Ruth Bader Ginsburg Says She's Not Surprised By New Voter ID Law Push Following Supreme Court Ruling

[Bill USA]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/26/ruth-bader-ginsburg-voter-id_n_3657858.html?ref=topbar

WASHINGTON -- Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she's not surprised that Southern states have pushed ahead with tough voter identification laws and other measures since the Supreme Court freed them from strict federal oversight of their elections.

Ginsburg said in an interview with The Associated Press that Texas' decision to implement its voter ID law hours after the court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act last month was powerful evidence of an ongoing need to keep states with a history of voting discrimination from making changes in the way they hold elections without getting advance approval from Washington.

The Justice Department said Thursday it would try to bring Texas and other places back under the advance approval requirement through a part of the law that was not challenged.

"The notion that because the Voting Rights Act had been so tremendously effective we had to stop it didn't make any sense to me," Ginsburg said in a wide-ranging interview late Wednesday in her office at the court. "And one really could have predicted what was going to happen."
(more)

[Tx4obama]

1. Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act is still intact. Glad to see the DOJ going after the states now

-snip-

June saw the gutting of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court collaterally attacked Section 5 of the VRA, which requires preclearance of voting and elections laws by states such as Texas, by striking down Section 4. By declaring Section 4 unconstitutional, the Court made it impossible to apply the Section 5 preclearance requirement.

Initial reaction focused on the presumptive death of the VRA and the almost certain enactment and implementation of discriminatory voting laws, yet much of that initial analysis neglected Section 3 of the VRA.

On Tuesday, Sahil Kapur wrote in TalkingPointsMemo that Texas and other states could still be subjected to preclearance requirements, despite the Court's June ruling.

"Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act lets courts add a state or local government to the preclearance requirement if it is found to have enacted intentionally discriminatory voting measures. The Supreme Court left that part of the Voting Rights Act intact; it invalidated Section 4, which includes the formula that Congress established to determine which state and local governments are to face that extra scrutiny automatically."

-snip-

Full article here: http://www.burntorangereport.com/diary/13777/experts-texas-possibly-subject-to-preclearance-under-voting-rights-act-suits-filed

[blkmusclmachine]

2. .

.