The Supreme Court recently overturned section 4 of the Voting Rights Act as unconstitutional. The response from the left has been the usual hysteria. According to the progressives, Jim Crow is back and voter suppression is rampant. The truth, however, is that these folks are wrong; it is they who suppress reality not the states that suppress voting. An article by Ari Berman in The Nation is a good example of this phenomenon. Berman makes contradictory and false arguments, some of which are patently ridiculous.
First, lets start with the worst. Berman's whole article is a claim that minority voting is being suppressed across the South. This is followed by Berman's announcement that "the voter suppression attempts of 2012 spurred black turnout, which surpassed white turnout for the first time in US history." Get it? The evil voter suppression led to a major upturn in minority turnout. Is it conceivable that Berman does not see the lunacy of this statement? If minority voting were really suppressed, wouldn't there be a decline in minority participation? The truth is that there was no suppression at all. Berman is just parroting the phony Democrat attack line of the last fifty years that Republicans are racist.
Second, Berman takes perfectly valid voting laws that treat everyone equally and makes them into some sort of evil effort to keep blacks from voting. My favorite of his claims is that states are rushing to pass "new voter-ID laws that disproportionately affect young and minority voters". The laws in question say that all voters must present a photo ID at the polls. The burden is not greater on minorities or the young. These folks just need to show their driver's license or another ID which is available from the state. We have had that law in Connecticut for a decade, and it was passed by a Democrat controlled legislature. No one here claims that it was a voter suppression effort. That only happens when a Republican legislature passes the same law.
Third, Berman tries to rewrite the Constitution and the Court's decision. He claims that the idea that states must be treated equally by Congress is a fiction and not part of the Constitution. He also calls it the basis for the decision of the Court. In fact, the Court makes clear in its ruling that it allows different treatment if there is a valid basis for that differing treatment. In 1965, there was clear discrimination in voting rights in certain states, and this led to section 4 of the Act. Today and a few years ago when the VRA extension was passed, however, there is no such discrimination sufficient to perpetuate the differing treatment of the states. That is what the Court held, not what Berman claims.
First, lets start with the worst. Berman's whole article is a claim that minority voting is being suppressed across the South. This is followed by Berman's announcement that "the voter suppression attempts of 2012 spurred black turnout, which surpassed white turnout for the first time in US history." Get it? The evil voter suppression led to a major upturn in minority turnout. Is it conceivable that Berman does not see the lunacy of this statement? If minority voting were really suppressed, wouldn't there be a decline in minority participation? The truth is that there was no suppression at all. Berman is just parroting the phony Democrat attack line of the last fifty years that Republicans are racist.
Second, Berman takes perfectly valid voting laws that treat everyone equally and makes them into some sort of evil effort to keep blacks from voting. My favorite of his claims is that states are rushing to pass "new voter-ID laws that disproportionately affect young and minority voters". The laws in question say that all voters must present a photo ID at the polls. The burden is not greater on minorities or the young. These folks just need to show their driver's license or another ID which is available from the state. We have had that law in Connecticut for a decade, and it was passed by a Democrat controlled legislature. No one here claims that it was a voter suppression effort. That only happens when a Republican legislature passes the same law.
Third, Berman tries to rewrite the Constitution and the Court's decision. He claims that the idea that states must be treated equally by Congress is a fiction and not part of the Constitution. He also calls it the basis for the decision of the Court. In fact, the Court makes clear in its ruling that it allows different treatment if there is a valid basis for that differing treatment. In 1965, there was clear discrimination in voting rights in certain states, and this led to section 4 of the Act. Today and a few years ago when the VRA extension was passed, however, there is no such discrimination sufficient to perpetuate the differing treatment of the states. That is what the Court held, not what Berman claims.
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