W(h)ither Voting Rights? | Raucous Caucus | Tom Cushing | DanvilleSanRamon.com |

Local Blogs

Raucous Caucus

By Tom Cushing

E-mail Tom Cushing

About this blog: The Raucous Caucus shares the southpaw perspectives of this Boomer on the state of the nation, the world, and, sometimes, other stuff. I enjoy crafting it to keep current, and occasionally to rant on some issue I care about deeply...  (More)

View all posts from Tom Cushing

W(h)ither Voting Rights?

Uploaded: Mar 5, 2013
Human nature being competitive and ethically flexible, if voting was essential to the invention of democracy, could vote-rigging have been far behind? Nope. There is evidence that early Athenians manipulated ballots cast on pieces of pottery (hanging shards?). In US colonial history, no less a figure than the Father of our Country was said to have won his seat in the Virginia House of Burgesses by spending 40 pounds on booze for his neighbors. And traditionally in Chicago, although a person's death may have been tragic, at least it needn't have kept him from exercising the franchise.

However, nowhere was such chicanery in the form of voter exclusion practiced in so comprehensive, open and vehement a manner as in the former Confederate States after the Civil War (a conflict known locally as the Recent Unpleasantness). The post-war 13th through 15th Amendments to the US Constitution were intended to grant full civic participation to freed slaves, but for nearly a hundred years those provisions were circumvented by formal and informal systems of enforcement against the exercise of voting while black.

Poll taxes, literacy tests and brutal intimidation were tools of that tradition, right up through the early 1960s. The NAACP was founded in 1909 for the express purpose of securing the vote for African Americans, and fought long and hard against this crucial element of the American Apartheid. The cause of voting rights has seared images of Selma's Pettis Bridge, the murdered Viola Liuzzo and an otherwise unremarkable 'earthen dam' in the vicinity of Philadelphia, Mississippi into the nation's collective memory.

Throughout that turbulent era, the federal government overrode local authorities who refused to act to end injustice. Federal courts secured marchers' rights to demonstrate, and National Guard troops protected them and others, like the high school students bravely integrating public schools in Little Rock, and James Meredith as he enrolled in college at Ole Miss.

Congressional responses took several forms, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act or 1965 (the VRA). The former broadly outlawed discrimination in employment, housing, accommodations and elsewhere, while the latter dealt with voting, per se. Despite that narrow focus, the VRA has been widely celebrated as the single most effective reform law passed during the civil rights era.

The two active provisions of the Act are section 2, which bans discrimination generally, and section 5, which requires 'preclearance' of any voting protocol changes in any jurisdiction that has a history of systematic discrimination. It is included in recognition of the fact that human creativity in the service of such a heart-felt goal is practically boundless; no law could anticipate in-advance every artifice that might be devoted to the task of disenfranchising black voters. Pre-clearance, then, would allow the feds to review plans in-advance for their destructive potential, and prevent that damage. Seven states, mostly in the Deep South, fall under the Section 5 pre-clearance requirement.

The VRA has been re-authorized by Congress five times, most recently in 2006 (the Senate voted 98 – 0, meaning that the Sec. 5 state Senators must have concurred). At that time, some 15,000 pages of testimony from 21 hearings supported the action. In 2009, a Texas utility district challenged pre-clearance, essentially claiming that the federal government had exceeded its enumerated powers by enacting the law. In upholding it at that time, Chief Justice Roberts pointedly recommended to Congress that it revisit Section 5's criteria, which had not been amended since 1972. Congress, of course, took note and did no such thing. That was an unfortunate missed opportunity, as there were majorities friendly to the Act in both Houses.

Which brings us to last week, when another Sec. 5 case came before the Court for argument. The issue is strikingly similar: has the federal government (Congress) over-stepped its Constitutional powers in enacting, or perpetuating the Sec. 5 scheme to enforce the 15th Amendment?

Wonks will recognize that this issue is not often decided by the Supremes. Accordingly, there are many ways they could go – from a wholesale purging of the VRA through excision of Sec. 5, to another warning – sterner this time – that its formula is outdated and needs attention. It seems likely that Section 5 will be weakened; otherwise, why even hear another case so similar to the 2009 version? I think that's both premature and a poor signal to send to the states in this uber-partisan epoch.

As to the notion that the VRA is outdated, much as been made of the re-election of our black President, and high levels of both turn-out and electoral success among various minority communities. To me, though, that's a testament to the success of the Act -- but it speaks not at all to the question of what would happen if its requirements were to be removed. I'm very much in the 'why mess with success' camp, here.

And if we want to look for evidence of what instincts will be indulged if protection is weakened, we need look no farther back than 2012, when GOP-controlled legislatures in battleground states like Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania (among others) enacted laws that restricted voting – in ways designed to differentially discourage likely Democrat voters. Granted that these schemes were more broadly targeted than some of their predecessors, but they were no less venal. Their make-weight justifications as voter-fraud countermeasures was brazenly ironic, as there's no evidence of such misbehavior – other than these new laws, themselves, of course.

Vote-rigging by disenfranchisement really is one of the lowest perversions of the system available to partisans. But that's not to say that it's unpopular. Because of the federal government's limited Constitutional powers, it cannot design a national voting system that could be uniformly administered to protect voting rights. So we are left with a game of whack-a-mole, played-out in every jurisdiction between Po and Dunk. Now would be a very bad time to take away any part of the mallet.
Local Journalism.
What is it worth to you?

Comments

Posted by Rick Pshaw, a resident of Danville,
on Mar 5, 2013 at 4:22 pm

Tom, you really need to have a bit less coffee.


Posted by Joy Bice, a resident of Blackhawk,
on Mar 5, 2013 at 11:28 pm

I thought he was going to reduce the size of his articles to crib notes. Oh well...


Posted by Tom Cushing, a resident of Alamo,
on Mar 6, 2013 at 9:39 am

VRA good. Change untimely. Stay tuned. OK?


Posted by Dirk, a resident of Alamo,
on Mar 6, 2013 at 9:45 pm

Keep drinking coffee, Tom; you're doing fine. Thanks for the informative summary and sensible conclusion. Even in this apparent hotbed of right wing politics we don't all miss the good old days of easy voter suppression.


Posted by C. R. Mudgeon, a resident of Danville,
on Mar 7, 2013 at 3:59 pm

Of course, to Democrats, asking voters to show an ID of some form in order to vote is viewed as voter suppression. Even if suitable ID is made available at no charge, it will still be viewed as voter suppression. The argument that requiring ID disproportionally impacts the poor is ridiculous, given that ID is required to receive aid of various kinds, cash checks, and any number of other basic functions, and any number of programs that are expressly intended to benefit lower-income people. Frankly, I find the idea that the poor and minorities are somehow less able than others to have or obtain an ID, to be fairly insulting and demeaning.

The one group that might actually be impacted by an ID requirement is senior citizens who are past driving age, and who therefore have let their drivers' licenses elapse, without obtaining the non-driving state ID as a replacement. But the vast majority of such cases are already registered, and can simply request ballots by mail. And in fact the vast majority of senior citizens do indeed have ID.

Want to have some fun? At our next election, try to offer your driver's license or other form of ID to the poll-worker who is checking off names on their paper list of registered voters. They will refuse to look at it, sometimes even to the point of quickly averting their eyes from the dreaded ID. Because not only are they not required to check ID, they are required NOT to look at it.

I leave it to the reader's imagination and common sense, to think about the real reasons that Democrats have for so vehemently opposing voter ID.


Posted by C. R. Mudgeon, a resident of Danville,
on Mar 7, 2013 at 4:07 pm

And just to be clear: Although I am in favor of voter ID, that is in no way the same thing as the voter-suppression tactics that were used 50 years ago in the South, or in other parts of the country, and in no way is it intended as any sort of return to the abuses of 50 years ago. Valid forms of voter ID must be easy to obtain, and I would also argue that they must be available free of charge, at least in one or more of the acceptable forms. (In other words, even if there is a cost to obtain a driver's license, which could be used for voting, there should be at least one form of accepetable ID that is easily obtainable at no charge.) Because it is unacceptable to have to pay anything to be able to vote.


Posted by Dave, a resident of Danville,
on Mar 7, 2013 at 10:15 pm

I would suggest that the problems of voter apathy, relatively low voter turnouts in the U.S. (compared with other western democracies), and scurilous mechanisms designed to discourage minority voter turnout dwarf whatever minuscule problem there might be from a handful of ineligible people voting fraudulently. With fewer than a dozen cases of voter fraud in the entire country over the past ten years, the vast cost of supplying and requiring voter IDs at polling place simply isn't justified.


Posted by Aware, a resident of San Ramon,
on Apr 30, 2013 at 11:13 pm

Dave, obviously you have never done hours, days, and years of voter registration, as I have. Otherwise you would understand just how easy voter 'registration' fraud really is.
A 'negative' cannot be proven. How do you know to ASK about George Brown III. You don't, the 'registration' has happened, and 'auto' mail ballots are set in place. Sorry you are so ignorant to the process. The 'fraud' is rampant ! Our elections are a farse.
As Americans, we should all be proud to have photo ID registration requirement for every ballot.


Posted by Aware, a resident of San Ramon,
on May 6, 2013 at 11:27 pm

Sad, that Mr Know-it-all,lectures us on the Consitution and voting rights, but cares so little about 'integrity' in the process, and honoring the idea of 'citizenship verification' and just 'one' vote per citizen. Kaiser has a photo of me on all computers, to verify 'I' am the one seeking treatment. Integrity and verification are honorable. Not having integrity or verification makes us little more than a third-world election.


Posted by Mr Know-it-all, a resident of Alamo,
on May 7, 2013 at 6:50 am

Knowing (as he does, of course) that bear-baiting is illegal in California, "Mr. Know-it-all" wonders how to get that same legal privilege extended to bloggers?

Until that day comes, what I Don't know about is actual evidence that fraudulent voting is a real problem. You've said in your two posts immediately above this one that you think it's easy to do, but all that does is set up an hypothesis -- surely Somebody must've studied it. Would you favor us with that evidence?

On the other hand, there IS plenty of evidence of transparent attempts to disenfranchise legitimate voters -- which motivated the Voting Rights Act originally, and continued during the most recent election cycle. MKiA thinks that's a better place to focus counter-measures -- at least in the absence of actual evidence of fraud.


Follow this blogger.
Sign up to be notified of new posts by this blogger.

Email:

SUBMIT

Post a comment

Sorry, but further commenting on this topic has been closed.

Stay informed.

Get the day's top headlines from DanvilleSanRamon.com sent to your inbox in the Express newsletter.

California must do a better job spending cap-and-trade revenue
By Sherry Listgarten | 3 comments | 1,912 views

Tri-Valley Nonprofit Alliance grew from chance meeting
By Tim Hunt | 0 comments | 1,144 views