“Side Door To Voting Rights Pre-Clearance”: The Next Best Way To Enforce The Voting Rights Act
I mentioned this briefly at Lunch Buffet, but because the story will be with us for a while, let me quote from Lyle Denniston’s explanation at SCOTUSblog of Eric Holder’s strategy for re-establishing a preclearance requirement for states engaged in repetitive and egregious voting rights violations in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holder decision:
The preclearance provision is contained in Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. It has been widely considered to be the government’s most effective legal weapon against race bias in elections, because it requires states and local governments with a past history of racial discimination in voting to get official permission in Washington before they may put into effect any change, however small, in voting laws or procedures.
The 1965 law provided two ways to impose a Section 5 obligation on a state or local government. One was a virtually automatic formula, contained in Section 4 of the law. If a state or local government had a sustained history of racial bias in its voting patterns in the past, that triggered a coverage formula that led directly to a Section 5 preclearance obligation. Preclearance can be sought either from the Justice Department or from a three-judge District Court in Washington.
The second way to get a state or local government put under a preclearance duty is the 1965 law’s Section 3 — the one that the Attorney General said the government will now be invoking. If a state or local government is found to have recently engaged in intentional race bias in voting, a court has the power to impose the preclearance duty on that jurisdiction for a set period of time. It is not an automatic method, in contrast to the coverage formula in Section 4.
While the Supreme Court in the Shelby County ruling did not disturb Section 5 and the preclearance requirement, it did strike down the Section 4 coverage formula. That has been the quickest and most effective way to lead to Section 5 preclearance. The Court’s majority ruled that the coverage formula was seriously out of date, and could no longer be used to trigger Section 5 for any state or local government anywhere in the country.
The Shelby County decision did not disturb Section 3 as a separate way to bring about a preclearance duty. That is why advocacy groups — and now the Obama administration — are turning to Section 3 as the next-best way to enforce the 1965 law through preclearance.
The immediate effort will be focused on Texas, thanks to past court findings of intentional discrimination. But challenges to new voting rules and districting decisions elsewhere–most notably those in North Carolina, which are setting a kind of Gold Standard for voter dilution and repression–could well be next, particularly if the Texas litigation is successful.
BTW, I’d like to note that Lyle Denniston is 81 years old. The clarity and comprehensiveness of Denniston’s writing gives this old goat hope for a journalistic second wind that lasts a while.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, July 25, 2013
“Unnecessarily Handicapped”: The Zimmerman Trial Shows It’s Time To Reconsider The Six-Member Jury
Small juries, like all small samples, carry big costs. Doesn’t a jury in a serious criminal case have 12 members? Not in Florida.
Florida is one of only two states where a jury as small as six can decide a serious felony case. It is the only state where a murder case goes to a six-member jury. And second-degree murder in Florida is serious indeed, carrying a sentence of 25 years to life. The circumstances of the shooting that killed an unarmed teenager, moreover, are sharply disputed, implicating the use of guns, the limits of self-defense and race relations. As we often do, we have given the jury in this case a challenging task.
Why should we care if the jury has six or 12 members? The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to trial by jury, but it does not specify jury size. When the Sixth Amendment was written, was the number simply assumed? James Madison thought it was: He thought the number was 12.
For almost 200 years, the U.S. Supreme Court consistently accepted this view, defining “jury” to mean the 12-member jury. For instance, in 1930, the court said that “it is not open to question” whether juries may consist of fewer than 12.
In 1970, however, the court reversed its position in Williams v. Florida and found no constitutional objection to Florida’s six-member jury. The court labeled the general use of 12 throughout history as an “historical accident.” The court’s characterization of the historical record has been widely disputed, but even more egregiously, the court joined its new historical assessment with a strikingly inaccurate behavioral claim.
It proclaimed that the behavior of six- and 12-member juries were “functionally” equivalent, and therefore the six-member jury was unobjectionable. In fact, the overwhelming weight of empirical evidence shows that juries of six do not perform as well as juries of 12.
How do six- and 12-member juries differ? Two differences are particularly relevant in the trial of George Zimmerman. First, numerous studies of all kinds show that cutting jury size in half decreases the likelihood that the jury will reflect a representative sample of the community. The lone non-white juror on the George Zimmerman jury is just one instance of that effect. The all-female jury is another.
The gender make-up of the jury cannot be explained merely by the majority female jury pool or attorney use of challenges. A total of 10 jurors was selected, the jury of six and four alternates. Two of the alternates were male. A larger jury that included the additional four would not have been homogeneous on gender.
Ethnicity and gender are not the only dimensions of difference shortchanged by a smaller jury.
Any background or set of beliefs or life experiences that may affect reactions to the evidence is substantially less likely to be represented on a six-member jury than on a 12-member jury. Simply due to chance, unrepresentativeness is more likely when only six jurors are needed to constitute the jury. That loss is particularly troubling when the jurors are evaluating crucial and disputed evidence, like the identity of the voice in the background on the 911 tape in the Zimmerman case.
Second, jury research finds that larger juries spend more time deliberating and their discussions of testimony are more thorough than smaller juries. More vigorous debate reflects the expanded pool of abilities and perspectives provided by the larger jury. Similarly, the ability of dissenters to resist majority pressure is promoted by the increased likelihood that a dissenter whose position is not simply idiosyncratic will have one or more other jurors who share that view. The dissenters might not carry the day, but their views will be more seriously considered.
There is no evidence that jury size is associated with more pro-prosecution or more pro-defense verdicts. Thus, the key here is not that the six-member jury systematically advantages one side or the other. Rather, the point is that a serious charge demands serious procedural consideration.
Even Florida, like every other state with the death penalty, uses a 12-member jury for capital offenses. Second-degree murder does not carry the death penalty in Florida, but it does call for thorough deliberation from a variety of perspectives. The six-member jury is unnecessarily handicapped.
What should be done? Ample empirical evidence on the jury demonstrates the need to reverse course. Perhaps in the wake of the Zimmerman case, Florida will reconsider its unique position on jury size. Even better: In recent years, the Supreme Court has turned down several opportunities to revisit the question of jury size. Perhaps it should accept the next one.
By: Seidman Diamond, The Miami Herald, July 15, 2013
“Someone Has To Do It”: Congressional Gridlock Leaves Lawmaking To The Supreme Court
One is the loneliest number and only one in 10 Americans trusts the United States Congress. And who can blame people?
The most visible congressional failure was the Senate vote that killed background checks on people who want to buy guns. It was a perfectly reasonable proposal. No one’s guns would have been taken away and national polls showed that nine in 10 Americans supported the proposal.
But that didn’t matter because the Senate was more responsive to pressure from the National Rifle Association than it was to public opinion. Gridley, damm public opinion, full speed backward!
The same tragedy is about to unfold with immigration reform. The Senate passed a compromise immigration proposal under which undocumented immigrants would have to get over a series of hurdles higher than the border fence to become citizens. To get the measure passed, Democrats agreed to GOP demands to hire 20,000 more border control agents. That’s enough of a force to conquer Mexico and more than enough to guard the border we share with our neighbor to the south.
Despite these concessions, House Republicans are doing everything they can to stop reform, and they will probably succeed even though national polls show strong support for citizenship for undocumented people if they meet a long list of requirements.
I could go on and on and on. What happens to a democracy when democratic institutions aren’t democratic anymore? Nothing good.
What if they gave an election and no one came. Well, we almost found out in two recent elections. Turnout was abysmal in the race for mayor in Los Angles and in the special Senate election in Massachusetts to select a replacement for John Kerry. Voters don’t see the point in going out to vote to elect people who can’t or won’t do anything to tackle the challenges facing the nation.
Nature abhors a vacuum and so does the Supreme Court.
When democratic institutions fail, undemocratic institutions step in. When the legislature stops legislating, the unelected Supreme Court rushes in to fill the vacuum. Someone has to make laws, and if Congress doesn’t legislate the federal court system will step in to fix problems. Like it or not, unelected or not, the Supreme Court has filled the vacuum that Congress created.
Historically, the Supreme Court has always been reluctant to void laws passed by the peoples’ elected representatives. But the court did just that on successive days last month. On day one, the high court nullified part of the Voting Rights Act. The next day, the court consigned the Defense of Marriage Act to the dustbin of history where it belonged.
The high court’s message to Congress was do something, just don’t stand there. Standard operating procedure in Congress these days is don’t do anything, just stand there. The world does not come to a grinding halt to accommodate Congress when it can’t get its act together.
When he ran for president in 1996, Ross Perot proposed the idea of having national referendums to make decisions on issues. Americans like the idea. A recent Gallup survey showed that two in three Americans supported it. Somebody has to make decisions. It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.
By: Brad Bannon, U. S. News and World Report, July 11, 2013
“Whether The Pretense Makes Sense Is Irrelevant”: The War On Voting In A Post Voting Rights Act World Just Got Worse
In North Carolina, thanks to Republican gains in the 2010 state elections, the congressional district lines already drawn in such a comically gerrymandered way, the state’s delegation bears little resemblance to the actual wishes of voters. In 2012, for example, a majority of North Carolinians voted for Democratic congressional candidates, and yet, only 4 of the state’s 13 members of the U.S. House are Democrats.
But as the Los Angeles Times reports today, that’s apparently not quite good enough for GOP state policymakers. In a story Rachel has covered on the show, now that the district lines have been gerrymandered to ensure a Republican advantage regardless of voters’ wishes, the next step is to restrict voters’ access to their own democracy.
The GOP chairman of the state Senate rules committee, Sen. Tom Apodaca, said he would move quickly to pass a voter ID law that Republicans say would bolster the integrity of the balloting process. GOP leaders also began engineering an end to the state’s early voting, Sunday voting and same-day registration provisions, all popular with black voters. Civil rights groups say the moves are designed to restrict poll access by blacks, who vote reliably Democratic.
Up until about a week ago, this would ordinarily be the point at which voting-rights advocates, civil rights activists, and anyone concerned with voter access and election fairness would say, “Whew, it’s a good thing the Voting Rights Act still exists. There’s no way these North Carolina’s measures will pass muster.”
But all of that changed rather abruptly when five justices on the U.S. Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act and gave GOP policymakers in North Carolina and elsewhere a green light to start restricting Americans’ access to the ballot box. It is open season on voting rights and Republicans throughout the South are seizing the opportunity.
Originally, GOP lawmakers in North Carolina held back on pursuing voter-ID laws, knowing how racially discriminatory they are. But thanks to the Supreme Court, they no longer care.
What’s especially interesting to me as how thin the pretense is. At least on the surface, Republicans say they need to impose the harshest voting restrictions since Jim Crow to prevent “voter fraud.” In reality, such fraud is practically non-existent, but it nevertheless serves as a convenient pretense. But how does ending Sunday voting prevent fraud? Why eliminate early-voting opportunities and make longer voting lines, neither of which relate to fraud at all?
Of course, questions like these only matter if there’s a real debate, and with Republicans controlling North Carolina’s legislature and governor’s office, whether the pretense makes sense or not is apparently irrelevant.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 2, 2013
“Blindspots, Symbols And Symptoms”: What Paula Deen Could Teach The Supreme Court
Why, in a week of multiple important Supreme Court decisions, are we so focused on the racial sins and multiple apologies of country cooking’s Paula Deen?
In part, of course, it’s because we brake for train wrecks, preferring them even to this week’s twin local animal stories about Rusty the runaway red panda and the black bear cub running through backyards in Northwest Washington.
But we’re also clicking on the Deen-athon because the “Oprah of food,” as one of the cook’s 2.7 million Facebook fans calls her, is a symbol and a symptom — a walking, talking, crying and deep-frying reminder of how much we still need both affirmative action and a fully functional Voting Rights Act.
Deen, who told NBC’s Matt Lauer, “I is what I is and I’m not changing,” was wrong about that: She’s already lost her cooking show, her deals with Smithfield Foods, Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Target. All that and more slipped away since the news that she’d admitted in a legal deposition that “of course” she’s used a racial slur in the distant past, and dreamed of throwing her brother Bubba a “plantation-themed” wedding dinner served by an all-black wait staff.
Now even Novo Nordisk has, by supposedly mutual agreement, “suspended” the woman who brought the world skillet-fried apple pie as spokeswoman for its diabetes drug. But she is the perfect spokeswoman for a week in which a number of the biggest stories circle back to the issue of inequality. To our flawed efforts to live up to that shimmery line in our Declaration of Independence about the apparently not-so-self-evident truth that we are all created equal.
In Florida, where George Zimmerman is on trial in the shooting death of black teenager Trayvon Martin, the friend Martin was on the phone with right before he died testified that he told her, “That ‘N-word’ is still following me now,’ ” she told the court. “I asked him how the man looked like. He just told me the man looked ‘creepy.’ ‘Creepy, white’ — excuse my language — ‘cracker. Creepy [expletive] cracker.” So we’ve been told that Zimmerman saw Martin through a racial lens. And now know that Martin saw Zimmerman that way.
In California, same-sex couples will soon be free to marry, but they still can’t walk down the aisle in 38 other states. And despite the high court’s thumbs down on the Defense against Marriage Act, we’re still nowhere near equality for an awful lot of Americans.
Which is why the saddest headline of the week had to be the one announcing that, as the civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis put it, “the Supreme Court has stuck a dagger into the heart of the Voting Rights Act” and “gutted the most powerful tool this nation has ever had to stop discriminatory voting practices from becoming law.” Now Mississippi and Texas can implement voter ID laws that, whatever their intent, will disenfranchise minority voters.
Across the land, meantime, disappointed white college applicants have effectively been invited to challenge race-conscious admissions plans like the one in Fisher v. the University of Texas at Austin, which the Supreme Court sent back to a lower court for further review. “The worst forms of racial discrimination in this nation have always been accompanied by straight-faced representations that discrimination helped minorities,” Clarence Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion. He’s long seen affirmative action as a vote of non-confidence, suggesting that maybe minorities aren’t as good as anybody else.
I’m not puzzled about why he might feel that way; when someone recently observed — pleasantly, with a hug and no ill intent — that my contribution to a certain group was to keep it from being all-male, I smiled on the outside yet inside, narrowed my eyes and gave him the invisible Death Stare.
But the problems caused by affirmative action are nothing compared to what the lack of diversity gets us: Just for example, a 66-year-old millionaire who still doesn’t know not to brag that she has a friend who is “black as a board.” Who somehow reached retirement age and became a big darn deal without ever learning that yes, the racial slur in question is offensive. Or that “plantation-style” is not a festive party theme.
Matt Lauer finally did make me feel for her with his blunt questions while she was in tears, acting like some latter-day Jean Le Maistre demanding on behalf of the Inquisition that Joan of Arc forsake men’s clothing in prison. (Though if Joan responded that he who is without sin should “pick up that stone and throw it so hard at my head that it kills me,” I don’t want to know.) We all pay the price for that kind of not-at-all-benign cluelessness. And for her blind spots and all of ours, what better antidote do we have than the civil rights remedies undermined this week by our highest court?
By: Melinda Henneberger, The Washington Post, She The People, June 27, 2013
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