Good morning!
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 :)
If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)
Or if you would like to send a check via snail mail, please make checks payable to “Michelle Moquin”, and send to:
Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129
Thank you for your loyal support!
All content on this site are property of Michelle Moquin © copyright 2008-2012
“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream
" Politics, god, Life, News, Music, Family, Personal, Travel, Random, Photography, Religion, Aliens, Art, Entertainment, Food, Books, Thoughts, Media, Culture, Love, Sex, Poetry, Prose, Friends, Technology, Humor, Health, Writing, Events, Movies, Sports, Video, Christianity, Atheist, Blogging, History, Work, Education, Business, Fashion, Barack Obama, People, Internet, Relationships, Faith, Photos, Videos, Hillary Clinton, School, Reviews, God, TV, Philosophy, Fun, Science, Environment, Design, The Page, Rants, Pictures, Church, Blog, Nature, Marketing, Television, Democrats, Parenting, Miscellaneous, Current Events, Film, Spirituality, Obama, Musings, Home, Human Rights, Society, Comedy, Me, Random Thoughts, Research, Government, Election 2008, Baseball, Opinion, Recipes, Children, Iraq, Funny, Women, Economics, America, Misc, Commentary, John McCain, Reflections, All, Celebrities, Inspiration, Lifestyle, Theology, Linux, Kids, Games, World, India, Literature, China, Ramblings, Fitness, Money, Review, War, Articles, Economy, Journal, Quotes, NBA, Crime, Anime, Islam, 2008, Stories, Prayer, Diary, Jesus, Buddha, Muslim, Israel, Europe, Links, Marriage, Fiction, American Idol, Software, Leadership, Pop culture, Rants, Video Games, Republicans, Updates, Political, Football, Healing, Blogs, Shopping, USA, Class, Matrix, Course, Work, Web 2.0, My Life, Psychology, Gay, Happiness, Advertising, Field Hockey, Hip-hop, sex, fucking, ass, Soccer, sox"
