My initial take on the Supreme Court decision yesterday to nullify sections 4 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act is not quite as outraged as my fellow Democratic and progressive colleagues. It's obvious that this was to be expected given the make up of the court but is it really as bad as they say it's going to be? Possibly but I have my doubts and the main reason why I do is the last election.
All of the gymnastics the Right did in 2012 simply resulted in a more concerted effort to get the non white vote out. It worked. They voted in record numbers in 2012. Changing demographics in the states affected by the SCOTUS decision means that there will be very little the state houses can do to suppress votes. The court is right to note that times have indeed changed and, although discrimination still exists, I just don't see any way they are going to get away with it.
And, if I can be extremely political here, the only states that matter for right now out of those nine affected the most by the changes are Florida and Virginia. The other states are going to be red for just a little bit longer, I suspect, with the exception, perhaps, of Texas. But the Lone Star state is a great example of those changing demographics. So is Florida, actually, as we saw people wait in line for seven hours to make sure they had the chance to vote.
People are resilient and will adapt to any bullshit the Right tries to pull with voting. It's happened before and it will happen again.
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One of the reasons that Democrats were able to get out the vote in 2012 was that the courts had blocked many of the onerous voter suppression tactics Republican legislatures had enacted, because they were put into effect so close to the election. But by the next presidential election many of those will have come into force.
So don't be so sanguine about this: in the next presidential election many people will go to the polls expecting to vote, only to find that they don't have the right ID, or they've been knocked off the voter rolls and they can no longer register at the polls. This will because they won't have voted in 2013 or 2014, and many jurisdictions have enacted laws that automatically terminate your registration if you only vote in presidential elections.
Additionally, by 2016 Republican legislatures will have cooked up even more onerous minority voter suppression tactics now that the voting rights act has been trashed. That may cost the Democrats several senate seats, in addition to House seats and perhaps the presidency. Sure, there will be lawsuits, but conservative judges will throw many of them out because "no one has been hurt" by these laws yet. And if Republicans steal the 2016 presidential and senatorial races, you can be damned sure they'll ram even more obnoxious federal laws through to artificially prop up their quickly weakening hold on power.
Yes of course your narrative just will never be wrong.
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