Legal Chum

What to say about the SCOTUS striking down parts of the Voting Rights Act?

The Act was intended to add federal oversight to elections in states with long-standing patterns of discrimination in voting, and gross disparities in turnout.

In 1960, about 70% of whites in Mississippi voted compared to under 7% of blacks.  The most recent figures show blacks in Mississippi have higher turnout than whites.

Is it time for the feds to give the states back what is under the Constitution their sovereign right, subject to further litigation in cases where actual discrimination does still exist?  Well, so says the SCOTUS.

Naturally, the left is playing this as “Voting Rights for Blacks Gutted!”, which is disingenuous at the very least, but it’s what they need to do to get ready for what will no doubt be a tough election for Democrats in 2014.

Perhaps its time for the Feds to look at elections in Minnesota.

8 thoughts on “Legal Chum

  1. As a state’s rights guy, this decision doesn’t bother me. As a resident of South Carolina, this decision really doesn’t bother me.

  2. I read one analogy would be if the endangered species act used 60 year old data to decide which animals needed protection and which one don’t.

  3. When you say the Feds should “give the states back what is under the Constitution their sovereign right”, you overlook a little thing called the 15th Amendment. States have no right, sovereign or otherwise, to restrict voting rights on the basis of race. Congress has full power to bar any state actions it thinks restricts voting on the basis of race. The Constitution could not be any clearer.

    Of course what you and Roberts really mean is we should go back to the days when States did have this power, the days before the Civil War and the 15th Amendment.

  4. So RickDFL, why weren’t all the states treated equally under the voting rights act? And when did you become a mind-reader?

  5. Because Congress found that not all states have a history of suppressing the vote of racial minorities. Congress treats states unequally all the time.
    The advantage of the plain text of the 15th Amendment is that it requires little in the way of mind reading, just the ability to read English.

  6. Person who does not know what +/- means and learned everything he knows on Wikipedia is lecturing on Constitution. Now that’s what I call chutzpa!

  7. I suppose five sentences count as “lecturing”, when the brain is as small as yours.

  8. Hmm, did not realize “lecture” had a number of sentences criteria. As far as size of my brain – it is capable of learning what +/- is. Same cannot be said for yourself.

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