MINORITIES, THE POOR, THE DISABLED, RETURNING VETERANS, THOSE WHO MUST MOVE FREQUENTLY, PEOPLE LIVING IN REMOTE AREAS OF THE COUNTRY, STUDENTS, AND THE ELDERLY WILL ALL HAVE A HARD TIME CASTING VOTES AFTER THE CONSTITUTION-CHANGING SUPREME COURT RULED ON THE VOTERS ACT THIS PAST WEEK.
THE ROBERTS COURT, WHERE REASON AND LOGIC ARE TWO WORDS NO ONE KNOWS, HAS HANDED DOWN YET ANOTHER HUMDINGER OF A "DECISION" ON DISENFRANCHISING MINORITY VOTERS, JUST AS THEIR PALS ON THE FAR RIGHT HOPED FOR.
AFTER THIS "RULING", IF YOU ARE A VOTER OF "A RACIAL MINORITY", IF YOU ARE POOR, IF YOU LIVE IN A REMOTE AREA OF THE STATE, IF YOU ARE ELDERLY, DISABLED, HAVE NO VEHICLE OR A RIDE TO REGISTER TO VOTE, IF YOU DON'T HAVE IRONCLAD PROOF OF YOUR CITIZENSHIP, PLACE OF RESIDENCE, AND MAYBE A HUNDRED OR SO OTHER THINGS, YOU JUST MAY NEVER VOTE IN AMERICA, OR YOU MAY FIND, ESPECIALLY IF YOU EVER VOTED FOR A DEMOCRAT, YOU CANNOT VOTE AGAIN!
THAT MAY SOUND LIKE A JOKE, BUT IT IS NOT!
ABOUT THE BEST WE CAN ALL DO NOW IS TO PUSH HARD FOR AUTOMATIC VOTER REGISTRATION, OR UNIVERSAL VOTER REGISTRATION, WHICH WOULD IMMEDIATELY REGISTER THE 51 MILLION UNREGISTERED POTENTIAL VOTERS, AND MAKE BLOODY SURE THAT EVERY ELIGIBLE VOTER IN THIS NATION CAN GO CAST A VOTE.
THE GOP WOULD FIGHT THAT TO THE DEATH!
NOW, ASK YOURSELVES WHY THEY WOULD...WHY THEY HAVE!
AUTOMATIC REGISTRATION COULD BE ACHIEVED FAR MORE CHEAPLY THAN THE SYSTEM WE HAVE NOW!
IT JUST MAKES SENSE THAT AUTOMATIC REGISTRATION WHEN A CITIZEN REACHES VOTING AGE IS THE WAY TO GO.
THAT WOULD STOP ALL LEGAL BATTLES ON THE ISSUE, AND THAT WOULD GUARANTEE NO AMERICAN CITIZEN WAS EVER KEPT OUT OF A VOTING BOOTH.
CALL YOUR REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMEN AND SEE, SEE FOR YOURSELVES, IF THEY WOULD SUPPORT AUTOMATIC REGISTRATION!
I DARE YOU!
THE SUPREME COURT SUPREMELY SCREWED MILLIONS OF AMERICANS WITH THEIR RULING TODAY.
June 25, 2013<<Let's be clear about what has just happened.
Five unelected, life-tenured men this morning declared that overt racial discrimination in the nation's voting practices is over and no longer needs all of the special federal protections it once did. They did so, without a trace of irony, by striking down as unconstitutionally outdated a key provision of a federal law that this past election cycle alone protected the franchise for tens of millions of minority citizens. And they did so on behalf of an unrepentant county in the Deep South whose officials complained about the curse of federal oversight even as they continued to this very day to enact and implement racially discriminatory voting laws.By voiding the legislative formula that determines which jurisdictions must get federal "preclearance" for changes to voting laws, today's ruling enables officials in virtually every Southern county, and in many other jurisdictions as well, to more conveniently impose restrictive new voting rules on minority citizens. And they will. That was the whole point of the lawsuit.
In a 5-4 ruling over liberal dissent, the Supreme Court today declared "accomplished" a "mission" that has become more, not less, dire in the four years since the justices last revisited the subject. They have done so by focusing on VOTER TURNOUT, which surely has changed for the better in the past fifty years, and by ignoring the other ruses now widely employed to SUPPRESS MINORITY VOTES. In so doing, the five federal judges responsible for this result, ALL APPOINTED BY REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTS, have made it materially easier for Republican lawmakers to hassle and harry and disenfranchise likely Democratic voters. And they have done so by claiming that the Congress didn't mean what it said when it renewed the act by landslide votes in 2006.
To the majority, the fact that "minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels," was more important than the fact that Section 4 was invoked more than 700 times between 1982 and 2006 to block racially discrimination voting measures.
The Fifteenth Amendment, which decrees "that the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of race or color," the Chief Justice [ROBERTS] wrote in a remarkable passage, "is not designed to punish for the past; its purpose is to ensure a better future." Yet the Court's ruling today directly contradicts that lofty premise. A black voter in Shelby County today, as a result of this ruling, has a much grimmer "future" when it comes to voting rights than she did yesterday.
Without Section 4's formula, Section 5 is neutered, and without Section 5 that black voter in Shelby County will have to litigate for her rights herself after the discriminatory law has come into effect.
We should also be clear today about who the winners and the losers are in the wake of this opinion.
The primary winners are vote suppressors in those many jurisdictions covered by Section 5, the politicians, lobbyists and activists who have in the past few years endorsed and enacted restrictive new voting laws in dozens of states. The legal burden now will be shifted from these partisans to the people whose votes they seek to suppress. This will mean that discriminatory practices will occur with greater frequency than they have before. The Constitution, the Court declared, must be color-blind and may not discriminate between states even if it means being blind to the political realities of a nation still riven by racial divides.
Who loses today? Not just the tens of millions of minority voters whose ability to cast a ballot now may be more easily restricted by new voting laws. Not just the millions who now will be more vulnerable to redistricting plans that are patently discriminatory. But the poor, the elderly, and the ill of all races, men and women who have voted lawfully for years but who will not be able to find the money to pay for new identification cards, or take the time out of work to travel to state offices to get one, or have the health to make the journey to obtain identification they otherwise do not need. These people, everywhere, were the indirect beneficiaries of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. And today their right to vote is far less secure.*>>
COLOR BLIND??? THE GOP???
WHEN THERE ARE SNOWBALL FIGHTS AND BOBSLED RACES IN THE DEEPEST PIT OF HADES WILL THE GOP BE "COLOR BLIND"!
NO WAY, NEVER, IT'S NOT ON THEIR AGENDA TO SEE EVERYONE THE SAME!
AND "HASSLE, HARRY, AND DISENFRANCHISE" IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY HAD IN MIND. I CAN'T REMEMBER WHEN THAT WAS NOT THE RULE OF THUMB FOR THE MONIED PARTY, THE 2%.
[AND TO THINK I WAS ONCE A CARD-CARRYING 'PUBLICAN!
CAN THERE BE FORGIVENESS FOR THAT?
WELL, I CARRIED THE DEMOKAT CARD TOO...WOE, OH WOE IS ME!]
BY VOTING RIGHT ALONG PARTY LINES, WHILE SWEARING THEY DON'T, AND I DO MEAN FAR RIGHT, THE JUDICIAL BRANCH OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT HAS PROVEN TODAY THAT IT'S LOST ALL TOUCH WITH SANITY, BUT THEIR DECISIONS AND LACK OF DECISIONS THIS PAST WEEK OR SO HAS ICED THAT CAKE NICELY.
THE RULING THAT SECTION 4 OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT IS "UNCONSTITUTIONAL" SHOULD PROVE THAT THE "JUSTICES" HAVE TAKEN UP PERMANENT RESIDENCE IN LA-LA LAND.
THAT SHELBY COUNTY, ALABAMA WENT WHINING UP TO THE "BIG COURT" IN THE FIRST PLACE OVER THIS ISSUE SHOULD HAVE SCREAMED THAT RACISM IS ALIVE AND VERY WELL IN AMERICA. IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THAT, IF YOU THINK THAT IS NOT TRUE, I HAVE A "SPECIAL AWARD" FOR YOU...THE "GOLDEN DUHHHHH".
“The Supreme Court has effectively gutted one of the nation's most important and effective civil rights laws,” Jon Greenbaum, chief counsel for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a statement. “Minority voters in places with a record of discrimination are now at greater risk of being disenfranchised than they have been in decades. Today's decision is a blow to democracy. Jurisdictions will be able to enact policies which prevent minorities from voting, and the only recourse these citizens will have will be expensive and time-consuming litigation.”
“Today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision erases fundamental protections against racial discrimination in voting that have been effective for more than 40 years,” Elisabeth MacNamara, president of the League of Women Voters of the United States, said in a statement. “Congress must act quickly to restore the Voting Rights Act.”
“Today will be remembered as a step backwards in the march towards equal rights,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “We must ensure that this day is just a page in our nation’s history, rather than the return to a dark chapter."
Said J. Gerald Hebert of the Campaign Legal Center, “The Court today declared racism dead in this country despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.”
I CAN HEAR THE BANTER AS THE ALABAMA BOYS MADE THEIR WAY NORTH:
"I TELL YOU WHAT, JIMMY JOE BOB,THEM DAMNED BLACKS, LATINOS AND THEM PORE DUMB COUNTRY BUMPKINS ARE ALL VOTING DEMOCRAT! WE GOTTA STOP THAT!" "DAMN STRAIGHT, RUFUS DELBERT! WE NEED US A POLL TAX AGAIN! THAT'LL KEEP 'EM AWAY FROM THE VOTING BOOTHS!"
[AND, FOR THE RECORD, I WAS BORN AND REARED IN ALABAMA AND THE "DEEP SOUTH", SO DON'T THINK I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT HERE! AND THE NAMES I CHOSE TO USE...ALL COUSINS OF MINE, SO HELP ME.]
REMEMBER HOW HARD, HOW DIRTY-TRICKS HARD THE GOP WORKED TO KEEP LATINOS, BLACKS AND POOR AND RURAL WHITES FROM VOTING LAST ELECTION?
WELL, WAIT UNTIL NEXT TIME!
NEXT TIME, WE MAY JUST SEE THE SMALLEST NUMBER OF MINORITIES VOTE IN THE HISTORY OF "PRETEND-VOTING". I SAY "PRETEND" BECAUSE BY NOW WE ALL KNOW THAT THE ELITIST ELECTORAL COLLEGE DECIDES THE TOP ELECTION ANYWAY, AND WE KNOW WHICH SIDE HAS BEEN RIGGING AND BUYING VOTING MACHINES SINCE BEFORE BUSH2, AND WE ALSO KNOW WHO STANDS TO LOSE THE MOST IF EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN HAS THE SAME RIGHT AS ALL OTHERS TO CAST A BALLOT.
SHADES OF HANGING CHADS!
IT WILL BE A FARCE NEXT PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION!
REPUBLICANS HAVE SEEN THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL SINCE BUSH2 MESSED THEIR NEST WITH THAT PATRIOT ACT, 9/11, TAX BREAKS FOR THE RICH, TAX BURDENS FOR THE NOT-RICH, THE HURRICANE KATRINA FIASCO RESPONSE/NON-RESPONSE, IRAQ/AFGHANISTAN, AND EVERYTHING HE TOUCHED.
THEY AREN'T "LOVED" BY THE MASSES ANYMORE...THE TIDE HAS TURNED AGAINST THEM, THEY ARE DESPISED FOR THEIR ELITIST ACTIONS, REMARKS, AND THE WAY THEY VOTE IN CONGRESS.
THEY HAVE LONG LOOKED DOWN THEIR NOSES AT MINORITIES, THE ELDERLY AND THE "POOR", BUT THOSE THEY HAVE SNUBBED SEE THAT, AT LAST!
THIS RULING WON'T CHANGE THE FACT THAT THE GOP HAS GONE TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET.
THIS RULING MAY KEEP ELIGIBLE VOTERS FROM VOTING, BUT THE BACKLASH FROM THIS WILL SURELY TURN EVEN MORE AMERICANS WHO DON'T "MOVE IN GOP CIRCLES", THOSE WHO FALL INTO ROMNEY'S "47%" CATEGORY, AND SURELY ANY INDEPENDENT, THINKING CITIZEN AGAINST THE "GRAND OLD PARTY".
OF THE TWO MAJOR PARTIES, BOTH OF WHICH DISGUST ME, BOTH MAKE ME WANT TO THROW UP, THE GOP HAS THE MARKET CORNERED ON DEEP, COMMITTED RACISM AND THAT SPECIAL ELITIST ATTITUDE THAT MITTENS ROMNEY SHOWED US TIME AND TIME AGAIN LAST ELECTION.
THE WAY REPUBLICANS TALK, THE GAFFES, THE DIGS, THE "OOPS" MOMENTS THAT SO MANY HAD TO GO BACK AND "APOLOGIZE" FOR, THE LONG LIST OF BIG MONEY WALL STREET NAMES AND BANKS WHO BACKED THEM AND TO WHOM THEY REPAY THE FAVOR EVERY TIME A VOTE IS CAST ON "THE HILL", THE INCREDIBLE BLATANT DISDAIN THEY SHOW FOR ALL "NOT US" "MIDDLE-LOWER-CLASS" CITIZENS, FOR ALL WHO DON'T FIT THEIR PRECONCEIVED MOLD OF A "GOOD AMERICAN", ALL THAT SHOULD DO NICELY TO PROMPT MORE AND MORE AMERICANS TO ABANDON THAT TIRED OLD SHIP, TO GET AWAY, FAR AWAY FROM THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.
[THE DEMOCRATS ARE NO BETTER, JUST IN DIFFERENT WAYS, SO DON'T RUN THERE!]
THE DIRTY TRICKS THE GOP USED ON RON PAUL AND HIS DELEGATES AT THE CONVENTION LAST YEAR SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN THEM JAIL TIME!
THEIR BACK-ROOM, OFF-THE-RECORD, OPEN-MICROPHONE BANTER ABOUT MINORITIES, THE JOBLESS, SENIOR CITIZENS, WOMEN, THE RETURNING VETERANS AND THE NOT-SO-WEALTHY SHOULD BE PRIME EXAMPLES OF WHAT NOT TO BE IN A 'MELTING POT NATION'.
THE GOP HAS A PLETHORA OF "PREREQUISITES" BEFORE THEY WILL SUCK UP TO YOU AS ONE OF THEIR OWN! BEING IN THAT TOP 2% OF THE WEALTHY GETS YOU THE RED CARPET TREATMENT!
THE "JUSTICES" (WHO WOULDN'T KNOW JUSTICE IF IT BIT THEM ON THEIR BEHINDS) ARE AS OUT OF TOUCH WITH REALITY AS HUMANS CAN GET...SURELY.
<<The Court's majority is wrong. Terribly wrong. The Voting Rights Act isn't outdated. Its vitality was amply demonstrated in the years before the 2006 renewal, and in the years since. What has become outdated is the patience of a certain political and legal constituency in this country that has decided for itself over the past few years that there now has been enough progress toward minority voting to justify the law's demise. To this constituency, it is enough that more blacks and Hispanics now vote or are elected to office. To them, Section 4's actual burdens on officials -- petty little bureaucratic burdens when compared to the burden of losing one's right to vote -- suddenly are burdens so unreasonable they cannot be constitutionally borne.
Today's decision is the legal sanctification of an ugly movement that has brought America a new generation of voter suppression laws. It is the culmination of an ideological dream of a young Reagan Administration official named John Roberts, who sought 30 years ago to block an earlier renewal of the law. It is the latest manifestation of America's unfortunate eagerness to declare itself the grand victor even when a fight is clearly not won. Indeed, as today's setback demonstrates, the nation's fight for voting rights will never be over because the effort to undermine these rights is ceaseless. Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act was so strong that it took 48 years and this dubious ruling to bring it down. But down it has come.
For these reasons and many more, the Supreme Court's decision in Shelby County is one of the worst in the history of the institution. As a matter of fact, and of law, it is indefensible. It will be viewed by future scholars on a par with the Court's odious Dred Scott and Plessy decisions and other utterly lamentable expressions of judicial indifference to the ugly realities of racial life in America. And to those tens of millions of Americans whose voting rights were protected last year by Section 4, it is a direct slap in the face rendered by judges who today used the banner of "states rights" to undermine the most basic right any individual can have in a free society -- the right to be able to vote free from racial discrimination employed by public officials.
The America described by the Chief Justice, the one in which "blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare," is an America which has never once existed and which obviously does not exist today. The America the rest of us see so clearly with our own eyes, the America in which officials all over are actively seeking to suppress black and Hispanic votes, is the one that tens of millions of the rest of us have to live with, at least for now, without the protections of Section 4 of the venerable law. When rights are weakened for some, they are weakened for all. We all are much weaker today in the wake of this ruling.
Losing today also are citizens of all races in Texas who work for a living but cannot afford to travel hundreds of miles to state licensing offices. They were spared last year by Section 5 when a federal court declared, among other things, that officials intentionally limited the hours of operation for offices available to issue new identification cards so as to preclude the working poor from getting there. "A law that forces poorer citizens to choose between their wages and their franchise unquestionable denies or abridges their right to vote," declared a federal court last year. Today's ruling in Washington stands for precisely the opposite proposition.
*Update: For example, to get a sense of how swift will be the descent into unequal justice, just hours after the Court struck down Section 4, Texas declared that it would immediately move to implement its restrictive voter identification law, the one that a federal panel of judges declared last year to be discriminatory and violative of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Meanwhile, in North Carolina, a voter identification law that had been stalled out of concerns that it is racially discriminatory will also now move forward. These laws will ultimately be challenged in court--at great expense to minority citizens, who now have the burden of demonstrating that that they violate the Constitution.>>
<<In her written dissent, Justice Ginsburg said that Congress was the
right body to decide whether the law was still needed and where.
Congress reauthorized the law in 2006 by large majorities; the vote was
390 to 33 in the House and unanimous in the Senate. President George W.
Bush, a Republican, signed the bill into law, saying it was “an example
of our continued commitment to a united America where every person is
valued and treated with dignity and respect.”
“For a half century,” she wrote, “a concerted effort has been made to
end racial discrimination in voting. Thanks to the Voting Rights Act,
progress once the subject of a dream has been achieved and continues to
be made.”
“The court errs egregiously,” she concluded, “by overriding Congress’s decision.”
The Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of the 2006 extension of the law in a 2009 decision, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder.
But it avoided answering the central question, and it seemed to give
Congress an opportunity to make adjustments. Congress, Chief Justice
Roberts noted on Tuesday, did not respond.>>
ROBERTS, THE REPUBLICAN APPOINTEE THAT HE IS, DID ADMIT THAT RACISM/DISCRIMINATION STILL EXISTS IN AMERICA...
<<For nearly 50 years, the law forced certain, mostly southern states to seek permission from federal authorities in Washington for any changes to electoral rules, such as introducing literacy tests to reduce voter registration among minority groups.
However, chief justice John Roberts ruled on Tuesday that although there were some signs of continued racial discrimination, it was no longer sufficient to justify legal discrimination against the southern states caught up by the rules.
"Voting discrimination still exists; no one doubts that," Roberts wrote, in the majority opinion. "The question is whether the act's extraordinary measures, including its disparate treatment of the states, continue to satisfy constitutional requirements.">>
THANKS TO THE 5 JUSTICES WHO SIDED WITH ALABAMA TODAY, AMERICA JUST RAN BACKWARD TO THE DAYS BEFORE ALL CITIZENS WERE FINALLY GUARANTEED THE RIGHT TO VOTE...BACK TO THE DARK DAYS OF EXCLUSION.
IF THAT'S JUST FINE WITH YOU, YOU ARE EXCUSED FROM THE TEA ROOM...BUT THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR THIS RETURN TO SUPER-ELITISM.
SOURCES:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/so-the-voting-rights-act-is-gutted-what-can-protect-minority-voters-now/277232/
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/on-voting-rights-a-decision-as-lamentable-as-plessy-or-dred-scott/276455/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/25/voting-rights-act-supreme-court_n_3429810.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/us/supreme-court-ruling.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2013/jun/25/supreme-court-voting-rights-act-obama
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