Limey, the jig’s already up. The Republican-controlled state legislatures are going to pass whatever onerous voter suppression laws they want. Even if Congress somehow passes voting rights legislation, it will immediately be challenged by the GOP states, and then this Supreme Court will happily turn around and strike it down using the same argument that was used to dismiss most of the various Trump suits: namely, that the states run their own elections, and the manner in which they run them is up to them.
That argument fails when states violate US constitutional rights.
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I think the point is that the court will invalidate the VRA (now) or John Lewis Act (if it gets passed) saying that those pieces of legislation violate the constitutions delegation to state legislators to set the terms of their elections. The state legislators can do whatever they want. The court will not see constitutional violations, instead ducking those issues as political questions, like it already has with gerrymandering.
I realize that this is an entirely plausible outcome. However, the Supreme Court gutted the pre-clearance provisions of the Civil Rights Act, not because there was anything constitutionally wrong with them, but because they said racism was over and the law needed to be updated. They referred it back to Congress for them to pass a new updated law.
So there’s the opening. The argument thereafter I imagine will be entirely around the equal protection clause, because the numbers on who is disenfranchised by so-called voter ID laws is basically every demographic not including able-bodied white men. There is no reason why one state has longer early voting than another, or that some states allow no-cause mail-in ballots while others don’t. Each state can run their own elections, but the federal government has an interest in ensuring that every citizen of every state has an equal opportunity to exercise their franchise.
Further, the partisan intent of these laws is also already on the record at the Supreme Court, courtesy of a GOP lawyer:
ETA: I am guilty of conflating two bits of legislation here:
- The John Lewis Voting Rights Act reimposes pre-clearance but, instead of being based on a list of past serial violators, it can apply to any state that has a recent history of violating voting rights. It’ll be mostly the same states as before, but they’ll re-earn the scrutiny every year.
- The For the People Act (HR1 from the last congress) is the Act that deals with equal access to the ballot box, providing funding for same, and also dealing with gerrymandering and a host of other electoral abhorrences.
Ah, people do talk about the 10th Amendment.
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We’ll see. I have a strong belief in judicial integrity when fundamental federal rights are involved.
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Well, really, it falls apart when the Supreme Court rules that states are violating US constitutional rights. You have more faith in the court’s collective reasonableness than I do, but maybe Roberts and Gorsuch will see these attempts for what they are. I have no faith whatsoever in Thomas, Alito, or Kavanaugh, and Barrett is still a cipher at this point (at least on this issue),
I hope so. But between Rucho’s blessing of gerrymandering with racial effects as a non-reviewable political question and the current conservative theory that any voting rule imposed by a state legislature is unassailable by any court and (presumably) the federal government, I have a hard time seeing any protections offered in favor of voting fairness.
This afternoon, VP Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate to advance the COVID relief bill.
Much is being made - including by yours truly - about the reticence of Manchin and Sinema to fall into lockstep with the Biden agenda. But, frustrating as they are, the real killers here are congressional Republicans. They are united in opposition to everything and anything, stressing the expanse of the Democrats’ big tent.
This particular bill is overall supported by 70%+ of Americans, with the individual component elements each enjoying significant majority support. Will Republicans pay a price for this obstruction? Probably not.
Conversely, because this is all asymmetrical warfare, Democrats will be flayed if they fail to pass these promised benefits. Got to get it done!
So this is March 4. Did Trump get inaugurated as the 19th President today? What will QAnon come up with tomorrow?
I saw some yahoo interviewed about that today. She said it means that God and Trump have a different plan. She trusts them. She’s also excited about the next few weeks. Not as much as I am about regrowing my hair, but optimistic nonetheless.
Unreal. Her ideas, not yours.
Mine’s pretty solid, huh?
Absolutely.
So, Sen. RonAnon Johnson went ahead and forced the reading of the COVID relief bill into the Senate record. This was stupid and pointless on so many levels, but especially as this kind of behavior is one of the main threats the QOP has made for what they will do if Democrats end the filibuster. They’re already doing it, so they just pissed away some ammunition in that fight.
Meanwhile, none of the QOP Senators bothered to stick around for the overnight reading of the bill. So, when it ended, Democrats proposed shortening the time for debate from 20 hours to 3 and, as no one was there to object, it passed. 
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Playing by the rules.
When the fuck will the Dems just eliminate the filibuster and be done with it? We’re not even two months in and the Republicans are solidly back to their Party-of-“No” status from the Obama years.
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Their chess is of the 3D variety.
Where are you getting that voting-it-down-to-three hours business? Not seeing it anywhere.
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