In Shelby County vs Holder 1, I said that I think that the central question here is this: Does the danger of systemic voter suppression currently warrant the continued disparate treatment of some states and units?
Are the units that now have to obtain preclearance in order to change their voter access laws still in need of the added scrutiny that preclearance provides? Consider the evidence in the 2006 United States Commission on Civil Rights, which reported that in "the 10 years prior to the review, the overall objection rate (to preclearance requests) was so low as to be practically negligible, at less than 0.1 percent.[15] "
That does not seem like a frequency large enough tojustify the government placing a substantial impediment on those states and units. So I would say no. That does not justify treating states differently.
Does this mean that I think it was wrong to have imposed Title 5 in the first place? No. It was probably appropriate then.
I agree! The questions then becomes why would any group want to keep those measures in place. It’s an open question because I can only come up with the two possibilities below:
ReplyDelete1. To maintain the appearance that you are protecting the rights of a voting constituency.
2. To maintain the mindset that some group (your political opponent) wishes to impinge on the voting rights of a certain voting constituency.