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> what are your thoughts about it, and how can it happen in America? I've seen every single proposal be rejected in congress. The Republican Party has, for dec

> what are your thoughts about it, and how can it happen in America? I've seen every single proposal be rejected in congress. The Republican Party has, for decades at least, had a program of making it more difficult to vote. I'm not saying that to be partisan, it's just a fact (sometimes facts favor one party or the other, but we shouldn't ignore them, twist them, or try to create a false equivalence). I believe it's because they are the minority party, especially among working class people. A law called the Voting Rights Act was passed in the 1960s that restricted many of those practices, which had been used to prevent minorities from voting in much of the South. In the last few years the Supreme Court said the Voting Rights Act was no longer valid, and many of the practices (though in different forms) quickly returned in Republican-controlled states. For example, in many places they increased the documentation required to register to vote, and then made it harder to obtain the documentation. And then they dramatically reduced the voting locations, so that registered voters have to travel further and wait in long lines in order to vote.

chimeracoder 10y ago
> In the last few years the Supreme Court said the Voting Rights Act was no longer valid That is not what they said. They did not overturned the VRA. What they did was overturned a section which labeled specific states and counties that were subject to increased scrutiny and protection, on the grounds that demographics have changed in the last 50 years, and that now that list is out of date and includes too many districts which no longer need the increased protection. They noted that the law could and should be amended to specify districts which previously were not in need of protection and now are, but that is outside the role of the Supreme Court, so they left it up to Congress to fix that.
- TheCoelacanth 10y ago
  They did not overturn the VRA; they just overturned the part that allows the whole thing to be enforced in a timely manner.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > They did not overturn the VRA; they just overturned the part that allows the whole thing to be enforced in a timely manner. Specifically, they overturned the preclearance requirement, which requires places that have been found to discriminate in the past to get clearance from the Justice Department before implementing changes to voting procedures. This requirement was to prevent jurisdictions from implementing changes that have major deleterious effects on specific groups and then having one or more elections occur (and then official acts and laws passed shaped by the results of those elections) while the legal challenges work up through the system.

chimeracoder 10y ago

> In the last few years the Supreme Court said the Voting Rights Act was no longer valid That is not what they said. They did not overturned the VRA. What they did was overturned a section which labeled specific states and counties that were subject to increased scrutiny and protection, on the grounds that demographics have changed in the last 50 years, and that now that list is out of date and includes too many districts which no longer need the increased protection. They noted that the law could and should be amended to specify districts which previously were not in need of protection and now are, but that is outside the role of the Supreme Court, so they left it up to Congress to fix that.

TheCoelacanth 10y ago
They did not overturn the VRA; they just overturned the part that allows the whole thing to be enforced in a timely manner.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > They did not overturn the VRA; they just overturned the part that allows the whole thing to be enforced in a timely manner. Specifically, they overturned the preclearance requirement, which requires places that have been found to discriminate in the past to get clearance from the Justice Department before implementing changes to voting procedures. This requirement was to prevent jurisdictions from implementing changes that have major deleterious effects on specific groups and then having one or more elections occur (and then official acts and laws passed shaped by the results of those elections) while the legal challenges work up through the system.