The US Needs a Constitutional Right to Vote

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/20187-the-us-needs-a-constitutional-right-to-vote

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, is leading to a new era of voter suppression that parallels the pre-1960s era - this time affecting not just African-Americans but also Hispanic-Americans, women, and students, among others.

The reasoning employed by Chief Justice John Roberts in Shelby County - that Section 5 of the act was such a spectacular success that it is no longer necessary - was the equivalent of taking down speed cameras and traffic lights and removing speed limits from a dangerous intersection because they had combined to reduce accidents and traffic deaths.

In North Carolina, a post-Shelby County law not only includes one of the most restrictive and punitive voter-ID laws anywhere but also restricts early voting, eliminates same-day voting registration, ends pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-olds, and bans many provisional ballots. Whatever flimsy voter-fraud excuse exists for requiring voter ID disappears when it comes to these other obstacles to voting.

In Texas, the law could require voters to travel as much as 250 miles to obtain an acceptable voter ID - and it allows a concealed-weapon permit, but not a student ID, as proof of identity for voting. Moreover, the law and the regulations to implement it, we are now learning, will create huge impediments for women who have married or divorced and have voter IDs and driver's licenses that reflect maiden or married names that do not exactly match. It raises similar problems for Mexican-Americans who use combinations of mothers' and fathers' names.

In a recent election on constitutional issues, a female Texas District Court judge, Sandra Watts, who has voted for 49 years in the state, was challenged in the same courthouse where she presides; to overcome the challenge, she will have to jump through hoops and possibly pay for a copy of her marriage license, an effective poll tax on women.

[Laelth]

1. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[world wide wally]

2. It's the Courts, stupid

<Comment not directed at OP>

[mythology]

3. We already have 4 of them

in the 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th amendments, all of which provided for expanding the right to vote. What we need is a more effective mechanism to punish those who want to limit the right to vote and a court system that will be proactive in protecting it.

Unfortunately the way the system is currently set up, when some asshat sends out notices to unwanted voters saying that election day was moved back, they get a fine after the election, but that doesn't create enough deterrent and it doesn't correct the wrong. Likewise, even when Republican laws that limit the vote are struck down, it doesn't cost them anything. If a law that tries to block voting resulted in jail sentences for the people pushing them, then there would be incentive to not do so. As it it, there's only potential upside.

[eridani]

4. Although the initial right to vote was not in the Constitution--

--do you think that indirect implication of the amendments you mentioned is itself an assertion of the right to vote?