Kirata
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quote:
ORIGINAL: vincentML
Do you agree or disagree? Why?
Mother Jones lays out the groundwork for the question as follows...
First, under the principle of federalism, states have an interest in making and administering their own laws without getting prior permission from the federal government. Second, under the Fifteenth Amendment, the federal government has an interest in making sure that states don't abridge the right to vote based on race or skin color. When the Supreme Court upheld the VRA in South Carolina v. Katzenbach, it explicitly noted that preclearance tested the boundaries of federal authority:This may have been an uncommon exercise of congressional power, as South Carolina contends, but the Court has recognized that exceptional conditions can justify legislative measures not otherwise appropriate.... Congress knew that some of the States covered by the Act had resorted to the extraordinary stratagem of contriving new rules of various kinds for the sole purpose of perpetuating voting discrimination in the face of adverse federal court decrees. Congress had reason to suppose that these States might try similar maneuvers in the future in order to evade the remedies for voting discrimination contained in the Act itself. Under the compulsion of these unique circumstances, Congress responded in a permissibly decisive manner. Is it still the case that there exists "reason to suppose that these States might try similar maneuvers in the future"? Chief Justice Roberts went straight to the point by asking the Obama administration’s lawyer, "Is it the government’s submission that the citizens in the South are more racist than the citizens in the North?" Justice Alito returned to the issue by asking, "Why shouldn’t it apply everywhere in the country?"
The Obama administration's responses were not reported. But we may have been given a clue to at least part of what's at issue by Brian Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative.
"Mass incarceration," he argues, "has radically changed society." He speaks of urban communities, like Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Washington, where 50 percent of young black men are in prison, on parole or probation and where the disenfranchisement of convicted felons "has horrific implications for the political aspirations of people of colour." ~Global Grind
If that's an example of the kind of racism (or "racism") at issue here, then part of the question is whether or not a State, any State, should have the right to bar convicted felons from voting. That's a question with much broader reach, and one which gives credence to a claim that Section 5 of the Voter Rights Act is unfair, because it applies only to eight States, plus parts of two others and some scattered counties.
According to Procon.org, there are 12 states that permanently bar convicted felons from voting; 19 that only restore the right after the individual is released from incarceration, parole, or probation; 4 additional states that restore the right after the individual is released from incarceration or parole (they don't count probation); 13 atates that restore the right after the individual is released from incarceration (they don't count parole or probation); and only 4 states that allow convicts to vote by absentee ballot while incarcerated.
Congress could amend the Act so that it applies equally to all States. But as the Supreme Court recognized in South Carolina v. Katzenbach, that would require the existence of exceptional conditions in order to be upheld. Whether or not those conditions may be said to exist, it seems clear to me that at least as the law is currently written it should not be allowed to stand.
K.
< Message edited by Kirata -- 3/2/2013 12:28:41 PM >
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JUSTICE ATONIN SCALIA - 
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