Six years ago, on June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court dealt the most devastating blow to participatory democracy in modern history. In Shelby County v. Holder, the Court effectively gutted the heart of the Voting Rights Act. By disabling Section 5, which required jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to preclear voting changes, the Court lifted voting protections in place since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965.

The egregious consequences of this ruling quickly came to pass. The ink was barely dry on the decision before jurisdictions began enacting oppressive voting measures which no longer required pre-approval.

Since Shelby County, twenty-three states have enacted “newly restrictive statewide voter laws,” which impose voter ID requirements, require proof of citizenship to register to vote, allow voter purging, reduce or close polling places, and eliminate early voting. New democracy-suppressing tactics are springing up such as Florida’s nullification of a ballot measure to re-enfranchise formerly incarcerated persons and aTennessee law penalizing voter registration efforts with criminal charges and fines. It is no wonder that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights reported that discriminatory voter laws have surged in the years since Shelby County.

Because the right to vote is “preservative of all rights,” civil rights in the areas of education, housing, employment, the environment, and the criminal justice system are all in jeopardy.

Compounding this crisis is the Trump administration’s frontal assault on voting rights. The Justice Department, which is charged with enforcing civil rights laws, has completely abandoned its duty to protect voting rights. Because the Shelby County ruling eliminated safeguards under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, litigation under Section 2 is all the more important, but the Justice Department has filed no such cases. Instead, it reversed positions to support voter suppression measures and purge voters from voting rolls.

As the nation experienced rampant voter suppression during the 2018 mid-term elections, the Justice Department stood by silently as communities of color were denied access to the polls. The Trump administration created a sham voting commission to propagate the voter fraud myth in support of voter suppression, only to be shamed into disbanding it. Motivated by a desire to maximize white political power, the administration engaged in deceit at the highest levels to add a citizenship question to the Census that constitutes the greatest attack on representational democracy since the Three-Fifths Compromise and that was rejected as fraudulent by this Supreme Court.

The Trump administration is engaged in another form of voter suppression that is equally harmful and will have lasting consequences for our democracy. Donald Trump has appointed an alarming number of nominees to the federal bench who have appalling records of enabling or defending voter suppression. These nominees are appointed to the very courts that rule on challenges under the Constitution and federal voting rights laws, involving issues of voter suppression, racial gerrymandering, and redistricting. If past is prologue, we fully expect these appointees to wield their Article III power to restrict communities of color from fully participating in the democratic political process.

https://naacp.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/WeaponizingTheBench.pdf

Why do so many people seem to believe that it is only the working class white Trump supporters who the president’s racist tweets appeal to? Why assume that the college educated, professional and well off white voters that he won aren’t encouraged by them as well?