North Carolina Conservatives Celebrate Supreme Court Voting Rights Ruling To Bring Back The Confederacy

North Carolina Conservatives Celebrate Supreme Court Voting Rights Ruling To Bring Back The Confederacy

Just days after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, North Carolina is moving forward with a host of bills to roll back voting rights. Republican lawmakers are accelerating a new agenda to eliminate early voting, Sunday voting hours, and same-day registration provisions. GOP leaders also vowed to move quickly to pass a controversial voter ID law that would make it much harder for minorities, seniors, students, and low-income voters to cast their ballots.

The court’s conservative majority decreed last Tuesday that the formula used to identify states with a history of using election law to discriminate against minorities has “no logical relationship to the present day.” Many of the covered jurisdictions celebrated the decision by promptly advancing voting restrictions that disproportionately target minorities and low-income voters. Texas enacted their previously blocked voter ID law mere hours after the ruling.

North Carolina’s newly unfettered attack on voting rights has three main prongs:

    Require ID at the polls. North Carolina’s voter ID bill could pose problems for 1 in 10 voters, according to an analysis by the State Board of Elections. About 613,000 North Carolinians lack the required government-issued ID. Nearly a third of these voters are black, while over half are registered Democrats.
    Penalize college students for voting. Republicans are also pushing a bill to raise taxes on families with college students who choose to vote at school rather than at home, effectively discouraging college students from voting.
    End early voting and same-day registration. Other states that restricted early voting, like Ohio and Florida, needlessly created mammoth lines on Election Day, forcing some voters to wait until 1 a.m. to cast a ballot. The backlash in Florida has been especially strong, prompting Gov. Rick Scott (R) to reverse his own voter suppression laws. In North Carolina, black voters make up 29 percent of early voters and 34 percent of voters who took advantage of same-day voter registration at the polls.

The Republican-dominated legislature and new Republican governor will likely do all they can to speed along these restrictions. However, polls show that North Carolinians overwhelmingly oppose these new voter suppression measures. “Moral Monday” protests are cropping up all over the state to challenge these bills and a slew of other draconian policies targeting the poor, women, minorities, and seniors.

OK my headline is a little off,  conservatives not only have contempt for Americans of color, but hate students and senior citizens as well. One has to wonder why conservatives don't just pack up and move to China, they don't have voting rights there either. A party of the elite decides what is good or bad - just the way conservatives do. There is nothing humanitarian or logical about conservatives and conservatism, it is all about getting and keeping power - again, much like the political elite in China or Saudi  Arabia or Iraq.

The Conservative Supreme Court May Strike Down Voting Rights Act, Section 5

The Conservative Supreme Court May Strike Down Voting Rights Act, Section 5. Which has had successes both in terms of civil rights and in improving the economic lives of Southern blacks

With most experts expecting Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act to be struck down by the Supreme Court in the coming months, can you talk about the future of the civil rights movement in the South?

It doesn’t look good for Section 5. It’s one of those things where almost from the start a piece of legislation was constitutionally innovative and now it may be due for a second look. What Justice Roberts suggested three years ago, that they really ought to rewrite or come up with a new Voting Rights Act that doesn’t use geographic indicators from the 1960s, is something he’s correct to argue.

But what the Court is being asked is whether they will take the relatively radical step of striking down legislation that has existed for decades, was renewed only recently after extensive hearings, and which has accomplished so much. I have no doubts about where my sympathies lie. But I would propose a test to determine whether this act is really needed or not: We should ask, ‘Do you have consensus in affected areas among the black as well as the white community that this kind of federal oversight is no longer needed?’ I doubt very much that those people would agree with what the Court is suggesting. And without that, how can they really say with any credibility, listening overwhelmingly to Southern whites in political power who never agreed that the VRA was ever needed in the first place, that Section 5 is no longer needed? It’s hard for me to see what makes that particular argument so persuasive.

More here, Why We Still Need The Voting Rights Act: Perspectives From Supreme Court Spectators.