SHELBY V HOLDER AND THE OUTRAGEOUS METHODS OF THE KEMP CAMPAIGN
COMPILATION AND COMMENTARY
BY LUCY WARNER
OCTOBER 13, 2018

IN THIS RECENT POLITICAL SCANDAL, A SOUTHERN POLITICIAN IS DOING WHAT THEY DO BEST – SUPPRESSING THE BLACK VOTE AND PURGING BLACKS FROM THE LIST OF REGISTERED VOTERS. HE WAS CAUGHT IN THE ACT BY HIS OPPONENT, SHE RAISED A STRONG OUTCRY AGAINST IT IN THE FORM OF THE PRESS ALERT AND HE IS NOW LAMBASTING HER ROUNDLY FOR HER SILLINESS AND UNFAIRNESS TO HIM. AW, SHUCKS. I WASN’T REALLY GOING TO ELIMINATE 70,000 BLACK VOTERS FROM THE ROLLS.

THE NAACP AND A NUMBER OF OTHER GROUPS ARE WITH HER, THOUGH, AND A DEMOCRATICALLY BACKED NAACP LAWSUIT AGAINST HIM HAS BEEN FILED. IT LOOKS TO ME AS THOUGH THE EVIDENCE GOES AGAINST HIM CLEARLY, SO I DO HOPE THE SUPREME COURT WILL BECOME INVOLVED AND RULE AGAINST THE VOTER SUPPRESSION TECHNIQUES THAT HAVE BECOME COMMON SINCE THE SHELBY COUNTY V HOLDER DECISION WIPED OUT THE ENFORCEMENT LANGUAGE IN THE 1965 VOTING RIGHTS LAW.

KEMP’S PARTICULAR PLAN IS TO USE A COMPUTER TO COMPARE CURRENT VOTER APPLICATIONS TO THE NAME AND ADDRESS INFORMATION IN THE FEDERAL DATABASES OF SEVERAL KINDS, ONE BEING THE SOCIAL SECURITY RECORDS. IF THERE IS ONE TINY AND INSIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEM, KEMP’S METHOD IS TO SET ALL OF THOSE POTENTIALLY “FAULTY” APPLICATIONS ASIDE “ON HOLD.” HE CLAIMS THAT THE POOR BLACK AND HISPANIC VOTERS WILL BE ABLE TO VOTE “ON A REAL BALLOT” WHEN THEY GO TO THE POLLS EVEN THOUGH THEIR NAMES AREN’T PRESENTLY FOUND IN THE GIGANTIC LIST OF VOTERS.

HE DIDN’T EXPLAIN HOW THAT WILL HAPPEN. HOW CAN THEIR VOTING STATUS BE VERIFIED? I CAN VISUALIZE NOW THE CHAOS AT POLLING PLACES ALL OVER GEORGIA. HIS NAME FOR THAT CLEVERLY MALIGN TECHNIQUE IS “EXACT MATCH.” DONALD TRUMP, IN THE RANGE OF A YEAR AGO, SET ONE OF HIS FOOT SOLDIERS TO WORK CREATING SOMETHING LIKE THIS FOR THE WHOLE USA, BUT THROUGH THE STATES. SOME 30 STATE ATTORNEYS GENERAL SUED HIM IN ABOUT THREE DAYS. IT IS NOT ONLY UNPOPULAR AND AMORAL, IT IS INSANE. FOR MORE ABOUT THAT GOOGLE TECHNIQUE, GO TO https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2497825?hl=en.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/georgia-voter-suppression-brian-kemp-736817/
The Georgia Voter Suppression Story Is Not Going Away
Republican Brian Kemp, who oversees the controversial policy and is simultaneously running for office, is facing legal action and calls for his resignation
By RYAN BORT
October 12, 2018

PHOTOGRAPH -- Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp appears during a unity rally, in Peachtree Corners, Ga., 2018 John Amis/AP/Shutterstock

The Georgia gubernatorial race is practically dead-even with 25 days to go before the 2018 midterm elections. Democrat Stacey Abrams is the former minority leader of the state’s house of representatives, as well as the first African American woman to be nominated for governor by a major political party. Republican Brian Kemp is a devout Trump acolyte and the state’s current secretary of state. It’s in this role that Kemp oversees Georgia’s elections, and, on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that over 53,000 voter applications have been put on hold under the controversial “exact match” verification policy. Over two-thirds of those affected are African American.


On Thursday, civil rights groups including the Georgia NAACP filed a joint lawsuit against Kemp alleging the policy, which was signed into law last year, has been “shown to disproportionately and negatively impact the ability of voting-eligible African-American, Latino and Asian-American applicants to register to vote.”

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Lawyers' Committee
✔
@LawyersComm
BREAKING: We have just filed a lawsuit against Brian Kemp to end #Georgia’s exact match law, which has put as many as 53K voter registrations on hold ahead of the #MidtermElections.

Joining us in this suit: @CampaignLegal @AAAJ_Atlanta @NAACPGA

6:04 PM - Oct 11, 2018
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The “exact match” policy holds that a resident’s voter application must replicate the information on file with the Social Security Administration and the state’s Department of Driver Services. If an application contains so much as a misplaced dot or dash, it is flagged and put on hold. The AP story breaking the news of the purge highlights an educator whose application was suspended without her knowledge, and there are likely tens of thousands of additional Georgia residents who are not aware that they are no longer registered. Georgians whose applications have been flagged may still vote in the election, although they will be forced to bring identification to their polling place. Voter registration in Georgia closed on Tuesday, and the lawsuit filed on Thursday seeks to reopen registration so the affected residents can square away their registrations.

The Abrams campaign has been outraged. “As he has done for years, Brian Kemp is maliciously wielding the power of his office to suppress the vote for political gain and silence the voices of thousands of eligible voters — the majority of them people of color,” spokesperson Abigail Collazo said in a statement. On Thursday night, Collazo called for Kemp to resign his role overseeing the state’s elections “so that Georgia voters can have confidence that their Secretary of State competently and impartially oversee this election.” As Jamil Smith wrote Wednesday in Rolling Stone, Abrams “is competing against a rival who is also the referee.”

The NAACP also cited Kemp’s conflicting roles in addressing the purge. “It’s a strain on our system of democracy when less than a month before an election, which could produce the first African American female governor in our nation’s history, we are seeing this type of voter suppression scheme attempted by a state official, whose candidacy for the governorship produces an irremediable conflict of interest,” NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said in a statement.


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After the news broke on Tuesday, Abrams pointed out Kemp’s history of voter suppression while assuring Georgians that her campaign “will work to process” those affected. Though over two-thirds of Georgians whose applications were put on hold are African American, the demographic makes up only 32 percent of the state’s population.


Stacey Abrams
✔
· Oct 10, 2018
Feels like deja vu: 4 years ago, Kemp tried to keep 40k new voters off the rolls. It took a few years, but we beat him. A few months ago, he tried to close polling places, but we beat him there too. Now he’s at it again, and we’ll beat him - again. 1/2 https://twitter.com/wabenews/status/1050000493316120576?s=21 …


Stacey Abrams
✔
@staceyabrams

Governor candidate, GA
We will work to process the 53k, but we don’t have to wait for justice. We’ve got 27 days of action. So we’ll beat him in absentee ballots. We’ll beat him at early voting starting 10/15. And we’ll beat him on Nov. 6. Brian Kemp has called us out. Let’s vote & let’s get it done!

9:46 PM - Oct 10, 2018
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Kemp has denied any wrongdoing. On Thursday night, he accused Abrams of manufacturing a crisis in order to raise money from “left wing radicals.” Though his campaign has been eager to point out that Kemp did not personally step in and purge 53,000 voter applications, he is responsible for the “exact match” policy.


Brian Kemp
✔
@BrianKempGA

Governor candidate, GA
My opponent manufactured a ‘crisis’ to fire up her supporters and fundraise from left wing radicals throughout the country. Local reporters know that. They also know the 53,000 “pending” voters can cast a real ballot in November. #gapol

stephen fowler
✔
@stphnfwlr
Replying to @stphnfwlr
And the @staceyabrams campaign is quick to fundraise off of all the national media coverage with a not-contextually-accurate subject line.

Local *counties* flag applications that don’t follow/match what state law says. @BrianKempGA isn’t “blocking” anyone. #gapol #gagov

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On Wednesday, Kemp wrote that Abrams “and her radical friends” are “incredibly dishonest,” and that her “dark money voter registration group submitted sloppy forms.” The same day, his campaign touted the nearly seven million Georgians who are currently registered to vote, a record for the state. “While outside agitators disparage this office and falsely attack us, we have kept our head down and remained focused on ensuring secure, accessible, and fair elections for all voters,” his office said in a statement.

Activists have argued otherwise, highlighting the myriad ways Kemp has worked to suppress the minority vote. Since becoming secretary of state in 2010, the Republican has closed hundreds of polling places, mostly in rural, minority-rich counties, and purged well over a million “inactive” voters. Many feel the “exact match” policy has no practical purpose other than complicating the process for minorities. “Nearly every other state treats failure to match a database differently than Georgia,” the Campaign Legal Center, one of the groups filing the lawsuit against Kemp, wrote in a statement. “In the case of a mismatch, the voter is still fully registered. First-time voters are required to show a form of identification at the polls when they vote for the first time. This process provides the same amount of election security and imposes less barriers to voters.”

According to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution/Channel 2 Action News poll released Thursday, Kemp currently leads Abrams by a margin of 47.7 percent to 46.3 percent. The difference of 1.4. percent is well within the poll’s margin of error of 2.8 percent. If neither candidate receives at least 50 percent of the vote in November, a runoff will be held in December to determine the state’s next governor.


ABOUT “DARK MONEY”*

THE MERE SOUND OF THE TERM “DARK MONEY” IS ENOUGH TO PRODUCE SUSPICION AND ANGER, AND IS USED ESPECIALLY FOR THE PURPOSE OF TARRING A CANDIDATE WITH EXPOSURE TO PRESUMED SCANDAL, AS KEMP IS DOING IN THIS CASE. IT IS FROWNED UPON PARTLY BECAUSE UNLIMITED DONATIONS ARE ALLOWED AND THERE IS NO REQUIREMENT TO STATE THE SOURCES. HOWEVER, I HAVE NEVER SEEN IT DEFINED BEFORE. HERE IS WIKIPEDIA’S GO AT IT.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_money
Dark money
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the politics of the United States, dark money is funds given to nonprofit organizations—and include 501(c)(4) (social welfare) 501(c)(5) (unions) and 501(c)(6) (trade association) groups—that can receive unlimited donations from corporations, individuals and unions. They can spend funds to influence elections, but are not required to disclose their donors.[3][4] Dark money first entered politics with Buckley v. Valeo *(1976) when the United States Supreme Court laid out Eight Magic Words* that define the difference between electioneering and issue advocacy.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, "spending by organizations that do not disclose their donors has increased from less than $5.2 million in 2006 to well over $300 million in the 2012 presidential cycle and more than $174 million in the 2014 midterms."[3] The New York Times editorial board has opined that the 2014 midterm elections were influenced by "the greatest wave of secret, special-interest money ever raised in a congressional election."[5] ]


BUCKLEY V VALEO
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1975/75-436
CITATION
424 US 1 (1976)

Facts of the case
In the wake of the Watergate affair, Congress attempted to ferret out corruption in political campaigns by restricting financial contributions to candidates. Among other things, the law set limits on the amount of money an individual could contribute to a single campaign and it required reporting of contributions above a certain threshold amount. The Federal Election Commission was created to enforce the statute.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Magic_Words
Eight Magic Words
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In Buckley v. Valeo, the United States Supreme Court limited the reach of campaign finance laws to candidate and party committees, and other committees with a major purpose of electing candidates, or to speech that "expressly advocated" election or defeat of candidates. In footnote 52 of that opinion, the Court listed eight words or phrases as illustrative of speech that qualified as "express advocacy".

Importance of the eight magic words
Under the Buckley ruling, speakers that did not invoke any of the eight specific words and phrases of Buckley, or similar language expressly calling voters to vote for or against a candidate, were exempt from campaign finance laws.[1]

The eight words and phrases appearing in Buckley were "vote for," "elect," "support", "cast your ballot for", "Smith for Congress", "vote against", "defeat", "reject", or any variations thereof.[2][3]

That footnote was intended to provide examples of the types of things that would lead a reasonable person to conclude the speaker was advocating a particular candidate or ballot measure.[4]

The Court felt that limiting campaign finance laws to speech with such express advocacy was necessary to avoid a "chilling effect" on speech about political officeholders and issues that was protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution.



https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/georgia-voter-suppression-736362/
Jamil Smith: Watch the Georgia Minority Vote Disappear Before Your Eyes
Brian Kemp, the Republican running against Democrat Stacey Abrams, is blocking more than 53,000 people from the polls over a technicality, continuing his history of voter suppression
By JAMIL SMITH
OCTOBER 11, 2018 2:05PM ET

PHOTOGRAPH -- Georgia gubernatorial nominee Brian Kemp smiles as he participates in a Georgia Republican Party Unity Rally in Peachtree Corners, Georgia. Tami Chappell/EPA-EFE/REX Shutterstock

My younger sister lives in the Atlanta area, and, like any annoying brother, I’ve been hounding her about something. I texted her this week to make sure that she is registered to vote. Not because I’m worried that she’ll be one of these Millennials Who Doesn’t Vote, but because she is black and living in Georgia, and could fall victim to Brian Kemp’s voter suppression tactics.

Kemp is Georgia Secretary of State, the state’s top elections official. He has decreased the overall number of voters in Georgia since 2012 by more than 1 million — all while purging the rolls in a way that has predominantly affected black residents. Kemp is also the Republican nominee for governor. Democrat Stacey Abrams, the first African American woman nominated by a major party for that job anywhere in the country, is competing against a rival who is also the referee.

Most candidates don’t want to be seen as cheaters. But for Republicans like Kemp, necessity outweighs propriety. Republicans have nothing else to sell, really. The tax cut is a bust, and I’m not sure how the Brett Kavanaugh fight helps Kemp as he runs against arguably the best-known female challenger on a ballot this November.

This past Tuesday, the deadline for Georgia residents to register to vote, the AP reported that at Kemp’s insistence, more than 53,000 voter applications have been suspended indefinitely. More than two-thirds of those applications were filed by black people. As the AP report makes clear, a lot of people in Georgia don’t even know that this has happened to them. One woman, while trying to demonstrate to her college students how Georgians can verify their registration, discovered that she had been removed from the rolls, herself. She and tens of thousands may have to submit a provisional ballot if their issues are not rectified in the next three weeks and change.

Abrams is within half a percentage point of Kemp in the RealClear Politics average as of this week. Already implicated in a failed effort to close seven of nine polling places in a sparsely populated but majority-black county, it is clear that Kemp and his allies understand how close this race will be. Those 53,000 voters could make all the difference in this race, which he surely realizes. Even if this was a blowout, his move would be suspect.

Kemp’s campaign didn’t respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment. Spokesman Ryan Mahoney told the AP in a statement that, “Kemp is fighting to protect the integrity of our elections and ensure that only legal citizens cast a ballot.” The aforementioned registrations were held up by the state’s controversial “exact match” verification policy. If a word is misspelled, an address not updated, or even a hyphen is out of place, a Georgia voter could end up in Kemp’s limbo. “Exact match” is a process that civil rights groups have sued to end, and that Kemp had been told was discriminatory eight years ago, before he implemented it. Yet his campaign would have us believe Kemp as an avenger, supposedly protecting democracy even as he mutilates it.

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The Georgia Voter Suppression Story Is Not Going Away

Five years after the neutering of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder*, we have gotten used to Republican voter suppression being a part of every election cycle. Along with police violence and mass incarceration, it is Jim Crow’s longest living descendant. Just in the past week, North Dakota’s voter-ID law got the Supreme Court’s sign-off, likely disenfranchising many tribal Native American residents who either don’t have an address on their identification or don’t have an ID at all. Missouri’s voter-ID measure was blocked by a state circuit judge, but Arkansas’ Supreme Court ruled in favor of its state’s law — which looks a lot like the one that the same court blocked four years ago. For Republicans looking to jimmy open new pathways to power, consistency is an afterthought, especially when few of these stories garner the kind of press that Shelby case did. Where there is no attention, there is no accountability.

Kemp’s actions reflect the worst instincts of Republicanism by placating those who believe President Trump’s lie about millions of illegal votes being cast against him. Kemp no doubt excites Americans who think that voter ID laws, discriminatory purges and other suppressive measures are here to save us from those who would thwart our electoral system. People in this camp obscure the con this way, further mutilating democracy even as they claim to be covering its wounds.

The Abrams campaign sees through it. Calling upon Kemp do away with “exact match” and to resign his position as Secretary of State, Abrams spokeswoman Abigail Collazo tells Rolling Stone that Kemp’s move to “silence” thousands of eligible voters “isn’t incompetence; it’s malpractice.”

Kemp tried to smooth things over on Wednesday by boasting about how Georgia broke its record for registered voters: more than 6,915,000 are eligible to vote this November. In announcing the registration record, Kemp was defensive and outright conspiratorial. “While outside agitators disparage this office and falsely attack us,” his office said in a Wednesday statement, “we have kept our head down and remained focused on ensuring secure, accessible, and fair elections for all voters.” Naturally, he expected applause for this, as if this was his accomplishment. But it was Abrams and her New Georgia Project that, for about five years now, has been working consistently to not only get 800,000 people on the rolls, but particularly to encourage those from marginalized groups to vote.

In return for the help in doing his job, Kemp blamed the victims. His office told the AP’s Ben Nadler that Abrams and the New Georgia Project were directly responsible for their need to interrupt those 53,000 voter applications. Kemp “accuses [her] organization of being sloppy in registering voters, and says they submitted inadequate forms for a batch of applicants that was predominantly black,” wrote Nadler, offering no proof to substantiate his claim. But how else is he to legitimize his discrimination against black Georgians — only 32 percent of the state’s population and yet nearly 70 percent of Kemp’s suspended voters? Too many of them were registered by Stacey Abrams, it’s her fault.

Republicans have been proud of their suppressive measures in the past, even if they try to cloak them in this false crusade against voter fraud. But Kemp has added a new twist. Outside of über-suppressor Kris Kobach’s run in Kansas, no other governor’s race has a candidate not just working the referee, but being the referee.

After I texted with my sister about the Kemp news, she told me she will check her registration again. That seems wise. Georgians should do the same today. Then perhaps next week, too. Brian Kemp is trying to shape his own electorate in a tight race against a black woman already making history. He has about 25 days left. Unless the courts stop him, who knows what he’ll do next?


HOW DID WE COME TO THIS POINT AS A COUNTRY? THREE ARTICLES, THE HILL 10/12, SALON 10/11 AND ROLLING STONE 10/12

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/411193-sanders-blasts-georgia-over-voter-registrations-cowardly-republicans-are
Sanders blasts Georgia over voter registrations: 'Cowardly Republicans' are 'blatantly suppressing the vote'
BY JOHN BOWDEN - 10/12/18 03:38 PM EDT

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Friday attacked Georgia Republicans, including gubernatorial candidate Secretary of State Brian Kemp (R) over reports that tens of thousands of registrations, primarily for black voters, remain on hold ahead of the midterm elections.

In a tweet, the progressive senator accused Republicans of specifically targeting African-Americans due to their tendency to vote Democratic. Kemp's opponent, former state lawmaker Stacey Abrams (D), is running to become the first black woman to serve as a U.S. governor.

The Georgia NAACP is reportedly planning to file a lawsuit against Kemp over the voter registration forms.

"In Georgia, in order to try to win the election there, cowardly Republicans are blatantly suppressing the vote and denying many African Americans the right to participate in the election," Sanders wrote on Twitter on Friday.

Abrams's campaign has called for Kemp, who is overseeing the election in his role as secretary of state, to resign from the position.

“As he has done for years, Brian Kemp is maliciously wielding the power of his office to suppress the vote for political gain and silence the voices of thousands of eligible voters — the majority of them people of color,” Abrams spokeswoman Abigail Collazo said Thursday.

A spokeswoman from Kemp's office told The Hill on Wednesday that the holds were caused by the state's "exact match" law, a policy that requires an applicant's information to match exactly what is listed by the state's Department of Driver Services or the Social Security Administration.

Kemp's campaign told CNN on Thursday that the roughly 53,000 people affected by the voter registration issue could resolve it by casting provisional ballots on Election Day.

"While outside agitators disparage this office and falsely attack us, we have kept our head down and remained focused on ensuring secure, accessible, and fair elections for all voters," a spokesperson said.


https://www.salon.com/2018/10/11/florida-gop-candidate-for-governor-made-excuses-for-slavery-in-anti-obama-book/?utm_source=spotim&utm_medium=spotim_social_rail&spotim_referrer=social_rail
Florida GOP candidate for governor made excuses for slavery in anti-Obama book
Florida gubernatorial nominee can’t stop dog-whistling, even if this latest example is several years old
IGOR DERYSH
OCTOBER 11, 2018 10:00AM (UTC)

PHOTOGRAPH -- Ron DeSantis (Getty/Drew Angerer)

Republican Florida gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis' little-read 2011 book "Dreams From Our Founding Fathers" included a bizarre defense of slavery in the U.S. Constitution.

The political-opposition research group American Bridge highlighted portions of DeSantis' book, which was aimed at then-President Barack Obama, who the former Florida congressman implied was a secret Marxist with “Muslim roots.”

The book includes a section in which DeSantis takes issue with former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to sit on the high court, for calling the founding fathers hypocritical because they formed a “free” state that allowed slavery.

DeSantis claimed that Marshall's comments were “misguided from the start” and “miss the mark.” He argued that it was unfair to criticize the founders for keeping slavery legal because they designed the Constitution in a way such that slavery was eventually “designed to fail.”

He argued that the infamous "three-fifths compromise" – which counted black people as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of Congressional representation – actually “benefited anti-slavery states.” This is historically false.

In reality, the deal allowed slave-owning states to have more congressional representation despite not allowing black people to vote. States where slavery was forbidden got nothing out of the “compromise.”

DeSantis went on to argue that the Founders were correct to allow slavery in the Constitution because “there was no real chance” it would be abolished at the Constitutional Convention.

“For anti-slavery delegates like [Alexander] Hamilton and [Benjamin] Franklin, abolition of slavery would be a moot point if a failure to erect a functioning government snuffed out the ideals of the American Revolution in their infancy; then, the future of all Americans, the free as well as the slave, would eventually be as serfs to a despotic government,” he wrote.

DeSantis is far from alone in the Republican Party in his whitewashing of slavery. His argument echoes conservative filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza, who received a pardon from President Donald Trump earlier this year after he pleaded guilty to making illegal campaign contributions.

“The three-fifths laws was about slavery, and it had to do with an argument between the North and the South over representation,” he said in an appearance on Fox News. “Ironically, the North, which was the anti-slavery side, wanted blacks to count for zero because they wanted to reduce the representative power of the slave states. The South wanted blacks to count for a full person. So the three-fifths law, which was usually presented to show that the founders didn't consider blacks to be fully human, doesn't actually show that at all."

As actual historian Mike Duncan points out, this is a horribly bad faith argument.

“The South wanted enslaved Africans counted as persons AFTER it was decided population would be the basis of political representation,” he wrote. “But remember, there was a period where it seemed like WEALTH might be the basis. At that point, the South wanted them all counted as property.”

Other Republicans have also downplayed the evils of slavery in recent months.

Former Alabama U.S. Senate candidate and state Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore said at a rally last year that the last time America was “great” was during slavery.

“I think it was great at the time when families were united — even though we had slavery — they cared for one another,” Moore told a black audience member, according to the Los Angeles Times.

In a speech to his staff last year, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson called slaves “immigrants” who came to the country on “slave ships.”

“That’s what America is about, a land of dreams and opportunity,’’ he said. “There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less.”

IGOR DERYSH -- Igor Derysh is a New York-based political writer whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Herald and Baltimore Sun.


https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/georgia-voter-suppression-brian-kemp-736817/
The Georgia Voter Suppression Story Is Not Going Away
Republican Brian Kemp, who oversees the controversial policy and is simultaneously running for office, is facing legal action and calls for his resignation
By RYAN BORT
October 12, 2018

PHOTOGRAPH -- Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp appears during a unity rally, in Peachtree Corners, Ga., 2018 John Amis/AP/Shutterstock

The Georgia gubernatorial race is practically dead-even with 25 days to go before the 2018 midterm elections. Democrat Stacey Abrams is the former minority leader of the state’s house of representatives, as well as the first African American woman to be nominated for governor by a major political party. Republican Brian Kemp is a devout Trump acolyte and the state’s current secretary of state. It’s in this role that Kemp oversees Georgia’s elections, and, on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that over 53,000 voter applications have been put on hold under the controversial “exact match” verification policy. Over two-thirds of those affected are African American.

On Thursday, civil rights groups including the Georgia NAACP filed a joint lawsuit against Kemp alleging the policy, which was signed into law last year, has been “shown to disproportionately and negatively impact the ability of voting-eligible African-American, Latino and Asian-American applicants to register to vote.”

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Lawyers' Committee
✔
@LawyersComm
BREAKING: We have just filed a lawsuit against Brian Kemp to end #Georgia’s exact match law, which has put as many as 53K voter registrations on hold ahead of the #MidtermElections.

Joining us in this suit: @CampaignLegal @AAAJ_Atlanta @NAACPGA

6:04 PM - Oct 11, 2018
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The “exact match” policy holds that a resident’s voter application must replicate the information on file with the Social Security Administration and the state’s Department of Driver Services. If an application contains so much as a misplaced dot or dash, it is flagged and put on hold. The AP story breaking the news of the purge highlights an educator whose application was suspended without her knowledge, and there are likely tens of thousands of additional Georgia residents who are not aware that they are no longer registered. Georgians whose applications have been flagged may still vote in the election, although they will be forced to bring identification to their polling place. Voter registration in Georgia closed on Tuesday, and the lawsuit filed on Thursday seeks to reopen registration so the affected residents can square away their registrations.

The Abrams campaign has been outraged. “As he has done for years, Brian Kemp is maliciously wielding the power of his office to suppress the vote for political gain and silence the voices of thousands of eligible voters — the majority of them people of color,” spokesperson Abigail Collazo said in a statement. On Thursday night, Collazo called for Kemp to resign his role overseeing the state’s elections “so that Georgia voters can have confidence that their Secretary of State competently and impartially oversee this election.” As Jamil Smith wrote Wednesday in Rolling Stone, Abrams “is competing against a rival who is also the referee.”

The NAACP also cited Kemp’s conflicting roles in addressing the purge. “It’s a strain on our system of democracy when less than a month before an election, which could produce the first African American female governor in our nation’s history, we are seeing this type of voter suppression scheme attempted by a state official, whose candidacy for the governorship produces an irremediable conflict of interest,” NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said in a statement.


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After the news broke on Tuesday, Abrams pointed out Kemp’s history of voter suppression while assuring Georgians that her campaign “will work to process” those affected. Though over two-thirds of Georgians whose applications were put on hold are African American, the demographic makes up only 32 percent of the state’s population.


Stacey Abrams
✔
· Oct 10, 2018
Feels like deja vu: 4 years ago, Kemp tried to keep 40k new voters off the rolls. It took a few years, but we beat him. A few months ago, he tried to close polling places, but we beat him there too. Now he’s at it again, and we’ll beat him - again. 1/2 https://twitter.com/wabenews/status/1050000493316120576?s=21 …


Stacey Abrams
✔
@staceyabrams

Governor candidate, GA
We will work to process the 53k, but we don’t have to wait for justice. We’ve got 27 days of action. So we’ll beat him in absentee ballots. We’ll beat him at early voting starting 10/15. And we’ll beat him on Nov. 6. Brian Kemp has called us out. Let’s vote & let’s get it done!

9:46 PM - Oct 10, 2018
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Kemp has denied any wrongdoing. On Thursday night, he accused Abrams of manufacturing a crisis in order to raise money from “left wing radicals.” Though his campaign has been eager to point out that Kemp did not personally step in and purge 53,000 voter applications, he is responsible for the “exact match” policy.


Brian Kemp
✔
@BrianKempGA

Governor candidate, GA
My opponent manufactured a ‘crisis’ to fire up her supporters and fundraise from left wing radicals throughout the country. Local reporters know that. They also know the 53,000 “pending” voters can cast a real ballot in November. #gapol

stephen fowler
✔
@stphnfwlr
Replying to @stphnfwlr
And the @staceyabrams campaign is quick to fundraise off of all the national media coverage with a not-contextually-accurate subject line.

Local *counties* flag applications that don’t follow/match what state law says. @BrianKempGA isn’t “blocking” anyone. #gapol #gagov

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8:50 PM - Oct 11, 2018
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On Wednesday, Kemp wrote that Abrams “and her radical friends” are “incredibly dishonest,” and that her “dark money voter registration group submitted sloppy forms.” The same day, his campaign touted the nearly seven million Georgians who are currently registered to vote, a record for the state. “While outside agitators disparage this office and falsely attack us, we have kept our head down and remained focused on ensuring secure, accessible, and fair elections for all voters,” his office said in a statement.

Activists have argued otherwise, highlighting the myriad ways Kemp has worked to suppress the minority vote. Since becoming secretary of state in 2010, the Republican has closed hundreds of polling places, mostly in rural, minority-rich counties, and purged well over a million “inactive” voters. Many feel the “exact match” policy has no practical purpose other than complicating the process for minorities. “Nearly every other state treats failure to match a database differently than Georgia,” the Campaign Legal Center, one of the groups filing the lawsuit against Kemp, wrote in a statement. “In the case of a mismatch, the voter is still fully registered. First-time voters are required to show a form of identification at the polls when they vote for the first time. This process provides the same amount of election security and imposes less barriers to voters.”

According to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution/Channel 2 Action News poll released Thursday, Kemp currently leads Abrams by a margin of 47.7 percent to 46.3 percent. The difference of 1.4. percent is well within the poll’s margin of error of 2.8 percent. If neither candidate receives at least 50 percent of the vote in November, a runoff will be held in December to determine the state’s next governor.


WHAT IS “NAMUDNO”? IT IS A MUNICIPAL UTILITY DISTRICT WHICH HAS NO VOTERS WHO ACTUALLY RESIDE THERE; SO THE QUESTION OF WHETHER THEIR VOTING RIGHTS WOULD BE TRAMPLED UNDERFOOT BY THE SUPREME COURT’S UNSETTLING RETURN TO STATES RIGHTS THINKING UNDER SHELBY COUNTY V HOLDER SIMPLY DOESN’T OCCUR IN FACT, AND THEY MAY “BAIL OUT.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Austin_Municipal_Utility_District_No._1_v._Holder
Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder, 557 U.S. 193 (2009), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court regarding Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, and in particular its requirement that proposed electoral-law changes in certain states must be approved by the federal government. In a 9–0 decision, the Court concluded that the district was eligible to apply for an exemption (bailout) from this section per §4(a), because the definition of "political subdivision" in §14(c)(2) included a district of this nature. In an 8–1 opinion, the Court declined to rule on the constitutionality of that provision; citing the principle of Constitutional avoidance.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Austin_Municipal_Utility_District_No._1_v._Holder
Section II [Constitutional claim]

In Section II, Justice Roberts acknowledged the "undeniable" historic accomplishments of the Voting Rights Act. However, the Act "now raises serious constitutional concerns." In particular, §5, "which authorizes federal intrusion into sensitive areas of state and local policymaking, imposes substantial 'federalism costs,' "[6] costs which have caused Members of this Court to express serious misgivings about the constitutionality of §5.[7] Meanwhile, some of the conditions that the Court relied upon when it previously upheld this statutory scheme[8] have unquestionably improved. "Those improvements are no doubt due in significant part to the Voting Rights Act itself, and stand as a monument to its success," but the Act imposes current burdens and must be justified by current needs. The Act also differentiates between the States in ways that may no longer be justified.

The Court recognizes that judging the constitutionality of an Act of Congress is "the gravest and most delicate duty that this Court is called upon to perform."[9] The District Court found that Congress's contributions to the record documented continuing racial discrimination, and that §5 deterred discriminatory changes. The Court will not shrink from its duty "as the bulwark of a limited Constitution against legislative encroachments,"[10] but "[i]t is . . . well established. . . that normally the Court will not decide a constitutional question if there is some other ground upon which to dispose of the case."[11] Here, the district does provide such other grounds: it raises a statutory claim that it is eligible to bail out under §§4 and 5. The existence of this claim invokes this principle of "Constitutional avoidance," as characterized in Escambia County v. McMillan.[11]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_avoidance
Constitutional avoidance
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In United States constitutional law, the doctrine of constitutional avoidance dictates that a federal court should refuse to rule on a constitutional issue if the case can be resolved on a nonconstitutional basis. When a federal court is faced with a choice of ruling on a statutory, regulatory or constitutional basis, the Supreme Court has instructed the lower court to decide the federal constitutional issue only as a last resort: "The Court will not pass upon a constitutional question although properly presented by the record, if there is also present some other ground upon which the case may be disposed of." Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Auth., 297 U.S. 288, 347 (1936) (Brandeis, J., concurring).

The avoidance doctrine flows from the canon of judicial self-restraint, and is intertwined with the debate over the proper scope of federal judicial review and the allocation of power among the three branches of the federal government and the states. It is also premised on the "delicacy" and "finality" of judicial review of legislation for constitutionality, concerns regarding the credibility of the federal courts, and the "paramount importance of constitutional adjudication in our system."[1] These elements demonstrate a significant overlap between the avoidance doctrine and other jurisdictional or justiciability barriers. The avoidance doctrine reflects such other justiciability doctrines as standing and ripeness, and permeates jurisdictional doctrines such as Pullman abstention and the adequate and independent state ground doctrine.


http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/06/the-curious-disappearance-of-boerne-and-the-future-jurisprudence-of-voting-rights-and-race/
Richard Hasen Guest
Posted Tue, June 25th, 2013 7:10 pm

The curious disappearance of Boerne and the future jurisprudence of voting rights and race

Richard L. Hasen publishes Election Law Blog and is Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science at UC Irvine.

A funny thing happened between the Supreme Court’s 2009 opinion in NAMUDNO v. Holder,* sidestepping the question of the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, and the Court’s new Shelby County decision effectively striking it down on a five-to-four basis: the Court majority failed to expressly resolve an open question of how to scrutinize Congress’s power to enforce the Fifteenth amendment in voting rights cases. It is not clear what that means for challenges to other voting and civil rights provisions going forward, but the Court for now seems to have foreclosed greater deference for voting decisions under Congress’s Fifteenth amendment powers. That could spell trouble for Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Section 203 of the Act (the language provisions), and other laws aimed at preventing race discrimination in voting.

In South Carolina v. Katzenbach, a case from the 1960s initially upholding the Voting Rights Act Section 5, the Court endorsed a “rational basis” standard of review which gave Congress broad Fifteenth Amendment powers to pass anti-discrimination voting laws. That’s no surprise: the whole point of the Fifteenth Amendment was to stop racial discrimination in voting and it was going to take the federal government to bring the former Confederacy into line.

But in NAMUDNO, the Court raised the possibility that a line of Fourteenth Amendment power cases beginning with City of Boerne v. Flores could apply now to review of voting rights. The Boerne test is much tougher on Congress, requiring that it pass laws burdening states only when Congress demonstrates with admissible evidence (to the satisfaction of the Court, not itself) that there is evidence of significant unconstitutional conduct being undertaken by the states and that the means Congress chooses to address it are “congruent and proportional” to the constitutional violations.

Here’s how the Court sidestepped the issue in NAMUDNO:

The parties do not agree on the standard to apply in deciding whether, in light of the foregoing concerns, Congress exceeded its Fifteenth Amendment enforcement power in extending the preclearance requirements. The district argues that “ ‘[t]here must be a congruence and proportionality between the injury to be prevented or remedied and the means adopted to that end,’ ” Brief for Appellant 31, quoting City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U. S. 507, 520 (1997) ; the Federal Government asserts that it is enough that the legislation be a “ ‘rational means to effectuate the constitutional prohibition,’ ” Brief for Federal Appellee 6, quoting Katzenbach, supra, at 324. That question has been extensively briefed in this case, but we need not resolve it. The Act’s preclearance requirements and its coverage formula raise serious constitutional questions under either test.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of Shelby County is that the majority purported to ignore this Boerne issue. The majority does not even cite to Boerne even though this has been a key issue involving the constitutionality of Section 5 for years. (I first wrote about the issue in 2005, even before the 2006 renewal.) Here’s all that the Court has to say in Shelby County on the standard of review, in its first footnote: “Both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were at issue in Northwest Austin . . . and accordingly Northwest Austin guides our review under both Amendments in this case.”

The failure to set the standard of review is no mere oversight by Chief Justice Roberts. The footnote appears deliberately inscrutable: the Court sidesteps an issue about the standard of review in Case 1, and in Case 2 the Court endorses Case 1’s analysis of the standard of review. And the rest of the opinion is not helpful either: the equal federal sovereignty analysis which the Court uses to kill Section 5 of the VRA is a Bush v. Gore-like one-day-only ticket. Few other voting laws fit this pattern (though one could imagine the language provisions of the Voting Rights Act in Section 203 falling under this analysis).

I presume the Chief Justice obfuscated the standard of review in this case as a time bomb: in a future case he could cite to NAMUDNO and Shelby County fn. 1 for the proposition that the Court has held that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendment standards are the same, and then bootstrapping the Boerne standard into a Fifteenth Amendment case. Saying so directly would have made today’s controversial decision even more provocative than it is; obfuscation better serves the Chief Justice’s attempt to portray his decision as an act of judicial modesty rather than a radical restricting on Congress’s power against the states (more on that in my op-ed for The New York Times). A future opinion can still look back on the obscure footnote as having resolved a key issue. The time bomb explodes.

If that prediction’s right, then I expect to see new challenges to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (which applies nationwide) and other voting laws on grounds they exceed Congress’s Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment voting powers. (Watch as conservatives move the goalposts here: a key argument against Section 5 was that it was not needed thanks to Section 2. But now that Section 5 has fallen, I expect lawsuits to next challenge the constitutionality of Section 2.)

How successful these new attacks on voting rights are likely to be depends upon the future of the Court. Liberals have to hope that the slow moving train of conservative jurisprudence will move slowly enough to await the departure of Justice Kennedy or Justice Scalia during the administration of a Democratic president, at which point the liberal Justices can turn the train around and rightly proclaim that Shelby County never expressly endorsed the tough Boerne standard for voting cases.

Posted in Shelby County v. Holder, Merits Cases, The Court and the Voting Rights Act

Recommended Citation: Rick Hasen, The curious disappearance of Boerne and the future jurisprudence of voting rights and race, SCOTUSblog (Jun. 25, 2013, 7:10 PM), http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/06/the-curious-disappearance-of-boerne-and-the-future-jurisprudence-of-voting-rights-and-race/


THE 2013 DECISION THAT LOOSED THE HANDS OF MODERN-DAY SLAVERS IN WAITING – SHELBY COUNTY V HOLDER. THIS IS WHERE OUR COUNTRY LURCHED BACK OVER TO THE DARK SIDE, MORALLY.

FOLLOW SHELBY COUNTY THROUGH TO MUNICIPAL... TO SEE THE LEGAL LINKS. IT IS A LITTLE LABORIOUS TO DO SO, BUT IT ANSWERED THE QUESTION FOR ME OF “HOW WE GOT TO THIS PLACE” IN OUR LIVING AND GROWING CULTURE. I AM ONLY SOOTHED BY THE STRONG AND INTELLIGENT BLACK WOMAN NAMED STACY ADAMS, WHO IS HIS WORTHY OPPONENT FOR THE GOVERNOR’S MANSION, AS SHE SHOWS THAT, THOUGH I MAY BE AFRAID FOR MY COUNTRY, SHE PLANS TO GO DOWN FIGHTING FOR IT.

THIS WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE CONCERNS AN UP TO DATE REVIEW OF BOTH POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE REACTIONS TO THE 2013 SUPREME COURT DECISION WHICH EFFECTIVELY ALLOWS STATES, DESPITE THEIR SPECIFIC HISTORY OF LAWS THAT HAVE TENDED TO DISENFRANCHISE MINORITY GROUPS FOR TECHNICAL REASONS, AND BASED SIMPLY ON THEIR IDENTITIES. PREDICTABLY, THE DECISION HEAVILY AFFECTS BLACK AND HISPANIC PEOPLE, AND CAN INCLUDE IN THE FUTURE OTHER RACES, RELIGIONS, LANGUAGE GROUPS AND NATIONALITIES.

IN THIS SHELBY COUNTY V HOLDER DECISION, THOSE STATES SHOWING THE MOST BIAS WERE NO LONGER REQUIRED TO FILE A DESCRIPTION OF NEW VOTING BILLS BEFORE INCORPORATING THEM INTO STATE LAW, UNDER THE CLAIM THAT SUCH DISCRIMINATION WAS NO LONGER OCCURRING. UNFORTUNATELY, IT FAILED TO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE LIKELIHOOD THAT AS SOON AS THE NEW AND MORE LENIENT FEDERAL RULING TOOK EFFECT IN THOSE STATES, THEY WOULD AGAIN MAKE LAWS TO KEEP MINORITIES FROM VOTING. DO NOT EXPECT A TIGER TO CHANGE ITS’ STRIPES. THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT HAS HAPPENED, UNFORTUNATELY. WHEN WE GIVE OUT RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES, WE NEED TO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT BOTH THE EVIL AND THE GOOD IN HUMAN NATURE.

ESPECIALLY READ THE SECTION BELOW OF DETAILED DESCRIPTIONS, STATE BY STATE, OF LOCAL RESPONSES TO SHELBY COUNTY V HOLDER IN ALABAMA, ARIZONA, NORTH CAROLINA, OHIO, TEXAS, AND WISCONSIN. THE NEW LAWS IN ARIZONA AND WISCONSIN SEEM TO BE AIMED AT FOREIGN LANGUAGE SPEAKING GROUPS. ANY DETECTABLE DISTINCTION CAN BE A GOOD ENOUGH REASON TO DISCRIMINATE AND DISENFRANCHISE. THE EVER MORE CREATIVE SUPPRESSION METHODS, ESPECIALLY IN THIS AGE OF SUPER COMPUTERS, ARE PROVING TO BE AS EFFECTIVE AS A KKK POLL WATCHER STANDING BY.

IN MY OPINION, THE RACIST SOUTHERN MANTRA, “STATES RIGHTS,” SHOULD BE ILLEGAL ACROSS THE NATION. WE NEED A NUMBER OF CHANGES IN THE CONSTITUTION, AND VOTING RIGHTS IS ONE OF THEM. WHAT IS A RIGHT OR A CRIME IN ONE STATE SHOULD APPLY IN ALL OR NOT AT ALL; AND BE IN ACCORD WITH THE CONSTITUTION IN THE WAY THAT IS MORE INCLUSIVE RATHER THAN MORE EXCLUSIVE; ALSO, WEALTH, POSITION, RELIGION OR RELATIVE DEGREE OF CAUCASIAN GENETIC CHARACTERISTICS SHOULD GIVE NO ADVANTAGE OVER OTHER INDIVIDUALS OR GROUPS.

WHILE THESE THINGS DO GO AGAINST HUMAN NATURE, SO DOES WEARING CLOTHES, AND WE ALL MOST LIKELY BELIEVE THAT NOT TO DO SO WOULD BE A DANGER TO SOCIETY OR EVEN A SIN.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelby_County_v._Holder
Shelby County v. Holder
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 2 (2013), is a landmark[1] United States Supreme Court case regarding the constitutionality of two provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: Section 5, which requires certain states and local governments to obtain federal preclearance before implementing any changes to their voting laws or practices; and Section 4(b), which contains the coverage formula that determines which jurisdictions are subjected to preclearance based on their histories of discrimination in voting.[2][3]

On June 25, 2013, the Court ruled by a 5-to-4 vote that Section 4(b) is unconstitutional because the coverage formula is based on data over 40 years old, making it no longer responsive to current needs and therefore an impermissible burden on the constitutional principles of federalism and equal sovereignty of the states.[2][3] The Court did not strike down Section 5, but without Section 4(b), no jurisdiction will be subject to Section 5 preclearance unless Congress enacts a new coverage formula.[4]

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.[5]

Background
Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to address entrenched racial discrimination in voting, "an insidious and pervasive evil which had been perpetuated in certain parts of our country through unremitting and ingenious defiance of the Constitution."[2] Section 5 of the Act contains a "preclearance" requirement that requires certain states and local governments to obtain a determination by the United States Attorney General or a three-judge panel of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia that changes to their voting laws or practices do not "deny or abridge the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group", before those changes may be enforced.[6] Section 4(b) contains the coverage formula that determines which states and local governments are subject to preclearance under Section 5. The formula covers jurisdictions that, as of November 1964, November 1968, or November 1972, maintained a prohibited "test or device" as a condition of registering to vote or voting and had a voting-age population of which less than 50 percent either were registered to vote or actually voted in that year's presidential election.[7] Section 4(a) allows covered jurisdictions that have made sufficient progress in ending discriminatory voting practices to "bail out" of the preclearance requirement.[7]

The Supreme Court upheld the preclearance requirement and coverage formula as constitutional enforcement legislation under Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment in South Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966).[8] The preclearance requirement initially was set to expire five years after enactment, but amendments to the Act in 1970, 1975, and 1982 reauthorized Section 5; the 1970 and 1975 amendments also updated the coverage formula.[2][9]:571 The Supreme Court upheld these reauthorizations as constitutional in Georgia v. United States (1973),[10] City of Rome v. United States (1980),[11] and Lopez v. Monterey County (1999).[2]:5[12] In 2006, Congress reauthorized Section 5 for an additional 25 years, but it did not change the coverage formula from the 1975 version.[7]

Shortly after the 2006 reauthorization, a Texas utility district sought to bail out from Section 5 preclearance and, in the alternative, challenged the constitutionality of Section 5. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder that government entities that did not register voters, such as the utility district, had the right to file suit to bail out of coverage. Because this decision resolved the issue, the Court invoked constitutional avoidance and declined to address the constitutionality of Section 5. Justice Thomas dissented from this portion of the opinion and would have declared Section 5 unconstitutional.[13]

History
District Court
Shelby County, in the covered jurisdiction of Alabama, sued the U.S. Attorney General in the U.S. District Court for D.C. in Washington, D.C., seeking a declaratory judgment that sections 4(b) and 5 are facially unconstitutional and a permanent injunction against their enforcement. On September 21, 2011, Judge John D. Bates upheld the provisions, finding that the evidence before Congress in 2006 was sufficient to justify reauthorizing Section 5 and continuing Section 4(b)'s coverage formula.[14]

Court of Appeals
On May 18, 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed the decision of the District Court upholding the constitutionality of Section 4(b) and Section 5. After surveying the evidence in the Congressional record associated with the 2006 reauthorization of Section 5, the appellate court accepted Congress's conclusion that Section 2 litigation remained inadequate in the covered jurisdictions to protect the rights of minority voters, that Section 5 was therefore still justified, and that the coverage formula continued to pass constitutional muster.[15]

Supreme Court
The Supreme Court granted certiorari to hear the case on the limited question of "whether Congress' decision in 2006 to reauthorize Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act under the pre-existing coverage formula of Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act exceeded its authority under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and thus violated the Tenth Amendment and Article IV of the United States Constitution."[16] The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on February 27, 2013.[17] Media coverage of the Justices' comments during oral arguments portrayed the Court as appearing likely to hold Section 5 or Section 4(b) unconstitutional.[18][19] Justice Antonin Scalia drew criticism from civil rights leaders, after expressing his belief during oral arguments that Congress reauthorized Section 5, not because the legislation was necessary, but because it constituted a "racial entitlement" that Congress was unlikely to end.[18][19][20]

Opinion of the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court struck down Section 4(b) as unconstitutional in its June 25, 2013 ruling.[2][21] The majority opinion was delivered by Chief Justice John Roberts joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito.[22][23][24] The Court held that Section 4(b) exceeded Congress's power to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, reasoning that the coverage formula conflicts with the constitutional principles of federalism and "equal sovereignty of the states" because the disparate treatment of the states is "based on 40 year-old facts having no logical relationship to the present day" and thus is not responsive to current needs.[2][3] The Court expressed that Congress cannot subject a state to preclearance based simply on past discrimination. It noted that since the coverage formula was last modified in 1975, the country "has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions".[2][25][26] The Court declared that the Fifteenth Amendment "commands that the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of race or color, and it gives Congress the power to enforce that command. The Amendment is not designed to punish for the past; its purpose is to ensure a better future."[27]

Roberts wrote that the Act was immensely successful "at redressing racial discrimination and integrating the voting process” and noted that the U.S. has made great progress thanks to the Act.[22] But he added: “If Congress had started from scratch in 2006, it plainly could not have enacted the present coverage formula.”[22] According to the Court, "Regardless of how to look at the record no one can fairly say that it shows anything approaching the 'pervasive,' 'flagrant,' 'widespread,' and 'rampant' discrimination that faced Congress in 1965, and that clearly distinguished the covered jurisdictions from the rest of the nation."[27][28]

The Court did not subject Section 4(b) to the "congruence and proportionality" standard of review or address whether that standard is the appropriate measure to use when determining the constitutionality of legislation passed pursuant to Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment.[29] The Court also noted the federalism concerns raised by the Section 5 preclearance requirement, but it did not reach the issue of whether Section 5 remains constitutional. However, because the Section 5 preclearance requirement applies only to jurisdictions covered by the Section 4(b) coverage formula, the decision rendered Section 5 inoperable unless Congress enacts a new coverage formula.[4][21][30]

Justice Thomas wrote a concurring opinion expressing his view that Section 5 is also unconstitutional for the same reasons the Court held Section 4(b) unconstitutional.[2][31]

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a dissenting opinion that was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. The dissent would have held that Congress had sufficient evidence before it to determine that the coverage formula remained responsive to current needs. The dissent acknowledged that discrimination in voting has decreased in the covered jurisdictions since the Voting Rights Act's enactment, but it attributed much of that decrease to the Act itself, noting that "[t]hrowing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet."[2][3][27]

Reaction
The controversial Supreme Court opinion prompted heavy media coverage of reactions from political leaders, activists, and the legal community. President Barack Obama expressed deep disappointment with the decision and called on Congress "to pass legislation to ensure every American has equal access to the polls."[32][33] Attorney General Eric Holder also expressed disappointment with the decision, and he pledged that the Department of Justice "will not hesitate to take swift enforcement action—using every legal tool that remains available to us—against any jurisdiction that seeks to take advantage of the Supreme Court's ruling by hindering eligible citizens' full and free exercise of the franchise."[34][35] On July 25, 2013, Holder announced that the Department of Justice will ask a federal court to subject the formerly covered state of Texas to preclearance under the "bail in" provision contained in Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act, which was unaffected by the Court's decision.[36][37]

When asked whether a polarized Congress could agree on a new coverage formula, Speaker John Boehner acknowledged the importance of the role of the Voting Rights Act over the previous 40 years and said that he was still reviewing the decision and trying to determine the next steps. Then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor expressed his hope that Congress would "put politics aside" and determine how to ensure that voting rights remain protected.[38] Representative John Lewis, a leader in the civil rights movement who was present when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, said that the decision disregarded the country's history of voting discrimination and that he fears the decision will allow local election officials "to go back to another period."[39][40] Representative Bob Goodlatte, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said that the committee will review new voting data but that he is unsure whether the committee will take any specific action in response to the decision.[41][42] On July 18, 2013, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice held a hearing to discuss how the House should respond to the ruling.[43]

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that Democrats were concerned with the ruling in light of "Republicans doing everything they could to suppress voting" in the 2012 elections, and he stated that the Senate will act to address the decision.[44] Senator Bob Corker, however, said that he "cannot imagine" Congress ever agreeing on the terms of a new coverage formula.[38][45] The Senate Judiciary Committee began to hold hearings on July 17, 2013 to discuss how to respond to the decision.[42][46]

At the state level, Texas and Mississippi officials pledged within hours of the decision to enforce voter ID laws that had not been precleared by the Attorney General.[47] Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner said it made no sense for five Florida counties to be subjected to preclearance based on decades-old voting rights data and that the decision will save the state money.[48] New York Governor Andrew Cuomo found the decision deeply troubling and called upon Congress to pass a new coverage formula.[49]

Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute said that the Supreme Court's decision "restore[d] the constitutional order, the status quo ante the temporary Sections 4/5, because there is no longer systemic racial disenfranchisement, or at the very least in the covered jurisdictions."[25] In contrast, Jon Greenbaum, chief counsel of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said that because of the decision, "[m]inority voters in places with a record of discrimination are now at greater risk of being disenfranchised than they have been in decades" and that their only recourse will be to pursue expensive litigation.[50][51] Penda Hair, co-director of national racial justice organization Advancement Project, spoke along similar lines, saying, "The Supreme Court's ruling rolls back legislation that courageous Americans fought so hard for, even giving their lives in many cases, to ensure that all citizens can participate in our democracy. Today's decision threatens the promise of equal access to the ballot – especially when the majority of voters of color who voted last year, 65.8 percent, live in states covered by the Section 4 formula."[52]

An investigation by ProPublica in October 2017 revealed that Chief Justice John Roberts used erroneous data in the ruling.[53] Roberts claimed that the registration gap between blacks and whites had shrunk dramatically in southern states since the Civil Rights Act of 1965, this calling into question why six southern states were subject to stringent oversight.[53] Roberts included Hispanics into his numbers for whites, including even those who could not register to vote because they were not U.S. citizens, which made the white registration rate appear lower than what it truly was.[53]

Impact
Since 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.[54] 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.

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.[5]


Alabama
After Shelby, Alabama Republicans drew a new legislative apportionment map of the state that some contend is illegal. Democrats said that the new map packs African-American voters into too few voting districts and is an effort to hamper the power of the largely Democratic voting base.

In 2014, the Supreme Court said it would hear appeals from the Alabama Legislative Black Caucus regarding the redistricting.[55]

Arizona
In an opinion issued by Arizona's attorney general in 2013, Arizona residents who registered to vote using forms provided by the federal government must also provide documentation proving their citizenship, or their registration will be labeled invalid. Attorney General Tom Horne said those who registered using federal registration could vote in federal elections, but not state and local elections without showing proof of citizenship. The attorney general also held that these same registrants will not be able to sign petitions for candidates or ballot initiatives.[56] Thousands may be barred from state and local voting due to this opinion.[57]

North Carolina
Shortly after the Shelby ruling, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed into law H.B. 589, which terminated valid out-of-precinct voting, same-day registration during the early voting period, and pre-registration for teenagers about to turn 18, while also enacting a voter ID law. Opponents criticized this law as adversely affecting minority voters.[58]

The law was challenged, on behalf of the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, by a lawsuit filed by Advancement Project, pro bono counsel Kirkland & Ellis, and North Carolina attorneys Adam Stein and Irv Joyner. The suit alleged that the law violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, as well as the 14th and 15th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.[59]

On July 29, 2016, a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a trial court decision in a number of consolidated actions, finding that the new voting provisions targeted African Americans "with almost surgical precision" and that the legislators had acted with "discriminatory intent" in enacting strict election rules; the Court struck down the law's photo ID requirement and changes to early voting, preregistration, same-day registration and out-of-district voting.[60][61]

Ohio
In February 2014, the Ohio House approved a bill that eliminated the so-called "Golden Week" during which Ohio voters could register and vote on the same day. The bill also cut six days from Ohio's early voting period. In a separate bill, the House made it easier for registrars to reject absentee ballots for missing information. This bill ends a program that mailed absentee ballots to all registered voters. Under the new law, Ohio's secretary of state would have to get lawmaker approval to mail these absentee ballots.[62]

Texas
While its voter ID law was passed in 2011, Texas did not enact the law until 2013 after the Shelby ruling, when the state was no longer subject to federal preclearance for changes to its voting laws. Under the law, Texas voters must show a photo ID to vote. While there are some exemptions, such as for voters with disabilities, most are required to produce a Texas driver’s license or state ID card. Other forms of acceptable ID include concealed handgun licenses, military ID, U.S. citizenship papers with photo and a U.S. passport.[63]

If the voter does not possess one of the forms of acceptable photo ID and cannot reasonably obtain one, the voter may present one of the following, after which he or she must execute a Reasonable Impediment Declaration:[64] a copy or original of... a government document that shows the voter’s name and an address, including the voter’s voter registration certificate; a current utility bill; a bank statement; a government check; a paycheck; or (a) a certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes the voter’s identity (which may include a foreign birth document).[65]

Critics of the law[who?] charge that it is unconstitutional. They also say that it will bar legitimate voters from voting and discourage citizens. Examples of problems under the new law involved public figures: Texas judge, Sandra Watts, was unable to vote because the name on her photo ID did not match the name on the voter rolls. Also, State Senator Wendy Davis and then-Attorney General Greg Abbott were delayed in voting under the new law. They were all able to vote after signing affidavits attesting that they were who they claimed to be.[66]

Wisconsin
In 2014, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Advancement Project filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to block Wisconsin's voter ID law, charging the measure would disproportionately affect voters of color.[67] Challenging the law under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution, Advancement Project litigated on behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens of Wisconsin, Cross Lutheran Church, Wisconsin League of Young Voters Education Fund, and the Milwaukee Area Labor Council of the AFL-CIO.[68] Advancement Project claimed that Wisconsin's voter ID law, enacted in 2012, is "part of a broader attack on the right to vote."[69] On October 9, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an emergency stay in this case, blocking a Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals order to implement Wisconsin’s voter ID law and enabling registration under previous rules for the fall of 2014 elections. It has yet to rule on the provisions of Wisconsin's law.[68]

New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand proposed to make online voter registration universal. Under her proposal states with existing online access would expand their system beyond those with state-issued IDs to allow more young people, seniors, minorities and the poor access and update their own voter records online. To ensure security, online systems will verify voter's eligibility by checking each person's personal information, like date of birth, Social Security, and address.[80] According to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School in 2014 several states (California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah) and Washington, D.C. passed laws improving voter access, while laws restricting voter access was only passed by a minority of states in 2014. Introduced and pending legislation to expand and improve access to registration and voting include as of December 2014 electronic transfer of voter registration information, online registration, portability i.e. the possibility to move a voter's registration with her when she moves to a new address within the same county or state, fail-safe protections, easier registration and voting for students, people with disabilities, military members and for voters who speak a language other than English as well as expansion of opportunities for voting registration and for early in-person voting.[81]


FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE TRULY DEEP SCHOLARS IN YOUR APPROACH TO LEARNING, YOU MAY WANT TO READ THE SOURCES LISTED AS REFERENCES IN THE WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE ABOVE. HERE ARE A FEW THAT APPEAR TO ME TO BE NOT ONLY INTERESTING, BUT IMPORTANT.

Pete Williams and Erin McClam (25 June 2013). "Supreme Court strikes down part of Voting Rights Act". NBCNews. Retrieved 27 August 2013.
Von Drehle, David (2013-06-25). "High Court Rolls Back the Voting Rights Act of 1965". Time. Retrieved 2013-06-25.
Barnes, Robert (25 June 2013). "Supreme Court stops use of key part of Voting Rights Act". The Washington Post. Retrieved 29 June 2013.
Shapiro, Ilya (25 June 2013). "Supreme Court recognizes Jim Crow's demise, restores constitutional order". SCOTUSblog. Retrieved 5 July 2013.
Schwartz, John (25 June 2013). "Between the Lines of the Voting Rights Act Opinion". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 June 2013.
Lyle, Denniston (June 25, 2013). "Open recap: Voting law in deep peril". SCOTUSblog. Retrieved June 30, 2013.