I’m getting whiplash. Here’s Josh Gerstein and Zach Montellaro’s take on the Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act decision at Politico:
The Supreme Court’s ruling in a Voting Rights Act case Thursday may appear modest in scope and subdued in rhetoric, but it will have a sweeping impact — undercutting efforts to challenge a slew of new laws Republican-led states have passed imposing new restrictions on the ballot, lawyers and civil rights activists said.
“It will have a devastating impact on our ability, and other civil rights groups’ ability, to protect the rights of voters through the courts,†said NAACP President Derrick Johnson.
The 6-3 loss for voting rights advocates also resurfaced second-guessing of the Democratic National Committee’s decision to file the suit on which the justices ruled, targeting Arizona’s longstanding refusal to allow out-of-precinct voting and a 2016 law banning collection of mail-in ballots through a practice critics call “ballot harvesting.â€
“Certainly in retrospect, one would say this case was not the best case to bring,†said David Cole, the national legal director of the ACLU, conceding that evidence of discrimination was “fairly weak†for the two practices challenged in Arizona.
“The fact that the court overturned the rulings, with respect to those two practices in Arizona, is not what’s disturbing about the decision,†he continued. “What’s most disturbing about the decision is how the majority has essentially rewritten Section 2, broadly, to make it more difficult in all future cases to challenge voter suppression methods.â€
while here’s the reaction from the editors of the Wall Street Journal:
The Supreme Court issued its ruling of the year on Thursday in upholding two Arizona voting rules. In a single blow, the Justices shot down efforts to politicize the Voting Rights Act and saved federal courts from becoming super election commissions.
Democrats in Brnovich v. DNC challenged Arizona’s ban on ballot harvesting and a requirement that voters cast ballots on Election Day in the precinct of the county where they’re registered. They claim the rules have a disparate adverse impact on minority groups and violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. A district judge found no evidence the rules were discriminatory in intent or effect. But liberal judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overruled the lower court.
Progressives have been bombarding courts with challenges to state voting laws under Section 2 since the High Court in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) struck down the Voting Rights Act’s requirement that the Justice Department or federal courts sign off on election-law changes in states with histories of discrimination. The Biden Administration’s lawsuit against Georgia’s new voting law is based on Section 2.
I suspect that voter suppression and vote fraud are the opposite sides of the same coin. While I think that both happen regularly it’s probably at a much lower level than “activists” of either party believe. In other words both those who claim either one is rampant or that either one is nonexistent are wrong.
I’m also suspicious of centralizing power and in particular in granting authority to judges that the Constitution has given to the states.
Beyond that I have no particular view of the decision. Comments?
1) The underlying complaint from the left is really about the SCOTUS finding Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional in 2013 because it imposed heightened requirements applicable to only some states. I’m guessing there has been no interest in a majority of Congress to renew Section 5 in a form applicable to all states.
2) The lawsuit was brought under Section 2 and I think liberals hoped its interpretation would expand in light of the disappearance of Section 5, but the conservatives got to write what will be the definitive interpretation of Section 2 for some time.
3) It was important to conservatives that Arizona has made voting much easier over time, so they evaluated the challenged provisions in light of the totality of the circumstances, while the liberals looked solely at the effect of the challenged provisions. To argue from consequences, expanding vote by mail creates issues and it seems that the liberals might prefer curtailing voting by mail.
4) Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act deals with the “denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen . . . to vote on account of race or color.” In this instance, the restrictions were argued particularly to disadvantage Native Americans on remote reservations. There seems to be some irony given that tribal sovereignty is frequently asserted to limit federal and state government having a footprint in these reservations. Ultimately, at some point I don’t think one can expect living in very remote locations cannot be without its inconveniences.
“While I think that both happen regularly it’s probably at a much lower level than “activists†of either party believe.â€
I think that may be true historically, but the lottery-odds events in a relatively few Democrat controlled counties this past election speak to a problem. And, leaving Trump out of this, I really don’t think Georgia suddenly fell in love with Rafael Warnock.
In any event, I’m both amused and saddened by the whole debate on voting requirements. Given its importance and what sacrifices people have historically made for that right, the perceived restrictions cited for simple things like an ID or showing up to exercise the right in a timely fashion look like nonsense. Conservative or liberal, I really don’t care what advantages may accrue to either. Treat the right with the respect its owed, at least as much as boarding a plane, cashing a check, buying liquor or any number of everyday activities. Shorter: diluting basic controls is designed for and opposed by cheaters.
I thought we should have a national biometric ID 20 years ago.
We’ll see how the various city, county, and state-level audits work out. I agree that results in some key jurisdictions look suspicious—I commented about it at the time. We should keep in mind that unlikely, even astronomically unlikely things happen every day. Statistical analysis alone isn’t enough. We need more actual proof.
As I’ve said I for one would welcome a national biometric ID which would need to be shown to vote along with limitations on WHERE and HOW one might vote. My reading of polling data suggests that I’m among the majority of Americans in believing that. That should eliminate or at least reduce the likelihood of the scale of cheating required to rig an election which we should recall is around 1-2%.