Image via Brennan Center for Justice.
Contemptibly lacking in courage; cowardly
by Tom Sullivan
Image via Brennan Center for Justice.
The word craven comes to mind. Often. Whether it is an aborted attempt to close 7 of 9 polling places in a rural, heavily African American county or a desperate, 11th-hour special legislative session called to massage ballot language for something as monumental as state constitutional amendments, our Republican counterparts seem determined to demonstrate their abject contempt for principles of representative democracy. That abbreviated list is just from yesterday.
After getting caught in national media klieg lights, the Board of Elections in Randolph County, Georgia on Friday voted down its own proposal for closing polling places. It took less than 60 seconds for the publicly shamed to go from opening the meeting to "This meeting is adjourned":
“We are pleased African-Americans voters in Randolph County will be able to access polling stations in November,” Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a phone interview. “Too often they are faced with voter suppression tactics like this which are clearly motivated by racial animus.”A court in Raleigh on Tuesday slapped down as unconstitutionally misleading North Carolina Republicans' ballot language on constitutional amendments for stripping power from the Democratic governor. They called a hasty special session on Friday to rework the language. They might not get another shot at this after new members are sworn in post-November.
It should not work this way. State constitutions simply should not be fundamentally rewritten during a poorly noticed, hastily arranged, kangaroo legislative session in which new amendment language is unveiled and approved in a span of a few hours (or a day or two) – especially when the session takes place just days before the public is scheduled to start absentee voting. This is the kind of action one would expect from architects of a military coup in a Third World country.But then, the country has a president whose underworld ties make him more suited to the Third World, so there's that.
But the big takeaway is that this is precisely the sort of change in voting procedures that would have until recently triggered an automatic review by the Justice Department, which would conduct an investigation and then either grant or deny a “preclearance” before it could be implemented, under the provisions of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 2013, however, a 5-4 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, in the Shelby County v. Holder decision, basically gutted Section 5 (by voiding Section 4, which identified the jurisdictions subject to preclearance), liberating the mostly former Confederate jurisdictions involved from having to get the Feds’ permission for voting changes potentially affecting minority voters.North Carolina and Texas are petri dishes for Republican election mischief since 2013. Wisconsin also makes the finals of this election rigging science fair. On top of that surgical precision, since 2013 North Carolina's post-2010 GOP-led legislature has kept voters heads whipsawing with modifications to election procedures both large and small. Slapped down by the courts, they've turned to voters to do their dirty work by asking them to pass voter ID on the fall ballot.