Is there much question that Shelby County v. Holder is the worst Supreme Court opinion of the 21st century so far? I'm not claiming that it's in the same league as Dred Scott or Plessy, but John Roberts explicitly overruled the nearly unanimous will of Congress for no good reason and has since watched as, first, North Carolina introduced an anti-Black voting bill literally on the day after the decision was announced, followed by an increasing number of Southern states that have enacted increasingly bold anti-Black voting bills. In 2021, voter suppression bills have become an avalanche.
I wonder what Roberts thinks of all this? Is he happy that this will be his legacy? Does he still believe that he was right? Would he write the same opinion today? Or a narrower one?
I wonder.
'Anti-black' meaning you know, showing up to the polls on your own, but being bussed in or induced with food. There is no poll tax or grandfather clause or literacy test being introduced. These are measures to ensure proper, individual, non-group influenced votes.
These are measures to impair access to the polls that disproportionately affect the poor and lower class. Since Black Americans are over-represented in that demographic, these groups are being targeted specifically, even though there's no evidence of improper or group-influenced voting.
In short, anti-Black.
Florida requires felons to pay court fees and other penalties (with no practical way to find out how much is owed) before regaining their voting rights. How is that not a poll tax?
Felons shouldn't vote at all.
This is GOOD NEWS for John Mc--...
I mean, thos is BAD NEWS for DONALD TRUMP'S ATTORNEYS.
*JOHN MC--...
**This
conservatively speaking, that would disenfranchise at least half the republican party.
Okay, I'll be your hucklebuck. Convicted felons.
Why not? They're still citizens. The ability to remove a large percentage of your political opponents by discrimination at the courthouse seems a rather large flaw, to me.
You are admitting so much with this comment.
“ Felons shouldn't vote at all.”
The people of Florida disagree with you. Not that you care, I suppose. Pretty typical of right-wingers that when they lose the election, they scrap democracy in favor of authoritarianism.
When a Democratic governor is elected in a state with a Republican legislature, the bills to strip the governor of power appear like clockwork.
Hey, if you don't own a car, getting a bus ride from your church to the polls after services is a Big Effin' Deal. And if your polling place has 7 hour waits in line -- which is totally unconscionable, but typical -- then getting access to food and water is important. After all, you're probably having to give up a day's pay just to vote, right?
If you've been privileged to have polling locations that you can easily drive to, and find (free!) parking, and have a short wait, none of these things make any sense to you. So you need to get out more and see how the rest of the world has to live.
7 hour waits in line have happened...they are not typical. Ironically they happened in 2018 in California due to the Dems messing with our traditional, fine, secure, precinct system.
Ken Blackwell 2004 Ohio General Election erasure.
You gonna make me search teh interwebz?
Your statement is easily disproven.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/13/more-than-10-hour-wait-and-long-lines-as-early-voting-starts-in-georgia
LOL. Everyone points me to that. Notice that is *early* voting two weeks in advance of elections. They had numerous options, including strategically placed drop boxes.
The funny thing is that the Left brings up 'oh, working people can't get to the polls', and these folks are wasting a day in line, a Monday, a workday for most Americans. And know, all those folks aren't retail workers who work weekends.
From the decision striking down the anti Black law:
“In what comes as close to a smoking gun as we are likely to see in modern times, the State’s very justification for a challenged statute hinges explicitly on race—specifically its concern that African Americans, who had overwhelmingly voted for Democrats, had too much access to the franchise,” wrote Judge Diana Gribbon Motz.
It was anti Black because the legislators put on the record that they were trying to prevent Black people from voting.
More from the decision:
“Before enacting that law, the legislature requested data on the use, by race, of a number of voting practices. Upon receipt of the race data, the General Assembly enacted legislation that restricted voting and registration in five different ways, all of which disproportionately affected African Americans,” Motz wrote. “Although the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies for the problems assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist.”
They asked for race based data and made decisions based on that rather than what would be effective at solving the purported problem.
Maybe they asked for data to try to avoid such outcomes. I don't trust a Federal judge's spin on anything.
Yer funny.
Maybe we don't need another racist commenter.
Yet somehow the outcome that resulted is precisely and extremely the very opposite of what you claim they intended to avoid. That would be incompetence so extreme that it's indistinguishable from malice.
Generously setting aside your self-evident disingenuity, you're still left with the problem that your argument assumes that such an outcome ought to be avoided... in support of the claim that this outcome is acceptable.
When your premises and conclusion are in contradiction, that's what's known as a fallacy.
It's funny how people so normally opposed to religion mixing with politics are good with black churches bussing voters to the polls right after a service. I have no problem with communities organizing transport to polls; I question whether they should be connected with religious services.
You don’t trust the voters, and you don’t trust federal judges.
I hear Russia is nice this time of year. And unlike Trump, Putin is a competent strongman who knows how to stay in power.
Better to carpool to the voting precinct on election day than lead a caravan of clowncars to the Capitol steps on certification day.
Not gonna argue with that.
How have you managed to dodge the g-men for the past four months?
Can't keep racists from inventing racist spins.
They're regular Trevors Bauer.
Of course it’s anti-black. Poll lines are longer in black precincts, and there are far fewer DMV offices. Black folks move more often.
Voting is a right. If the government wants to curtail a right, it must have a reason.
Needless to say, panicking about a deranged sociopath shrieking hysterically about nonexistent voter fraud is not a valid reason.
There is far more Social Security fraud. Maybe we should make recipients appear in person and present valid ID in exchange for paper checks. After all, apparently the U.S. Postal Service is rife with fraud.
Amen.
There's definitely no law against "group-influenced votes." That's just code for "these people can't think for themselves, so we need to legislate against their rights."
By that logic, let's please legislate against the voting rights of anyone who spends time reading Q garbage or has ever re-tweeted a select list of troglodyte republicans (I get to decide who they are).
"Proper?" WTF is a "Proper" vote, and MY GOD can it not be idiots like you who decide?
As explained in this Vox article, Roberts has spent his entire professional life fighting against voting rights; so I expect he's happy with/proud of the Shelby legacy.
https://www.vox.com/21211880/supreme-court-chief-justice-john-roberts-voting-rights-act-election-2020
He can't shake his commitment to Reagan's Philadelphia, MS, dreams.
I'm stunned and amazed that anyone would think that Roberts expected & intended the responses to Shelby County. He will continue to support voter suppression because it is at the center of his beliefs. It is the one issue he has been working on his entire career.
This place needs an edit function.
"anyone would NOT think"
If the Trumpian Party has its way the Supreme Court will be an irrelevant rubber stamp for their agenda. Shelby County v. Holders the tool they will use to make it so.
Has Alito admitted he was wrong on Citizen's United?
There is a problem with the Voting Rights Act--it only targeted southern states when it would need to target all Republican controlled states. Maybe a consent decree is needed?
This is not true: https://www.gothamgazette.com/129-elections/4184-what-a-court-ruling-against-the-voting-rights-act-mean-for-nyc
ok, Southern states and three counties in NYC.
😉
Just America’s most populous city!
If you think Shelby is bad, just wait until Roberts and the rest of his illegitimate Federalist society hacks sitting on the Supreme Court uphold state legislatures ability to override election result and select electors for the party that lost the popular vote. Without a doubt, that is pretty much the end state the Republican party is working towards, and due to the archiac nature of the Constitution and the filibuster fetish of Joe Manchin, I am not sure that Democrats are going to be able to stop them.
There is no such thing as the 'popular vote' in presidential elections.
+1 republic, -1 democracy
With all due respect, of course there's a "popular vote" in US presidential elections. It's just that the popular vote doesn't determine the outcome of the election.
and due to white republicans anti-trumpers in mainly "blue states", inflated both Clinton and Biden's total %%%%%. Democrats have done a bad job getting out white democrats and indies in crucial battleground states. Deal with that reality. Nobody wants "social liberals" and their nonsense.
Nobody wants "social liberals" and their nonsense.
You think people want to go back to the days when gay sex was illegal, when women couldn’t get a credit card or keep their job after they married?
So it's irrelevant. But it's also unknowable. Because campaigns would be different if we did have a strictly popular vote. It is quite conceivable that Trump could pick up 3-4-5 points in California if he had campaigned here, and that would boost his 'popular vote'. He wouldn't win the state, but he'd have more votes. But that's not how it works.
I lived in the UK for a long while and I don't even recall them mentioning the popular vote. Only when things like the vast overrepresentation of Scotland in the British parliament comes up do it even come up.
Which brings up another point, practically no liberal democracy has direct popular vote for its head of government...though France might be the exception.
Is that why your party is trying so hard to keep Mexicans out, so they won't import any ideas about direct election of the president?
Mexico might be another one...I am too ignorant on Mexican politics (I did try to memorize on the states once).
What I do know is they have a special voter ID... with picture and I believe fingerprint...that must be presented to vote.
I personally want to avoid the Latinization of the US, to the extent that is even possible anymore, because it crushes wages, leads to extremes of rich and poor (I wonder if Mr. Drum lives in a 'gated community'), causes sprawl, is bad for the local and global environment, and yes, displaces my ethnie.
https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-construction-trump/
Of course there's the popular vote - in each state, which determines who win that states electors. Honestly, do you really not know this?
Well, as we all probably now know, in most states the electors are not bound to vote in accordance with their state's popular vote.
Strictly speaking, the national popular vote is more advisory than determinative. The more's the pity.
The constitution has a very clear process indicating how it can be changed...actually several ways.
Ok, you got me. Need to be more precise. There is no polity wide national vote.
States have different ways of allocating their electoral votes. Most do first past the post, but some have districts (Nebraska I believe, and Maine)
Still first past the post.
Biden won one NE delegate by virtue of having the plurality total in NE2.
Re: "I personally want to avoid the Latinization of the US, to the extent that is even possible anymore, because it crushes wages, leads to extremes of rich and poor (I wonder if Mr. Drum lives in a 'gated community'), causes sprawl, is bad for the local and global environment, and yes, displaces my ethnie."
Flush out your head, you racist POS. Your Tucker Carlson act is pathetic. What actually causes the problems you so blithely list isn't Latinos. It's the lack of a legal and economic structure compatible with our nations founding goal to be a refuge for people who want a better life and are ready and willing to work for it. (I wonder is Mr. Young eats fruit or dines out.)
So can it, a-hole. Your time is over.
I would imagine Roberts thinks, “This decision is why I was put on the Supreme Court.”
The Citizens United decision is also in the running for the worst of the Roberts Court but I'm sure we'll have much, much more to consider by the time he's gone.
They still have the possibility of doing huge damage with an off the rails "constitutional carry" decision. Don't count the current nine as out of the running yet!
Anti-Black, its not. Florida's is anti-white. Blacks don't make up much of the voting bloc in North Carolina and barely any in Florida. Many of their laws will hurt white republican voters. My view the real goal of this is trying to stem Republican voters going Democrat in the last election, but I think they are missing the boat. Sorta like the mess they made on census with the consistent virtue signaling.
Arizona's was similar. It isn't minorities voters that have flipped, its white voters. Matter of fact, more hispanics in Arizona went Trump in 2020 than 2016 in total share only to be wipped out by whites. The only election law I see being Anti-Black, which is Georgia, due to its high volume of black voters, mainly be slowing down metro area voting lengths(which won't work because most blacks are in rural areas in Georgia...........like the rest of the south).
The Republican party is a mess right now. Its why Dems bad campaigning in the north and not doing far better in the 3 blue wall states +Ohio/Iowa states had some long reaching damage. You could tell by polling their vote was "iffy", it was the bulk of undecideds and Trump's rise in approval throughout October was a bad sign. Obama killed it in those states due to his ability to get the economic message and deflect the stupid morons that believe in CRT as "dumb idiots". Amazing Biden didn't remember.
'More' as in, 'within the margin or error' more.
Actually no, there were statistically significant increases in the black and hispanic vote for Trump across the country, while white men abandon him (as well they should because he did little for us).
Good to know none of us can be racist because blacks are a minority in this country.
Randall Kennedy was on a Manhattan Insitute Zoom conversation recently, and he put "Shelby County" in the same category as "Plessy", fwiw.
The Supreme Court is a political instrument. It's been a while since it was actually composed of nine justices whose actual demeanor and comportment radiated judicial temperament.
According to https://prospect.org/justice/five-worst-roberts-court-rulings/
the Roberts Court is really piling up the candidates for his Legacy.
I wonder what Roberts thinks of all this? Is he happy that this will be his legacy
Yes. The decision helps further the cause of movement conservatism.
As the evidence piles up that federal and state governments have the potential to be oppressive and violent, what will we do about that? At what point do these republicans stop being our fellow citizens and start being the enemy? Now there is no way I’m going to do violence, but this is how radicalization happens. We know that the trumpists have become radicalized and have already resorted to violence.
We want to work within the political system to manage our affairs, but that is impossible when the opposition is contemptible and acting in bad faith. So... when does this all fall apart? If Mr. Drum and the lefty media want to write and comment on this bad faith, what exactly to they expect to be the result? Radicalization. Contempt for the normal politics. Be careful.