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Posted on 02/27/2013 2:15:53 PM PST by SeekAndFind
The U.S. Supreme Court's conservative justices voiced deep skepticism Wednesday about a section of a landmark civil rights law that has helped millions of Americans exercise their right to vote.
In an ominous note for supporters of the key provision of the Voting Rights Act, Justice Anthony Kennedy both acknowledged the measure's vital role in fighting discrimination and suggested that other important laws in U.S. history had run their course. "Times change," Kennedy said during the fast-paced, 70-minute argument.
Kennedy's views are likely to prevail on the closely divided court, and he tends to side with his more conservative colleagues on matters of race.
The court's liberals and conservatives engaged in a sometimes tense back-and-forth over whether there is still a need in 2013 for the part of the voting rights law that requires states with a history of discrimination against blacks, mainly in the Deep South, to get approval before making changes in the way elections are held.
Justice Antonin Scalia called the law a "perpetuation of racial entitlement."
Chief Justice John Roberts, a vocal skeptic of the use of race in all areas of public life, cited a variety of statistics that showed starker racial disparities in some aspects of voting in the northeastern state of Massachusetts than in the southern state of Mississippi
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
FOR THOSE WHO DON’T REMEMBER AND NEED A REFRESHER:
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (42 U.S.C. 1973–1973aa-6) is a landmark piece of national legislation in the United States that outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S.
Echoing the language of the 15th Amendment, the Act prohibits states from imposing any “voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure ... to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.”
Specifically, Congress intended the Act to outlaw the practice of requiring otherwise qualified voters to pass literacy tests in order to register to vote, a principal means by which Southern states had prevented African Americans from exercising the franchise.
The Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had earlier signed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law.
Another thing to remember is that from the arguments, people thought they would void Obamacare.
MORE DETAILS HERE:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2013/feb/27/supreme-court-strike-down-voting-rights-act
EXCERPT:
Justice Elena Kagan argued that while the initial aim of ensuring African Americans could vote had been met, there is a “second generation” of discrimination under way with the insidious use of other devices, such as the drawing of electoral boundaries, voter identification laws and the placing of polling stations, which are intended to undermine the power of minority votes.
“Think about this state that you’re representing. It’s about a quarter black but Alabama has no black statewide elected officials,” she said.
Kagan said that while Rein objected to the formula used by Congress to decide which states should have their elections still fall under federal oversight, “by any formula Congress could devise, Alabama would be captured”.
One of the questions the justices are considering is whether it is unjust to impose controls on Shelby County and Alabama if other jurisdictions which may be similarly guilty are not also subject to the same constraints.
Sotomayor told Rein that he was trying to obscure continuing discrimination in Alabama.
“You’re asking us to do something, which is to ignore your record and look at everybody else’s,” she said.
Rein responded that the number of black members of the Alabama legislature is proportionate to African Americans living in the state.
The argument was at times framed in terms of dealing with a disease and whether the remedy should still be applied, or whether there is a new disease requiring a different remedy.
“It’s an old disease,” said Justice Stephen Breyer. “It’s gotten a lot better. A lot better. But it’s still there.”
Part of the disagreement between the justices centred on how Congress reached the decision to renew the Voting Rights Act. Sotomayor noted that Congress compiled a long record of recent measures by the affected states that discriminated against minority voters at elections.
“Think about this state that you’re representing. It’s about a quarter black but Alabama has no black statewide elected officials,” she said.”
Yes, let’s just choose officials on the basis of their color. Surely that’s constitutional (sarc/off)
I wouldn’t care if all the officials of my state (not Alabama) were all Asian or South Pacific Islanders, so long as they were honest and the most competent. I want good government—not government
where people vote for others on the basis of their skin color.
Vote on the basis of the merit of the individual.
Do it the other way, and you get what Birmingham is today...corrupt, but unable to do anything about it.
Chief Justice John Roberts, a vocal skeptic of the use of race in all areas of public life, cited a variety of statistics that showed starker racial disparities in some aspects of voting in the northeastern state of Massachusetts than in the southern state of Mississippi“It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences
The only thing wrong with the literacy tests was that they were not difficult enough.
To ask the question is to know the answer.
What ever you read these days,its backwards.
Fool me once we don't get fooled again.
Don’t forget that President GW Bush signed the renewal act into law in 2006.
Kagan is right, but the discrimination is occuring in Democrat controlled urban areas.
Outstanding and worth repeating again and again. It literally voids all the arguments in favor of the VRA.
We need to reject the entire premise that race exists and that only someone of your same race can effectively represent you.
Does Obama’s race disenfranchise Asians and Latinos?
Another Karl Rove genius move.
Hey Kagan...were minorities disenfanchised in their communities when the turnout was 104% and every vote was for President Urkle?
Thanks SeekAndFind.
“Another thing to remember is that from the arguments, people thought they would void Obamacare.”
It is very rare that the Federal employees ever rule against their appointing government.
I honestly find the Conversation itself sick not only because it likely has no significant and therefore only exist to tease the rest of us with the spectacle of debate.
I mostly find it sick because the supposedly Conservative injustices are talking about changing their rulings to “reflect modern times”. I realize this is using the left’s own “living constitution” reasoning against them, an almost certainly fruitlessly effort as the left have well demonstrated that their guiding light is not reason but ideology.
voting fraud is one of the most particularly interesting thing about the last election.
I know they been building up a base of fraudulent voting for decades.
An easy way to find out just what kind of numbers were talking about is to take the voting list and call each and everyone of the voters to see how many reported as voting actually voted and for whom.
once you get a sample it might become possible to know where to look. The smoking gun would probably be in the form of some list of people they regularly vote in the name of. Folks that are registered but never voted. The democrats have to have a list somewhere or their voter fraud operation would step upon its own toes.
But of course the first step is to take a poll of them counties from the voter list.
It would also be very helpful to review the registration list there too, because a lot of the false votes might be in the name of folk that don’t exist anymore if they ever existed.
This of course does not preclude the possablity of the bulk ballets being casts without a registered voter to cast them. But such a thing should turn up by comparing the number of voters having been checked in as voted and the number of votes cast.
“We need to reject the entire premise that race exists and that only someone of your same race can effectively represent you.”
That is my position, if we really want to be blind to race then we should reject that notion.
If you want equality then you should stop looking for races to discriminate for or against. As it is right now our Government is itself the most racist institution in America.
“Does Obama’s race disenfranchise Asians and Latinos?”
Good question, sadly I think their answer would be he pays for my Allegiance with special “protection” IE: privilege. Thus reducing the “protected ethic minority” Status little more than a Racket.
Justice Elena Kagan argued that... there is a “second generation” of discrimination under way with the insidious use of other devices, such as... voter identification laws...
Heaven forfend people wanting to vote should be made to prove they are who they say they are, and that they are citizens in the first place. Good lord - - if the rats ever take over the Supreme Court, ANY hope of resurrecting America is gone forever.
In addition, the superbly evil 17th amendment is also responsible for the popularity of Justin Bieber, the disappearance of Crispy M&M's, Michael Moore winning an Oscar, O.J. Simpson being acquitted, the current 3D movie craze, the existence of French people, and Johnny Cash dying. There is simply no end to the evils wrought by this amendment. We must give Mike Madigan the power choose our Senators to save our Republic.
Race or color has nothing to do with it.
Being a citizen, the right is protected. Showing one is a citizen should not be an undue encumbrance, nor should identifying one's self to prevent being denied the Right by those who might fraudulently utilize one's right to vote.
Of course, if that seems simple enough to me, they will probably vote the other way.
>>We must give Mike Madigan the power choose our Senators to save our Republic.
No, just confine the people to the election of one house of Congress.
Roger that. Progressives have been wrecking things for some time now.
Love the use of forfend. That’s a word that gets too little play. Kagan’s the epitome of liberal thought - an affirmative action hire fulfilling the Peter Pan Principle.
Spot on.
So you’re argument is that we’re closer to republican perfection with two popularly elected Houses of Congress?
You might want to revisit the history of democracies and tyrannies. I suspect you’re less knowledgeable than our Founders.
If you think the Founding Fathers would want corrupt tyrants like Mike Madigan annointing Senators for perpetuity, you’re sadly mistaken.
Our Founders knew all about corruption a la Madigan.
If you’re at all familiar with history from ancient to modern (1700s), you’d know that the Founders knew about and recognized that the archetype of Madigan had existed in every age and place and would return again to infest our country.
It may surprise you, but even during the lifetimes of the Founders power-mongers, sociopaths and charlatans existed.
It may also surprise you that the same people who elected a Madigan elected a Durbin and a Kirk. There’s no reason to believe that we wouldn’t end up with exactly those two again if the 17th didn’t ever pass.
The difference would be a Senate made up of representatives of state interests, as opposed to what we have today - a House with six year terms.
Sure, Congresswoman Shelia Jackson Lee of Texas could easily be elected Senator Shelia Jackson Lee of Texas, since there's no difference between the two houses since the 17th passed. I'm sure her constituents in her ultra-liberal safe Democrat house district are exactly like the statewide electorate.
Give it a rest.
Pause for a moment and ponder:
The House is popularly elected to 2 year terms.
The Senate is popularly elected to 6 year terms.
That’s my point. Yours is obfuscation and nonsense.
The Senate was supposed to be insulated from popular sentiment and represent the natural aristocratic/landed/monied class that exists in every society.
If you think Madigan represents his own interests you’re a fool.
Chief Justice John Roberts, a vocal skeptic of the use of race in all areas of public life, .....
Then he votes with the liberals.
Do you offer any proof of this?
Well I think so, yes.
Politicians are a-holes. I don’t want a bunch a-holes in the state legislatures choosing such a powerful office. I’d rather take my chances with the retards in the general public.
I am certain repeal would lead to more statist Senators from both parties.
In their infinite wisdom they made the constitution amendable. And it’s a damn good thing they did otherwise there would be no bill of rights and every POTUS election would end in a tie.
FReepmail me to subscribe to or unsubscribe from the SCOTUS ping list.
“You’d think the Land of Liberty would be embarrassed to have race classifications a la Apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany.”
I know the democrats that put this into place and advocate it to this day are openly shameless about almost everything.
As for me I am quite embarrassed that what I felt was once my country committed this contradictory hypocracy.
Racism is the least of our problems.
the Act prohibits states from imposing any “voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure ... to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.”
Seems to me that this arguement if valid could apply to
the 2nd amendment also.
What the gun grabbers are trying to do is no different,
infringement is infringement no matter which amendment
you are talking about.
The Gun Rights Act of 2013...the Act prohibits states from imposing any “ qualification or prerequisite to owning, or standard, practice, or procedure ... to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to bear arms.”
If it’s good enough for voting, it’s good enough for
firearms.
The dems encouraged people to go to battleground states to help with “get out the vote” gotv. Someone I know did this and I thought it was very interesting that during the gotv process, they were so organized that they went door to door and had to personally meet with each registered voter. At the time, I thought it was unusual that this was their goal, but it just dawned on me... once they established that the registered voter wasn’t interested in voting, they sent someone in to use that voters name to vote for zero. Incredible.
Most Get out the vote efforts tend to target democrat voters, perhaps because democrat voters tend not cast their own ballots.
I honestly believe however this is but a major part of the problem. The other part is the so called low info voters who see Obama himself as a kind of cultural icon whom the press they watch all but deify as if he could do no wrong.
If Obama were to be replaced with almost anyone else and his policy’s continued you would likely have a revolution in revolt against this evil. Provided it happened before people became too accustomed to theses usurpation. His polices don’t even register with theses voters who cant look past his skin deep fame.
“An easy way to find out just what kind of numbers were talking about is to take the voting list and call each and everyone of the voters to see how many reported as voting actually voted and for whom.”
Got an Ouija board handy?
““An easy way to find out just what kind of numbers were talking about is to take the voting list and call each and everyone of the voters to see how many reported as voting actually voted and for whom.”
Got an Ouija board handy?”
Have you ever been to a party call center? They have theses lists. The State also has theses list as your suppose to check in when you vote.
This is very do able and granted a lot of people may lye particular those who want to sound like they “did their civic duty” when they didn’t.
But a lot of people will also tell the truth. As Far as I know this is the one data point we can go on, aside from fraudulent registrations which we can’t contact anyway.
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