Yesterday Bryan Preston noted that legislators in Texas are ready to bypass the Department of Justice for approval of new election laws like redistricting, and maybe even voter identification, and seek approval directly from United States District Court instead. A story in contrasts follows. (With a hat tip to Billy Berg), Virginia seems to be flinching from taking on DOJ to get plans approved. This Washington Post story has Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s spokesman saying that Virginia will not challenge the Voting Rights Act. A challenge is an attempt to have the law declared unconstitutional. Fine, but what about the two other options? Option A is to file a redistricting plan with the United States District Court for approval, and that doesn’t have to include a constitutional challenge to the law itself. Option B is to seek a statewide bailout from the Voting Rights Act.
Here’s a little secret. Yes, Virginia, the Department of Justice really DOES want you to bail out. There is nothing the DOJ would like more than for the entire state of Virginia to bailout from the Voting Rights Act. So Virginia, it is yours for the taking, if you apply. Consider Georgia. While Texas talks and Virginia flinches, Georgia has been acting. Thanks to savvy Georgia election lawyers, the peach state has pushed back against DOJ over and over again in the last year. When DOJ objected to Georgia’s citizenship verification program, Georgia sued. They just didn’t sue, they challenged Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act as unconstitutional (the law that forces states to seek federal approval for election changes.) What did DOJ do? Capitulate entirely, and quickly. Just within the last few weeks, it happened again. Facing difficulty getting the regulations which implement citizenship verification approved, Georgia once again sued in United States District Court. What did DOJ do? Capitulate again.
Here is the lesson for three states. First, if you care about state control over their own elections, Georgia has figured it out. Aggressively challenge DOJ’s disdain for your state election law in federal court, and you win. Threaten the whole statutory scheme of Section 5 which employs dozens and dozens of federal bureaucrats, and those same bureaucrats quickly settle the case and approve the state plan. Second, Texas is starting to understand, and this understanding will help get Texas Voter ID approved if Texas and other states follow Georgia’s lead, and not Virginia’s. Lastly, Virginia should follow Georgia’s example and take advantage of rights that are explicitly in federal law either to escape federal oversight, or get the federal court to approve state law changes. Even the DOJ wants Virginia to seek a bailout from Section 5, and Virginia should consider giving Department of Justice exactly what it wants.
Nice job Christian Adams. Nowhere in any media that crosses this desk is there any discussion of just these subjects. Looks like PJM is pulling ahead of the pack, in very important areas of the maneuvering of the Eric Holder ‘justice’ department. Keep ‘er going!
Yep. Photo ID here in Georgia. But we still can’t buy alcohol on sunday, except at a bar or restaurant. God wants us to drive drunk on the Lord’s day.
Yep God wants you to drive drunk on Sunday because you were too stupid to buy your beer on Saturday.
I come from a state that only allows alcohol to be sold from state owned and operated liquor stores. These stores do not open on Sunday’s but we had enough intelligence to figure out that you can buy alcohol on Saturday and use it the next day watching Football or the NASCAR race.
Also there is this thing called a designated driver. You know where one person doesn’t partake of alcohol on that day and drives there friends and family members to and from bars and restaurants.
Of course if you live Somewhere like Atlanta there is these new fangled contraptions called Taxi’s, where for a fee someone will pick you up and drive you to other locations.
Yep you just have to drink and drive because there was no other options.
Sorry, If you can’t remember to buy a six pack on Saturday to get you thru untill Twelve A.M Monday morning, your problem isn’t the blue laws . Just give the rest of us one day we don’t have to content with drunks. Freedom requires responsibility….
Bob and D, you miss the point. Your pastor may want you sober on Sunday, your fellow parishioners may want you sober on Sunday, but the government has no business wanting you sober on Sunday (the fact that you can plan around it is irrelevant).
What if you’re Jewish or Muslim? For consistency, shouldn’t the law also forbid alcohol sales from sundown Thursday to Monday morning? (Keep in mind that under your scheme, it eventually will.)
If you’re Muslim your Imam (and the Koran) don’t want you to drink, period. It’s the (Sharia)Law.
No tim we didn’t miss the point but you sure did.
Once again explain how not being able to buy Alcohol on Sunday stops you from purchasing it on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday and consuming it on Sunday. Looks to me like the Pastor, the other parishioners and the government of Georgia is failing big time in stopping people drinking on Sunday’s. So again epic fail in the “Government is stopping me from drinking on Sunday department because I’m too stupid to buy it on Saturday and save it for Sunday”.
Also laws like the Georgia Blue laws have been found to be constitutional by the Supreme Court:
“MCGOWAN V. MARYLAND, 366 U. S. 420 (1961)”
http://supreme.justia.com/us/366/420/case.html
In it you find this little gem:
“(c) In the light of the evolution of our Sunday Closing Laws through the centuries, and of their more or less recent emphasis upon secular considerations, it is concluded that, as presently written and administered, most of them, at least, are of a secular, rather than of a religious, character, and that presently they bear no relationship to establishment of religion, as those words are used in the Constitution of the United States. Pp. 366 U. S. 431-444.
(d) The present purpose and effect of most of our Sunday Closing Laws is to provide a uniform day of rest for all citizens, and the fact that this day is Sunday, a day of particular significance for the dominant Christian sects, does not bar the State from achieving its secular goals. Pp. 366 U. S. 444-445.”
So the whole religious posturing you and Bill dangle out there, is just a strawman and has no basis in the actual laws. You see for your arguments to hold water the laws, besides stating alcohol cannot be sold, it must also state you have to attend a church that Sunday. It would also state that you couldn’t buy alcohol on any of the other 6 days of the week for consumption on Sunday, for it to rise to unconstitutional levels.
No, bob, you HAVE missed the point. Badly.
No Government has a right to prohibit the activity of two willing participants in a transaction that doesn’t do harm to anyone, ESPECIALLY if said transaction would otherwise be legal if it weren’t for some arbitrary mark on the calendar.
No right whatsoever. I don’t care what its provenence is, democratic or otherwise. It’s an assault on individual liberty, the principle our country is founded on, even if a minor one.
DOJ can’t challenge rights that explicity bind to Federal law.
They are Up to challenge, but Loathe to defend against the indefensible.
Can you believe that in this day and age that a country such as the United States of America would let anyone vote without the proper ID?
Yes, this is easy to believe when one party in a two-party system could never win another election without fraudulent voting, that party has the balls to defend this indefensible position, and the other party has no balls at all and won’t stand up for the rule of law.
God is not the reason for the Blue laws in GA; the fault lies in the voters in that state. Democracy yields strange results, but at least this is at a local (state) level, and not a Federal issue.
I have been closely following voting right for several election cycles. With the spectacle of the Wisconsin goons fresh in memory, I am very interested in a couple of points. Dems frequently accuse Reps of intimidating behavior, but is there any actual record of such behavior by Republicans? By far the majority of such reports are against Democrats, sometimes including physical violence. Secondly, have there been any confirmed convictions of Republicans for having violated election laws? Actual convictions always seem to be against Dems.
Which brings up another point. A functioning democracy as envisioned in the Constitution requires that there be no intimidation and no fraud in elections. Does not intimidation or fraud in elections constitute treason as defined in the Constitution?
Election fraud is an equal opportunity crime. While it is true that most in-person election fraud takes place where one party completely dominates the administration of elections, examples exist where Republicans are accused of breaking the law. Ask Charlie White, the Indiana Secretary of State. There are other examples and I cover and report on nearly every instance of voter fraud that appears at my blog http://www.electionlawcenter.com. Part of the problem is that academia is populated with voter fraud deniers who are unwilling to collect real social science data on the actual behavior in the field. Instead, academics and their enablers in the Soros-funded nonprofit sector like Tova Wang at Demos and the Brennan Center for Justice devote their energies and hundreds of thousands of dollars to claim voter fraud doesn’t exist. The response of the other side? You’re virtually looking at it by reading Pajamas. Outside of a few journalists like John Fund at the Wall Street Journal and ad hoc temporary efforts, little serious attention has been given to amassing a clearinghouse collection of voter fraud instances. Normally human behavior is cataloged by academics. But when the academics are in the business of voter fraud denial, the human behavior is never cataloged.
Does not intimidation or fraud in elections constitute treason as defined in the Constitution?
No.
Article III, Section 3:
“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”
We don’t need to put a false label on voter fraud. We just need to have a political party with the guts to stand up against it.
“Option B is to seek a statewide bailout from the Voting Rights Act.”
okay… and that means….. in layman’s terms… …..
we can’t all be rocket scientists and lawyers
A bailout is a way for a state, county or local jurisdiction to wholly escape from the requirement to submit election law changes to the federal government for approval in a state covered by the law. (All of 9 states and parts of 7). You can read all about it at http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/vot/misc/sec_4.php#bailout.
Seeking a bailout is very different than challenging the constitutionality of the law.
I have received a great deal of feedback about this article. One of the common questions from Virginia citizens is why doesn’t Virginia do something? I suspect it is a misguided fear of a political price. But what price has the Georgia Secretary of State paid? None. Moreover, the upside of defending the state laws, and the state power to implement them, has proved nothing but a net positive for Secretary of State Brian Kemp.
Is there any reason for AG Cuccinelli to continue on the path he is on?
I really don’t know, but if there is to be a showdown on voting rights from States against DoJ, then putting DoJ on the spot now, well before the next federal elections, seems an important thing to do. If it really is easy to take an alternative path, then there may be reasons to stick with the current one… like keep Holder distracted and having to defend the law on voting rights. Do that long enough for enough States to start taking the GA route, and then the reason why the alternatives are necessary becomes plain and clear… well before the federal election.
Do not mistake flinching for obstinacy: they come from very different sources and come to very different ends.
what happens when a person is elected to be president that is not a “natural born Citizen” according to the constitution, meaning that both parents were citizens and born in America?
It means that the person elected as president that is not a “natural born Citizen” is serving illegally and should be removed from office. Go back to that pink site where you belong.