One of the reasons the Court majority gave for striking down the law was that we were no longer a nation we were in 1965. Maybe the nation isn’t, but Texas and Alabama and Mississippi--and yes, Pennsylvania--certainly seem to be.
Between 2006, when Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act, and 2013, when the Supreme Court declared pre-clearance unconstitutional, the Justice Department blocked thirty-seven electoral proposals as discriminatory.
In its decision the Court said Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act (pre-clearance for changes) violated the “fundamental principle of equal sovereignty among the States.” Judge Richard Posner, a real expert on the Constitution who teaches at the University of Chicago, said there is no such principle of constitutional law, and “the opinion rests on air.”
On the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington (Aug. 28), Advancement Project, a civil rights group, is planning a voter mobilization to protest voter suppression efforts. I missed the March on Washington (parental objections), but I’ll be demonstrating on the 28th.
Information and quotations for this post came from an article entitled “Fight Back for Voting Rights” in the July 22 issue of The Nation. I love that magazine.
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