This Is the Other Shoe Dropping From When John Roberts Gutted the Voting Rights Act

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

02 March 21

A new case coming before the Supreme Court underlines the importance of passing election reform and voting-rights protections.

ver since Chief Justice John Roberts attained his lifelong goal of gutting the Voting Rights Act, declaring the Day of Jubilee back in 2013, those of us who did not celebrate the Day of Jubilee have searched the sky for signs of the other shoe. Over the weekend, the sky was darkened by the descent of a well-turned wingtip. From the New York Times:

The provision has taken on greater importance in election disputes since 2013, when the court effectively struck down the heart of the 1965 law, its Section 5, which required prior federal approval of changes to voting procedures in parts of the country with a history of racial and other discrimination. But Chief Justice John G. Roberts’s majority opinion in the 5-to-4 decision, Shelby County v. Holder, said Section 2 would remain in place to protect voting rights by allowing litigation after the fact. “Section 2 is permanent, applies nationwide and is not at issue in this case,” he wrote. But it is more than a little opaque, and the Supreme Court has never considered how it applies to voting restrictions.

Well, I feel better knowing that.

It’s hard to imagine a worse time for this Court to be “studying” that part of the VRA that’s been on life support for almost eight years. All over the country, faced with the unpopularity of their ideas and the consequences of their unquestioned devotion to a vulgar talking yam, Republican state legislators are engaged in an unprecedented war on the franchise. The party has been committed to voter suppression ever since William Rehnquist was rousting Hispanic voters in Arizona in the early 1960s, but it’s positively manic on the subject now.

And, as the former president* made clear, Target A is now the For The People Act—aka H.R. 1 and S. 1—a huge defibrillator for American democracy. The provisions of the act are like an endless loop of conservative nightmares.

• Modernize Voter Registration

• Protect Against Deceptive Practices

The former president* railed against this measure briefly in his extended episode at CPAC on Sunday. Of course, he couldn’t identify the bill. Nor could he cite any of its specific provisions, but that’s because he doesn’t know anything about anything. But he’s entirely opposed to that of which he knows nothing. Trump ’24!

Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in Congress are racing to pass a flagrantly unconstitutional attack on the first amendment and the integrity of our elections known as HR 1. Do you know what HR 1 is? It’s a disaster. Their bill would drastically restrict political speech, empower power the federal government to shut down decent. And turn the Federal Election Commission into a partisan political weapon.

As opposed to the toothless waste of space it is now, one supposes. Now, the former president* doesn’t know anything about anything, but the battle lines over this bill extend deeply into conservative politics. The misdirection is already underway, and the usual suspects are hard at work explaining how helping more people vote more easily is contrary to modern constitutional government. (I almost wrote, “contrary to the Founders’ wishes,” but, let’s face it, they weren’t big fans of an extended franchise, either.) The WSJ will never stop being hilarious on this stuff.

The bill also strips state legislatures of their role in drawing congressional districts, replacing them with commissions that are ostensibly independent. In practice commissions have turned out mostly to favor Democrats, as in New Jersey and California. If states want such commissions, so be it. But this is an attempt to impose one Pelosi standard from coast to coast.

The independent commissions have “turned out mostly to favor Democrats” because Republican majority state legislatures have made a partisan hash out of redistricting for two decades now. And the Pelosi Standard sounds like a paperback you buy at the airport. This is a fight that is worth winning, now, with the Democrats in control of the presidency and the Congress, because it might be the last chance to rehabilitate representative democracy in this country. And out there a little ways is still John Roberts, dancing to the Day of Jubilee.