Voting rights – and wrongs = Supreme Court struck down voter rights

[Coyotl]

Voting rights – and wrongs

LISTEN 52:13

This presidential election is the first since the Supreme Court struck down voter rights protections that had been in place since the Civil Rights Era. Since that 2013 decision, states across the country have rushed to pass new laws that make it harder to vote. Reveal examines whether these laws are fighting fraud or simply keeping people of color from voting.

First, we meet Alberta Currie, an 82-year-old African American woman. Born at home in North Carolina, she never had a birth certificate but nonetheless never had trouble voting – that is, until a new state law kicked in for this year’s presidential primary.

Next, we head to the Lone Star State, where Texas passed the strictest voter ID law in the country. The governor there says the law is urgently needed to address rampant voter fraud. Reveal’s Laura Starecheski looks into that claim and finds a 100-year legacy of laws that has kept black and Latino voters away from the polls.

With the help of the Houston Chronicle, Starecheski also tells the story of Pasadena, Texas, a suburb where the Hispanic majority remains on the political sidelines ...........

[BSdetect]

1. The Dems need to get really into those places and register people.

They missed the whole GOP state vote suppression move.

A shocking oversight.

The GOP is as slippery as shit on a glass shute.

[Coyotl]

2. Here's What's Happening in the Battle for Voting Rights

Here's What's Happening in the Battle for Voting Rights

The courts have recently transformed the voting rights debate.

Last Friday, a panel of judges struck down a sweeping set of voting restrictions enacted by North Carolina Republicans in 2013 in the wake of the Supreme Court's gutting of a key portion of the Voting Rights Act. Later that day, a federal district court killed a series of voting restrictions in Wisconsin, including rules that banned students from using expired student IDs, a residency requirement aimed at limiting college students' right to vote, and some restrictions on early in-person voting. And in Kansas, a state district court judge ruled that the state's two-tier system of voting—proof of citizenship required for state local elections but not federal elections—would disenfranchise too many citizens, and ordered the state to count the ballots at all levels.

The following Monday, a federal judge blocked a North Dakota voter ID law that he said posed an undue burden on the voting rights of Native Americans. And all these decisions come less than two weeks after the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a voter ID law in Texas, and a federal judge weakened that state's voter ID law.

"It has been a string of victories for voting rights advocates, and we'll have to see whether or not they stick, or they all stick, but it is an impressive string of victories for now," said elections expert Richard Hasen, a professor of law and political ................

[Coyotl]

3. “I Wanted to Dramatize the Racist Attitude of the Majority”

“I Wanted to Dramatize the Racist Attitude of the Majority”

An interview with 94-year-old Judge Damon Keith, author of the most important voting rights dissent in recent history.
By Mark Joseph Stern

In his nearly 50 years on the bench, Circuit Court Judge Damon Keith has issued his share of blockbuster decisions—desegregating a racist public school system in Pontiac, Michigan, allowing affirmative action in police departments, and even halting President Richard Nixon’s illegal wiretap program. (In response, Nixon sued Keith personally; the Supreme Court unanimously vindicated Keith.)

But at 94 years old and still serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, the federal judge still isn’t finished putting his stamp on American jurisprudence. This year, Keith heard a challenge to Ohio’s draconian new voting restrictions cracking down on early in-person and absentee voting. His colleagues voted to uphold the measures, which disproportionately burden minority voters.

In response, Keith, who is the grandson of former slaves, wrote an extraordinarily impassioned dissent reminding the majority about “the utter brutality of white supremacy in its efforts to disenfranchise persons of color.” This bigotry, Keith explained, remains alive today and is very much evident in the attacks by Republican legislatures across the country on voting rights. “With every gain in equality,” he wrote, “there is often an equally robust and reactive retrenchment.” The modern effort to curb voting rights is part of that retrenchment, Keith noted—and the judiciary must not accept states’ pretext for disenfranchising minorities. Most remarkably, Keith included in his dissent a gallery “martyrs of the struggle of equality,” slain civil rights heroes “whose murdered lives opened the doors of our democracy and secured our right to vote.”

I recently spoke with Keith about his career, ...........

[Gothmog]

4. John Roberts new name needs to be "Jim Crow" Roberts

The man is a racist and hates letting non-whites vote