The 5-4 2013 conservative Supreme Court ruling
Shelby County vs Holder, claimed that the passage of time since the enactment
of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (amended but retained over the decades)
required that the Court release states that, in 1965 and subsequent amendment
years, had practiced racially discriminatory voting restrictions from federal
supervision under sections 4(b) and 5 of the statute. Both sections were
annulled. Section 4(b) contained
the coverage formula that determines which jurisdictions are subjected to
preclearance based on their histories of discrimination in voting, and Section
5 had required certain states and local governments to obtain federal
preclearance before implementing any changes to their voting laws or practices.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was widely heralded as one of the major
changes to the Jim Crow laws that prevented African-Americans from voting.
Almost immediately after the ruling, “several states once covered under
preclearance have passed laws that removed provisions such as online voting
registration, early voting, ‘Souls to the Polls’ Sunday voting, same-day
registration, and pre-registration for teens about to turn 18. The ruling has
also resulted in some states implementing voter identification laws and
becoming more aggressive in expunging allegedly ineligible voters from
registration rolls. States that have changed their voting policies post-Shelby
include both jurisdictions that were previously required to undergo federal
preclearance, as well as some that were not covered, including Alabama,
Arizona, Arkansas, North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin and Texas. According to the
Brennan Center for Justice, the states most likely to enact voting restrictions
were states with the highest African-American turnout in the 2008 election.
“Three years after the ruling, 868
polling places had been closed down. Five years after the ruling, nearly a
thousand polling places had been closed in the country, with many of the closed
polling places in predominantly African-American counties. Research shows that
the changing of voter locations and reduction in voting locations can reduce voter
turnout.” Wikipedia. Virtually all of the post-Shelby voting restrictions was
passed by Republican legislatures and signed into law by Republican governors.
And while many early efforts to contain minorities from voting were reversed by
the lower courts, many others were sustained, and rejected efforts were quickly
replaced by new voting restrictions, slightly reconfigured.
The Republican Party, viewed as the
party of wealthy tax-avoiding elites and right wing social conservatives, had
come to the realization that on a strict demographic basis, they were a
minority party with a strong rural constituency in a country that was well over
85% urban. Fear of losing both the presidency and the Senate is the force
behind the eleventh and a half hour rush to nominate a right-wing Supreme Court
Justice in complete defiance of the once-GOP-backed tradition of kicking late
term presidential judicial appointments past the election. If the GOP does not
win the Presidency and hold the majority in the Senate, a supermajority of
conservatives can reverse the will of both Congress and the President.
Controlling who can vote is equally
important. Just looking at the overwhelming mayoral control of most major
American cities by Democrats, the handwriting for the GOP was on the wall. To
survive, the GOP felt the need to dilute the urban and non-white vote by
whatever means possible. Otherwise, America’s growing shift toward the center
and left of center would become their worst nightmare.
Cities are particularly vulnerable.
There is much more mobility (moving to new homes, new cities) among those who
make their living in cities versus in rural communities, and the resulting
constant change in the relevant voter rolls gave rise to new tools to delist
and disqualify those who change their place of registration. By blending the
conservative countryside into districts that include cities with liberal
leanings, gerrymandering effectively dilutes those liberal votes into oblivion.
And today, Republican controlled states, even as their populations are shifting
to purple and maybe even blue (e.g., North Carolina), are far and away the
greatest implementers of gerrymandering.
Sensing that if he can stop new
voters from turning out, he can stem the liberal tide against him, Donald Trump
has attempted to attack, thwart and undermine a well-established and pervasive
vote-by-mail practice, seen by many as a necessity during the pandemic. Then,
in conservative states, by making early voters struggle to get their ballots
counted at all, the GOP is erecting barriers specifically to keep minorities
and city dwellers, particularly those without cars, from being able to cast
their ballots at all.
As once virulently red states are
turning purple if not blue, the need to stop that transition dead in its tracks
has become a GOP obsession. Like in Texas. Houston is the largest city in the
state (and the fourth largest in the country), located in Harris County, which
is 1777 square miles (making it bigger than Rhode Island). And like most big
cities in Texas, Houston skews heavily Democratic. Sylvester Turner, an
African-American, is the current Democratic mayor of the city, which last had a
Republican mayor in 1981!
Houston has ample public
transportation, including the modern Metro rail system noted on the above map.
If you live in Houston (or Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, etc.), you do not need
to own a car. Why does this matter? Because during a pandemic, even if you
typically use public transportation, you are less inclined to do so in a state (and
a city) with some of the highest COVID infection and mortality rates in the
nation. Traditional white voters beyond the pale of big city limits almost
uniformly have cars. Thus, voters with cars are more likely to be in
conservative rural areas than liberals and minorities in cities who do not.
Hmmmm. That gave the governor an idea.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, anxious
to deliver his state to Donald Trump and make sure that both Senators remain
Republican, in early October, issued an executive order limiting each of the state’s 254 counties, including
Houston’s Democrat-led Harris County, the nation’s third largest by population,
to a single ballot drop site. One place. Challenged in federal district court,
Abbott was gratified when the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed his
order to take effect. Any further judicial review would take place after the
election. The dozens of polling deposit sites in Houston were closed, and only
one drop-off site remained. And if you don’t own a car… Oh….
“Texans are supposed to be able to vote
several ways. Early in-person voting started last week [early October]. Those
who are out of state are eligible to vote absentee. Certain in-state voters can
have ballots mailed to them, including those who are disabled and 65 or older.
Those ballots may be mailed back to election officials or dropped with poll
workers at designated sites…
“But ongoing legal maneuvers by Republican
state officials have resulted in frustration at the polls amid record early
turnout. Abbott and others say they’re trying to guard against possible voter
fraud, but voting rights groups and Democrats complain of voter suppression —
long a problem for minorities in Texas — and they worry the actions could tilt
the outcome of the presidential election.
“Texas was one of nine mostly Southern states
barred for decades from changing voting laws without federal approval under the
Voting Rights Act of 1965. Since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down provisions
of the act in 2013, Texas Republicans have attempted to redistrict and to
impose stricter voter identification legislation, prompting lawsuits alleging
voter suppression.
“Abbott has also refused to mandate masks at
the polls during the COVID-19 pandemic, potentially further tamping down the
vote. And Republican leaders have fought straight ticket voting, which would
have reduced the time voters spend casting in-person ballots, and have
unsuccessfully tried to block curbside voting and online voter registration.
Republicans have also fought one another over voting restrictions: When Abbott
ordered early voting to start a week earlier than scheduled because of the
pandemic, other state GOP leaders unsuccessfully sued to stop him…
“Some at the polls last week said they worried
about vote fraud and agreed with the governor that ballot drop sites should be
restricted… ‘It’s good because you can get oversight. It’s all about control,’
said retired Texas Ranger Dewayne Goll, 58, after casting an early vote for
Trump at a polling place in a German dance hall turned community center in a
Houston suburb.” Los Angeles Times, October 19th. Despite constant
statements to the contrary, no one has produced any serious tangible evidence
of inherent fraud in vote-by-mail anywhere in a US national election.
Given the obvious manipulation and
vote-rigging, it seems pretty clear that even Texas Republicans fear Donald
Trump can’t win their traditionally red state. So, if Trump does in fact
prevail, it would seem pretty obvious, given the rapid erosion Trump’s poll
numbers, that such a victory would only be by reason of a dramatic distortion
of the will of a majority of the American voting public. It’s not clever or
cute. It is downright unpatriotic and un-American!
I’m
Peter Dekom, and if you ever wondered how democracies morph into autocracies,
look around you at all the efforts to marginalize all but white traditional
voters.
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