Certain Un-Certainties, About the Voting Rights Act

Editorial reaction to Voting Rights Act cases fall out along the usual lines. The Bartlett case is no different. Where the editorial line is generally "progressive", judgment has been critical of a decision seen to weaken a critically important law into eventual oblivion. More "conservative" publications, the Wall Street Journal being a good example, are sure that the Court acted wisely and that the statute has outlasted its useful mission. On the one side: the certainty that the courts must keep the law in fighting trim, in a world where race still matters and voting rights are fragile. On the other: the same certainty that times have changed but that the Voting Rights Act supporters won’t change with them. Each side is quite sure, just as the Justices lining up on each side of the issue in Bartlett seem quite sure of their positions.

(3/10/09) Read More

“Vote Fraud” and the Question of Denial

Cleta Mitchell is just as the Wall Street Journal has described her—“vocal” in the expression of her views. For this she is well known within the cottage industry of political lawyers, and she is, in the practice of her craft, highly knowledgeable and experienced.

But a hard partisan line is a hard partisan line, and it can take, in the thick of competition, a deeply unfortunate turn, such as when Cleta recently chose to be “vocal” about “vote fraud”:

What we’re [Republicans] not for is registering fake people at fake addresses, and creating barriers to trying to identify voter fraud where it exists, which is everywhere. It’s a growing problem, because of the professional vote-fraud denier industry.

(8/13/08) Read More

Voters and the Question of their “Confidence in the System”

The "public confidence" that is popularly invoked to justify restrictions on political activity, such as voter ID, lets legislators off far too easily. This should be clear with little more said on the subject: why would legislators be given license to restrict substantive rights in the name of relieving a heavily advertised fear in the body politic, such as the fear of corruption or voter fraud, that legislators might have self-interested reason to promote and exploit? And is it not reasonably suspected that a record built on representations about public fears and anxieties rests on this material for want of the real thing—data?

(6/9/08) Read More

The Trivial and the Significant in Riley v. Kennedy

The Supreme Court decided a Voting Rights Act case yesterday, and it was received in the general press, when noticed at all, with a yawn. The question in the case was whether VRA’s pre-clearance requirements were triggered by a decision of the Alabama Supreme Court, and the Court concluded, on a complicated set of facts, that the decision produced no change in voting rules within the meaning of the federal law.

(5/28/08) Read More

The Question of Election Day Equity

Ned Foley has written an interesting series of commetaries, the last Part appearing today, raising questions about a March 4 federal court Order in Cuyahoga County that extended polling hours in selected precincts to address a shortfall in ballot supplies. He does not believe that the Order should have been issued; he sees in any poll extension a serious Equal Protection defect harmful to voters elsewhere denied similarly extended hours. Foley has fashioned an equitable test for consideration in a small number of cases where such relief would be appropriate. He means for this relief to be hard to get.

(4/17/08) Read More

Also...

California Redistricting Reform: Replacing Retired Judges With…. Well, It’s All Very Complicated 10/25/07

Hebert Contra von Spakovsky 6/8/07

Voter Politics: the High Drama of Bad Intentions 5/30/07

Voting Fraud and the Offense of Littering in the Jurisprudence of Richard Posner 5/3/07

A Hard Shot at von Spakovsky 2/21/07

One Surprising Voice for (One Kind of) Reform 11/21/06

Lessons about and for the Voters, Learned from 2006 11/15/06

Voter Injury 11/2/06

Voter ID: The Missouri Supreme Court Evaluates Legislative "Foresight" 10/17/06

Voter ID and Citizen “Capacity” 9/20/06