The Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. We must act now. 27JUN13

IN response to the supreme court's ruling on the 1965 Voting Rights Act progressive groups are organizing for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing the right to vote for every citizen, no matter what state you live in. This from Credo, and if you agree with it please click the link and sign on as a citizen sponsor, and please share this with others. And for more on this see my earlier post 

Bob Cesca - Supreme Court Helps the GOP Revive the Era of Jim Crow 27JUN13 http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/bob-cesca-supreme-court-helps-gop.html

Yesterday was a great day for those of us who support marriage equality. But we can't lose sight of the Supreme Court's shameful decision to accelerate voter suppression by gutting the Voting Rights Act. Please read the e-mail below and take action.

The Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. We must act now.

Become a citizen co-sponsor: "I support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that guarantees the freedom to vote for all."

Just days ago, the United States Supreme Court handed down a decision in the case of Shelby County v. Holder1 that destroyed the Voting Rights Act, ending 40 years of protection for minorities against discriminatory and unfair attempts to limit voting based on one's race.2 It's a shameful decision, and after hearing oral arguments, it sadly comes as no surprise. During the oral arguments in this case, Justice Scalia described the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act as "the perpetuation of a racial entitlement," and other justices questioned whether racial discrimination even still exists. Now that the Voting Rights Act has been gutted, we must act to protect the rights of everyone to vote. That’s why there must be a constitutional amendment that guarantees the freedom to vote for every citizen, regardless of race or where they live. And we’re joining with our friends at Color of Change to help make that happen. Join the movement to pass a constitutional amendment that protects the right to vote for every citizen. Click here to automatically add your name as a citizen co-sponsor. While the Supreme Court did not invalidate Section 5, a key part of the Voting Rights Act, it threw out the basic formula that has been used practically since the bill's passage in 1965 to determine where the Justice Department must provide approval before local election rules that would suppress the votes of African American and Latino citizens can be put into effect. While voter suppression rules can still be challenged by the Department of Justice after the fact, this will most likely happen too late to prevent minority voters from being blocked from the polls. The court's decision effectively guts the Voting Rights Act, rendering it useless until we elect a Congress willing to update this formula — which could take years. For decades the Voting Rights Act protected voters in pockets of the country with a history of racially discriminatory voting practices. Just this past election, it allowed the Justice Department to block attempts by Texas, South Carolina and Florida to implement discriminatory voting rules. For decades, the Voting Rights Act has helped narrow the gap that exists between civic participation rates of white voters and voters from communities of color. But now, right-wing efforts to make it harder for African Americans and Latino citizens to vote will be completely unfettered. With so many state legislatures and governorships held by these right-wing extremists, efforts to block voting access will be widespread, targeted and coordinated. But a constitutional amendment would forever enshrine the right to equal and protected access to the vote and ensure that we never again come face-to-face with the type of voter suppression that we’ll surely see in the next election, as the ramifications of this court decision are felt. Join the movement to pass a constitutional amendment that protects the right to vote for every citizen. Click here to automatically add your name as a citizen co-sponsor. For African Americans, voting has never been a “racial entitlement.” It is a right that was earned through extraordinary sacrifice. The Voting Rights Act was the result of decades of hard work, of advocacy, of protests and marches and courage before fire hoses and police dogs. It was one of the crowning achievements of a generation. Now we can put those protections back in place and ensure that the right to vote is guaranteed by the highest law of the land. While the road to passing a constitutional amendment for the freedom to vote is long and paved with obstacles, if we join together with our allies, we can make it happen. Join the movement to pass a constitutional amendment that protects the right to vote for every citizen. Click the link below to automatically add your name as a citizen co-sponsor: http://act.credoaction.com/go/974?t=6&akid=8248.179403.-BqL33 Thank you for standing up for the right to vote. Becky Bond, Political Director CREDO Action from Working Assets Learn more about this campaign 1. Lyle Denniston, "Voting rights case: Made simple," SCOTUSblog, February 8th, 2013. 2. Mark Sherman, "High Court Voids Key Part of Voting Rights Act." Associated Press, June 25, 2013

Bob Cesca - Supreme Court Helps the GOP Revive the Era of Jim Crow 27JUN13

THE ignorant bastard chief justice john roberts has finally achieved his dream of gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The supreme court of the United States, while not committing a judicial coup d'etat, as they did in 2000, has endorsed the repiglican / tea-bagger goal of disenfranchising millions of voters across the nation, threatening the very foundations of democracy in our Republic. The fascist pigs who voted with the chief justice are a disgrace to the history of the court, and we, as a nation, should be outraged and ashamed. Check out more on robert's war on the Voting Rights Act in my earlier post on this blog....

In Voting Rights Arguments, Chief Justice Misconstrued Census Data & Chief Justice Roberts' Long War Against the Voting Rights Act 1MAR&27FEB13

http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/in-voting-rights-arguments-chief.html

From HuffPost......

Here's a fantastic example of cognitive dissonance. On Tuesday, Republicans and conservatives continued their collective screeching about the rapidly fizzling IRS non-scandal and how the government unfairly targeted conservatives, while also applauding the Supreme Court's Shelby County v. Holder ruling which allows Republican-controlled states to deliberately target and disenfranchise Democrats.

That's a remarkable display of intellectual violence right there.

Chief Justice John Roberts along with four other justices gave a dying party a resuscitating zap with an electoral defibrillator. The Court decided that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional, thus undermining Section 5, which requires certain states with particularly egregious histories of racism to seek approval from the Justice Department for any and all changes to voting rules and regulations. Put another way, the Supreme Court just removed a huge barrier between the Republican Party and its continuing strategy for suppressing Democratic voters, thus giving the Republicans an extra advantage on Election Day.

It's difficult to envision a more obvious example of a political party abusing government power as a means of deliberately targeting the opposing political party. In fact, the IRS non-scandal, as it's described by the Republicans, doesn't even come close. Nothing the Republicans have alleged about the IRS strips conservatives of their right to vote or to participate in campaigns in any way. In reality, conservative groups were granted non-profit status twice as often as liberal groups, so there's no substance to their scandalmongering. It only serves to illustrate the conservative penchant for hypocrisy and projection, given the voter suppression effort.

With a non-white majority growing larger in the window, Republicans cleverly ginned up a fake voter fraud crisis then prescribed new laws to combat the fake crisis. Every single Republican-controlled state government has passed or is attempting to pass laws that will require a second layer of government approval, the acquisition of a Voter ID, on top of registering to vote. You know, because Republicans hate big government bureaucracy.

The nefarious goal is to make it more difficult for low income voters to successfully cast a ballot by engaging yet another step in the process -- and sometimes charging money for the privilege, which clearly recalls the days of poll taxes.

So this will weed out voter fraud, we're told. Nonexistent voter fraud. In Ohio, for example, Secretary of State Jon Husted ballyhooed his war against fraud and the nabbing of a whopping 20 potential cases. 20 out of nearly six million votes cast. The Bush Justice Department found that there were as few as 80 successful prosecutions of voter fraud cases out of hundreds of millions of votes cast since 2000. For this ratio of possible-fraud-to-votes-cast we're told we need laws that make it more difficult to vote, not less.

And that's the key to understanding all of this. Casting a ballot should be as easy as ordering a hamburger at a drive-thru window, and the steps to get there are no-brainers. We should enact universal voter registration: when citizens turn 18 or attain citizenship status, they should be automatically registered to vote. Early voting should be permanently expanded to a full month nationwide, culminating with the traditional first Tuesday of November. Each precinct should be provided with more than enough voting machines and poll workers to guarantee that no one has to wait in line to vote. And that's it.

But none of this conforms to the Republican electoral strategy. Republicans simply don't want you to vote. There are countless examples of Republicans derping their true intentions in public beginning most-famously with Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, who said:

"I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

There was Jim Greer, former chairman of the Florida Republican Party:

"The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates," Greer told the Post. "It's done for one reason and one reason only...'We've got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us.'"

There was Dallas Tea Party activist Ken Emanuelson who admitted:

"I'm going to be real honest with you. The Republican Party doesn't want black people to vote if they are going to vote 9-to-1 for Democrats."

There was Republican state representative from Pennsylvania, Mike Turzai, who said:

"Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania? Done!"

From here we can thumb through the list of Republican state governments that played grabass with early voting hours (Democrats predominantly vote early when possible) or that provided fewer voting machines to African-American precincts. And now the conservative-leaning Supreme Court has allowed these governments, under the preposterous cover of 10th Amendment "states' rights," to pass more of these laws with impunity. By the way, this is the centerpiece of everything Ron and Rand Paul believe as self-proclaimed Tenthers, and come to think of it, in 2006, Ron Paul was one of only 32 congressmembers who voted against renewing the Voting Rights Act. So it's not just the Republican establishment, it runs the entire gamut of the right -- from libertarians and the tea party on through the old guard.

Now, there's a small glimmer of hope here, believe it or not. Congress is now tasked with coming up with a repalcement for the Section 4 formula determining which states much comply with pre-clearance. And the new formula might sweep up more states and municipalities for DOJ scrutiny. That's a big might. Meanwhile, Voter ID laws in North Carolina, Virginia, Texas and Misssissippi are being hustled onto the books now before any changes occur, avoiding the pre-clearance process. So by the time a new formula is passed, if it's passed at all, it'll be too late for the states that've already passed these new Jim Crow laws.

And in the face of all of it, the Republican Party is still regarded as a serious outfit with noble intentions on this matter when in fact it's resurrecting one of the most horrendous episodes from American history: the era of Jim Crow.

Cross-posted at The Daily Banter.

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