NBC: Supreme Court to hear key voting rights case

[nonniey]

huh?

Look slim, its not that serious. You said the VRA only applies to those southern states. I just said it applies to all. You never said, "this section of the VRA only applies to southern states." I dont know why you didnt, so I corrected that part of your post.

It wasnt meant to cause any conflict or even move the topic. In fact, I said that I feel the VRA should still apply because we have incidences of state governments attempting to suppress the vote just this year. I am not moving the topic to anywhere else.

What incidences? Voter ID laws? Courts didn't find that to be the case, however the Justice Department which is partisan did, and used their authority to overturn those efforts in some of the areas the VRA entitled them to.

[Larry]

Except the courts didn't find the Voter ID laws to be disenfranchising voters, but the Justice department did.

Actually, as I understand it, the courts didn't find that there was sufficient evidence to prove that the intent was to disenfranchise minorities.

(As I understand it, that's the standard that has to be met, to overturn a law that we all know was designed to disenfranchise minorities.)

Whereas the DoJ found that the law would have the effect of disenfranchising minorities (which it will). And that was the only standard they had to meet. (Because of the Voting Rights Act.)

[twa]

so why not make 'effect' the hurdle for all?

discriminating against us because you can is a strange corner to paint yourself in

[Larry]

so why not make 'effect' the hurdle for all?

I'm in favor of it.

I think this latest election has made it very clear that organized attempts to disenfranchise minorities isn't just something that The Evil South does.

All it takes is a Republican legislature.

----------

And yeah, I DO have an issue with the idea of federal laws that only apply to part of the country. It's a legitimate complaint.

[twa]

I
All it takes is a Republican legislature.

It was a Rep legislature that decided to exclude themselves from "effect" ???

and have continued to do so

[NoCalMike]

Larry is right, the 2012 election showed that it isn't a "Southern thing" to try and disenfranchise a certain voting group. Efforts to do so are taking place all over the country and should be nipped in the bud. When it comes to voting there needs to be some sort of basic across the board federal regulation.

I found it comical that Scalia deemed racism in America to be over, though. That was amusing and I was kind of puzzled at the A member of the Supreme Court having the power to claim that so matter of fact-ly.

[Larry]

Unfortunately, while I think it's clear that the right thing to do, would be to make the Voting Rights Act apply nation-wide, I suspect that the odds of the Supreme Court doing that are about the same as the odds of the Republicans allowing Congress to vote on a bill doing that.

In fact, I think they're precisely the same.

Edit:

Although, the portion of the article posted, above, does give me some pause.

I'm no legal scholar, but I've seen a few Supreme Court decisions where the court has really bent over backwards to show deference to things which received huge Congressional support. Even some real stinkers of laws. (Korematsu comes to mind.)

I wonder if that might have an effect on some of the more "conservative" Justices. If they might be reluctant to overturn a law that was recently renewed by a vote of 99-0 in the Senate, and 390-33 in the House.

[LadySkinsFan]

We need the Voting Rights Act preserved intact as long as Republicans are trying to deny qualified US citizens the right to vote either through registration or actual voting at the polls.

[Larry]

Another thought on my speculation on the court's history of deferring to the Legislative, though.

I don't see it happening in this case.

I could see it, if Congress actually wanted this law to pass, by those margins. But I think we all know that a great portion of Congress actually wants the law gone, the law just has to much popular support, that nobody has the guts to vote for what they actually want.

[NoCalMike]

To me it is sort of like Affirmative Action in a sense (although the two aren't 100% parallel) In a perfect world/America, there would be no need for a "Voting Rights Act" but this past election should be pretty ample evidence that unless specific legislation stays in tact, there are more then enough elected officials who would be more than happy to roll back legislation and/or change laws that specifically target certain voting demographics in the name of winning elections.

Isn't it the Voting Rights Act that prevented these measures from going through? That didn't allow it? If so....why on earth would removing it be a good idea? Universalize it rather than scrap it.

[Larry]

Isn't it the Voting Rights Act that prevented these measures from going through?

Yes, a lot of the debate revolves around the fact that Republicans attempted to pass laws which would have had the effect of suppressing the votes of several groups (one of which is racial) (and suppressing them by a rather small amount), and that places where the VRA applied, blocked them, but places where it didn't, passed them.

Obviously there are different ways of looking at these facts.

[twa]

Larry is right, the 2012 election showed that it isn't a "Southern thing" to try and disenfranchise a certain voting group. Efforts to do so are taking place all over the country and should be nipped in the bud. When it comes to voting there needs to be some sort of basic across the board federal regulation.

I found it comical that Scalia deemed racism in America to be over, though. That was amusing and I was kind of puzzled at the A member of the Supreme Court having the power to claim that so matter of fact-ly.

Scalia was likely talking about institutionalized racism ,it would be hard to ignore that racism exists(among all races and parties obviously)

The court is likely to deal with just section 5&3....which are patently discriminatory and a issue of unequal under the law

[twa]

Obviously there are different ways of looking at these facts.

Obviously so

like this one

http://www.soopermexican.com/2013/02...morous-letter/

Texas Republicans have elected more minorities to statewide office in the past 19 years than Democrats did after controlling the state for over 100 years. The list includes Al Gonzales, David Medina, Eva Guzman, Wallace Jefferson and Dale Wainwright to the Texas Supreme Court, Elsa Alcala to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Victor Carillo and Michael Williams to the Texas Railroad Commission. And, Texas’ first U.S. Senator of Hispanic descent, Ted Cru

[NoCalMike]

This will probably be another contested Supreme Court decision that comes down to a 5-4 vote.

My concern is that there will be some slick way that ignores the reality of the situation on the ground in order to justify overturning the law.

Maybe a BS explanation such as "While some of the legislation being pursued challenging the Voter Rights Act may have unintended results, you have failed to prove that those were the intended outcomes of, therefore have not proved that minorities need special protection"

Just not in such a simplistic way.