Supreme Court takes Voting Rights Act case.

WaPo reports:

The justices three years ago expressed skepticism about the continued need for Section 5 of the historic act, which requires states and localities with a history of discrimination, most of them in the South, to get federal approval of any changes in their voting laws....

That is, the law applies differently to different states, based on their record with voting and race decades ago.

"New Orleans fans boo Madonna after she demands they vote for Obama."

Always one to pick up and run with a trend, she changed to: "Seriously, I don't care who you vote for.... Do not take this privilege for granted. Go vote."

Privilege? Hey, lady, this is America. It's not a privilege. It's a right.

"Reading that Althouse thing about the 'fear' of black people, I mean, who 'fears' black people because of that phone clip?"

"Who 'fears' black folks, period? Or gays? Everything you hear these days is about fears and phobia and hate. I usually dismiss it as rhetoric, but I am starting to wonder if that isn’t what is motivating a great deal of the citizens of this country. Maybe they really are afraid of their own shadow and hate the things that scare them."

So says commenter B Moe over in the comments to an open thread at Protein Wisdom — which I noticed because I saw traffic coming from there because, unlike the Freepers, at least they open up the pathway so readers can see the object of their criticism for themselves.

And then McGehee says:

Althouse typifies a new hyphenation: the Hormonal-American. If only we could bring a bunch of state legislators up to today from 1920 or slightly before, to see what these Hormonal-Americans have done to the country, maybe they’d return to their own time and just repeal Prohibition a decade early.

The old joke — women shouldn't have been given the right to vote because they're emotional. I was making that joke myself, making that joke as a joke, as I was out biking and conversing with Meade about the very material that would later take the form of the post that's made all the wingers cringe, "'Just How Racist Is the "Obama Phone" Video?'" Well, you men have only yourselves to blame. We didn't have the power to vote for the right to vote. You men gave it to us.

And then some commenter named Car, whose icon is a baby — McGhee is an old cowboy and B Moe looks like the Disney Br'er Bear — Car says:

Can we all stop reading Althouse now? Can we get Glenn to give her up?

This is a classic theme in anti-Althousiana: jealousy that I have readers and, especially, that I get Instapundit links. (Hey, I'm a guestblogger on Instapundit right now. If I wanted, I could go over there myself and write a post lambasting Rush Limbaugh for playing and replaying that racial-fear-stimulating video over and over. But I'm keeping it here, in this cozier place, where I let  commenters in. And there are 600+ shots at me in the "How Racist?" comments thread.)

Car says:

And, please, when was the last time Althouse was IN a city? Women like the one Rush played, over and over, you SHOULD fear them- or the segment of society who they represent. She’s not there for the upwardly mobile, educated black. She was there shouting her membership as one of the failures of black society- the takers.

Well, thank you, Car. You're proving my point. You do have a highly emotive mental picture of those terrible black people, the very brain zone Rush was stimulating.

Our cities, and it’s [sic] denizens, are going down like the mutherfocking bootleg fireworks. A cop came into our shop and said whole areas are basically lawless, and that people need to protect themselves. And Ann just wants to turn the other cheek and pretends it’s not happening, because it’s not happening in her line of sight.

See?

And it’s not a function of color. The cities just HAPPEN to be populated by folks that could look like Obama’s son. 

I think "it’s not a function of color" is intended sarcastically. He's saying I should look at the reality he knows, and it's full of terrible black people.

And they also just happen to be represented by race pimps who don’t care what happens to “their people” as long as they get their own filthy lucre as they pretend to fight the power.

But, you know, I’d like Ann to head to Detroit, get our of her car on the East side – you know, near Kelly and Gratiot, and use her rational mind to get to know those folks. Don’t fear those folks, Ann. VOTE for Obama.

Put your head back in the sand, Ann. Rush probably made that woman up.

So he's reinforcing my point! That video stands for a large group of people who really are the problem and voters ought to wake up and get scared!

"John Lewis tells you something about voting rights and you say, yes, sir, and you shut the fk up."

Charles Pierce pithily dictates the sole method of showing respect. 

But actually, ironically, that kind of respect entails massive disrespect. You say yes and you shut the fuck up in his presence, and that means the only way people can have a serious back-and-forth debate on the subject is if they exclude John Lewis.

***

Pierce has a nice sidebar at his blog under the heading "About this blog." I read it for the first time, by chance, just now. The penultimate sentence is:

It will be the belief of this blog that, as Christopher Hitchens once said, the only correct answer to the question, "Is nothing sacred?" is "No."

"A federal court on Thursday rejected a Texas law that would require voters to present photo IDs to election officials before being allowed to vote..."

"... in November's election, unanimously ruling that it imposes 'strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor,' who are often racial minorities."

"Voter ID laws could swing states."

An article at Politico:

"Swing states are always much more likely to have these kinds of laws restricting voting,” said Wendy Weiser, director of Brennan’s Democracy Program. “To the extent that it’s a political tactic to try and game the system, … it does make sense that that is where we see a lot of that because that is where it could make a difference to the outcome.”

Weiser's argument doesn't prove as much as she'd like, because it's also true that it's in swing states where there's the most reason to worry about fraud. It's a corollary to the old saying "if it's not close, they can't cheat."

Dane County judge finds Wisconsin's voter ID law violates the state constitution.

This is the second case finding the law violates the state constitution. Dane County is the location of Madison, and the case will almost certainly be appealed to the state supreme court. In the meantime, the rest of Wisconsin has another opportunity to notice Dane County/Madison and feel aversion/affection/apathy.

Liberals worry that Chief Justice John Roberts has built up political capital...

... which he will spend next term in what will be conservative decisions on things like affirmative action, voting rights, and same-sex marriage.

Eric Holder "implies that Jim Crow is on the cusp of a comeback" — why?

The Wall Street Journal says it's a cynical election move.

Mr. Holder's Council of Black Churches address is merely the latest of his election-year moves that charge racial discrimination of one kind or another. These include voting-rights lawsuits to block voter ID laws in Texas and South Carolina, intervention in immigration cases in Arizona, and various housing and lending discrimination suits. Whatever the legal merits of these cases, their sudden proliferation in an election year suggests a political motivation.

The courts will eventually expose much of this as meritless, but it's a shame the media won't call Mr. Holder on this strategy before the election. Imagine the uproar if a Republican AG pursued a similar strategy. It's worse than a shame that America's first black Attorney General is using his considerable power to inflame racial antagonism.

2 teachers and a busload of high school students vote — using early in-person absentee balloting — in the Walker recall election.

"A witness at the Milwaukee Municipal Building on Friday reported seeing about 30 students from Pulaski High School arrived at the polls around 10 am. About 10 or 11 of them used their class schedules to vote."

However, according to the Milwaukee Elections Commission and the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, voters do not need to provide proof of age in order to register. All they have to do is check off a box on the registration form certifying that they are a qualified elector, a U.S. citizen and at least 18 years old by the time they vote.

"The whole system relies on the honestly and integrity of the individual," Sue Edmond, Milwaukee's Election Commission director, told the MacIver News Service. "If we find after the election that they lied, they could be charged with a felony."

The new voter ID law is not currently being enforced (because of the judgment of 2 Dane County judges). Interestingly, the new Marquette Law School poll, surveying likely voters in the recall election found that "61% percent favored requiring a government-issued photo id to vote, while 37 percent opposed that." People really do worry about voter fraud. Given the polls that show Walker leading — the Marquette poll has him 7 points ahead — if Barrett wins, people should be suspicious.

Here's Reince Priebus on the subject:

"I'm always concerned about voter fraud, you know, being from Kenosha, and quite frankly having lived through seeing some of it happen," Reince Priebus said. "Certainly in Milwaukee we have seen some of it, and I think it's been documented. Any notion that's not the case, it certainly is in Wisconsin. I'm always concerned about it, which is why I think we need to do a point or two better than where we think we need to be, to overcome it."...

Lester Pines, an attorney involved in a separate legal challenge to the voter ID law, also denounced Priebus' comments, saying they were baseless.

"His statement that Republicans need to outperform Democrats by one to two percent to account for vote fraud is an absolute, total, 100% lie," Pines said. "It is a fantasy. And Reince Priebus and his ilk are saying this and they're saying it over and over and over because they're using the well-known propaganda tool called 'the big lie.' If you say it enough times, people will believe it. There's no other way to characterize this except that Reince Priebus is a liar."

"The Big Lie" is indeed a well-known propaganda tool, but it is not simply something that's repeated a lot. "The Big Lie" refers to "colossal untruths" of the sort that ordinary people don't even think of telling, which they don't suspect because "they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously." I'm quoting Mein Kampf there. It's Adolph Hitler's term. Know it. Use it, but know what you're saying when you use it and only use it when you mean it, Mr. Pines. Don't make casual, vague allusions to Hitler. It's not right.

"Divided D.C. Circuit Panel Upholds Constitutionality of Voting Rights Act, Teeing Up Issue for Supreme Court."

The Shelby County case is explained by Rick Hasen over at the Election Law Blog.

From the dissenting opinion by Judge Williams:

Why should voter ID laws from South Carolina and Texas be judged by different criteria (at a minimum, a different burden of persuasion, which is often critical in cases involving competing predictions of effect) from those governing Indiana?...

It goes without saying that racism persists, as evidenced by the odious examples offered by the majority.... But without more evidence distinguishing current conditions in the covered jurisdictions from those in the uncovered ones, § 4(b)’s coverage formula appears to be as obsolete in practice as one would expect, in a dynamic society, for markers 34-to-59 years old.

64% of likely voters think voter fraud is a problem and 74% think voter ID laws don't discriminate.

According to a new Rasmussen poll.

This includes 35% who consider it a Very Serious problem and seven percent (7%) who view it as Not At All Serious....

Eighty-two percent (82%) believe all voters should be required to prove their identity before being allowed to vote. Only 14% oppose such a requirement.

Just 21% think laws requiring photo identification at the polls discriminate against some voters. Seventy-three percent (73%) disagree and feel that such laws do not discriminate.

Support for voter ID laws has increased over the years. It was 72% in June 2006 (as opposed to 82% today). The notion that these laws are discriminatory is losing ground. Last month, 67% said the laws don't discriminate, and 73% say that now.

Most voters across partisan lines express confidence in election results, but Democrats are more confident than the others. A plurality (49%) of voters in President Obama’s party consider voter fraud a serious problem in America today, but that compares to 84% of Republicans and 58% of voters not affiliated with either of the major parties.

What accounts for that split? Do people feel more confident that the voting is accurate if they think the fraudulent votes, if any, are coming in on their side? (And conversely, that people worry about fraud when they picture the bad votes counting for the other side?)

Will this poll make Democrats think they should abandon their attacks on voter ID laws? I don't think so. Whatever people think consciously when asked these poll questions, the issue works as a way to keep massaging brains with the message that racial discrimination is ever out there, ready to burst forth, unless constant vigilance is maintained, and only the Democratic Party will maintain that vigilance for you. After all, they keep talking about these terrible voter ID laws. 

Wisconsin Voter ID case goes straight to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The Wisconsin State Journal reports:

Appeals courts sent two lawsuits challenging Wisconsin's blocked new voter ID law directly to the state Supreme Court on Wednesday, determining it was imperative to resolve the cases quickly given the slate of important upcoming elections, including the state's presidential primaries next week.

If the Supreme Court agrees to take the cases, it could reinstate the state's new requirement that voters show photo identification at the polls just days before Tuesday's election. However, attorneys challenging the law said it is unlikely a decision would come that quickly.

A decision before next Tuesday's primaries? Assuming a majority of the court will uphold the new law, I find it hard to believe the minority won't at least have some power to slow the case down. But, on the other hand, you have a trial court enjoining an important new state law, interfering with an impending election, why should that be allowed to happen, if the law is, in fact, valid? 

"A panel of federal judges in Milwaukee has barred Wisconsin elections officials from using new Republican drawn redistricting maps..."

"... and ordered that two districts be redrawn because they unfairly weakened the voting power of Latinos."

The judges ruled that both Assembly Districts 8 and 9 in Milwaukee violate the Voting Rights Act, and said the state Government Accountability Board cannot implement the new maps in their current form....

The judges' memo that accompanied their decision was another harsh one for Republicans. It slammed GOP lawmakers over the secrecy surrounding the redistricting process.

"The 2012 congressional redistricting cycle following the 2010 Census... seems likely to make much less difference than many of us expected."

Writes Michael Barone:

I predicted that this cycle, like the 2002 cycle, would produce significant gains for Republicans. Their success in electing governors and legislators in 2010 gave them control in big states like Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia and North Carolina. And voters in Democratic California approved a ballot measure turning redistricting over to a nonpartisan commission.

But it turns out Republicans will probably only gain 1 new seat in Congress as a result of all this.

In the [some] big states... Republicans concentrated on bolstering incumbents rather than creating new districts. Big Hispanic population increases in Texas and Florida forced Republicans to create new Democratic districts.

It is said that partisan redistricting can swing dozens of seats the way of one party through the creation of grotesquely shaped districts. But most grotesque districts in the current cycle owe their shape to the Voting Rights Act. Otherwise partisan districting has produced pretty clean lines. 

And when voters change their minds, redistricters can turn out to be too clever by half. Many districts designed to elect Republicans elected Democrats in 2006 and 2008. Many districts designed to elect Democrats elected Republicans in 2010. 

The less aggressive redistricting plans adopted this cycle show that even strong partisans have absorbed the lesson that if you create a bunch of 53 percent districts you can lose them when your side’s support goes down by 4 or 5 percent.

Justice O'Connor said it best in the original political gerrymandering case, Davis v. Bandemer:

[T]here is good reason to think that political gerrymandering is a self-limiting enterprise. See B. Cain, The Reapportionment Puzzle 151-159 (1984). In order to gerrymander, the legislative majority must weaken some of its safe seats, thus exposing its own incumbents to greater risks of defeat — risks they may refuse to accept past a certain point. Id. at 154-155. Similarly, an overambitious gerrymander can lead to disaster for the legislative majority: because it has created more seats in which it hopes to win relatively narrow victories, the same swing in overall voting strength will tend to cost the legislative majority more and more seats as the gerrymander becomes more ambitious. Id. at 152. More generally, each major party presumably has ample weapons at its disposal to conduct the partisan struggle that often leads to a partisan apportionment, but also often leads to a bipartisan one. There is no proof before us that political gerrymandering is an evil that cannot be checked or cured by the people or by the parties themselves. Absent such proof, I see no basis for concluding that there is a need, let alone a constitutional basis, for judicial intervention.

That was judicial restraint — circa 1986 — and it was apt.

Bush v. Gore is "the case of the century" because it "truly altered history," even though it "didn’t change constitutional doctrine."

Writes TNR's Jonathan Cohn setting up a discussion of whether this year's big Obamacare decision will be the new case of the century. Well, the century is pretty young, and admittedly Bush v. Gore felt like a huge deal at the time. But "truly altered history"?

Just think how the years after 2001 would have unfolded if Al Gore had been president.

Ridiculous! I can't believe Cohn doesn't know that if the case had gone the other way Gore would still have lost in the end!

George W. Bush would have won a hand count of Florida's disputed ballots if the standard advocated by Al Gore had been used, the first full study of the ballots reveals. Bush would have won by 1,665 votes — more than triple his official 537-vote margin — if every dimple, hanging chad and mark on the ballots had been counted as votes, a USA TODAY/Miami Herald/Knight Ridder study shows. The study is the first comprehensive review of the 61,195 "undervote" ballots that were at the center of Florida's disputed presidential election.

That's the news from 2001. And speaking of 2001, does Cohn actually think that Gore would not have responded vigorously to the 9/11 attacks? 

Anyway, I have close to zero interest in reading what Cohn has to say about this year's big case.

I generally leave the sophisticated constitutional analysis to Jeff Rosen, my (much) more informed colleague. But you don't have to be a legal expert to....

Fortunately, I can do my own legal analysis. I'm certainly not interested in Cohn's. As for Rosen's... I don't need to read that either. I know what he'll say. 

"The Obama administration has blocked Texas’ new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls..."

"... saying it would suppress Hispanic voter turnout, and the United Nations is now investigating the fairness of such laws in Texas and other states."

But voters in this country still overwhelmingly support voter ID laws and don’t think they discriminate.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 72% of Likely U.S. Voters believe voters should be required to show photo identification such as a driver’s license before being allowed to vote.

"It's a shame activist Dane County judges continue to stand in the way of common sense."

Said a spokesman for Gov. Scott Walker, after Circuit Judge Richard Niess found that Wisconsin's voter ID law violates the state constitution.

"Today, the second time a judge has ruled against this heinous law, provides Wisconsin a moment to reflect on just what was given away by Scott Walker's tea party Republicans when, instead of focusing on the issues facing our public, they rushed instead to limit their freedoms," said [Democratic Party] chairman Mike Tate....

Here's some detail about the state constitutional provision Niess relied on. It is nothing like the arguments against voter ID laws based on the U.S. Constitution that you may be familiar with. It's about the "Suffrage" section of the state constitution that declares a big group of residents to be qualified electors, then gives the legislature the power to pare away from that group (in 2 specific categories, convicted felons and incompetent persons). To agree with the judge, I think you need to see a person without an ID as a type of person who is being excluded from the right to vote (and not within one of those 2 categories, so not within the legislature's power to exclude).

"There is a purity, a simplicity..." to Eric Holder's fight for voter rights.

Asserts Jeffrey Toobin... mystifyingly. Holder is fighting against voter ID laws, and the argument that these laws violate rights isn't pure and simple, as Toobin's own article shows. So why is Toobin saying that? It's by contrast to all the other issues that Holder might want to use "to define his legacy as Attorney General — as something more than the guy who tried, and failed, to have Guantánamo Bay detainees tried in federal court in New York."

There is a purity, a simplicity, about the voting-rights fight that is sadly absent from many modern civil-rights battles. This is not about special privileges, or quotas, or even complex mathematical formulae.

Why be sad? The straightforward civil-rights battles have been won. Those that are left are questionable. That's good. Unless you define the good in terms of opportunities for Eric Holder to define his legacy.

It's about a basic right of American citizenship, which is being taken from large numbers of people for the most cynical of reasons. [Voter ID] laws are, quite literally, indefensible...

Ridiculous! They're completely defensible. The case law is clear that requiring an ID doesn't violate the Constitution. The Supreme Court said so in 2008, in a 6-3 case. Holder still has a chance to use statutory law against the states that are covered by the Voting Rights Act, but to do that he'll have to argue for a broad interpretation of congressional powers, and what's pure and simple about that?

"Next time Holder speaks, someone should run to a judge for a TRO."

"And file a race-discrimination suit against whoever’s hosting him. Every single time...."

That's mainly a joke, but this isn't:

... I anticipate that South Carolina (and Texas) will take the preclearance decisions to a three judge court in DC, with direct appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.  I further expect that in this litigation, South Carolina (and Texas) will argue, among other arguments, that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional...

If review is expedited — which seems likely — the Supreme Court will be looking at this question and perhaps striking down the provision during the 2012 campaigns. Which party would be helped by that issue? Democrats will be positioned to preen about their concern for racial equality, and that puts Republicans in the position of championing the importance of leaving states alone to do things their own way, which — for some people at least — is a reminder of the bad old days when there clearly was discrimination and some states — mainly the states that are now stuck with the preclearance procedure — pontificated about "states' rights."

Nevertheless, I think the Republicans will be better off if this becomes an issue. First, people who reflexively impose that "bad old days" template are probably already voting for Democrats. Second, huge majorities of Americans support voter ID requirements, which means that few people buy into the race pandering. Third, playing the race card backfires once people clearly see that's all that's going on. And fourth, there really is something screwy about treating a few states differently from the other states, and if if a high-profile Supreme Court case makes people notice this strangeness, they'll be suspicious of the politicians and lawyers who strain to make the argument that it's right.