re: #16 Dark_Falcon

I know, but I also know that Congress didn’t really examine the situation on the ground, only the politics. As a practical matter, it was impossible for the Republicans in Congress to propose a change to Section 4, because no matter what change they proposed they would have been attacked as racists. Given the additional internet rumor mongering that black people were going to lose their right to vote (don’t yell at me, because chain emails saying just that were circulating), the Congress ordered s narrative crafted to justify a political decision. It did not really evaluate the situation.

I’m not going to deny that the VRA authorization is as political as it gets, and probably nobody wanted to really get into the weeds on this.

On the other hand, is SCOTUS really entitled to void acts of Congress because Congress allegedly didn’t show its work? Congress did build a record for the VRA reauthorization, to try to make everyone happy. Courts usually show considerable deference to such a record, but not in this case. Can’t imagine why.

Seems reasonable to me that the reason the GOP didn’t fight anything in Congress in 2006 was that the coordinated GOP anti-VRA strategy was to be a SCOTUS case, and a little bird told the Congressional republicans that the more the reauthorization of 2006 looked like a rubber stamp, the easier it would be for SCOTUS to kill the VRA. After all, this SCOTUS told all the world how to run this scam some years ago.

BTW, killing the VRA is not an exaggeration. In jurisdictions bound and determined to suppress the minority vote, an effective pre-clearance regime is the only option. Otherwise, it is a perpetual game of legal whack-a-mole.