[trukledeitz]

Agreed, from my limited web research the actual existence of use of this document has been questioned for many years. This is not a new topic, or a new artifact. I've found references to this verbiage going back as far as the 1960's.

Racism and/or vote fixing via the methodology claimed in this article would be a serious and despicable thing, however, as far as I'm aware, we are protected from this now and have been for a long time.

Speaking to many of the outraged commenters, Do you think that the example test is a reasonable analog of any state's voting process currently in use? If not, do you think an analog of this test could be enacted legally under current legal statutes? If so, what additional changes would you propose to supplement current statutes?

[mrgoldenbrown]

We may be protected from the specific literacy tests mentioned here, but there are modern variations that accomplish the same goal of disenfranchising black voters. North Carolina's legislature asked for data showing how white folks and black folks used various voting techniques (in person vs by mail, preregister vs day of register, etc) , and then modified the voting rules to specifically lower black votes. One judge used the phrase "with surgical precision". They were so blatant about their true intention a federal court struck it down.

But other states saw what they did and managed to pass similar laws with just a tad more subtlety and plausible deniability.

[trukledeitz]

Haven't followed specifics in North Carolina. But it seems as though the structure of statutes allowed the court to disallow the action(s), hopefully via injunction to prevent inappropriate implementation. This would however, support the case that statutes and understanding of intent are there.

Hopefully in the other unnamed states/actions that have been taken since, the impact will be small, or preferably, their actions will face similar repeal.

[Terr_]

> Racism and/or vote fixing via the methodology claimed in this article would be a serious and despicable thing, however, as far as I'm aware, we are protected from this now and have been for a long time.

The protection took a major hit in 2013, when the US Supreme court made a 5-4 decision in Shelby vs. Holder [0], permitting some areas to (re-)start a strategy of imposing unconstitutional and discriminatory laws just before an election, with local authorities knowing that any court-case voiding their law can't arrive in time to matter. Then they just enact the same kind of discriminatory law before the next major election, over and over, with no real punishment.

While state legislatures aren't currently choosing to enact things quite as blatant as before, the same exploit makes it possible.

[0] https://www.naacpldf.org/shelby-county-v-holder-impact/

[trukledeitz]

Thank you for including a link for reference. I may have missed some substance in the article, so help me out if I missed it. For my part, I'm not sure that the court would make additions to law, but maybe they should have allowed an option for Congress to update the law so that section 4 applied to all states? I can see that if you view section 4 of the VRA to be an important construct for citizen voting protections, nation wide application of the statute would only further protect the populace...

[Terr_]

> Congress has repeatedly tried and failed to adopt a new Section 5 coverage formula, but there are signs that it is inching ever closer to success. In January 2022 the House passed a package of democracy reforms that included the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would have updated the Section 5 coverage formula. Though the package commanded the support of a majority of senators, it narrowly failed due to the inability of the body to reform its archaic filibuster rules.

-- [0]

The act would have set pre-clearance to occur based on a pattern of recent violations [1], and also made election day a holiday, promoted early-voting etc... So you can guess which party was for it and which was doing the filibustering.

Related, the NVRA has another section about how states aren't supposed to mass-purge voters right before an election [2] (whether it's blatantly discrimiantory or not) but without pre-clearance it may lack teeth.

[0] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/prec...

[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/4

[2] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-virgi...