JB: What do you mean when you ask, "How did the Court know?" How does the Court know anything? What do they base their decisions on? Sound reasoning? Whim? Political agenda? Something else?
RR: That's the problem. The Court's majority merely assumed that those particular states had somehow remedied their histories of discrimination because many of their citizens had voted for Barack Obama for president, and for black candidates for some other offices. But that's like arguing that there's no need for an umbrella because the sun is shining. The reason these states were required to get clearance from the Attorney General before changing their voting laws in the 1965 Act was they had a long record of altering their voting laws in ways that discriminated against African-American voters, and might well do so again. And an overwhelming majority of Congress recognized this reality as recently as 2006.
JB: How do we go about remedying the situation so we won't suffer from more voter suppression going forward? And we do have the midterms coming up so it has be to fast.
RR: Congress has to come up with a new formula for determining which states need pre-clearance under the Voting Rights Act -- and has to do so well before November's midterm. Granted, that's going to be hard to do, given the prevailing gridlock. But without it, the Voting Rights Act won't be the bulwark against voter suppression it was intended to be. In the meantime, the Justice Department must take to the federal courts any and all states that may be suppressing minority votes.
JB: Is there any sign that the Justice Department is on top of this? Sees this as a priority? And if not, what's to be done?
RR: The Justice Department is taking voter suppression very seriously. The problem is the Department is understaffed, with too many important laws to enforce and too few enforcement resources. Taking a state to the federal courts, and getting an injunction against state laws or rules that suppress the votes of minorities, is labor-intensive and difficult. Many district court judges are reluctant to intrude unless the Department has ample evidence of discriminatory effect. Yet several of the laws and rules that now impose burdens on voters (such as providing a driver's license at polling places, or eliminating early voting) have been implemented recently, and don't yet show they'll have a disproportionate burden on minority voters.
JB: What're we talking about numbers-wise? How many votes in how many states will be affected?
RR: If nothing is done, potentially millions of votes.
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