I can not help but think the main reason so many have turned against the Voting Rights Act is because we have a Black President. People tolerated the protection of minorities rights to vote because they could never see the nation being lead by an African American, the president would always be a white man. But the times, they are a changin'!!!! And most Americans have come to the realization that the color of a person's skin isn't important, it really is their character that matters. Deep seated racism is rearing it's ugly head, and will try to influence the decision of the US Supreme Court. The future of our county hangs in the balance, we can only hope and pray the court upholds the law and not bends with the political winds. From HuffPost....
In a speech
at the John F. Kennedy Library last week, U.S. Attorney General Eric
Holder made an impassioned case for the present amd continuing need for
the Voting Rights Act, in particular the Act's Section 5, saying,"
"This provision has consistently enjoyed broad, bipartisan support -
including, most recently, in 2006, when an overwhelming Congressional
majority joined with President Bush to reauthorize its protections."
He's right. It is almost hard to believe now, but just six years ago
Republicans and Democrats came together in both chambers of Congress to
reauthorize the landmark Voting Rights Act by overwhelming majorities --
98 to 0 in the Senate, 390-33 in the House. The 25-year
reauthorization of the act was signed into law on July 27, 2006 by
President George W. Bush.
The story of how quickly conservative politicians abandoned their
support for the iconic Voting Rights Act is one of the most depressing
examples of the toxic brand of politics that has broken out on the far
right. Just as important, though lesser known, is the support for this
critical statute provided by lower court federal judges from across the
ideological spectrum. Indeed, judges appointed to the bench by
President Bush have been among the most powerful advocates for the
constitutionality of, and continued need for, the Voting Rights Act.
Whether the conservative majority on the Roberts Court will follow
the political winds on the right, or hew to the legal analysis of
conservative judges on the lower courts, is one of the critical
backstories in Shelby County v. Holder, a blockbuster challenge
to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act -- a critical part of the law --
that will be decided by the Court this spring.
On the political front, the floor debate over the 2006
reauthorization of the act stands as a striking example of how quickly
Washington has changed for the worse in recent years. In 2006,
Republican lawmakers were tripping over themselves to voice their
support for the Voting Rights Act.
For example, Senator Chuck Grassley,
citing his own remarks during the previous reauthorization vote in
1982, said "the Voting Rights Act is a key tool -- perhaps the key tool
-- in eradicating any remaining vestiges of racial discrimination." Senator Mitch McConnell
reminded his colleagues: "We have, of course, renewed the Voting Rights
Act periodically..., overwhelmingly, and on a bipartisan basis, year
after year after year because Members of Congress realize this is a
piece of legislation which has worked." Republican Judiciary Committee members touted the eight months of studies and markups that went into the final bill. Southern senators spoke powerfully on how the civil rights movement had touched their lives. Lawmakers from covered jurisdictions
gamely affirmed that the law had had a positive impact in their states.
To be sure, there were some Republicans who were sharply critical of
the act, including several Senators who signed an extraordinary
post-passage Judiciary Committee Report, but by and large, Republicans
in 2006 agreed with President Bush
that "[i]n four decades since the Voting Rights Act was first passed,
we've made progress toward equality, yet the work for a more perfect
union is never ending."
In 2012, the political landscape looks very different. Following a
dramatic overreaction to a handful of "studies" on voter fraud that have
been thoroughly debunked, Republican legislatures around the country
passed harsh new restrictions on voting and registering, including
strict photo ID laws, which not one state had on the books prior to
2006. Crass calculations about demographics appear to have fed the
trend. Famously, one overly candid lawmaker crowed that new voter ID laws would "allow Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania." Just last week, a GOP consultant suggested that long lines at the polls represented an advantage for Republican campaigns. That's sickening.
Correspondingly, it's very hard right now to find a conservative
politician willing to defend the Voting Rights Act, even though most
voted for reauthorization just six years ago. One of the few exceptions
is Representative Jim Sensenbrenner,
who recently told NPR: "I'm proud of this law... Going up to the
Supreme Court, saying that the court should make findings that are
opposite of the findings that Congress made after extremely extensive
deliberation, I don't think is the way the system ought to work."
Sadly, Sensenbrenner is a rare and courageous voice in the conservative
wilderness.
The remarkable thing is that this willful amnesia about the wisdom of
the Voting Rights Act does not seem to have filtered into the federal
courts, where conservative judges have been quite adamant in explaining
the continuing need for the act and the constitutionality of the
challenged provision: Section 5, which requires that jurisdictions with a
history of discrimination get "preclearance" from the federal
government before changing voting rules. As these judges have
recognized, once you read the Constitution, it is clear that Congress
has the power to eliminate the scourge of racial discrimination in
voting.
Indeed, perhaps the single most powerful defense of the
constitutionality of Section 5 was penned by District Judge John Bates, a
George W. Bush appointee, who wrote a 151-page opinion
rejecting the challenges brought by Shelby County. Another George W.
Bush appointee, Judge Thomas Griffith, joined an opinion by the D.C.
Circuit Court of Appeals affirming the ruling by Judge Bates. Conservative judges
also wrote or joined a number of other very important opinions earlier
this year that employed Section 5 to prevent some of the most disturbing
efforts by states to make it more difficult to vote from ever going
into effect.
This sets the question as the Shelby County case is heard by
the Supreme Court: will the Court's conservative majority, including
President George W. Bush's two appointees to the Court, Chief Justice
John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, follow the conservative political
winds or the well-reasoned opinions by conservative judges? One of our
nation's most important and successful statutes hangs in this balance.
This piece was written with CAC's Emily Phelps and will be cross-posted on CAC's blog Text and History.
Learn more about the fight to defend voting rights.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/doug-kendall/while-politicians-run-con_b_2332118.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications
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