Best to be on the side of access to voting
In the debate over the future of the Voting Rights Act , it sometimes becomes apparent that certain members of the Supreme Court are either oblivious to our nation’s recent history or willfully ignore it. Justice Antonin Scalia made this abundantly clear in his comments during the Feb. 27 oral argument in Shelby County v. Holder , statements that he repeated in a speech on April 15.
To Scalia, the Voting Rights Act — especially Section 5, which requires covered states to submit any changes in voting practices to the Justice Department or a Washington court for approval — is a “racial entitlement” and a violation of state sovereignty. In his view, it unfairly and unnecessarily treats seven Southern states, plus Alaska, Arizona and parts of six others, differently from states not covered by the act. This month, according to the Wall Street Journal, he called the act a form of “racial preferment” that affected only African Americans while ignoring the white population.
Such statements indicate that Scalia is woefully ignorant of the legislation’s history. Because of our nation’s painful legacy of racial injustice, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has often been used to safeguard black voters specifically, but its protections extend to all Americans regardless of skin color, as was vividly demonstrated in the period after its passage.Enactment of the Voting Rights Act also led to the abolition of the poll tax. So in May 1966, African Americans were able to vote freely for the first time in an off-year primary election. In Alabama, a Democratic candidate for governor, Attorney General Richmond Flowers, vigorously campaigned for black votes. The favorite to win in Alabama, however, was Flowers’s opponent, Lurleen Wallace, a stand-in for her husband, George, the gubernatorial incumbent who was ineligible to run because of term limits. A vote for the Wallace ticket would be a vote for segregation; George Wallace had been the scourge of the civil rights movement in Alabama and had actively incited racial hatred to obtain the support of white voters.
On Election Day, the turnout was extraordinary. In Selma, the polls opened at 8 a.m., but black voters started lining up hours before. In Birmingham, a blistering sun caused one older man to faint, but when an ambulance arrived, he refused to go to the hospital until he had cast his ballot. “This is the first time I’m voting,” he said. “It might be my last.”
For African Americans, the outcome was disappointing. Few had doubted that Wallace would win, but the size of her victory was what was truly surprising. And it was due, in part, to the Voting Rights Act.
Analysts later discovered that, while their projections had accounted for the historic enfranchisement of Alabama’s blacks, they had missed an equally important development: the even greater expansion of the white vote. By eliminating the literacy tests and other impediments such as the poll tax, the Voting Rights Act gave many poor whites the opportunity to register and cast ballots. A skillful get-out-the-vote campaign by Wallace’s staff added 110,000 new voters to the white majority, decreasing black influence even as the number of black voters grew. Nor was this phenomenon limited to Alabama. Throughout the South, many of the new registrants were white.
The act protects all voters, especially in the states and districts covered by Section 5, from any obstacles that might be put in their way. That was true in 1966 and remains true today as efforts to suppress the minority vote continue. Scalia needs to do his homework before the court determines the act’s future.
It’s always been a real easy choice to be on the liberal side re: voting. If you want a government that represents the country, you should be working to protect and improve laws and systems that allow and improve access for ALL voters. The other side, Scalia’s side, is really indefensible. That’s why conservatives have to make up elaborate fairy tales about voter impersonation fraud and “racial entitlement.” This voting rights rollback crusade they’re on isn’t about the mechanics of voting or what actually happens in elections in the US. It’s about some larger theoretical point involving validation of their cherished beliefs about “racial entitlement” and how they they have been wronged. It’s a horribly selfish position for a state actor like Scalia to take, and if he succeeds, I hope it comes back and bites his Party in the ass.
MattW
Misspelled “willfully”.
Yutsano
May Fat Tony choke on a cannoli yesterday. Though it would be a waste of a perfectly good Sicilian pastry.
Kay
@MattW:
Oh, I’m fairly confident it’s “woefully” too. He’s completely ignoring the 2006 history of the Act. I don’t think we can expect him to go back this far.
cvstoner
Any government that willfully ignores reality is either a monarchy or totalitarian. Seems like we are well on the way towards either.
Kay
@cvstoner:
They’ve done to voting what they did to birth certificates. They’ve managed to portray what it at base a really boring and rule-bound federal scheme overlaying a state records process as this morass of malicious and evil liberal machinations.
Wacky. We got rid of the poll tax so more POOR PEOPLE voted. Scalia sees only BLACK PEOPLE.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: Obligatory link.
GregB
Nobody knows the trouble Tony Scalia has seen. The discrimination, the suffering, it’s too much for one man, let alone an entire race to bear.
Vaffanculo Tony, vaffanculo.
Ben Cisco
Itching for a tumbrel ride.
Violet
Scalia is telling his Team what they want to hear and providing legal cover for their racism. This is all about tribalism and racism. Facts and history don’t matter when you’ve got white bigots to protect.
Speaking of white people, Tim Tebow got waived by the Jets. Heh.
hitchhiker
The thing is, the whole plan to keep minorities from voting boomeranged. People got pissed off when they saw how much the Rs wanted them to stay home — like, the very fact of all that effort was evidence that something valuable was at stake.
Would all those people have shrugged off election day if it hadn’t been so obvious that someone was trying to make them do just that? People are contrary. You say I can’t do this or that? Doesn’t even matter that I didn’t really want to! Now I’m gonna.
Not being complacent — just enjoying this unexpected consequence of the blatant & disgusting crusade to keep certain voters from access to the polls.
Omnes Omnibus
The more publicly the GOP tries to mess with the right to vote, the more angry and determined the people being messed with will be.
Violet
@hitchhiker:
This is so true. The more they try to keep people from voting, the more determined people will be.
maya
T Largo has felt the texture of the Constitution and it was a 90% poly-cotton blend.
Scott S.
I’m really a bit boggled that Scalia and the Republicans seem to really believe that embracing Jim Crow is going to a smart electoral strategy. The best they could hope for would be that it would carry them through a single election — are they really dumb enough to think they can turn that into a Permanent Republican Majority?
I know, I know — stupid question…
Kay
@Scott S.:
I thought it was frankly disgusting that Scalia was opining on Virginia election math during oral arguments. I mean, Jesus Christ. Show some restraint up there. Grow up.
Violet
@Scott S.: Isn’t the next election the only thing that matters?
Michele C
@Violet: I am wont to agree with you. This seems like the usual claims of reverse racism thrust upon you by liberals, and we saw the specific anger against this supposed “reverse racism” during CPAC. Sounds like the correct whistle, if I’m hearing right.
I kept thinking that he must be getting old enough to fall ill and retire, but he was so young when St. Ronnie appointed him that he’s not really that old now. Ugh.
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: I have a confession to make: I have never seen that movie. Just please don’t tell my Sicilian friend.
cmorenc
There’s a couple of HUGE “originalist” problems with Scalia’s claimed points about “racial entitlements” or “state’s rights interference”.
1) The Tenth Amendment was adopted in 1791. The Fifteenth Amenmdent (on which the Voting Rights Act was based) was proposed in 1869 and adopted in 1870, which are both AFTER the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted in 1868. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments are unquestionably superceding modifications to the Tenth Amendments, to the extent they apply.
2) The Fifteenth Amendment SPECIFICALLY gives congress in Article 2 the right to enforce the Amendment by appropriate legislation.
The context of the Fifteenth Amendment was also specifically aimed at attempts by the former confederate states to impair the voting rights of negroes (or African Americans in modern nomenclature).
Justice Scalia is so full of shit about parading constitutional doctrine sophistry to suit his political ideology, and ignoring it where convenient to suit his political ideology. He’s one of the worst, most dishonest hacks ever to dishonor a seat on the Supreme Court.
Yutsano
OT: One step at a time…
c u n d gulag
@Scott S.:
Scott,
If Romney had won last year, and had both houses under Republicans, I have no doubt in my mind, that they’d have taken whatever steps were necessary to make sure that they’d keep winning elections.
Voter disenfranchisement would have been the law of the land by now.
The CRA’s of ’64 and ’65 would have been overturned.
And a whole host of other things that we think can’t happen here.
And mark my words, the same will hold true of 2016. If a Republican wins the Presidency, and has control of both houses of Congress, they will try to do what they now realize they should have done, when they had that dunce, W, in office.
And they might have, if they weren’t all so focused on lying us into two wars and occupations.
It’s now like demographic changes happened overnight.
FlyingToaster
Now that Eyetalian Catholics are no longer considered to be “brown”, Fat Tony is singing the “I got mine, sucks to be you” chorus for his fellow oligarchs.
I think we should be sending him dinners of osso bucco and salsiccie alla griglia and anything else that will coat his arteries.
Maude
@Kay:
His face belongs on a sausage package. I wouldn’t expect much from him, if anything at all.
Violet
Is anyone else experiencing FYWP? My posts just keep disappearing. No unapproved words in them. Only one link, linking to a previous comment.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
Or says he does. I’m sure our Galtian Overlords would be thrilled for voting restrictions on poor people to be colorblind.
handsmile
Scrutinizing the GOP’s “voting rights rollback crusade,” there was an excellent and finely-detailed discussion on voter suppression efforts in North Carolina on yesterday’s “Up with Steve Kornacki.”
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/46979738/
(Scroll down the “Latest Clips” at the left of its homepage to find the three segments on North Carolina.)
One man’s opinion: I remain unimpressed by Kornacki himself (and regret his selection as Chris Hayes’ successor) but the show’s producers continue the exemplary practice of inviting deeply informed and engaged guests to discuss the chosen topic, individuals and perspectives rarely, if ever, heard elsewhere on US corporate media.
Cassidy
OT: Pro NBA player comes out
artem1s
slightly OT, O’Connor, too little, too late
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/04/26/189795/retired-justice-expresses-regret.html
powertool
Patricia Kayden
@hitchhiker: Amen to that. Not only came out to vote in record numbers but stood in line for hours and hours in some states for the privilege of doing so.
Patricia Kayden
@c u n d gulag: But thankfully, I don’t think the Repubs will be winning Presidential elections in the near future. Thank goodness for that.
catclub
@handsmile: “but the show’s producers continue the exemplary practice of inviting deeply informed and engaged guests to discuss the chosen topic, individuals and perspectives rarely, if ever, heard elsewhere on US corporate media. ”
You mean Maureen Dowd on Syria saying ‘ No one knows what might happen.’ And the no one is no one at her last cocktail party?
gene108
The elimination of poll taxes has been codified into law via Constitutional amendment.
Literacy tests are way on the back burner because of the VRA. If the VRA gets chucked out, look for literacy tests to make a come back.
PurpleGirl
@MattW: Yup, I agree 1,000,000%. (And you beat me to it, dammit.)
Matt McIrvin
@Scott S.: They don’t really have to win every election to keep winning for a long time. All they have to do is keep winning off-year, midterm and special elections in big waves, which keeps them in the legislative game enough that they can obstruct Democratic policy through rules-gaming and unanimous action. In those elections, you have a chance of winning just with older white voters.
Look where we are now. The Republicans lost substantially in 2012, the Democrat got reelected, but the Republicans still effectively control national economic and fiscal policy, by forcing compromises and keeping the majority from doing anything effective, and sabotaging the economy enough to keep dissatisfaction with the majority high so they can win the next time around.
I think the Republicans aren’t really going to have to change or die, for a lot longer than most of us think. They may not win the Presidency, though they may get even that if they can mess things up so badly that they can sell themselves as economic saviors.
Elizabelle
Kay puts up a post on “Justice” Scalia and his dishonesty.
I get an ad for a super-strength odor eliminator, which works on
** vomit
** feces
** skunk
** urine
really, anything you can throw at it.
Coincidence? I think not.
handsmile
@catclub:
Why yes, that would be standard television bobble-head drivel. (but pleasedeargod tell me that was conjecture, not an actual quote from the doltish Dowd)
One week ago on “Up”, Salon’s Joan Walsh (admittedly not the best representative of my characterization of its usual guests) excoriated the “deeply stupid” NYT column that Dowd had written blaming Obama for the Senate’s failure to pass the Manchin-Toomey amendment.
PurpleGirl
@FlyingToaster: Actually, Sicilians do have some African genes in their mix — Sicily was a stop for many groups sailing/crossing the Mediterrean between Europe and North Africa.
Mr Stagger Lee
@Cassidy: Wasn’t there another guy who came out a few years ago? Good for him, but the guy was a scrub, when a player with the caliber of a Kevin Durant, LeBron James or Kobe Bryant comes out that will be the news. Now will that player have the courage to take that step?
RaflW
I do not believe Scalia is ignorant of history. I think he’s an extreme ideologue and a rank and yet fatuous arsehole.
Cassidy
@Mr Stagger Lee: I don’t know. This is aying he’s the first openly gay NBA player. I have no clue to the truthfullness of that statement.
FlyingToaster
@PurpleGirl: “Race” is a misnomer, honestly, but that doesn’t stop people who want to use it for their own nefarious purposes. I’m well aware of the moniker “eggplant”, after all.
Once upon a time, here in this neck of the woods, the sign “NINA*” was ubiquitous. And various schemes failed to suppress their vote, and now their descendants (along with Italians and Greeks) run local politics.
The Klan categorized Catholics and Jews along with Blacks as “undesirables”.
Now that there are enough Catholic oligarchs, the oligarchy has to go back to finding some way to suppress the poors; more blacks and hispanics are poor than whites (by percentage), so they’ll try to repeal the VRA.
They’ll use race as code for poor, and use socialist as code for race, and muslim for “not-SouthernBaptist, conservativeCatholic, or Pentacostal”. Because “Daddy”, that’s why.
Start sharpening your pitchforks, practicing your laser pointer aim, and learn how to make caltrops.
RaflW
@cmorenc:
Well, silly, there really is only The Actual Original Constitution, and the holy Fourth Amendment. The rest is chaff.
Scalia would probably favor gutting the 19th amendment, but his wife would probably tell him he could just suck his own tiny cannoli if he went public with that.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kay:
No, he sees Democrats. As a shameless racist he does assume that all blacks are Democrats, blacks are too dumb to vote, etc. In this case that’s a side effect. Current voting restriction laws are calculated to make Democrats lose votes. He’s demonstrated quite clearly that he doesn’t care a flying fuck about anything but his side winning. Not history, not future precedent, not the law. Well, he probably does care about spitting in Obama’s eye more, but that and Republican domination of the government are almost the same thing to a short-sighted cretin like him.
PurpleGirl
@Yutsano: My mother had a curse which went along the lines of “The ship your mother came over on should’ve sunk.” (My mother was planted in Sicily and born in NYC. She was almost born while still in transit.)
Kay
@Frankensteinbeck:
I think losing VA really rattled the cranky old men bloc. A lot of the DC chapter must live there.
That was a lot of fun for me to watch.
Scalia went on and on about Virginia this and Virginia that..he’s a purely political animal. I imagine him checking the polls and cursing Romney.
liberal
@Frankensteinbeck:
Well, if we’re honest, to first order all blacks really are Democrats; the ones who vote, anyway.
It’s gotta be the first bit of empirical evidence anyone whips out when confronted with the “Bell Curve” claim that whites are smarter. (If we’re so smart—yes, I’m white—then why do so many of us vote Republican?)
Ruckus
@artem1s:
This really is on topic. By the SC accepting and ruling the case they changed the whole direction of prior law. Plus fat tony took her place. A moron replaced an idiot. We went even farther backwards.
Cacti
The Voting Rights Act is going down, and they’re going to let Thomas draft the majority opinion, because yes, they’re that fucking cynical.
Tokyokie
@Ruckus: Tony the Chin Scalia replaced Rehnquist as a justice when Rehnquist was elevated to replace Burger as chief justice. O’Connor replaced Potter Stewart and was in turn replaced by Strip Search Sammy Alito.
Tonal Crow
Meanwhile, vendors are pushing internet voting and other forms of paper-free electronic voting. Coincidence? Maybe, but there is hardly a better way of ensuring that the candidates the Republican elites prefer get installed, no muss, no fuss, every time it’s important.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tonal Crow: HAVA requires voting machines that produce a paper record.
e.a.f.
Scalia isn’t ignorant of the history of the Voting Act. He chooses to ignore it. What he wants to do is turn back the clock. The greater the restrictions of the right to vote, the easier it will be for the wealth to be elected. It concentrates the power, as it was in the 1800s and early 1900s. It isn’t just the Afican American vote Scalia and his ilk want to exclude, it is the Latino vote also. If Scalia and his ilk had their way, only white men who owned land and were over 25 would be able to vote. Letting any citizen vote gives way to things like the average citizen having a say and perhaps even gaining control of legislative bodies. That would never do.
Tonal Crow
@Omnes Omnibus:
So? If you are talking about s.301(a)(2), read it very carefully; it does not actually require that the “permanent paper record” be presented to the voter for her approval, only that the voter have the opportunity to “change the ballot or correct any error before the permanent paper record is produced.” That isn’t the same thing. And anyway, the only study I am aware of in the area (Selker) shows that the vast majority of voters either won’t examine their “paper records” or won’t discover “errors” in them. Also too, a manipulated voting machine can tilt the vote in other ways. I’ll be glad to fill you in if you’d like.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tonal Crow: My experience with this has been in Wisconsin and the voting machines here are run through very stringent tests prior to election and then locked down. Post-election a significant percentage of machines are audited to verify their accuracy.
Tonal Crow
@Omnes Omnibus:
1. Guess I was right about HAVA.
2. What “very stringent tests”? Be specific; computer security is my main vocation.
3. What “audit”? Be specific.
4. Do they do parallel testing? In every election? If so, how? And who does it? And are the results made public promptly?
5. Are the hardware and firmware audited? If so, which hardware and firmware (e.g., a designated sample, a random sample, every machine?) and how?
6. How do you know that the machines are “locked down”? Or is that only what’s supposed to happen?
7. Is there a review for vendor fraud? If so, when, by whom, how, and how often?
rikyrah
another good one, Kay.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tonal Crow: Take a look at this.
ricky
Activist Historians on the March…..
So far, so good, professor.
Really????? Guess it all depends on how you interpret the phrase “led to” because the VRA certainly did not abolish the poll tax. And the VRA certainly followed passage of the 24th Amendment, which abolished the poll tax in federal elections. And it was a court case brought prior to passage of the VRA but decided by the Sipteme Court afterward, in March 1966, that abolished the use of the poll tax in the 4 states which clung to it, including Alabama. The VRA did order the Attorney General to sue the states continuing to use a poll tax.
Come again??? Which analysts? What projections? 110,000 White voters free from the shackels of literacy tests and poll taxes? How was that number derived? There is vitually no way to check the accuracy of the claim that 110,000 white voters were added to anything, much less the implication that it was freedom from literacy tests and poll taxes that helped in this effort.
Well, this was an intersting Op-Ed in the Wa-Po by a history professor. Of course he carefully skated over the fact that the issue before the Supreme Court is Section 5 of the VRA, which did not address either the poll tax or literacy tests, both of which clearly worked to disadvanatage white folk based on their race throughout the South prior to the Civil Rights era.
Tonal Crow
@Omnes Omnibus:
So? The very first link I clicked on there was entitled “Voting Equipment Security”. It leads to a page that helpfully details Wisconsin’s approach to voting system security, reading, in its entirety:
In any case, do you have answers to any of my questions? Or are you fobbing off the research on me? If the latter, please stop referring to the Wisconsin security program as “very stringent”, etc.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tonal Crow: This is a link to the audit information.
As far as some of your other question, I can’t tell you if every machine in in all 2600-2800 polling places is perfectly locked down every election. I also can’t tell you that every bag of paper ballots is perfectly secured every election. Following pre-election testing the memory devices are sealed into the machines with with serial numbered seals. The numbers are recorded and records are kept.
Tonal Crow
@Omnes Omnibus: That is not very confidence-inspiring, and a far cry from “very stringent”.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tonal Crow: Well, fuck. Which part? The audit procedures or the fact that I can’t vouch for a system working perfectly?
TriassicSands
Yeah, and the Civil War…um, War to End Northern Oppression… was a violation of state sovereignty, too. Maybe we should rule it null and void and undo all the laws (and amendments) passed as a result.
Then, we’d be back to 1860, not quite far enough for Scalia, but it would be a start.
(If good and honest people write the history of this time, Scalia will be accurately portrayed as a hypocritical political hack and a racist posing as a Supreme Court justice.)
Ruckus
@Tokyokie:
There I go trusting things I read on the internet.
Live and hopefully learn.
Tonal Crow
@Omnes Omnibus: Christ, I’m supposed to do your research for you? You said the system is “very stringent”, I asked some questions, and now you give me a research project to determine whether “very stringent” is a proper characterization of the process. Then you raise the strawman of “working perfectly”. If you’re going to say that the process is “very stringent”, you ought to be able to answer my questions right off the bat.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tonal Crow: Okay, I am not a computer or voting equipment security guy. I relied on the description of the process as very stringent by others in the agency at which I worked who had more expertise in the area. An argument over whether “very stringent” is the correct term is not one in which I want to invest much more time.
Tonal Crow
@Omnes Omnibus: Alright then. Every such process I’ve seen leaves plenty of room to use the machines to manipulate the vote, at least in relatively close elections (which are pretty common). These range from the super-simple (e.g., ensuring that favored precincts get more voting machines than disfavored ones, as in Cleveland, Ohio 2004) to the more involved (e.g., distributing machines that are more likely to fail to disfavored precincts), to the diabolical (e.g., using remote-control firmware to directly manipulate machines during the election). And once you go to internet voting, the attack vectors multiply like rabbits on speed.
This stuff is amazingly involved once you begin to look into it.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
To Scalia, the Voting Rights Act — especially Section 5, which requires covered states to submit any changes in voting practices to the Justice Department or a Washington court for approval — is a “racial entitlement” and a violation of state sovereignty. In his view, it unfairly and unnecessarily treats seven Southern states, plus Alaska, Arizona and parts of six others, differently from states not covered by the act.
Now, I admit I’m not a great Constitutional scholar like Scalia, but I have to ask two questions:
i, If the “racial entitlement” we’re talking about is, you know, the ability of blacks to vote, wasn’t that pretty much covered by the 15th Amendment as a right?
ii, And I’ve looked at the 14th Amendment, and it talks about “people” having equal rights. “People”, not “States”. As far as i can see there’s nothing unConstitutional about treating States differently.
priscianus jr
What I don’t understand is, what is the grievance of these states in having to follow the law? That they have to actually allow AAs to vote?