Obama Nominates Voting Rights Supporter To Powerful Court--Here’s How The GOP Freakout Will Play Out
BY IAN MILLHISER ON SEPTEMBER 6, 2013 AT 12:17 PM
A partisan effort to keep the nation’s second most powerful court in Republican hands will flare up against next Wednesday, when the third of President Obama’s three nominees to this court faces his confirmation hearing. Yet, while next week’s confirmation hearing is likely to focus on the GOP’s effort to prevent new judges from being confirmed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by citing misleading statistics, they are also likely to detour into a debate over voter suppression.
Judge Robert Wilkins is not simply a DC Circuit nominee, he is also one of three judges that prevented Texas from enforcing a voter suppression law last year, although that decision has since been superseded by the five Republican justices’ decision to render much of the Voting Rights Act toothless. Additionally, Wilkins was one of three judges that rejected a suit by the Republican National Committee that could allow billionaires to launder enormous sums of money to political candidates if the RNC eventually wins its lawsuit in the Supreme Court.
This second decision in particular should not be controversial. The RNC’s lawsuit wasn’t simply rejected by Wilkins, it was also brushed back by Judge Janice Rogers Brown, a deeply conservative judge who once compared liberalism to “slavery” and Social Security to a “socialist revolution.” Yet, while gutting restrictions on money in politics may not be good law, it is a top priority of the most powerful Republican in the Senate. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) may be the Senate’s leading advocate for tearing down campaign finance laws.
Wednesday’s hearing, however, will almost certainly bring some fireworks over the unanimous opinion Wilkins joined blocking Texas’ voter ID law. Although voter ID’s proponents justify these laws by claiming they are necessary to combat voter fraud at the polls, such fraud barely even exists — a Wisconsin study found that only 0.00023 percent of votes are the product of such fraud. What voter ID laws do accomplish is making it less likely that students, low-income voters and minorities will cast a ballot, all of whom tend to be more liberal than the median voter. Perhaps for this reason, protecting voter ID laws is a priority for many Republican lawmakers. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, recently suggested that he might kill an effort to reinstate the Voting Rights Act unless a special carve out is created to ensure that voter ID laws can still exist ...
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/09/06/2581771/meet-champion-voting-rights-senate-republicans-desperately-want-powerful-court/
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