Virginia Democratic Party Chair Brian Moran misses the mark wildly and jumps all over Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli over the Voting Rights Act.  Of course Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act requires certain, but not all, states to get federal government approval of any change whatsoever involving elections.  For example, hours an election office is open, the location of the office, the people translating ballots into Spanish, the district lines, etc, must all be approved by the feds. 

States and jurisdictions are allowed to apply for bailouts, but almost nobody has.  Of the thousands of jurisdictions eligible to seek bailout, only a dozen or so have done so.  At the same time, two jurisdictions are challenging the constitutionality of Section 5.  Whether or not bailouts are effective and being used is an issue that will affect the constitutionality of Section 5.  Simply put, defenders of Section 5 want jurisdictions to bail out.  The more jurisdictions that bailout, the more constitutional Section 5 is.

Enter Brian Moran.  He obviously didn’t get the memo that the defenders of Section 5 are desperate to find places to bailout.  If Virginia bailed out as a state, and very few would be more appropriate for a bailout than the Commonwealth, it would significantly bolster the constitutionality of Section 5. 

Because of the high temperature rhetoric of Moran, states and jurisdictions are scared to seek bailouts because of the racially driven wrath people like Moran will unleash when they do.  If the Supreme Court strikes down Section 5, which most informed observers believe is increasingly possible, there will likely be a passage in the opinion about the low number of places which obtained bailouts, and those seeking to overturn the law will be able to thank people like Brian Moran.    Perhaps he will reassess his position.