June 12, 2018
Yesterday, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court erected another barrier to participation in democracy by people of color, the elderly and veterans, in its decision legitimating Ohio’s “use it or lose it” voter disenfranchisement scheme. At issue in Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute was an Ohio law which purged voters from the rolls if they failed to vote in two successive elections and neglected to return a postcard confirming their address. The Court overturned the 6th Circuit’s invalidation of the statute as violative of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (the “Motor Voter Act”), a law with the express purpose of making it easier for citizens to vote. The majority reached the opposite result from the Sixth Circuit despite the fact that one of that law’s “key provisions limits the ability of states to remove the voters from the voting rolls ‘by reason of the person’s failure to vote,’” (Source: “Sonia Sotomayor’s Dissent in the Big Voter Purge Case Points to How the Law Might Still be Struck Down,” by Richard L. Hasen, Slate.com, 6/11/18).
The court eagerly seized on the fig leaf of the postcard requirement as the basis for its holding that Ohio’s disenfranchisement scheme didn’t run afoul of the Motor Voter Act. Of course, the Court may also have been influenced by the fact that the Sessions’ led Justice Department, in its zeal to offer states a disenfranchisement tool, filed an amicus brief in support of Ohio, after previously taking the opposite position when the case was pending in the Sixth Circuit. The DOJ’s support was such a contravention of the long held Justice Department position that no career Civil Rights Division attorneys signed off on the brief (Source: “DOJ flips on SCOTUS purge case,” by Justin Levitt, Electionlawblog.org, 8/11/17).
It is no surprise that Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, the committed racist who buys his Klan robes in the children’s department, would enthusiastically endorse a technocratic reading of the statute that operates to disenfranchise people of color. On a daily basis, Sessions makes clear that his most defining character trait is virulent racism. How else can we explain his cruel decision to remove domestic and gang violence as bases for seeking asylum? (Source: “Sessions: Domestic and Gang Violence Are No Longer Grounds For Asylum,” by Maria Sacchetti, The Washington Post, 6/11/18).
As we watch our country rapidly transforming into a fascist state, it is understandable to feel paralyzed by rage and fear. The risk is that we prematurely cede the power we still have. The effort to disenfranchise people of color on a wholesale basis can be thwarted if we regain control of the statehouse and the Governor’s mansion. 36 states are electing governors this year and there are Democratic candidates in critical races in Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that we must support. We must support organizations such as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the ACLU and Let America Vote that aggressively work to protect the franchise. The truth is that our hostile, sadistic federal government which constantly finds new ways to target and punish people for the “offense” of being non-white, poses a greater threat to our national safety and security than North Korea ever will.
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