The Justice Department is going to argue that Florida’s change in early voting should not be approved under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act because Florida has not carried the burden that the change did not have a racially discriminatory intent.   This validates Florida’s decision to go to Federal Court or else an objection would have been entered by now.  The submitted change alters early voting dates but keeps the same aggregate number of early voting hours.  It also requires that third party voting registration forms be turned in on time. 

In 2006 when Republicans reauthorized Section 5, and added new, harder to meet, review standards, they thought they would extract more legislative seats.  So far in redistricting, they have gained a single seat.  On the other side of the ledger, Holder’s DOJ is interfering with election integrity measures in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Texas.