Discussion: Dem Leader: Alabama DMV Closures 'Deeply Disturbing' For Voting Rights

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Discussion for article #241438

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Preach, preacher, preach!

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If God intended for black people to vote He would have made them white.

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I remember when the VRA was essentially gutted THIS is what some people were worried about. Because sufficient proof would have to be presented to SCOTUS that voting violations had been/were being committed that suppressed the vote of minorities. In the meantime, the suppression would continue until proven to need some kind of remedy.

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BACK in the good old days, voter suppression was done on an individual basis, BUT these days it’s done in a more impersonal way, voter suppression by the mass…RIGHT out there in plain sight for all to see. Can’t be denied. In your face, voter suppress. Wonder how the SUPREME BEINGS will view it.

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Very good news. I hope action is taken to reverse this.

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Voter suppression is one of their specialities. In 2000 they suppressed the the vote in Florida and gave us ‘W’ and all that came with him.

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House Minority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) renewed his call for the restoration of the Voting Rights Act, suggesting Monday that it would have stopped Alabama from implementing a law requiring a photo ID at the ballot box.

Why do you think they got rid of it in the first place? I mean why are we pretending that stopping what happened in Alabama is something that would get Republicans on board with restoring the Voting Rights Act? We need to stop giving them the cover that espousing such fantasies provides and simply call them out loudly and publicly as wanting exactly this type of disenfranchisement to occur.

[quote=“brooklyndweller, post:4, topic:27299”]
Because sufficient proof would have to be presented to SCOTUS that voting violations had been/were being committed that suppressed the vote of minorities.
[/quote]Riiiight, because the Conservative majority on the court totally had no idea that this stuff would occur as a result of this ruling and most certainly didn’t intended to enable these sorts of shenanigans in order to empower their political allies.

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Which is happening as we speak. DMV closures are still in place and will remain so until this case gets to the DOJ and, ultimately SCOTUS, where we’ll be right back to where we were 50 years ago.

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In 2013, the Supreme Court invalidated the formula determining which states – which, at the time, included Alabama – were required to get “pre-clearance” from the federal government or a panel of judges before implementing changes to voting practices.

I had forgotten that the ruse the right-wing nut-bags used was that the “formula was wrong.” Not that the law was unconstitutional, but the judicial equivalent of, “We think you got the decimal point in the wrong place.” Of course, jurisprudence, unlike mathematics, is all a matter of opinion, so they lacked the temerity to claim that protection of voters’ rights was unconstitutional, but they were willing to say that the formula used to determine which states have a history of racially based vote suppression misplaced a legal decimal.

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Sorry, but I don’t see a scenario where the same Court reverses itself and declares a now defunct piece of the VRA functional again. And the certainly aren’t going to use the 14th Amendment to create an equal right to vote for everyone; the Constitution is pretty clear that it is up to each state to run its own elections.

The solution is the one I have been speaking about since the VRA was gutted. Democrats should have gone to the floor of both Houses the very next day will bill in hand, re-instating the VRA by applying it to every state. Sure, it wouldn’t have passed, but we should be making republicans own the refusal to allow people to vote, every election.

Quite frankly, I am totally on board with starting a movement to amend the Constitution and make voting a right. Its rather shocking that there is nothing in there already, but there isn’t. We shouldn’t have to rely upon the “political will” of any given Congress or the ideological make up of any given Court to determine whether or not every American can vote.

Alabama will lose this case, however. Either they are going to have to repeal their ID law, or they are going to have to reopen their DMV offices. They will spend millions fighting it, however. They don’t have the money to keep them open, but they will spend a multitude of that money fighting a losing battle to keep them closed.

Because…Logic!

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The argument was that the pre-clearance requirement was only on certain states, i.e. Southern states. And that argument does hold a certain amount of merit…it should be applied everywhere.

However, Scalia specifically cited the “lack of political will” within Congress to change the law, so he decided to do it for them. It’s a massive example of judicial activism and judicial overreach. He is literally saying “no, the law isn’t unconstitutional, I just don’t like it. If more people who agreed with me would get elected, than Congress would do this on their own. Since they can’t get elected, I am just going to do it myself”.

Again, there was no question of constitutionality. The law has been found to be constitutional on numerous challenges,even by this same court. There was no question of Congress’s intent, Congress has just recently passed its continuance by overwhelming majorities. Scalia and the others voting with him, just didn’t like it anymore. So they tossed it out…because.

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Now that this has come to light, do you see the American public demanding all citizens the right to vote? Do you hear any outcry on a national level? In the time it takes AL to lose this case, certain people still can’t vote.

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I honestly don’t know. I like the fact that Hillary has spoken out rather strongly against what is happening in Alabama, and I like it even more that Hoyer is making public statements.

I would like it a whole lot better if LOTS of Congressional Democrats were echoing the call for revisiting the VRA, though. Its the right thing to do, and from where I seat, it makes excellent political sense. But it was barely mentioned in 2014.

The only think I can tell you is A) I think its a great idea and B) The DNC doesn’t listen to me.

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  • Alabama closes 31 driver license offices. And while the cuts come across Alabama, they are deepest in the Black Belt. The harm is inflicted disproportionately on voters who happen to be black, and poor, in sparsely populated areas.

  • Alabama also jacked up the price of getting a driver’s license from $23.50 to $36.25. Nothing but a de facto poll tax.

So roll out the welcome wagon to the Justice Department, and tell the world
that Alabama is exactly what they thought she was.

I’d love to say they have them all wrong.
But the numbers say they don’t.

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Exactly.

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“The devil fools with the best laid plans…”

I hope Neil Young does remember.