No. If their earlier attempt had been successful, would you have been sanguine with the law?
In other words, the racial data request was not relevant. The legislature had already signaled their intent to undo the early voting and Sunday voting provisions added in 1999 and 2002. They already passed a bill without the racial data; the racial data could not make them pass it harder or with a bigger font.
You still seem to be back at the racial data request means something stage of evolution.
No one stated a position, prior to iiiandyiii, that the VRA was violated regardless of the existence of a racial motive.
If you contend otherwise, please provide the post #.
I’m in general uncomfortable with a law created for the specific purpose of reducing minority vote, but I understand that the court might not have had sufficient proof that the law was racially motivated to overturn it without the racial preferences data.
Ummmm…this is completely wrong. Are we discussing the same case? The legislature used the racial preferences study to refine the law to more accurately target black voters. Do you really not understand this?
Does anybody else say that? Has the world of Constitutional scholarship been advised of this development? Has Chief Justice Roberts dropped you an e-mail, requesting your advice?
To put it more bluntly, did you just pull this right out of your ass?
Yeah, the appeals court seems to think that also, so I’m comfortable with my position.
Well, then, they’re wrong, aren’t they? Understandable, since they have not the advantage we have, of having the World’s Foremost Authority in our midst.
I don’t know if it caused it, but I believe it’s reasonable to conclude that it was influential.
Yay! This was what I was aiming at.
I didn’t say racial animus was in play – I don’t know whether it was or not. But you seem to agree with me that with regards to the VRA, it doesn’t matter.
Now it sounds like you agree with the conclusion of the appeals court, you just don’t believe that this part of the VRA is constitutional. Is this an accurate characterization of your argument?
It is at least the position he has retreated to, the bunker in which he can hunker down and assemble his massive force for the counter-attack.
From my understanding of the VRA, it doesn’t matter whether or not it was racially motivated – only the results matter. But in this case, I think the evidence, including the request for data following by the amendment, and the state’s admission of the racial relevance for the law, makes the case much stronger that it clearly violated the VRA.
No. I agreed the state said this at trial. I said there was a context related to the statement, not that they “simply disgorged” that admission.
At least it is consistent with his argument that you have to somehow be deserving of suffrage, that it has to be something to be worked and strive for.
What exactly the stipulations on the requirements are, he has not defined, but I assume it is less than what he has to do to vote, but, obviously, higher requirements than all these undeserveds that are impacted by these laws.
Bricker, if you believe that the “results” portion of the VRA is unconstitutional, then what part of the Constitution do you believe it violates?
How did the request made in 2013 influence the bill passed (but vetoed) in 2011? Tachyons?
Or are you saying that the legislature passed a bill to eliminate early voting in 2011, then was influenced to do the exact same thing again after getting the racial data?
Yes. But now we enter the question of which portion of the VRA was violated.
Yes. Well, I agree with the appeals court in the result, but not in their reasoning. The change violated the VRA as amended to protect against disparate results.
That language is not constitutional, in my opinion.
My understanding, which may be wrong, is that the racially discriminatory intent of the law meant that the appeals court took a more jaundiced view of the impact of the law:
While remedies short of invalidation may be appropriate if a provision violates the Voting Rights Act only because of its discriminatory effect, laws passed with discriminatory intent inflict a broader injury and cannot stand.
I’m saying this: They asked for data in 2013, and then made a change to the bill that was specifically related to the data they asked for. Therefore, it’s reasonable to believe that this data was somehow related to the change to the bill that they made, even if similar legislative action had been proposed in the past.
Do you believe that the data that they requested had absolutely nothing to do with the subsequent change to the provisions that are very specifically related to the data they requested? If not, why do you believe that they requested that data?
Why is that not constitutional, in your opinion?
Speaking of tachyons, I’m going to go back in time and ask you this question in the past:
Yes or no: Could the legislature have known *before the racial preferences data * that their proposed laws would primarily impact minorities?
Yes or no: Could the legislature have requested the racial preferences data as a way to refine their proposed laws to have maximum impact on minority voters and the minimum impact on non-minority voters?
Yes or no: Did the legislature adjust their proposed laws after receipt of racial preferences data in such a way as to increase the impact on minorities?
Yes or no: Are you a goldfish?
The earlier version of the VRA operated to forbid any “…standard, practice, or procedure . . . imposed or applied. . . to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” (emphasis added)
The current version of Sec. 2, however, forbids actions that RESULT in such denial.
This change allows the “one-way rachet” I spoke of above. It permits one political party to expand voting procedures to their benefit but prevents the opposition from reversing that change.
This runs counter to basic principles of federalism (“…imposes substantial federalism costs…” as Shelby v. Holder put it) and as the Supreme Court pointed out in that decision:
The Act, as applied to this set of facts, runs afoul of similar complaints that arose in Shelby – and if we’re talking timeline, it’s no accident that this legislation arose almost immediately after Shelby was handed down.
I get the one-way ratchet thing, but isn’t expanding voting access a different sort of fish? It’s not like reshaping districts, for example. Do you really believe that “making it easier for everyone to vote” is no different than “making it harder for everyone to vote”?
Though I can think of ways that early voting could be revoked without running afoul of this – for example, if a legislature got rid of early voting, but instituted some sort of statewide free ID, automatically distributed with no effort from citizenry, along with more polling places in poor areas, then that could be allowed by the VRA.
But it wasn’t “everyone.” The Democrats targeted way to make it easier for black voters to vote. They passed (“…with almost surgical precision…”) measures which made it easier for likely Democratic – black – voters to vote.
Also, Bricker, wouldn’t your interpretation of the VRA mean that it would be very easy for states to restrict black people’s voting by being just a little bit sneaky? Couldn’t they claim that they were getting rid of polling places in inner cities because of cost, for example?