I'll be able to tell by the view counts.
Related: You Can Vote on This Supreme Court Post
Results are in!
"Voting law requiring proof of citizenship rejected; Supreme Court rules 7-2 against Arizona measure" by Adam Liptak | New York Times, June 18, 2013
WASHINGTON — Arizona may not require documentary proof of citizenship from people seeking to vote in federal elections in that state, the Supreme Court ruled in a 7-to-2 decision Monday.
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, said a federal law requiring states to “accept and use” a federal form displaced an Arizona law requiring various kinds of proof of citizenship.
The federal law, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, allows voters to register using a federal form that asks, “Are you a citizen of the United States?” Prospective voters must check a box for yes or no, and they must sign the form, swearing under the penalty of perjury that they are citizens.
The state law, by contrast, required prospective voters to prove that they were citizens by providing copies of or information concerning various documents, including birth certificates, passports, naturalization papers, or driver’s licenses, which are available only to people who are in the state lawfully.
The state law was a result of a 2004 voter initiative, Proposition 200, that said it was meant to combat voter fraud.
The law has given rise to tangled proceedings ever since. Under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Arizona was required to obtain federal approval before it changed its voting procedures. The Justice Department granted approval in 2005.
According to the plaintiffs in the case, tens of thousands of Arizonans have been denied the ability to vote because they failed to present the required evidence.
Much of Scalia’s majority opinion concerned the meaning of the phrase “accept and use.” Arizona officials argued that they do accept and use the form but they also require additional information. An airline may accept and use e-tickets, they said, but also requires identification.
When the case was argued in March, Thomas C. Horne, Arizona’s attorney general, said the federal approach was insufficient to protect the integrity of federal elections in his state.
“It’s essentially an honor system,” he said of the statement required by the federal form. “It does not do the job.”
In the decision Monday, Scalia said the phrase “accept and use,” when understood in context, meant that the federal form had to be accepted as sufficient. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan joined all of the majority opinion, and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy joined most of it.
In a long dissent, Clarence Thomas said the Constitution gave states the power “to determine the qualifications of voters in federal elections, which necessarily includes the related power to determine whether those qualifications are satisfied.”
“Congressional legislation of voter qualifications was not part of the framers’ design,” Thomas wrote.
In a second dissent, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. focused on the language of the federal law, which he said was ambiguous. The majority’s interpretation of it, Alito wrote, “produces truly strange results.”
He said he would read the law to mean that states “accept and use” the federal form so long as it is “a meaningful part of the registration process.”
Alito likened his proposed process to the common application used by many colleges and universities. Those institutions, he said, “also require that applicants submit various additional forms and documents.”
But Scalia wrote that Arizona had additional options if it wished to obtain documentary proof of citizenship. It may ask the Election Assistance Commission, a federal body, to make changes to the federal form.
Arizona made such a request in 2005, and the commission split 2-2, effectively rejecting it. The state did not challenge that action in federal court.
The commission recently approved a request from Louisiana to require additional information from its voters, Scalia noted. He said Arizona could ask again.
In dissent, Alito said the majority was giving the state an empty promise.
He pointed out that the commission “currently has no members, and there is no reason to believe that it will be restored to life in the near future.”
Sorry, it's hard for me to get worked up about elections with it being $poiled and all by money, framing, filtering, and rigging. I know it is important and people have died for such things, but the current $tate of politics leaves one hopele$$.
In other action Monday, the Supreme Court:
■ Held, 5 to 4, that prosecutors in some instances may use a suspect’s silence at an early stage of a criminal investigation against him, before the suspect has been arrested or informed of his constitutional right to remain silent.
So much for innocent until proven guilty and right to remain silent (until government tells you?).
■ Agreed to decide in its next term a new dispute involving race, whether federal housing law requires proof of intentional discrimination.
■ Decided, 5 to 4, that judges may not increase mandatory minimum prison terms when sentencing defendants unless the facts justifying the increase have been found by a jury.
Yay, one for freedom.
■ Barred lawyers, in another 5-to-4 ruling, from obtaining state driver license records to recruit clients, saying the practice is prohibited by a federal law aimed at shielding motor vehicle information.
But the NSA can have anything they want.
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"Supreme Court voids vital part of ’65 Voting Act; Calls formula outdated; ruling worries activists" by Tracy Jan | Globe Staff, June 26, 2013
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday invalidated a key provision in the 1965 Voting Rights Act that is intended to guard against discrimination at the ballot box, raising concerns among civil rights activists that the decision will spawn new laws making it harder for minorities to vote.
Voter suppression is happening all over the place, and not just the South. AmeriKan politics is a wreck, and the Supreme Cour(pora)t(e)'s decisions aren't helping fix the problems.
In a 5 to 4 ruling, the court deemed it unconstitutional for the federal government to use an outdated formula to single out states for extra scrutiny of their voting procedures.
Under the Voting Rights Act, federal authorities must approve the voting procedures of nine states, mostly in the South, that were selected in the 1960s and 1970s because they displayed a pattern of discrimination against black voters. Residents in some states, for example, were not allowed to vote unless they passed a literacy test, and turnout was low.
Who trusts the federal government these days?
Do you really think they are looking out for you?
The court majority said the criteria for picking states and other jurisdictions are based on decades-old data, and the suspect practices that prompted the law no longer exist. Literacy tests have been banned for 40 years. Voter registration and turnout in the nine states have increased dramatically.
Sometimes I think they are living in the past. Go stand in a voting line in Cleveland or Florida for the entire day.
And African-Americans have been elected in record numbers to political office, including the presidency. The formula used for identifying states has “no logical relation to the present day,” the court majority said.
Some of that is due to gerrymandering.
“Today the nation is no longer divided along those lines, yet the Voting Rights Act continues to treat it as if it were,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the opinion. He was joined by the four other conservative-leaning justices – Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito.
Well, we are (with ma$$ media help for sure), but not as badly as in the past. Besides, the IMPORTANT ISSUES like ECONOMY, HEALTH, WAR, TYRANNY, and CORRUPTION AFFECT US ALL!!
Senator William “Mo” Cowan, a Massachusetts Democrat and one of only two black senators, said he was disappointed by the court’s decision to weaken the Voting Rights Act and hopes Congress can “come together and move swiftly to rectify this detrimental action.”
The court, in striking down an act of Congress, seemed to chastise lawmakers for leaving in place the outdated formula to determine which states needed federal oversight when it reauthorized the Voting Rights Act in 2006.
“Its failure to act leaves us today with no choice,” Roberts wrote in reference to Congress. “Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.”
In a sharply worded dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg questioned why the majority threw out a vital section of the Voting Rights Act that enabled the federal government to ensure that states were not discriminating. She said the law “has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes,” arguing that the majority’s logic was akin to “throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”
Ginsburg stressed that Congress reauthorized the law after finding that “voting discrimination had evolved into subtler second-generation barriers.”
Ginsburg was joined in her dissent by liberal-leaning justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.
While the court left the rest of the act intact, legal specialists say that the ruling spells a sea change in civil rights and voting rights litigation. Voter advocates fear that some state legislators, emboldened by the ruling, could now have an easier time passing so-called voter suppression laws – cutting back on early voting days, Sunday voting, and same-day registration, and requiring government-issued identification at the polls.
Which the court was likely to uphold anyway.
The Voting Rights Act has a storied history. One trigger for its passage was the March 1965 murder of James Reeb, a Dorchester minister and civil rights activist, on a sidewalk in Selma, Ala. The killing of Reeb, along with two other activists, Jimmie Lee Jackson and Viola Liuzzo, was widely credited with moving Congress and President Lyndon Johnson to ban discriminatory voting practices and ending the disenfranchisement of black voters.
During oral arguments in February, Roberts made the erroneous declaration that Massachusetts had the worst ratio of white voter turnout to African-American voter turnout, as well as the greatest disparity in voter registration – a mistake that Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin characterized as a “cheap shot.”
The lawsuit was brought forth by Shelby County, Ala., which argued that the extra federal scrutiny is unfair. Roberts seemed to use Massachusetts as an example to argue that it was a state exempt from the extra federal scrutiny yet less successful in providing ballot access.
In fact, according to Galvin, Massachusetts has one of the highest voter registrations in the country.
That's not ballot access though, Bill.
Roberts emphasized in his opinion that the court’s ruling does not impact the permanent, national ban on racial discrimination in voting. Congress may draft a new formula based on current conditions, the court said.
So Congress will have to vote, huh?
President Obama called Tuesday for Congress to pass legislation to ensure equal access to the polls, saying the court’s decision “upsets decades of well-established practices that help make sure voting is fair, especially in places where voting discrimination has been historically prevalent.”
At this point one stops and tries to balance all the brainwashing we have been raised with regarding American elections and voting with the cold reality of crap elections and.... who would ever want to $top people from voting in AmeriKa?
But many advocates and even some lawmakers remain skeptical of how much Congress can really do in an age of partisan paralysis.
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Freed From the FEC
Yeah, it's paralysis unless it's what Israel, Wall Street, or the War Machine wants -- and it's always the Republicans fault if you read the Globe.
Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat and member of the House Judiciary Committee who participated in the bipartisan reauthorization of the law in 2006, said the makeup of Congress has changed since then.
“The present Congress will see nothing but obstruction, delay, and the introduction of voter suppression laws,” Jackson Lee said.
Depending on the issue, I'm all for that. I wish I felt more excited about the electoral process, but after seeing Ron Paul get jobbed two elections in a row and seeing the swing in control down there still serving the same intere$ts.... sigh.
Allison Riggs, staff attorney at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a Durham, N.C.-based nonprofit representing plaintiffs in several states in lawsuits over racially motivated redistricting, said there would be a rush by some states to enact new voter identification laws.
Minutes after the court’s decision, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott vowed — via Twitter — to immediately implement a controversial voter identification law that had previously been struck down for violating a section of the Voting Rights Act.
Texas is one of the nine states subject to federal clearance of any changes to voting procedures.
The others are: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia.
In addition, jurisdictions in other states have also been affected by the act — including, until earlier this year, New Hampshire.
Wow. Racist in our midsts.
The election practices of 10 small towns in New Hampshire were supposed to have been subject to federal scrutiny for 40 years because of suspiciously low voter turnout in the 1960s. It was never determined what caused the low turnout, although some have attributed it to a freak snowstorm. Until recent years the state, which is 95 percent white, had never submitted any changes on behalf of the towns for federal approval and the federal government never asked about it.
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"Voting rights decision is a blow to fair elections" June 26, 2013
BY STRIKING down a key section of the Voting Rights Act Tuesday, five justices of the US Supreme Court dealt a setback to fair elections in states with a documented history of racial discrimination. And in undoing this key protection of individual voting rights, they relied on a selective reading of the facts....
How interesting that a newspaper is hurling that charge.
Lawmakers in many of those same states have shifted to subtler means of blunting the influence of nonwhite voters at the polls....
It’s true that the Voting Rights Act is nearly half a century old, and no one should presume that the existing law should be automatically extended into the indefinite future. But it hasn’t been. Congress recognized that subjecting some states to greater scrutiny than others was an extraordinary step, so it has periodically reviewed and adjusted the law — most recently in 2006. The law already allows for the possibility that communities can change for the good....
I guess the Boston Globe's editorial staff doesn't believe in your goodness, Americans. No wonder they are pushing the division agenda nearly every day.
In its zeal to spare a small number of states a modicum of extra inconvenience when changing their election rules, the court majority fails to recognize what that scrutiny secures: fair elections.
We don't have those anyway.
Rather than slamming the door entirely, the majority left open the possibility Congress could come up with new rules to determine which areas are subject to pre-approval by the Justice Department.
This is the same Justice Department that spied on the AmeriKan press (and us all), validated waterboarding, ran guns to the Mexican drug cartels, and I'm sure there is more I'm forgetting. So you will excuse me if I'm not all giddy about Justice overseeing anything.
Unfortunately, there are enough mechanisms to block progress in today’s bitterly divided Congress that a new formula seems unlikely.
It's divided unless... sigh.
But lawmakers reauthorized the Voting Rights Act by large margins in 2006, and a similarly resounding endorsement of the law is needed now.
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"Ruling on Voting Rights act brings joy, concern to GOP; Case alienates key voting bloc" by Bill Barrow | Associated Press, July 05, 2013
ATLANTA — When the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights act last week, it handed Republicans tough questions with no easy answers over how, and where, to attract voters that even GOP leaders say the party needs to stay nationally competitive.
The decision caught Republicans between newfound state autonomy that conservatives covet and the law’s popularity among minority, young and poor voters who tend to align with Democrats. It’s those voters that Republicans are eyeing to expand and invigorate the GOP’s core of older, white Americans.
Did you know that I'm tired of having the all-inclusive, diversity-promoting media dividing the rest of us into groups -- as if we all don't want good health care and safe food.
National GOP Chairman Reince Priebus began that effort well before the court’s decision by promising, among other initiatives, to hire non-white party activists to engage directly with black and Latino voters. Yet state and national Republicans reacted to the Voting Rights Act decision with a flurry of activity and comments that may not fit neatly into the national party’s vision.
Congressional leaders must decide whether to try to rewrite the provision the court struck, but it’s not clear how such an effort would fare in the Democratic-led Senate and the GOP-controlled House. And at the state level, elected Republicans are enacting tighter voting restrictions that Democrats blast as harmful to their traditional base of supporters and groups the Republicans say they want to attract.
States like North Carolina and Virginia provide apt examples of the potential fallout. An influx of nonwhites have turned those Republican strongholds into battlegrounds in the last two presidential elections, and minority voters helped President Obama win both states in 2008 and Virginia again in 2012.
Nationally, Republican Mitt Romney lost among African-Americans by about 85 percentage points and Latinos by about 44 percentage points, margins that virtually ensure a Democratic victory.
Yet presidential math doesn’t necessarily motivate Republicans who control state houses and congressional districts in states most affected by the Voting Rights Act. Core GOP supporters in the region react favorably to voter identification laws and broad-based critiques of federal authority.
Against that backdrop, Southern Republicans celebrated Chief Justice John Roberts’s opinion that effectively frees all or parts of 15 states with a history of racial discrimination from having to get federal approval for any election procedure....
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Also see:
Voting Rights Act was outdated, but now Congress needs to act
Civil-rights generation prisoner to its fears
