting me to censure the governor,” Greer testified, according to the Times. “Legislative leaders were using their party credit cards like drunken sailors and they made it clear to me I was not to interfere with their spending.”

Greer resigned after pressure from the party in late 2009, signing a severance agreement that outlined a $130,000 payment. Party officials later denied making the agreement and refused to honor it.

“They took everything I worked for my whole life,” he said, admitting that his family is now on food stamps. “Any good thing I did at the Republican Party has been destroyed by these people. I want my life back. I want them to say they are sorry for what they did to me.”

Watch an interview with Greer, uploaded to YouTube on January 23.

 

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December 27, 2011 · 1:54 AM

93-Year-Old Tennessee Woman Who Cleaned State Capitol For 30 Years Denied Voter ID

Voter suppression is alive and well in 2012.

I’m happy to know that the Department of Justice is looking into the South Carolina voter suppression issue, but I honestly believe all the states that implemented those laws should be investigated as well.

Think Progress

A 93-year-old Tennessee woman who cleaned the state Capitol for 30 years, including the governor’s office, says she won’t be able to vote for the first time in decades after being told this week that herold state ID failed to meet new voter ID regulations.

Thelma Mitchell was even accused of being an undocumented immigrant because she couldn’t produce a birth certificate:

Mitchell, who was delivered by a midwife in Alabama in 1918, has never had a birth certificate. But when she told that to a drivers’ license clerk, he suggested she might be an illegal immigrant.

Thelma Mitchell told WSMV-TV that she went to a state drivers’ license center last week after being told that her old state ID from her cleaning job would not meet new regulations for voter identification.

A spokesman for the House Republican Caucus insisted that Mitchell was given bad information and should’ve been allowed to vote, even with an expired state ID. But even if that’s the case, her ordeal illustrates the inevitable disenfranchisements that result when confusing voting laws enable state officials to apply the law inconsistently.

The incident is the just latest in a series of reports of senior citizens being denied their constitutional right to vote under restrictive new voter ID laws pushed by Republican governors and legislatures. These laws are a transparent attempt to target Democrat constituencies who are less likely to have photo ID’s, and disproportionately affect seniors, college students, the poor and minorities.

As ThinkProgress reported, one 96-year-old Tennessee woman was denied a voter ID because she didn’t have her marriage license. Another senior citizen in Tennessee, 91-year-old Virginia Lasater, couldn’t get the ID she needed to vote because she wasn’t able to stand in a long line at the DMV. A Tennessee agency even told a 86-year-old World War II veteran that he had to pay an unconstitutional poll tax if he wanted to obtain an ID.

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June 21, 2011 · 9:22 AM

The Crackdown on Voting

What will it be next?  A restoration of the old Jim Crow laws to include Muslims and Hispanics in addition to Blacks?

Talking Points Memo – Editor’s Blog

As we gear up for our 2012 election season coverage and the redesigned TPM website, due later this year, I wanted to let you know that we’re going to have a special section on what I believe is one of the most important — though still pretty undercovered — stories of this election cycle: the crackdown on voting.

Largely, but not entirely, because of the big Republican wins in the 2010 midterms, states around the country have been passing laws to make it more difficult to vote: voter ID laws, end of same day registration, more aggressive efforts to cull voting lists, various pieces of legislation aimed at cutting down on the number of people who are able to cast ballots. As always the purported aim is to eliminate voter impersonation fraud — people trying to show up and vote as people they’re not. That despite the almost total lack of any evidence that’s actually happening. These laws have the biggest effect on blacks, hispanics, the poor and the young. And that, my friends, is the idea.

Those ballots that never get cast will likely make the difference in many close elections next year. It’s a big, big story. But it’s still far under the radar.

 

 
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June 20, 2011 · 1:26 AM

ACLU sues Rick Scott to stop ‘voter suppression’

Jim Crow  laws seem to be alive and well in FL and other states adopting similar laws…

The Miami Herald

Rick Scott is sued for the fifth time in almost six months, this time for  signing a law that civil libertarians say violates the Voting Rights Act.

A pair of liberal-leaning groups sued Gov. Rick Scott on Friday to block an  elections law that they say amounts to “voter suppression.”

The ACLU of Florida and Project Vote filed the suit in the hopes that it  would stop Miami-Dade County from shortening the number of early-voting days  before its June 28 mayoral elections.

The new law shortens the early voting days – but not necessarily the number  of total hours – from 14 to eight days. It also requires an out-of-county voter  who tries to change his voting precinct on Election Day to cast a provisional  ballot, which can be more easily challenged. Also, the law cracks down on  third-party registration groups.

One of the plaintiffs, Tampa Sen. Arthenia Joyner, said the bill  passed by the Republican-led Legislature is an example of a “rank partisan  agenda” that disproportionately hurts minorities.

“It is un-American to make it a burden to vote. Too many people fought and  died for this right,” Joyner, a Democrat said. “This is an abomination. And it’s  unconscionable.”

Read more…

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February 4, 2011 · 1:27 AM

Former Sen. Norm Coleman: We Should ‘Absolutely’ Consider Gutting The Voting Rights Act

Here we go again…

Think Progress

As state legislatures gear up for the decennial process of congressional redistricting, one of the few obstacles preventing excessive gerrymandering in a handful of southern states is the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Still, despite the legislation’s massive success in preventing racism, many conservatives are dead set on dismantling the longstanding civil rights law.

In December, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) sounded the rallying cry. During a press conference, Cuccinelli declared that Virginia had “outgrown” institutional racism, and therefore ought to be exempted from the Voting Rights Act. (Virginia is one of nine southern and western states that must get their new redistricting maps pre-approved by the Justice Department in order to prevent discrimination against minority voters.)

Now, one of the architects of the Republican redistricting efforts, former Sen. Norm Coleman, wants to “reconsider” the entire Voting Rights Act. In an interview with ThinkProgress, Coleman argued that it was “absolutely” the right move to loosen the Voting Rights Act’s provisions that prevent legislators from drawing redistricting maps with a clear racial bias:

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