Well, not EVERY Sunday, it should be in an election year at least…
But if we’re going to entertain slippery slopes, why not debate the merits of a law that allows for police who serve no-knock smash-entry warrants to hand out ballots to the startled homeowners? Surely that’s the peak of convenience, having them delivered directly to your home and when armed and shouting men have swarmed your house, your thoughts on who to vote for are likely to be the least cluttered by irrelevancies.
The canons of statutory construction would be strained indeed to find that ending early voting and mass production of ID cards to be a single standard.
And this idea of your ought to terrify you: you are happy with the courts having the power to ignore the text of the law in favor of what they think the spirit ought to be?
That sounds great… if you also agree with that spirit. If you’re considering abortion restrictions and run into a judge who believes that the spirit of the Fourteenth Amendment is that it covers the unborn, I suspect your enthusiasm for “the spirit” will vanish.
It seems like it would be much easier to hide discriminatory practices, with just a little bit of (racist) legal ingenuity. Mix in a few non-inner city polling places, for example – or require voter ID without mentioning that there are no ID offices near inner cities, or the only ones in inner cities are only open every third non-holiday Tuesday from 1 to 1:30 PM, or something like that.
But this already happens. Courts already do this sometimes, finagling out the spirit with legalistic thought and language.
Alternately, amend the VRA such that provisions of a law can affect voter access for minorities as long as they are paired with other provisions that make up for it.
What happened to plausible deniability? These days, either the lies are blatantly obvious and Brickerish persons who maintain “I don’t recognize that A is a result of B” display an Orwellian capacity for doublethink, or the pols are just too lazy to lie at all and barely show up when the courts ask for reasons.
Kids today…
True, but passing your first law would be silly and problematic anyway.
A better analogy would be that you have passed a law that puts polling places in all churches on Sundays for a few Sundays before election day, and then, upon discovering that it is predominately black (or democratic)people using it, removing it for those reasons.
OK.
Let’s explore that.
We start with the state of Missitucky. Missitucky is a very traditional state, with Election Day on the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November of every even-numbered year. Polling stations are distributed generally mapped to population density. There is no photo ID requirement.
At this point there is no real avenue for anyone to challenge the voting rules as being unfair.
Now the Democrats have a good year, and sweep the state house, state senate, and the governor’s mansion.
They enact new laws: same-day registration, early voting, including Sunday voting, and out-of-precinct voting within municipal limits. These changes indisputably increase African-American turnout.
The next election, the GOP sweeps into power…notwithstanding the increased AA vote turnout.
Is there any legal way, according to you, to undo those changes? ID cards won’t help: there is no requirement for them.
How about making election day a state holiday, and/or mandate that businesses give workers 2 hours paid vacation on election day? Provide free public transportation to the polls (or free public transportation in general on election day)? Automatic registration? It seems like there still might be plenty of avenues.
How would you defend against the allegation that those measures are insufficient?
Never mind. Let’s say the courts agree.
Next cycle, the Democrats win. They AGAIN pass same-day registration, early voting, including Sunday voting, and out-of-precinct voting within municipal limits…now against the backdrop of election day being a state holiday, businesses giving workers 2 hours paid vacation on election day, and free public transportation to the polls.
Can the GOP get in next cycle and reverse THOSE changes?
They might have to be creative. Have an “election week” instead of “election day”. Online voting or vote by mail. Mobile polling places that go door to door. Etc.
It seems unfair, perhaps, to those who think it’s ever legitimate to make it harder for anyone to vote (not me, as you know). But the alternative makes it pretty easy to discriminate, and I think it’s pretty clear that plenty of state legislators are interested in discriminating, whether out of hatred or because they think it helps them electorally. So I (obviously) favor the status quo and the NC appeals court’s interpretation of the VRA to your solution.
This is one of the legacies of the immense and overwhelming influence of white supremacy well into the 20th century and beyond.
And in the NEXT switch cycle?
You see the problem with a one-way rachet?
I understand your point of view, but I don’t share it. The feds cannot so constrain state action, in my opinion, and remain consistent with the Constitution. I think that message is clear from Shelby County v Holder, and in this circumstance I hope that the Fourth Circuit rehears this case en banc and vacates their current holding.
For the next cycle, they’ll just have to try again.
If this got to ridiculous levels, and there were no more evidence of significant attempts to discriminate in voting, then I’d be open to amending the VRA to prevent silliness (perhaps by including specific voting provisions which may be allowed or disallowed or something).
But thank you for sharing so amicably. I clearly see that not everyone favoring voter ID (or other voting restrictions) does so out of racism, and you can see that many of us who oppose it do so without hypocrisy or partisan urges.
Well, let’s see how long that lasts…
The problem with the one way ratchet analogy is that on one side is fairness and equality, and the other discrimination and oppression.
No, that ratchet should never slip backwards.
Oh, absolutely. People of good faith may disagree on this issue.
Since we’re all so kumbaya and good faith and stuff, how about answering that series of yes/no questions I asked you earlier:
Yes or no: Could the legislature have known before the racial preferences data was prepared that their proposed laws would primarily impact minorities?
Yes or no: Could the legislature have reasonably expected that reducing minority voting would increase Republican electoral chances?
Yes or no: Could the legislature have requested the racial preferences data as a way to refine their proposed laws to more effectively target minority voting?
Yes or no: Did the legislature modify the proposed laws after receipt of racial preferences data in such a way as to effectively reduce minority voting?
Yes or no: Did the appeals court consider the, in their opinion, deliberately racially discriminatory impact of the laws in reaching their conclusion?
Yes or no: Was the appeals court correct to consider whether the laws deliberately targeted minorities when they made their decision?
The voters rights act prohibits voting laws that have a discriminatory effect. If a change to a voting law doesn’t reduce minority voting percentage below the voting percentage of the majority population, then it’s not discriminatory. In other words, the “ratchet” only ratchets up to the majority voting percentage, which I’m completely OK with.
Do you have a cite for your claim that NC Democrats passed those laws “to gain voting advantages”?
I would be willing to accept that some Democrats had nefarious motivations. Naturally, I won’t speculate on the proportion or offer any evidence, and will expect respect bordering on reverence for my non-partisan objectivity.
As I understand it, this question contains an error: the legislature did not “do the exact same thing again after getting the racial data”; they altered the bill after getting the racial data.