How will this SCOTUS decision affect voting rights?
Your question is more suited for Great Debates or IMHO since there is no simple answer.
The current Congress will do nothing. That’s because a segment of Congress will do nothing to enfranchise voters who would be inclined to vote out that same segment of Congress. In other words, the Republican / conservative / religious right / Tea Partyesque members of Congress will are celebrating today’s Court decision and will do little, if anything, to cut off their own noses.
As has been mentioned in the Pit threads, Texas is already moving to take advantage of this ruling to push forward on voting ID laws and use gerrymandered maps.
So I expect the widespread disenfranchisement of people with dark skin to be a result of this.
Hell, we already have gerrymandered maps. As for voter ID, I don’t have a problem with that.
Most people don’t vote most of the time. Informed citizenship takes a bit of effort and most people can’t be botherd to make effort. I think most disenfranchisement is self imposed.
And of course it’s merely a coincidence that the disenfranchised tend to be poor and dark skinned and vote Democrat.
Moved to Great Debates.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Most of such laws tend to get blocked and bogged down in courts (if last year was any indication) so I doubt any sort of widespread disenfranchisement will occur. If anything, if the public anger is big enough, it may serve to further increase black voter registration and turnout.
Pretty predictably. Laws that were blocked by the Voting Rights Act are no longer blocked, and those laws are going to be put into effect ASAP.
See also: every red state hates brown people.
Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and every other place where Republican governors and state government try to disenfranchise the poor, elderly and minorities makes it clear to me that this sort of shit is not limited to former slave states. We need a broader reading of the constitutional right to vote that makes the VRA redundant.
Where’s the nearest DMV to where you live? Back when I lived in the states, it was 30 miles away. That’s 30 miles with no transportation. Sure, I guess you could ride 30 miles each way on your bike, or maybe hitchhike (keeping in mind that not having ID precludes having a driver’s license), but that’s pretty much the entire day down the drain, plus you have to hope you can get ID at your first try (which often isn’t the case - sometimes, you’re missing something, or their computers are down, or some other shit comes into play).
And of course, 60 miles round trip is small potatoes compared to the 200-250 cited in the texas court case. Enforcing voter ID laws means very realistically that some people simply will be completely unable to vote unless they take a massive road trip (without a car, mind you), and given the state of public transit in the USA, I wouldn’t rely on that either. And of course, it doesn’t have to make it impossible - all it has to do is make it so that it’s a challenge that people aren’t willing to go through to vote. And that’s definitely the case with such laws - I think many people aren’t going to be bothered enough to get ID, given that it’s just one vote anyways.
And for what? The number of voter fraud cases documented within the past 13 years (since the DOJ started a massive investigation under Bush) has been essentially non-existent. However, the number of eligible voters without ID has been a pretty constant 10%, and the groups most likely to not have ID include:
- The Poor
- Racial Minorities
- The young
- The elderly
…So basically, 3/4 groups which are hard democrat, and one which is starting to move towards the democrats as the republicans become more extreme on their positions towards programs they rely on. It’s blatantly obvious that the goal of these laws is not to prevent the (virtually non-existent) voter fraud, but rather to disenfranchise voters.
So after stripping Americans of our right to remain silent unless we assert it, and our right to vote regardless of socioeconomic status, it’s not looking good for the gays that are also up for a ruling this week, is it?
I guess we can be glad that Roberts had his one moment of benevolence back with the ACA. I knew it was too much to hope for another.
The 2006 reauthorization of section 5 of the VRA passed 390-33 and 98-0.
The part of the VRA that prohibits voting acts or procedures with a discriminatory result is Section 2, which was unaffected by this ruling. Any discriminatory law that was illegal yesterday is still illegal today, and any that were legal yesterday are legal today.
Actually, it’s looking pretty good right now! 
But it effectively doesn’t matter since the list of places where it applies has been rescinded. Practically speaking, the VRA doesn’t apply anywhere until Congress approves a new list of locations.
Nope, that’s incorrect. Section 2 applies to the entire nation. New York City can’t pass a law tomorrow requiring pure white blood to vote any more than Alabama could.
It is Section 5 that only applies to certain districts, using critera spelled out in Section 4 (primarily, data from the 1964 election). This required the covered jurisdictions to pre-approve (or “pre-clear”) any changes in their election laws or procedures through the Department of Justice.
That is what has been struck down, the pre-clearance formula of Section 4.
Chief Justice Roberts has made a finding, based on his personal mood, that this country has changed. The constitution authorizes remedies for voter restriction, Congress has passed them multiple times and tailored them as narrowly as possible to remedy the ill, and passed them by overwhelming margins. The one-vote majority of the Court has ruled the narrow remedy too narrow because it doesn’t cover all wider instances than Congress intended to address (or was authorized to address) and overturned previous decisions upholding the Voting Rights Act.
Ignores all previous equal protection jurisprudence to substitute the judicial feeling that the country has changed in place of Congress’ findings.
I’ve got to say that I never thought the conservative majority on the court would sink lower than Bush v. Gore, but this does it. The country has indeed changed.
Yes, this is it.
From what I read/heard - They struck down the requirement that some states had to have every little election process change approved in Washington, some don’t. The logic of the decision was the situation as it stood 50 years ago does not automatically apply today. Like the affirmative action ruling, they said - you need to look closer and explain the reasons/benefits for any actions based on the current circumstances. You cannot rely on the fact there was a serious problem many years ago to apply a restriction on rights today.
However, if a law is passed anywhere today, a concerned group can still take it to court and have the discriminatory effect weighed against the seriousness of overriding a legally elected legislature. That part has not changed.
For example, Texas said it will issue ID’s to those who do not have them. If the requirements or process turn out to be discriminatory (too far, too complex documentation needed, too expensive) Then preumably some court will override that law.
Or not…
“Preclearance has worked so well that…we don’t need preclearance anymore!”
Makes perfect sense.
That the conditions the VRA Section 4 formula were created to address no longer exist to the same extent or in the same places isn’t anyone’s personal mood, it’s a fact. Read the DoJ’s report on the matter if you don’t believe me.
Essentially; the objection wasn’t to some states being pre-cleared and others not, it was to the formula being used to decide which ones were and were not.
That wasn’t the ruling, it was that pre-clearance based on this particular 47-year old formula, was no longer acceptable.
Pre-clearance remains constitutional, but a new formula must be created.
People genuinely in favor of voting rights being protected should support the creation of a new formula, since it would presumably cover districts that are engaged in (minor compared to the past, but still extant) voter discrimination right now, rather than focus on ones that did it in 1964 (or were covered by the formula despite no actual efforts at discrimination).
We don’t use 1964 as the basis for our laws governing cars, or computer crimes, or any number of things. It shouldn’t be the basis for voting pre-clearance either.