Unfortunately “racially charged” attacks are commonly the attack of choice.  The Foundry.

“The inflammatory attacks on Justice Antonin Scalia after the oral arguments in the Supreme Court in the Shelby County case last week show the desperation of the supporters of the “racial entitlement” that is Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.”

The Secretary of State questions the triggers in the Union Leader: “Forty-eight years ago, eight New Hampshire towns and two unincorporated places were incorrectly and unfairly subjected to the federal Voting Rights Act for discrimination,” Gardner said.

A posting at National Review.  National Review says that “Roberts and Scalia are right.”  National Review:

An obvious question that the government should have been prepared to answer was one asked by Roberts: Which state today has the worst ratio between black and white turnout? Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. either didn’t know the answer or pretended not to. The chief justice informed him that it was Massachusetts. . . .

However, while decrying the exchange between Roberts and Verrilli, and claiming his state has high voter registration, Galvin never disputed Roberts’s actual point about the disparity between black and white turnout in Massachusetts. . . .

Moreover, anyone who had read the opinion of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in the Shelby County case knows that Roberts was citing information from that opinion. As Judge Stephen Williams pointed out on page 14 of his dissent, “Most of the worst offenders — states where in 2004 whites turned out or were registered in significantly higher proportion than African-Americans — are not covered. These include, for example, the three worst — Massachusetts, Washington, and Colorado.” This point was uncontested by the Justice Department in its brief filed with the Supreme Court. . . .

Section 5 has made race a dominant factor in redistricting. Democrats like it because the majority-minority racial districts created to satisfy Section 5 provide safe seats for black and Hispanic Democrats. That is the very definition of a racial entitlement. Those same majority-minority districts drain Democratic voters from surrounding districts, creating safe Republican seats surrounding those almost challenge-proof, racially gerrymandered Democratic districts. Much of the support for Section 5 is motivated by crass, partisan objectives that both parties share, especially the entrenchment and protection of incumbents.

MSNBC has discovered voter fraud.  This blog reported a few days ago about the fraud committed by GOP voter registration field workers.  Because the acts were committed by Republicans, MSNBC decided to cover it.  Yet MSNBC has failed to once mention Melowese Richarson, the Obama campaign activist and election official who admitted on camera that she voted six times in Ohio.

When voter fraud deniers so zealously deny that vote fraud occurs, perhaps they can be forgiven, because unlike most cable news viewers, they may be tuned into (or appearing on) MSNBC, where vote fraud is only covered if a Republican is accused of committing it.

Nice analogy in The Atlantic on the campaign finance zeal of the “reformers”:

Campaign-finance reform is a bit like the war on drugs: a decades-long
exercise in over-regulation that has exacerbated the problems it was
designed to solve.

And a good breakdown of the actual issue the Supreme Court will review:

It’s important to stress that McCutcheon is not challenging limits on
individual or base contributions to party committees or individual
candidates. (Candidate contribution caps were $2,500 per federal
election in 2011-2012; contributions to national party committees were
capped at $30,800 per year.) He is challenging aggregate limits on
contributions to candidates and parties. In other words, he is not
demanding a right to give more than $2,500 to any candidate; he’s
demanding a right to give as much as $2,500 to more candidates, in
excess of the aggregate cap.

Thirty-three states now have passed voter ID laws. Nebraska nearly
joined them last year, but my previous proposal was filibustered by a
small group of opponents. We nearly broke the filibuster with 30 votes
in favor of ending the delay, but 16 senators voted against the motion.

Link.

A House panel has advanced legislation requiring Arkansas voters to show photo identification before they can cast a ballot… The panel last week delayed a vote on the measure so that a fiscal impact study could be performed.   Link to story.

So say Virginia Democrats about Senator Mark Obenshain’s support of voter ID.


Now where have I heard this term before?  Hmm, wasn’t there a time when the most outrageous thing you could do is call someone un-American?  Wasn’t there no greater sin in political discourse than to make the charge against political opponents?  Perhaps I am confusing things; perhaps not.

A few days ago, I took note of a pinhead study purporting to measure racism in the hearts of Americans.  Naturally, the study contorted the absurdist methodology into an argument that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act should be preserved.  Some took the absurdity seriously enough to post it without critical comment.

Since clumsy statistics are now relevant to the Section 5 debate, here’s another fact: more hate crimes per capita occur in states not covered by Section 5.  In fact, they occur in northern states.  The FBI says so.  The worst states for hate crimes (Hate crimes per capita: pop:hatecrimes)

Massachusetts