Joan Walsh: The ugly SCOTUS voting rights flim-flam
No good deed goes unpunished, I like to say. In striking down a key enforcement provision of the Voting Rights Act, Chief Justice John Roberts noted that African American voter turnout in 2012 either exceeded or essentially matched white turnout in five of six Southern states governed by the act’s tough and controversial Section 5.
Ironically, as anyone paying attention knows, that turnout surge was driven by anger over a wave of GOP efforts to suppress black votes in those and other states – and it was helped along by Section 5, which requires states with a history of voting rights suppression to pre-clear any voting changes with the Justice Department (Justice struck down 21 such proposals since 2006). Still, despite new voter identification laws, restrictions on early voting and Sunday voting and other barriers, African Americans voted at unprecedented rates in 2012 – and that helped give Roberts an excuse to strike down a section key to enforcing the law.
Of course, 2012 turnout wasn’t Roberts’s real excuse: he has been advocating for limiting the scope and power of the Voting Rights Act since he worked for Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department 30 years ago. In 2009, the last time the court considered Section 5, Roberts asked the government attorney defending it: “Congress can impose this disparate treatment forever because of the history in the South?”
Now we know the answer: They cannot.
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/25/the_ugly_scotus_voting_rights_flim_flam/
