Under the scheme envisioned in a bipartisan bill to restore the Voting Rights Act of 1965, only states with five violations of federal voting laws over the last 15 years would be required to seek preclearance to change their voting laws. Without looking, can you guess which four states fail that test? I actually guessed correctly. Three states were obvious to me, although it was a toss-up on the last one.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Guessing TX, SC, MS, NC, AL.
that’s five, and only two are correct.
Yup, so counting is not my strong suit.
I got two. The last two were the toss-ups imo lol, but that’s without looking through at who has been guilty of the most violations under the previous preclearance.
I’m a bit surprise my brain dead congressman, Steve Chabot, who, in 25 years of government service has yet to determine the function of reason, logic or government, has sign on as a co-sponsor.
A different question would be what states immediately initiated actions that were not permissible under the previous law after the court ruling?
I am surprised Florida is not on the list
I thought about Florida, but my last one came down Georgia or Alabama. Alabama has a worse reputation, but less reason to monkey around since it’s safely red. I correctly settled on Georgia.
Yeah, I had Texas, Florida, Georgia and Ohio. But I guess Ohio just stuck out because people there actually gave a shit.
I got three. I had Florida instead of Mississippi – based not on overall level of bigotry, but amount of voting population from which abusive incidents could come. Passed on AL & SC for the same reason. Also because in MS/AL/SC there’s really no significant urban areas controlled by Dems, as is the case in TX, LA, GA, and FL. (Even in cities like Birmingham and Jackson, the money now is in the Republican-controlled white flight suburban counties like Shelby AL and Madison MS.) Having big Dem-controlled cities like Houston or Atlanta in my experience tends to stoke the resentment and perceived need in other parts of the state to stack the deck above and beyond the imperatives of racial animus – not that racial animus isn’t reason enough for these jackals to act.
Ah’m a-guessin’ Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi
Gosh-durn it. Only 2 right.
three
OK, that’s not so bad.
Five strikes me as a ridiculously high number. I could support one. Maybe two. Three as a nod to political reality. Five???
Having looked at the list, I’m feeling down about this possible voting rights bill. Considering all the states with terrible recent records that aren’t on the list, it’s very weak tea. Better than nothing, of course.
So many possibilities. I had to look. Now compare those four with the number of executions in those states. The support for education. The number of religious, private, and charter schools….Institutions of the state powers-that-be, not attitudes.
Math is not looking like a core competency among the commenters, but that’s ok.
Missed TX, had AL instead. And I had LA, not because of anything other than it appears to be the most commonly corrupt / incompetent state in the union.
Any list of the bottom 4/5 states on almost any metric and my impression is that LA is always on it. Of course, that’s why I put Alabama on the list, too. So it’s not foolproof.
The Republicans are playing a game that’s more subtle than usual, but no less evil. Used to be 9 states for pre-clearance, it goes down to 4, that’s easy to sell to their “we always have to win” base. The Republicans get public credit for bipartisan caring about voting with low information voters/general public which they will use as a dodge as they go full bore on voter suppression everywhere they can including the 5 states that have solid experience doing it. When people try to point out their schemes they can point to this bill as ‘proof’ they aren’t into suppression.
Meanwhile, the 4 states still on the list immediately file suits from the state level with the full expectation that the 5 conservatives on the USSC will limit it much further, ideally invalidating key provisions.
From their POV this is all upside.
“Math is not looking like a core competency among the commenters”
As a mathematical physicist, I resemble that remark! I leave counting to four to my grad students.
Given the USSC’s ruling on the VRA, which can at best be termed “lawless” (as they did not even claim to find a constitution violation), it’s hard to get very optimistic about a new preclearance formula.
Preclearance for all. Just do it.
Only got two. I guessed TX, MS, AL and SC
Decided to look up the Section 5 map again. Here it is in case anyone is interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Us_s5_cvr08.PNG
hey, that’s exactly my guess.
Same.
Really surprised Alabama is not covered. What? They only had four violations?