North Carolina’s Republican-held legislature clearly tried to discriminate against African-American voters when it passed what it laughingly called voting rights legislation back in 2013. The federal appeals court unanimously ruled that way, writing
“The record makes clear that the historical origin of the challenged provisions in this statute is not the innocuous back-and-forth of routine partisan struggle that the State suggests and that the district court accepted,” Judge Diana Motz wrote on behalf of Judges James Wynn and Henry Floyd. “Rather, the General Assembly enacted them in the immediate aftermath of unprecedented African American voter participation in a state with a troubled racial history and racially polarized voting. The district court clearly erred in ignoring or dismissing this historical background evidence, all of which supports a finding of discriminatory intent.”
The court’s opinion bluntly described the legislation as a clear effort to suppress the black vote.
“We cannot ignore the record evidence that, because of race, the legislature enacted one of the largest restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history,” Motz added.
Despite that unanimous opinion, the state appealed to the US Supreme Court, and all four of the Republican-appointed justices found absolutely nothing wrong with what the state did. It was only by the grace of Justice Scalia’s death that the case was deadlocked 4-4 and thus reverted to the decision made by the Court of Appeals.
This shows just how important Presidential elections are and how important the winner’s appointments will be. If Secretary Clinton wins and the Democrats win the Senate she’ll be able to fill the dead Scalia’s seat with a justice who presumably believes that voting is an American right which accrues to all citizens, rather than one which really should (nudge nudge, wink wink) be assigned only to white people. If that view were to prevail, what would be next? Only property-holders can vote? All you apartment-livers, too bad?
Vote for Clinton-Kaine in November.