Outdated Voting Rights Act

[ArtDrake]

These ****** cartoons are the last straw. I'm out.

[SmartyPants]

The fake, overblown outrage is unnecessary, because there is nothing controversial or offensive about those political cartoons.

All the cartoons illustrate valid reasons for Voter ID laws:

• The first cartoon makes a reference to Voter ID laws being intended to prevent criminals voting on behalf of the deceased.
• The second cartoon is a list of examples where one would need a picture ID besides voting such as buying alcohol, driving a car, cashing a check, and to see Eric Holder say voter ID laws are racist.
• The third cartoon comments on how being required to show a picture ID to vote is much less burdensome than the Obamacare mandate that forces people to fill out numerous extra IRS forms in order prove one is insured.

[SmartyPants]

Recently, we had the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington.  It was time to celebrate the progress our country has made.  No longer are bathrooms, restaurants, or schools segregated as "whites" and "colors".  No longer are certain people forced to sit at the back of the bus.  No longer are black men getting lynched, and then the perpetrators gets away due to a racist, all-white jury.  No longer are minorities intimidated at the polling booth. No longer is racism rampant among our country.

The series of speeches celebrating the 50th Anniversary shows how outdated the voting rights act has become.  During the celebration, the civil rights speakers claim that the major problems of racism today are Stop and Frisk and the death of Trayvon Martin.  Stop and Frisk is a police policy used in New York City, while Trayvon died in the state of Florida. Neither of these states are covered by the Voting Rights Act.

[CraigStern]

The series of speeches celebrating the 50th Anniversary shows how outdated the voting rights act has become.

You just named a bunch of different things that have nothing do with voting rights. As we covered before, a number of states are still trying to suppress minority voter turnout.

There's been quite a bit more than that as well, which I didn't even get into before. Some prominent examples that journalists happened to catch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression#2008_presidential_election

[SmartyPants]

There's been quite a bit more than that as well, which I didn't even get into before. Some prominent examples that journalists happened to catch: Voter suppression@2008 presidential election

Your post further proves my point.  The states that had allegations of voter suppression were Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Maryland, and Florida.  Other than Georgia, none of the eight states with voter allegation were in the South.  Clearly, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is outdated and needs to be updated to represent current trends.   I don't know why anyone would oppose updating the formula that determines what areas currently have problems with voter suppression.   Maybe those up North want to look down on the South as inherently more racist, while they deny that northern states like Illinois and New York have their own racial problems.

[CraigStern]

Yeah, I don't necessarily oppose updating the formula--in fact, I think it should be extended to cover the entire country. Still, striking the law down in the interim is a disaster for voting rights. IMO Congress needs to act, and quickly.

[SmartyPants]

The law needs to be struck down in the interim, because Congress would never get around to updating it otherwise.  Congress had multiple chances to update the formula, but they have been too lazy to do so.  The last time congress actually put the effort into updating the formula was 1972.

I disagree that we should extend preclearance to the entire nation.  Preclearance would be an unnecessary burden on the local, state, and federal government.   In Texas, the vast majority of the preclearance requests are trivial requests such as moving a polling place from a church to a school.  That means we have to wait for the slow, federal bureaucracy to approve the request before we can do any simple task that deals with voting.  Areas without any recent history of voter suppression should not be put through such a burden.  Also, the courts are perfectly capable of dealing with cases of voter discrimination.  I would also prefer the court system to rule what is voter suppression instead of an executive branch that is prone to put politics before rule of law.

Voter suppression clearly isn't much of a problem, because no one in Congress feels this is enough of a priority to even talk about.

[CraigStern]

Areas without any history of voter suppression should not be put through such a burden.

What areas would those be? (Hint: probably not Texas.)

Voter suppression clearly isn't much of a problem, because no one in Congress feels this is enough of a priority to even talk about.

Your faith in the competency of members of Congress to focus on things based on their actual importance to the nation is both touching and naive. :)

[SmartyPants]

Areas without any history of voter suppression should not be put through such a burden.

What areas would those be? (Hint: probably not Texas.)

Your evidence of voter suppression is even more outdated than the formula used by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. You can't claim that Texas still has voter suppression, because there was voter suppression during the Reconstruction period.  This is the same time period that anti-Irish and anti-Italian sediment lead to corrupt political machines in the North.  I wouldn't claim that Boston, Cleveland, New York City, Philadelphia, and St. Louis have issues with corruption due to having corrupt political machines during the late-18th century and the early-19th century.

Voter suppression clearly isn't much of a problem, because no one in Congress feels this is enough of a priority to even talk about.

Your faith in the competency of members of Congress to focus on things based on their actual importance to the nation is both touching and naive. :)

Did you miss how I complained that Congress has been too lazy to update the Voting Rights Act since 1972?  Also, I never said anything about Congress doing anything about this issue.  I said congress is not talking about the issue of voter suppression. Even though nothing is getting done about gun control, members of Congress constantly talk about it.  On the other hand, voter suppression isn't a big enough issue to even to talk about.

[CraigStern]

History of voter suppression implies that it's in the past. If you want something current, look at Texas's voter ID law.

[SmartyPants]

Voter ID is internationally accepted policy to combat voter fraud.  Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, and many other countries use Voter ID.  The myth that Voter ID is racist was created by Democrats for political reasons.  States like Texas that use Voter ID to ensure the integrity of the electoral system should not be burdened by preclearance from inefficient, politicalized federal government.

In Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, liberal Justice John Paul Stevens ruled that the Voter ID laws are constitutional because it is not a unrealistic burden of the voters:

"The relevant burdens here are those imposed on eligible voters who lack photo identification cards that comply with SEA 483. Because Indiana's cards are free, the inconvenience of going to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, gathering required documents, and posing for a photograph does not qualify as a substantial burden on most voters' right to vote, or represent a significant increase over the usual burdens of voting. The severity of the somewhat heavier burden that may be placed on a limited number of persons—e.g., elderly persons born out-of-state, who may have difficulty obtaining a birth certificate—is mitigated by the fact that eligible voters without photo identification may cast provisional ballots that will be counted if they execute the required affidavit at the circuit court clerk’s office. Even assuming that the burden may not be justified as to a few voters, that conclusion is by no means sufficient to establish petitioners’ right to the relief they seek."

There are flawed surveys with questionable data collection techniques that say there might be disenfranchised voters in the future, while studies of past elections that use voter ID laws show little effect on voter turnout.  The states that already had voter IDs showed no signs of voter disenfranchisement, yet liberals keep pushing a false narrative in order to demonize Republicans as racists.

Jeffrey Milyo, professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Missouri and the Hanna Family Scholar in the Center for Applied Economics at the University of Kansas, notes that overall voter turnout in Indiana actually increased after the implementation of photo ID. His study evaluated the effects of photo identification requirements by comparing county-level turnout in Indiana in the 2002 and 2006 mid-term elections, since the current ID law was not in place in ‘02.

“Previous studies have examined the effects of voter ID laws more generally, but none of these separately analyzes the effects of so called ‘mandatory photo ID’ on turnout in Indiana,” Milyo said. “I examined a variety of models on voter turnout. After controlling for several factors that influence county-wide turnout, there is no consistent or statistically significant evidence that the photo ID law depressed turnout in counties with greater percentages of minority, poor or elderly voters. Contrary to conventional wisdom, turnout in Democratic-leaning counties actually increased in the wake of the new photo ID requirements, all else constant.”

[CraigStern]

Want to see a Daily Show interview with a GOP executive committee member from North Carolina about their new voter fraud law? I think you might find it enlightening: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-23-2013/suppressing-the-vote

[SmartyPants]

It looks like they might finally update the Voting Rights Act.

The Daily Show has such a blatant liberal bias that they might as well be the entertainment wing of the Democratic party, so I wouldn't take what they call "reporting" seriously..