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Chief Justice John Roberts, writing the majority opinion, said the court’s quarrel had been with what he described as an outdated, circa 1965 formula used to decide which states must submit their voting laws for preclearance. “Congress may draft another formula based on current conditions,” he wrote. Though, of course, this dysfunctional Congress can’t pass a bipartisan farm bill. The notion that this bunch might get together on voter anti-discrimination law seems downright fanciful.
Apparently, the court majority decided that the Voting Rights Act has been working so well in getting rid of discrimination that it was no longer constitutional. That theory seemed at odds with the testimony elicited by the Presidential Commission at Friday’s hearing in Miami. The commission heard a report from election experts Michael Herron of Dartmouth and Daniel Smith of the University of Florida, covering 85 percent of the state’s precincts, that found Hispanics and blacks faced longer, sometimes hours longer, waits to vote in their overwhelmed urban precincts in the 2012 general election.
The daunting waits diminished turnout by an estimated 200,000 voters in Florida. Kathy Culliton-Gonzalez of the Advancement Project, the advocacy group that sponsored the Herron-Smith study, called the delays a “time tax” on voting. “Voters of color paid that time tax more than white voters.”
Last month, Gov. Scott signed a bill into law that undid some of the damage caused by the 2011 law. Early voting was extended. And restrictions on early voting locations were loosened. The length of constitutional amendments was limited to 75 words. And, finally, the state enacted some restrictions on people who request absentee ballots.
Well, hurray. We’re not Texas. It’s almost as if Florida legislators seem a little chastised by their ham-handed efforts to beat down the minority vote and deliver the state’s electoral college votes to the Republican presidential candidate in 2012. All they accomplished, really, was to get that particular segment of the electorate riled and determined to vote. No matter how long the wait.
But you’ve got to worry, with the Voting Rights Acts crippled, with the good ol’ boys in Texas and elsewhere in the Confederacy raring to push another round of election “reforms,” that the gang in Tallahassee might get inspired to come up with new and novel ways to limit the turnout of certain demographics.
Odd, isn’t it, how our governor and legislative leadership defend gun rights with such fervor, based on a single, ambiguous passage in the Constitution. Meanwhile, the phrase “right to vote” shows up in the 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th Amendments. You’d think our legislators might defend that right to vote with as much enthusiasm as they champion our sacred right to shoot.
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