MSNBC Panel on Section 5

Since hardly anyone watches MSNBC, reposting here an MSNBC discussion on the Voting Rights Act with some old familiar faces.






“Racism has taken a different face.  It is kind of concealed.”  While you are watching the video, remember that Chris Hayes, the host, is the same person that said he felt “uncomfortable” calling servicemembers killed in action “heroes” because it can be used to justify unjust wars.  Respectable fellow he is.



“Voting Rights Act Stuck in the Past”

Washington Post’s George Will: “Progressives are remarkably uninterested in progress.  . . .  Chief Justice John Roberts, noting that Massachusetts has the worst rate of white turnout compared with that of blacks, and that Mississippi has the best, asked Solicitor General Donald Verrilli: “Is it the government’s submission that the citizens in the South are more racist than citizens of the North?” Verrilli said no. His answer was obviously false. Otherwise, the administration would favor extending Section 5 to the entire nation.”

Ouch.

Of course Robert’s question reminds me of a passage in Injustice about the actual attitudes of DOJ officials about whether the government thinks citizens in the South are more racist:

“Civil rights laws are no longer great moral levelers, providing equal opportunity and breaking down legal barriers. Instead, Ike Brown and his allies at the DOJ view civil rights laws as a system for redistributing wealth and power along racial lines. Voting Section visits to the deep South are seen by some as expeditions to alien territory. Anyone who questions this simplistic worldview must be a racist, if not an outright Klansman.”

The orginal draft of my book had much more detail on this point, in particular, one draft detailed a discussion between two Voting Section lawyers in Texas.  The conversation revealed the negative attitudes toward Texans by one of the Voting Section lawyers.  And yes, it was awfully obvious, that this “government [official’s] submission [was] that the citizens in the South are more racist than citizens of the North.”

Section 5 reauthorization based on questionable objection in small town of 2,202 people

The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court noted during the oral argument that in the year before reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, there was 3700 submissions under Section 5.  Of that high total, there was a total of one objection in that crucial year prior the reauthorization hearings.  That objection appears to be focused on the town of Delhi, Louisiana with a current population of 2919 people.  During the Civil War, historians reported “Union sympathy” in the city so the town was not exactly a hotbed of racial discrimination.

In 2005, it had 2,202 people and the 2000 Census revealed 51% voting age African American population in the city.  All things being considered, you would expect roughly half representation on any local government to be fair distribution of power.  However, the Department of Justice Voting Section objected under the max-black theory, that the town needed to maximize their black representation with four members instead of three minority council members out of what appears to be a total of five members on the council.  A supermajority of black representation was the only way for this small town to avoid an objection, a clear majority was not going to be good enough.

Not surprising, the idea of DOJ providing a clean record to Congress in 2005 was simply out of the question.