Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Good article. It sure puts Roberts in clear view:

"Liberals in Congress and voting rights advocates swiftly rallied around an amendment to the Voting Rights Act that would undo Mobile and rescue Section 2 plaintiffs from the task of trying to read lawmakers’ minds. That amendment banned any voting practice that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” Thus, even if a plaintiff could not prove racist intent, they could still prevail if the law had a disparate negative effect on voters of color.

It was this amendment that the young John Roberts fought so hard to kill. As the voting rights journalist Ari Berman writes, “Roberts wrote upwards of 25 memos opposing an effects test for Section 2 .. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/john-roberts-voting-rights-act-121222 .” He “drafted talking points, speeches and op-eds for” senior Justice Department officials opposing the amendment, and “prepared administration officials for their testimony before the Senate; attended weekly strategy sessions; and worked closely with like-minded senators on Capitol Hill.”

But opposition to the Section 2 amendment fizzled in Congress. As Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) told Reagan in October of 1981, conservative lawmakers feared that “anyone who seeks to change” an expansive voting rights renewal that had already passed the House “will risk being branded as racist.”

Ultimately, Reagan signed the bill, extending preclearance for another quarter century and trashing the Mobile decision in the process.

The same dynamic played out once again in 2006. Although President Bush initially displayed some ambivalence toward Voting Rights Act renewal, and some members of his Justice Department advocated scrapping preclearance, legislative opposition to the renewal never got too far off the ground.

As Edward Blum, a wealthy anti-civil rights activist who would go on to be the driving force behind the Supreme Court case that gutted preclearance in 2013, complained in a 2006 National Review article, “Republicans don’t want to be branded as hostile to minorities, especially just months from an election.”

The 2006 Voting Rights Act reauthorization passed both houses by overwhelming margins ..

Outed here -
[07/20/2006 Passed/agreed to in Senate: Passed Senate without amendment by Yea-Nay Vote. 98 - 0. Record Vote Number: 212.
07/13/2006 Passed/agreed to in House: On passage Passed by recorded vote: 390 - 33 (Roll no. 374). ]
https://www.congress.gov/bill/109th-congress/house-bill/9/actions .

It was signed into law by Bush.

It’s not hard to imagine the frustration conservative Republicans must have felt each time the act was renewed. Those Republicans elected sympathetic presidents, and they had every reason to believe that those presidents and Republican lawmakers would hear their concerns. And yet, in each case, a Republican president sided with liberals over their own conservative supporters."

Now here is a perfect time to jump to a third excerpt from one first introduced yesterday ..
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173294108 . The 2nd excerpt is here:
And, all must understand Trump's supporters don't care about any of Trump psychopathy or his narcissism. They only care
about fixing America to more back in their own image. In that sense they dislike democracy, and see themselves as Gods.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173294212 . The 3rd:

The conservative movement is rejecting America

A recent essay in a prominent right-wing outlet gives an unusually clear window into the modern right’s anti-democratic worldview.

By Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp [e-mail] Apr 1, 2021, 1:40pm EDT

[...]

Ellmers’s essay is in line with this tradition, identifying freedom as a right that only a certain section of the population deserves. Those outside of it, either because they come from the wrong background or think the wrong way, have no just claim on our political system. When they wield power, it is by definition oppression.

In some ways, this is the central animating idea of the broader conservative movement in America. Ellmers is a radical who sees himself as opposed to “establishment” conservatism, but in reality, many on the broader right share a more attenuated version of his worldview — and pursue the disempowerment of their political opponents.

Barack Obama’s 2008 victory, and the attendant talk of a coalition of minorities and young voters creating a “permanent Democratic majority,” helped spread anxieties about declining electoral power on the political right. After the 2010 midterm elections, which swept Republicans into power in statehouses across the country, they acted — drawing gerrymandered maps and passing laws, like voter ID, seemingly designed to suppress Democratic-leaning constituencies.

The state-level Republican lawmakers were often quite honest about their aim of locking Democrats out of office.

“I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats,” former North Carolina Rep. David Lewis, who chaired the state’s recent redistricting committee, once said. “So I drew this map in a way to help foster what I think is better for the country.”

[INSERT: For more justice around voting rights you really need an independent commission on electoral boundaries, both federal .. https://www.aec.gov.au/electorates/Redistributions/ , and state, e.g. .. https://elections.nsw.gov.au/voters/electoral-districts-redistribution/names-and-boundaries-of-electoral-districts . Course, even if you had them, if an autocrat as Trump was ever reelected he would just either abolish or bring independent bodies as that under control of the president.]

The January 6 attack on the Capitol was a pure expression of Ellmers-ism, a violent lashing out against a system that conservatives believe to be fraudulent and corrupt. The new round of voter suppression bills represents the more subtle 2010 variant of Republican anti-democratic attitudes: that the system can be rigged such that the Democratic threat is locked out of power for good.

There are at least eight proposals from Republican lawmakers in state legislatures around the country to seize partisan control over electoral administration. One of the most egregious examples, in Georgia, was passed into law last week. More broadly, there are over 250 state bills .. https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/ensure-every-american-can-vote/voting-reform/state-voting-laws .. under consideration that would curtail voting rights in one way or another.

That these proposals are justified in the language of “restoring confidence” in elections and “preventing fraud” does not make them actually defensible in democratic terms — anymore than Ellmers’s thinly-veiled pining for a civil war is “democratic” because he wants to wage it in defense of a warped conception of liberty.

In a sense, Ellmers is right that America’s political system no longer works. He’s just wrong about who broke it — and why.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/4/1/22356594/conservatives-right-wing-democracy-claremont-ellmers