dismantling voting rights, one case at a time

in a previous decision this year, the supreme court chose to limit the voting rights act, “ruling that provisions aimed at maintaining black and Hispanic influence at the polling place don’t apply in districts that are less than half minority.”

just a couple of months later, the supreme court could again limit provisions of the act, which was meant to protect the voting rights of minorities and end racial inequality in government representation.

Will the Supreme Court kill the Voting Rights Act?:

The case is Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District #1 v. Holder—shortened to NAMUDNO—and represents the most serious challenge to the act to date, and has become a lightning rod for debate over the role of race and racism in U.S. politics today.

The case started in 2006, when a largely white and wealthy utility district in Travis County, Texas argued that it should be excepted from Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires that a handful of states and counties—mostly in the South—must “preclear” any changes to voting procedures with the Department of Justice before they’re implemented.

Section 5 has been battled by conservatives, especially in the South, ever since. The 1966 case South Carolina v. Katzenbach went all the way to the Supreme Court, which affirmed that, while certainly a heavy-handed approach, Congressional action was needed to enforce the Constitution’s 15th Amendment protections against racially-biased voting laws.

The original NAMUDNO complaint made two distinct legal arguments: First, that the Texas district should have the right to “bail out” from the Section 5’s preclearance provision; and second, failing that, the entirety of Section 5 should be struck down as unconstitutional.

It was an odd place for Section 5’s biggest threat to originate. For example, the utility districts’ central claim is that complying with Section 5 is too “burdensome”—even though it has only cost the district about $233 a year. In contrast, last month the attorney generals of six states which face far greater “burdens” in complying with the Act—Arizona, California, Louisiana, Mississippi, New York and North Carolina—filed an amicus brief arguing that “the burdens imposed by Section 5 on covered jurisdictions are not onerous.”

But whatever its strange origins, NAMUDNO could be fatal to Section 5. The case is structured as an all-or-nothing—as election law guru Richard Hasen points out in Slate:

What’s especially worrying about NAMUDNO is that the case does not provide the court with an easy incremental way out: If a majority of the justices want to side with the challengers to the Voting Rights Act, there’s not much they can do short of holding the act as broadly unconstitutional.

And given the inclinations of the current Supreme Court, a complete take-down of Section 5 is a distinct possibility. As a Reagan lawyer in 1982, now-Chief Justice John Roberts spearheaded an effort to prevent expansion of the Voting Rights Act.

The Supreme Court’s Hostility to the Voting Rights Act:

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Tagged as: politics,racism,conservatives,voting May 14, 2009 @ 11:44 am

the frenzied right-wing

check out the wonderful artwork at active art!

The Rise of Glenn Beck’s Bizarre Media Militia:

Adkisson made headlines on July 28, 2008, when he took his sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tenn., and, after whipping it out of a guitar case, opened fire on parishioners while a group of schoolchildren performed songs up by the altar. Adkisson killed two people and wounded several others.

He hated liberals. 

The only way we can rid ourselves of this evil is kill them in the streets. Kill them where they gather. I’d like to encourage other like-minded people to do what I’ve done. If life ain’t worth living anymore, don’t just kill yourself. Do something for your Country before you go. Go Kill Liberals!

“There are a lot of people who hate liberals, and if we stir that around in the pot and on the airwaves, eventually there will be people (like Adkisson) ... who get infected by the violent rhetoric and put it into violent action,” Bohstedt said.  He remained worried about future violence: “Do you think there are other Jim Adkissons out there listening to hate speech? I do.”

A lot of Republicans have gone off the deep end into crazy land:

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Tagged as: texas,politics,news,conservatives April 16, 2009 @ 01:56 am

the face of modern conservatism, ctd

Lately we have been hearing a lot of squawking and screeching emanating from the conservative right wing about a revolution.

This is rather perplexing given that we recently had an election in which the elected President won rather substantially without the need for voter caging, voter suppression, election fraud, recounts, recount shut downs, lawsuits and the Supreme Court.  Nor was it necessary to bring in the likes of a Swift Boat attack machine and a corrupted Secretary of State (R-OH) to deliver a win in a razor thin, close election. 

And despite all of the problems we face in these dire and stressful times the President’s approval ratings remain in the 60’s.  Today it is at 67%. Today an ABC/Washington Post poll also reveals 65% trust President Obama to handle relations with Muslim nations.

So, what is the problem?  Why is a revolution necessary now? 

read further: “So Now They Want a Revolution?”

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Tagged as: politics,news,conservatives April 08, 2009 @ 02:39 pm

the more things change, the more they revert back

this is a few days old, but worth noting.

March 9 (Bloomberg)—The U.S. Supreme Court limited the Voting Rights Act, ruling that provisions aimed at maintaining black and Hispanic influence at the polling place don’t apply in districts that are less than half minority.

The justices, voting 5-4, struck down a North Carolina redistricting plan that sought to preserve minority voting power in a state legislative district that is 39 percent black. The high court said that district wasn’t covered by the “vote dilution” protections in Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act because minority voters could elect their preferred candidate only with the help of whites.

“Nothing in Section 2 grants special protection to a minority group’s right to form political coalitions,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for three justices in the court’s controlling opinion.

The ruling, which will affect the way voting lines are redrawn after the 2010 census, may make it harder for minority candidates to win election in some voting districts.

Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens dissented. Souter said the ruling will lead to districts that are more racially concentrated.

The decision will have the effect of “contracting the number of districts where racial minorities are having success in transcending racial divisions in securing their preferred representation,” he said.

Kennedy said that dipping below the 50-percent threshold “would place courts in the untenable position of predicting many political variables and tying them to race-based assumptions.” He said that approach would raise “serious constitutional questions.”

Critics of the ruling questioned that reasoning, saying the upshot will be more racial polarization in voting.

The decision “seems to open the door to still more packing of minority voters into fewer districts so as to minimize the number of political races their votes will impact and thus diluting their political voice,” said J. Gerald Hebert, executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, which filed a brief backing the North Carolina plan.

Defenders of the ruling disagreed. “The practical effect of this decision is to make it harder for politicians to gerrymander electoral districts by race,” said Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Ralph Kasarda, who filed a brief opposing the plan.

and, of course, that’s exactly what the decision would mean.  section 2 of the voting rights act sought to end vote dilution.  there is absolutely no “equal opportunity to participate in the political process”, if districts are redrawn to make it impossible for a minority to be elected.  after this last election, it should come as no surprise that conservatives have tried to find a way around that.

from an article entitled “Voting Rights in Jeopardy”, which discusses what was then an up and coming revisitation of the voting rights act:

Prior to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, barriers to black registration and voting were massive and crude. The entire white southern way of life was at stake. It was voting rights, more than anything else, that stimulated the 1964 Freedom Summer, voting rights that split the 1964 Democratic National Convention, and voting rights for which young activists gave their lives. In 1964, Mississippi had only about 7 percent of its black voting-age population registered to vote, with a voting-age population that was 36 percent black, Alabama, with a voting-age population that was 26 percent black, registered less than one eligible black voter in four, and Louisiana, with a voting-age population that was 28 percent black, registered less than one in three. In 1964, out of about 29,000 local, state, and national elected officials in the entire ex-Confederacy of 11 states, just 16 such officials were black, 3 of these state legislators and 13 local officials.

The 1965 act focussed entirely on the franchise. The act contained two sets of provisions, permanent sections that prohibited discrimination in voting, and temporary elements for enforcement, subject to renewal. The most important of these temporary features was Section 5 pre-clearance, which empowers the Justice Department to pre-clear any proposed changes in local registration and voting procedures. But there were also other temporary sections that barred specific impediments to voting and that provided for direct federal observation or examination of electoral processes as they occurred. This was the most basic takeover by Washington of local civic functions since Reconstruction; it was richly deserved and roundly resented.

No sooner was the law enacted than several southern state legislatures adopted programs of massive resistance to voting rights, much like the earlier massive resistance to school desegregation. States recast entire systems of representation in order to dilute black influence. They permitted or required county and municipal governments to create at-large voting for public offices, which submerged geographic black voting strength within a larger white majority. They changed balloting systems so that black voters were forced to vote for entire tickets, thus blocking any “single-shot” or “bullet-voting” by blacks for a liberal or minority candidate, which had been permitted previously in some jurisdictions. They pushed local governments to establish absolute majority vote requirements for winners, thus preventing plurality victory by a black candidate over a split field of whites. They converted elective offices to offices appointed by officials likely to have exclusively white support. Finally, states reapportioned legislative and congressional district lines to submerge black voting strength in white majorities.

yet, the supporters of this recent ruling, illogical asshats that they are (woo!  check out my non-ableist language!), would have us believe that would *never* happen.  yeah.  right.  and that civil war?  had *nothing* to do with slavery. 

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Tagged as: politics,racism,conservatives,voting March 23, 2009 @ 03:11 pm

more on the face of modern conservatism

from The Sewers of Hate:

One can draw a straight line from political operatives like Lee Atwater and his racist “Southern Strategy” or Newt Gingrich’s 1996 memo urging Republicans to use words like “corrupt”, “sick”, “radical” and “traitor” to describe their political opponents, to popular conservative pundits who write books with titles like Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism (Ann Coulter), Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism (Sean Hannity), and The Enemy Within: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Schools, Faith, and Military (Michael Savage), to internet columnists who proclaim in absolute seriousness that one-half of the American population is composed of traitors and subversives. And from there, all this accumulated anger and hate trickles down into the right-wing sewers. It was such a sewer that birthed James Adkisson and filled his mind with the venom that motivated his deeds.

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Tagged as: politics,bigotry,conservatives February 28, 2009 @ 12:14 pm