So one arguments the right winger Supreme Court used to dismantle Voting Rights Act was that the South had changed, the Law was not needed?

Question

So, it was not necessary to have rules in place that said States making certain voting law changes could not be doing them to sneakily oppress certain types of voters or make it harder for them to vote.  Why have a review system to make sure a thing was not happening when clearly it was no longer happening.

But a strange thing happened as soon as the law was dismantled.  Now that the States voting law changed were no longer supervised, the very thing the protections were there to protect against started happening like crazy,

My question is this.  When this comes again in front of the Supreme Court as it will soon due to so many new State Voting Law changes that are alleged to be discriminatory and make it harder for certain classes of voters to vote, what will the right wingers justices now argue is their reason for not reinstating the protections?

Someone who does not care to understand how the changes harm certain voters will never see it.  The fact remains, that even the smallest voting law changes that seem innocent can have a greater impact on certain groups of voters.  Let us say you generally cut early voting down from 4 weeks before the election to 2 weeks, or you reduce the number of places people can vote by half, or cut down the hours when you can vote on election day, or make it extremely difficult to vote by mail, how is that discriminatory some may ask?  Well, for one if you make it so that people have to invest more of their time waiting in lines to vote,

? · Answer

It's true that the South HAS changed, but mostly in urban/suburban areas.  If you car break down galoshes corners and you're not white, heaven help you.  Cletus will find himself "too busy" to give you a tow to the nearest service station, and even if he did, the SERVICE STATION would have a "backlog" and if you have to stay for the night, the motels will all of a sudden have no vacancies.

Archer · Answer

The slave states birth the Democratic party who were constantly attempting to reinforce the Jim Crow laws. Now they are presenting that any move to have Americans prove they have the "Right To Vote" is racist but then they no longer know what Racism is for now it is "Racist" if you disagree with them or any of those who can't justify their stupidity in some form of intelligence.

Tmess2 · Answer

Actually, the Voting Rights Act did have a provision by which covered jurisdictions could end their covered status.  Since 1982, Section 4(a) permitted a state to seek a declaratory judgment finding that it was no longer covered, but the major requirement of Section 4(a) was the State (or a county or city within a covered state) proving that it had not violated the Voting Rights Act in the last ten years.  Until the Supreme Court ignored Section 4(a) in its decision striking down Section 4, over 150 jurisdictions managed to successfully get removed from coverage.

Basically, Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act put states that had discriminated against minority voters on probation with the probation ending when a state proved that it had stopped trying to discriminate.  Nobody with a functional brain should be shocked that the states that were unable to prove that they had stopped trying to discriminate went back to trying to discriminate when they became exempt from preclearance. Outside of the decision striking down Section 4, I am unaware of any decision holding that it was improper to keep supervision over somebody or something that was still violating the law.

We will see what arguments the conservatives make in the Supreme Court's current Section 2, Voting Rights Act case.  Normally, discrimination requires considering the context faced by the alleged entity accused of discrimination.  In the case out of Arizona, there are some practices that have significant impact on the Native American community in Arizona.  If Arizona did not have a large Native community, the practices would probably not have a significant impact.  Because a disparate impact test takes context into consideration, some rules that are allowed in state X will be improper in state Y.  For example, Georgia has a long history of minority churches providing transportation from churches to early voting sites.  So a change barring providing transportation or putting additional burdens on such efforts or eliminating early voting on Sundays would have a significant disparate impact in Georgia.  In states in which those practices have not developed in minority churches, such laws might not have disparate impact.  But conservatives are trying to move away from a disparate impact test (or even a discriminatory purpose test) in that case and instead want bright line rules in which commonly-used practices are permissible even if a state decides to adopt them for discriminatory reasons.

And the Constitution does give the federal government substantial authority over elections.  Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 gives the federal government the express power to regulate Congressional elections (overriding state laws).  And the Fifteenth Amendment, Nineteenth Amendment, Twenty-Fourth Amendment, and Twenty-Sixth Amendment (each of which protects some form of voting rights) have clauses permitting Congress to enact legislation enforcing the protections of voting rights in those amendments.  Which is why the Voting Rights Act has, mostly, been upheld by the Supreme Court even as judicial conservatives have engaged in consistent judicial activism to try to avoid enforcing the Voting Rights Act as Congress intended (requiring frequent amendments to the Voting Rights Act to fix the latest flawed opinion from the Supreme Court).

Anonymous · Answer

Jun 28, 2020 — Justice Antonin Scalia (nominated by Reagan) wrote the Heller majority opinion. ... By its terms, the Second Amendment does not apply to the States; read properly, it does not ... Of course, none of the original bill of rights amendments are absolute. https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/on-this-day-a-divided-supreme-court-rules-on-the-second-amendment

Jeff D · Answer

The Voting Rights Act had no real mechanism to the end the special treatment for the states it singled out.  'Once a racist, forever a racist' was embodied in the legislation.  The Supreme Court rightly pointed out that that was unfair and unconstitutional.  And in spite of your hysterics, there's no evidence that new voting laws are in any way discriminatory.

Randy R · Answer

For your own sanity please explain to "YOURSELF" what and how does this :
"sneakily oppress certain types of voters or make it harder for them to vote."
If it is a Law it will apply to all People .....

Most people renew their Car Registration every year, not the show stopper as you want to make it seem.

Having Safe, Fair, Honest , and legal Elections is FAR more important than a few people not having the time to do what it takes to vote !
You sound a little Sneakily Racist ....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW2LpFkVfYk

Anonymous · Answer

In court, they require actual evidence, not merely allegations. Just because a bunch of fools say something could happen, does not mean it will happen.

Godless Gazoo · Answer

The Constitution specifically says that voting is state controlled.  That's kind of the end of the story.

? · Answer

What is wrong with you lazy libs???  These laws today make voting much easier than ever before in our history.  Libs are just a bunch of immature whiners who want to create more opportunities for fraud. Pretty sad that you liberals will go down in history as underhanded hateful liars who would do ANYTHING to take control of our country abs ruin our democracy.     The way it’s going it won’t take long for our country to fall.  If libs have their way elections will just be meaningful gestures. But you keep on whining.

Anonymous · Answer

Did you just come here to listen to yourself?

So one arguments the right winger Supreme Court used to dismantle Voting Rights Act was that the South had changed, the Law was not needed?

10 Answers