The central strategy of the Justice Department in this week’s voter ID trial about South Carolina Voter ID is to portray the state as virtually unchanged since 1965. This McClatchy report provides some background. DOJ will produce experts to testify that South Carolina continues to be a racist place, even if the racism has gone more underground.
As someone who lived in South Carolina and saw race relations up close, this is a disturbing and deceptive argument. I even brought a Voting Rights Case against Georgetown County School Board. That lawsuit did not include any claims of racially discriminatory intent. Race relations in South Carolina are better now than they are in most parts of the United States, including the Northeast, Boston, Cleveland and elsewhere. But to this Justice Department, the south is a strange and sometimes wicked place, where the ghosts of the past determine modern policy.
Too bad. It isn’t true. Sure, there are isolated pockets, isolated events. But that’s true everywhere. DOJ will attempt to do so with an expert witness that will cost the taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. That’s right, the citizens of South Carolina are paying tens of thousands of dollars for government experts to testify they are racists.
South Carolina will no doubt object to the introduction of this evidence, but they will probably lose, and the court will have to decide how much weight to attach to it, if any. This is unlikely to be an appealable issue. Indeed, few issues in these trial are set up well for appeal – except a challenge to the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights itself, something South Carolina has not done, even though they have filed an amicus brief in the US Supreme Court saying so in another case.
Perhaps the trial will reveal why South Carolina has filed the amicus calling for Section 5 to be invalidated, but refuses to avail themselves of the same defense in District Court. I am sure that the trial lawyers from the Justice Department are highly relieved.