This Is Going To Get Interesting

When Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his famous I Have A Dream Speech at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, he stated, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Somehow the professional racists in our country have forgotten that concept.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered Louisiana to redraw its congressional map because the map was drawn along racial lines.

On Wednesday, The Daily Caller reported:

The United States Supreme Court has knocked another peg out of the legalized racism instituted by progressive election law, ordering Louisiana to redraw its congressional map in a landmark voting rights decision.

On Wednesday, the Court dealt a blow to a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, siding with Louisiana Republicans and President Donald Trump’s administration by blocking an electoral map that created a second majority-black congressional district.

In a 6–3 decision, the justices upheld a lower court ruling that found the map unconstitutional. The dispute centered on whether the districts amounted to race-based gerrymandering, with the lower court concluding that race played too large a role in how the map was drawn — violating the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection.

The article concludes:

The stakes extend well beyond Louisiana. Historically, the party that controls the White House tends to lose House seats in midterm elections. With Republicans holding a narrow majority, any shift in how districts are drawn could play a significant role in determining control of the chamber.

The ruling follows years of legal battles over Louisiana’s congressional map and broader disputes over race-based redistricting, which critics argue amounts to legalized racism, while supporters say it is necessary to ensure fair representation under the Voting Rights Act.

Following the 2020 census, Republican lawmakers redrew the state’s map so that black voters made up a majority in just one district, despite accounting for roughly one-third of the population. In 2022, a group of black voters filed a lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act, arguing the map diluted their political influence by concentrating many black voters into a single district while spreading others across the remaining districts.

Can we please get to the point where we vote for candidates because of their qualifications and their ability to do the job–not for any other reason? I would also like to mention that gerrymandering has become a national sport. The New England states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut range from about 35 to 48 percent Republican. They do not have one Republican representative in the U.S. House of Representatives. Congressional districts need to reflect the voters in their state.

Lying When Convenient

Politicians are not known for telling the truth, but sometimes the lies are simply outrageous. It seems that lying to attack political opponents has become a way of life for some of our politicians.

The Washington Examiner posted an article today about a recent whopper told by Senator Chuck Schumer. The lie by Senator Schumer was told during a hearing for Thomas Farr, a North Carolina lawyer who is President Trump’s pick to be a district court judge in New York.

The article reports:

Schumer said on the Senate floor that Farr “stands for the disenfranchisement of voters,” then raised the 2013 Supreme Court case Shelby County v Holder. That case ended in a Roberts opinion that said a key part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is outdated and needs to be modernized.

Schumer said that opinion showed that Roberts believes voting discrimination no longer exists.

“Justice Roberts will go down in history as one of those who worked to take away voting rights when he authored the Shelby decision and stated that he didn’t believe that … more or less, he stated that he didn’t believe that discrimination existed any longer, so we wouldn’t need Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act,” Schumer said.

But Roberts never wrote that voting discrimination no longer exists and, in fact, said explicitly that it does still exist.

“At the same time, voting discrimination still exists; no one doubts that,” Roberts wrote at the time.

Either Senator Schumer is misinformed or he decided that the best was to prevent the appointment of Thomas Farr was to play the race card. That card is getting very old, and the number of Americans falling for it is rapidly dwindling. The card is played frequently against President Trump despite the awards he won before running for President for promoting racial harmony and for his removal of race and religion restrictions when he opened Mar-a-Lago.

Keeping Election Integrity

In the last state legislative session, North Carolina changed its voting laws to ensure the integrity of its elections. Photo ID will be required in 2016, there will be no more same day registration, and voters will be required to vote in their own precincts.

The reasoning behind these changes was simple. Voter ID prevents a voter from being disenfranchised by someone who casts an illegal vote. Same day registration does not provide a way to check to make sure someone actually lives at the address they state. As I recently reported, a friend of mine who lives in North Carolina checked the voter registration rolls a few weeks ago and found out that there were six people who claimed her house as a residence, but did not live there. That is potentially six illegal votes cancelling out the votes of legal voters. Requiring people to vote in their own precinct ensures that they receive the appropriate ballot. Precinct ballots vary according to local offices being filled, obviously, voters need to vote for their local officials–not someone else’s. The idea behind the new law was to secure the right of voters to an honest election.

Unfortunately, some of that law was recently struck down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. According to the U. S. Supreme Court blog, the Fourth Circuit judges felt that the new laws would limit the black vote. I guess I’m a little dense, but it seems to me that if it actually limited anyone’s ability to vote (which it doesn’t), it would limit everyone’s ability to vote. Registering to vote is easy–it can be done five days a week at the Board of Elections or when you get your license. Advance registration gives the Board of Elections time to confirm your address. Voting in your precinct should not be a problem as your precinct is determined by where you live–therefore the voting place should be relatively close to your home.

Well, now the U. S. Supreme Court is involved.

The article reports:

The Supreme Court, with two Justices noting dissents, on Wednesday afternoon allowed North Carolina to bar voters from registering and casting their ballots on the same day, and to refuse to count votes that were cast in the wrong polling places.  Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.  The majority did not explain its action.

The order gives the state time to file an appeal from lower-court rulings striking down those two provisions, which were part of a larger, sweeping change in voting rights in the state.  If the Court grants review of the state’s appeal, the postponement will remain in effect until there is a decision.

Justice Ginsburg, writing for herself and Justice Sotomayor, argued that the two restrictions at issue as well as others in the broader reach of the new law probably would have been found illegal, if the Voting Rights Act of 1965 remained in full effect and North Carolina had had to ask permission from the federal government to make those changes.  The Court last year limited the 1965 Act in a way that the dissenters said “effectively nullified” the law’s pre-clearance requirement.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit found that the two provisions permitted by Wednesday’s Supreme Court order would risk a significant reduction in voting opportunities for black voters in North Carolina, in violation of a part of the Voting Rights Act still intact.

Ensuring the integrity of the vote does not disenfranchise anyone–in fact, it ensures that legal voters will not be disenfranchised by illegal voters.