These anti-voter tactics are happening now, in the 21st century, 50 years after President Lyndon Johnson signed the VRA. And these anti-democracy tactics, worthy of tin-pot dictators and totalitarian strongmen, are happening in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
So the question is: With evidence in front of our noses of attempts at voter suppression by conservative governors in conservative states, why in hell would the SCOTUS even think of loosening up the law and making it easier to tamper with people's ability to vote?
This article in The Nation answers that question.
And this blog post talks about what the consequences of overturning Section 5. of the VRA will be. h/t Infidel753
UPDATE:
Leonard Pitts Jr. at The Miami Herald explains why he is no longer naïve about voter rights in Voting Rights Act: It's not a ‘racial entitlement’:
Yes, the South has changed — largely because of the law Shelby County seeks to gut.
Even so, attempts to dilute the black vote have hardly abated. We’ve just traded poll taxes and literacy tests for gerrymandering and Voter ID laws.
So we can ill afford to be as naïve as a top court conservative at the prospect of softening federal protection of African-American voting rights. “Trust us,” says the South. And the whole weight of history demands a simple question in response. Why?
2 comments:
The right-wingers would be well advised to read and consider the People's View post (not that they will). There's abundant anecdotal evidence that 2012's surge of minority turn-out was partly a reaction to Republican vote-suppression efforts, and one can only imagine what an attack on the Voting Rights Act, of all things, would do.
It won't only be minorities. Personally I'm not a member of a racial minority, but I will never forgive the conservatives for trying to rob tens of millions of fellow Americans of the critical right for which they had to fight so hard half a century ago.
The Orwellian stance of Roberts (and Scalia) should motivate us to make sure that the next few Supreme Court appointments, even if they happen after the end of Obama's term, are made by another Democratic President.
The Nation article and Pitts' column are both excellent. Both deserve a much wider readership
What this comes down to in conservative Republican minds is winning. They long ago adopted an anything-to-win approach. Lying, even when they routinely get caught out in their lies, is standard operating procedure. Cheating and stealing aren't beyond the pale for them. Subverting democracy with ever-larger sums of money devoted to buying candidates, officeholders and whole elections is the cost of overcoming the unpopularity of their ideology and agenda. Saturating the airwaves with expensive, vile attack ads, demonizing their opponets, promoting suspicion and division among different groups in society, fearmongering by playing up or even making up threats from within and without, are all components of the right's anything-to-win approach.
So, this naked attempt to pave the way for more and more-effective voter suppression comes as no surprise. Demographic change has been a worry for the radical right for some time. Having a few token blacks like J.C. Watts and Colin Powell on board did them little good, even as window dressing. The 2008 election registered as a huge wake-up call. What we're seeing is their response.
The very real possibility of losing Section 5 was made possible by voters' error in electing the Republican presidents who put Scalia, Roberts, Alito, et al, on the Supreme Court. Well, voters and those who didn't bother to vote -- fools who rejected participation in politicss and elections on the dim-witted by widely held notion, "The pols are all alike, and they're going to do what they're going to do, so why bother?"
Make no mistake, radical-right Republicans don't give a happy damn about the Constitution, about civil rights, human rights, or about the future of this country. What they do care about is money, power and the election victories that ensure they will have the money and power to crush the opposition and keep on winning.
It's as selfish, ruthless and simple as that.
Post a Comment