The Bipartisan Bill To Restore The Voting Rights Act
Posted by Michelle Moquin on January 26th, 2014
Good morning!
Here’s The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly About The Bipartisan Bill To Restore The Voting Rights Act
On Thursday, Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and John Conyers (D-MI) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) plan to introduce bipartisan legislation that will undo much of the damage done by the Roberts Court’s 5-4 decision to neuter a key prong of the Voting Rights Act. Since its enactment in 1965, the Voting Rights Act required states with a record of racial voter suppression to “preclear” any new voting laws with the Department of Justice or a federal court in D.C. The Supreme Court’s decision last June struck down the formula that determined which states are subject to this preclearance regime, effectively halting federal supervision of many states that were actively engaged in voter suppression.
Prior to the Roberts Court’s decision, nine states were subject in their entirety to the preclearance requirement, and parts of six others were also covered. Notably, much of the state of North Carolina, which recently enacted the most aggressive voter suppression law in the nation, was covered under the old formula.
The bipartisan fix to the Roberts Court’s decision creates a new formula that would initially lead to far fewer states being covered by preclearance. As the Nation’s Ari Berman explains, the new formula requires preclearance in states “with five violations of federal law to their voting changes over the past fifteen years,” and to localities “if they commit three or more violations or have one violation and ‘persistent, extremely low minority turnout’ over the past fifteen years.” The upshot of this new formula is that only four states, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas will immediately be subject to preclearance in their entirety. Notably, none of these four states are North Carolina, with its comprehensive voter suppression law.
The other piece of bad news is that the bipartisan bill creates a special carve-out for voter ID laws. Voter ID, which requires voters to show a photo ID before they can cast a ballot, are one of the most common voter suppression tactics in the country. Though their proponents claim that they are necessary to prevent voter fraud at the polls, such fraud is virtually non-existent. Indeed, a Wisconsin study found that just 0.00023 percent of votes are the product of in-person voter fraud, so a person is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit fraud at the polls.
What voter ID does accomplish that it removes many low-income, student and minority voters from the electorate, all of which are groups that tend to favor Democrats over Republicans. Yet, despite their impact on racial minorities, the bipartisan voting bill will not count voter ID laws as a violation of federal voting rights that that can be used to subject a state to preclearance. Berman reports that this special carve out for these racially discriminatory laws was necessary to secure the support of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and some other Republicans.
It should be noted, however, that while voter ID laws cannot be used to bring a state under the preclearance requirement, the bipartisan bill will allow them to be blocked in states that are already subject to preclearance — either under the new formula or under another provision that will be discussed shortly. In this sense, the bipartisan bill appears to be a compromise between a radical proposal hinted at by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) — that voter ID be exempt from the Voting Rights Act entirely — and the pre-Roberts Court status quo. Nevertheless, there is a risk that the bipartisan voting bill will allow voter ID laws in some states to be grandfathered in if they are enacted during a period when the state is not subject to preclearance.
So that’s the bad news for supporters of voting rights. The biggest piece of good news is that the law does not just create a new formula that will immediately subject a handful of states to preclearance, it also strengthens the ability of courts to bring states and localities engaged in voter discrimination under the preclearance umbrella. Currently, the Justice Department is suing Texas andNorth Carolina under Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act, a provision which allows a state to be made subject to preclearance if a court finds “violations of the fourteenth or fifteenth amendment justifying equitable relief have occurred within the territory of such State or political subdivision.”
The problem with Section 3, however, is that it is widely understood to require the Justice Department to prove that Texas and North Carolina enacted voter suppression laws with the intent of disenfranchising voters because of their race. Proving intent is a challenge in any context — neither judges nor attorneys are mind readers — so DOJ faces a difficult road ahead under current law. The bipartisan bill will strengthen Section 3 so that “any violation of the VRA or federal voting rights law – whether intentional or not – can be grounds for a bail-in.” This is a really big deal. Big enough that it probably justifies paying the high price Cantor and others have demanded in order to revive the Voting Rights Act.
So on balance, this is a good bill for voting rights. It will improve the baseline significantly from the post-Roberts Court status quo, and will make it much, much easier to hold states like North Carolina accountable for voter suppression. Nevertheless, two caveats are in order.
The first is that anyone who remembers what happened after the Senate passed a bipartisan immigration bill knows that it is always dangerous to bet on progressive legislation surviving contact with the GOP-controlled House. Majority Leader Cantor’s apparent support for the bill is a good sign that it may pass, but it remains to be seen whether that support can be relied upon or whether he can deliver the votes necessary to pass the bill into law.
The second is that there is always some risk that the very conservative Roberts Court will object to this bill as well. The Court’s June decision gutting the Voting Rights Act includes some language suggesting that any preclearance formula is unconstitutional unless it is limited to states engaged in the kind of “‘pervasive,’ ‘flagrant,’ ‘widespread,’ and ‘rampant’ discrimination that faced Congress in 1965.”If the Roberts Court applies such a standard in future cases, not even North Carolina is likely to be susceptible to preclearance — though it remains to be seen whether the five conservative justices would actually go this far.
In other words, the biggest challenge facing voting rights advocates is that they must overcome two lawmaking bodies controlled by very conservative officials — the House of Representatives and the Supreme Court of the United States. Should they clear these hurdles, however, this bipartisan proposal would go a long way towards fixing the damage caused by the Roberts Court last June, and its amendments to Section 3 would actually make American voting rights law more robust in some ways than it was before Chief Justice Roberts got his hands on it.
*****
Readers: New topic for today. However I am sort of stuck on the topic from the last few days. Feel free to comment on whatever pulls at you. Or introduce something new. :)
So many interesting comments to Bee and women like Bee. All I can say is good stuff. Nothing really new to add except I want to address one commenter…
Morris: I appreciate you sharing your story as it inspired me to think deeper on it when I was discussing your comment to a male friend. It sounds to me like you got married young. So, your wife made a mistake and slept with you on the first date. You wanted her to and you got her to. Young girls do that all of the time – they don’t know any better. (So do mature women, but they should know better.) Between males telling girls that they aren’t worth much and tricking them into feeling that if they don’t give it up on the first date they’ll not see the man again, it is challenging for a young girl who doesn’t have a sense of herself, nor know herself, or her value, to say no and wait.
However, you still married her because you fell in love with her, and to this day still love her as much. And although you felt she was a great mother, wife and partner, you still hold onto this one thing, and have not gotten over it. With all of the wonderful things that you respect and love about your wife, it is too bad that you let the fact that she slept with you on the first date, and continually questioned her faithfulness, bother you for so long.
What I don’t understand is you felt that the marriage license was a “wedding pact” for you not to cheat on your wife, (And you didn’t. I congratulate you for upholding your end of the “pact.”) however, you didn’t trust that the piece of paper, the “wedding pact,” would also be upheld on your wife’s end.
The last time I checked it seems to be that men are more prone to cheat on their wives than women cheating on their husbands. So I find it interesting that because she made this one mistake, when she was young, which has bothered you ever since, yet you still loved her enough to marry her, that you could not afford her the same trust in her upholding her end of the “wedding pact.”
It reminds me of a commenter who felt that it was no big deal to cheat on his wife, yet, if she did the same and cheated on him, it would be something that he would never forgive.
In my opinion, it is unfortunate that you never got over it. Because women have a sense about these things, I can only imagine how your wife must’ve felt, knowing how uncomfortable your first sexual encounter made you feel throughout your entire marriage. And knowing that you never really trusted her to not fuck a man that she may have liked. Even if she never cheated on you, which I am guessing she didn’t, or would never cheat on you, she probably had to live with the fact that you never totally trusted her and thought that she would.
Your uncomfortableness was that she slept with you on her first date, didn’t value herself, and couldn’t be trusted. Her uncomfortableness may have been that you felt that because of her youth and sleeping with you on the first date, that you didn’t trust that she valued herself enough to be faithful to you. I really don’t know – I am just putting myself in her shoes and guessing.
She may have grown to really know herself, respect herself and know her value. But she may have felt that no matter what she did, no matter how great of a wife, mother or partner she was, you would not trust her totally, nor think she was as valuable as she had grown to know and be.
I really don’t know but that is my gut feeling. And I HOPE you don’t mind me expressing it.
Peace out.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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January 26th, 2014 at 3:50 pm
I agree Misha that’s why I thought it poignant, seem to me that’s an awfully long time to hold on to a burden that neednt be there given that he fell in love, at some point you apply the id rather trust the not trust principal, one would think…
January 26th, 2014 at 9:40 pm
Michelle, I have been reading your blog for three years. I have seldom read advice from a woman who thinks as deeply on a subject as you do. I appreciate your opinion because unlike some on this blog you have one.
You take a stand a defend it without trying to claim all sides of an issue. For you, if you feel a thing is bad or wrong you don’t say it is, and then immediately qualify that opinion with a “but if.”
Your analysis of my actions and thoughts were so powerful that I wept. I have cried only once before, silently in my bedroom when I realized that I would never see that beautiful face smile at me in the morning again.
Today I wept openly. You are so right when you say I didn’t trust that piece of paper would be up held by my wife. Why I don’t know, because she was not the kind of person to cheat. She made the type of mistake young women make. I was 17(I lied because I was in college at 16, I told her I was 20 because she was) and just too dumb to know better.
As you said some women are just too naive to know better. That is easy to see when those women who know better tell them to learn for themselves. Women like you know that the younger generation can only learn by your mistakes if you take the time to educate them.
The principle benefit of an experience is that you can save someone else the anguish you have suffered by telling them not to repeat yours.
Those who know better and give that do what suits you advice are worst than the men who use the “playing games” line to get a naive female to feel she has to to prove she is an “adult”, or as slutty as a man.
Thank you for taking the time to tell me like you saw it. I see it that way too. I just hope my beloved never knew I didn’t trust her. I never acted like I didn’t trust her because I was afraid that she would think I was less of a man.
No Michelle, I don’t mind you expressing it. It is true. She never acted as if I didn’t trust her. I never said or acted as if I didn’t trust her. Now, I know better. I wish someone had had this talk with me long ago before my beloved passed away.
I now realize she was perfect, it was I who was flawed. It was my naivete that kept me from knowing better. I was the self-righteous idiot for believing my vows on our wedding night were more sacred to me than to her. It is 12:27 AM I am writing this after I got on my knees as asked God to tell my wife I love her and that she was perfect in every way. I asked her to forgive me for not trusting her.
You have made me the happiest man on the planet and the saddest. But since I know that Trish would not want me to grieve too hard. I can let the sadness of my mistrust of her become the happiness of my learning it was me not her who lacked the maturity to trust the one you love.
January 26th, 2014 at 9:41 pm
The republican party isn’t interested in anything but white male supremacy.
January 26th, 2014 at 9:58 pm
The way I see this double standard thing is whether women like it or not it is here to stay. Equality isn’t about fucking us in bed or out. It is about sharing equally with us economically and otherwise.
But I’ll take the pussy if you want to give it to me before that 90 day thing because it makes you feel equal to a man.
January 26th, 2014 at 10:02 pm
Ladies the truth is only the man benefits from getting fucked before that 90 day period. The woman who convinces herself that she is doing it because she wants to is lying to herself.
She is doing it because she doesn’t think she can hold him if she doesn’t. If she did, she would wait, what does she have to lose if she discovers that he couldn’t or wouldn’t wait?
January 26th, 2014 at 10:26 pm
Why are you holly rollers trying so hard to convince these sluts not to give up the pussy? Could it be you are afraid of the competition?
It is not like we men aren’t working hard to get the tramp to drop those drawers as soon as possible. On some of you tricky whores I had to use up every line I had to get you to give it up.
And don’t think 90 days is going to put me off. I’m a successful trolling animal. I can smell a bitch in heat. I know when she is just waiting on the right words to convince her to fuck my brains out.
Leave the whores alone. It cuts down on rape.
January 26th, 2014 at 10:33 pm
Michelle, that pussy Morris just didn’t discover the bitch was cheating on him. I speak from experience. My wife sucked my dick in a public restroom, the first night we met.
I was a drummer in the band playing at the gig. Like a fool, I married the strumpet. That easy lay cheated on me throughout our 4 year marriage.
Dogs and whores don’t change their spots. Once a cheap piece of meat ALWAYS a cheap piece of meat.
January 26th, 2014 at 10:44 pm
Jack, I’m a drummer in a band to. Your story reminded me of my youth. I was bi back in those days. Today I’m strictly for the boys women are so nasty that I wouldn’t trust one to be my mother.
I used to fuck and man in the ass after one set, wipe my dick with toilet paper and let a bitch suck it after the next. I use to do a drum roll to acknowledge the funky bitch so the rest of the band could laugh.
Often times the bitch would stand and applaud. There were days I would refuse to kiss a bitch. They are dirty filthy whores who vindicate their whoring ways by saying they are protesting the double standard.
They are just whores with self-serving explanations to account for their lack of any common decency. I laugh when I think of the straight men who make fun of fags.
They are probably kissing some woman who just sucked the shit from some man’s ass off this homo’s dick.
January 26th, 2014 at 10:46 pm
Yeah, go ahead keep telling the ladies to fuck at will. I got no problem with that.
January 26th, 2014 at 10:47 pm
Whores just wanna be whores. Leave them alone.
January 27th, 2014 at 6:43 am
Morris, there’s a lot of gray area in life, (not about vetting men), if people want to believe in absolute terms black-and-white ideas that’s fine, live and learn, 1 come from knowing that people are always going to leap off to make their own choices and mistakes, which wouldn’t always be the ones I would suggest. I would never suggest not getting to young girls or even an adult woman though I don’t call them whores and sluts automatically if the bed their men at day 65 or 75 for instance, it’s their call! I assume here on MM readers are at least 18. If I’m wrong please tell me bc I will at G audience my responses here!
I would also add to the 90 day rule that if you aren’t spending much weekend time with your new honey that he’s possibly got another honey…there are a variety of additional wats to vet properly…
Luv, Zen Lill
January 27th, 2014 at 6:55 am
And I’m honored to be the first on here to wish you a VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY to our BABE of a blog host, have a great day, Mischa!
January 27th, 2014 at 6:58 am
Without you and this place I would not have had the chance to live, learn, grow, expand, have an ocasional setback over the past 5 years and hopefully we will still continue to – live, learn, grow & expand over the next 5+ years, thank you, you are an outstanding mentor and commander.
January 27th, 2014 at 7:52 am
Happy Birthday Michelle
January 27th, 2014 at 7:53 am
Feliz Aniversário Michelle
January 27th, 2014 at 7:58 am
Alles Gute zum Geburtstag Michelle.
January 27th, 2014 at 7:59 am
สุขสันต์วันเกิดมิเชลล์
January 27th, 2014 at 8:00 am
S̄uk̄hs̄ạnt̒ wạn keid mi chell̒.
January 27th, 2014 at 8:02 am
Gelukkige Verjaardag Michelle.
January 27th, 2014 at 8:05 am
عيد ميلاد سعيد ميشيل.
Happy Birthday Michelle
January 27th, 2014 at 8:07 am
Happy Birthday Michelle, Certainly wish you would change your mind and come celebrate with us here.
Love
Ruth & family
January 27th, 2014 at 8:08 am
Happy Birthday Michelle. Your blog is fantastic.
January 27th, 2014 at 8:09 am
The GirlZ of Saudi wish you the best this day and every day but especially on your Birthday.
January 27th, 2014 at 8:11 am
The GirlZ of Tunisia have many great wishes for you too Michelle. Happy Birthday.
January 27th, 2014 at 8:12 am
Feliz cumpleaños Michelle de México.
January 27th, 2014 at 8:15 am
بنات مصر نرسل لك حبهم ميشيل. عيد ميلاد سعيد.
The Girls of Egypt send you their love Michelle. Happy Birthday.
January 27th, 2014 at 8:38 am
Happy Birthday Michelle gikan sa Cebu. Ang mga babaye sa Cebu ipadala kaninyo sa ilang gugma Michelle.
January 27th, 2014 at 8:39 am
Wishing you a special day all day.
Love and Happy Birthday.
January 27th, 2014 at 8:39 am
Happy Birthday Michelle.
January 27th, 2014 at 8:52 am
Happy Birthday, Michelle!!! xoxo
/SB
January 27th, 2014 at 8:56 am
Håfa ådai Michelle.
Biba Kumplianos.
January 27th, 2014 at 9:07 am
The Girlz of Israel wish you a very Happy Birthday. Your blog is just great. You are a very cherished friend of Israel.
January 27th, 2014 at 9:09 am
The GirlZ of China love you too Michelle.
Happy Birthday.
January 27th, 2014 at 9:10 am
Feliz Aniversário Michelle do Brasil. As meninas do Brasil enviar-lhe o seu amor Michelle. Feliz Aniversário.
January 27th, 2014 at 9:12 am
Happy Birthday Michelle. As Zen Lill said much has been learned here and I am looking forward to more great years to come.
Love
Delores
January 27th, 2014 at 9:14 am
I live in Brazil but every time I see your face I wish I were in you Bay Area. Happy Birthday Michelle.
January 27th, 2014 at 9:16 am
Michelle your blog has made a difference in the attitudes of the GirlZ of Kenya.
Have a very Happy Birthday.
January 27th, 2014 at 9:17 am
I can’t say enough about what this blog has meant to me.
Happy Birthday Michelle.
January 27th, 2014 at 9:17 am
Happy Birthday Michelle, You are indeed special.
February 12th, 2014 at 12:48 am
Appreciate Your Readers – I couldn’t believe that the number of visitors and people who left comments was growing every day.
Place a link to your blog in your e-mail signature, promote all your content via social
media and submit your blog to directories and search engines.