[EL] Opinion: Voting Rights Are on the Ballot in 2020

[Elias, Marc (Perkins Coie)]

Yesterday I posted an opinion piece about the Republican Party’s recent opposition to reauthorization of the VRA and the role that the Supreme Court’s partisan gerrymander ruling had in that decision.

After the 2000 Census, Republicans realized that by cloaking their partisan redistricting schemes in the disingenuous rhetoric of protecting minority voting rights and supposed compliance with the Voting Rights Act itself, Republican state legislatures could pack minority voters into electoral districts to limit the number of Democratic districts while claiming to empower minority voting communities. In this way, Republicans piously disclaimed partisan motives and instead insisted that their redistricting maps were evidence of their firm commitment to the Voting Rights Act.

In 2016 the Supreme Court struck down the North Carolina congressional map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander — and called out the Republican legislature for its cynical ploy. Justice Kagan warned legislators that using race as the predominant means to draw a district remains constitutionally suspect even if it is done “with the end goal of advancing their partisan interests — perhaps thinking that a proposed district is more ‘sellable’ as a race-based VRA compliance measure than as a political gerrymander and will accomplish much the same thing.”

Once the guise of concern for minority voters fell away, shame and embarrassment proved no barrier to Republicans’ extreme partisan gerrymandering. Earlier this year, a conservative Supreme Court majority approved this tactic and the resulting map, finding itself and the federal judiciary unable to formulate a “manageable standard” to determine when a partisan gerrymander is unconstitutional.


If you are interested in reading the full piece, you can find it here: https://medium.com/@marceelias/voting-rights-are-on-the-ballot-in-2020-37777f4ac976?source=friends_link&sk=fa50df0d1f6548beb0242313e6b430d5


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Marc E. Elias
Perkins Coie LLP
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For scheduling assistance, or if it is urgent, contact Allie Rothenberg: ARothenberg at perkinscoie.com<mailto:ARothenberg at perkinscoie.com> or 908-377-7531.


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