TEXAS has not had a good time of it this month in federal court. Four times in a fortnight, a federal judge has determined that the state legislature discriminated against black and Hispanic voters by drawing up electoral maps or voter-ID requirements that—by design, effect or both—reduce minority influence in the voting booth.
Ken Paxton, Texas’s defiant attorney-general, promises to appeal what he calls “outrageous” rulings. But the string of defeats tells a tale of race-tinged Republican electoral hardball that may earn America’s second-largest state a stint in the dog-house. The Voting Rights Act (VRA) is far from what it once was, thanks to the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Shelby County v Holder gutting the law’s requirement that certain states get approval from the Department of Justice before changing electoral rules. But the VRA’s section 3(c) survives, providing that states caught discriminating intentionally could be put back under a “preclearance” requirement—and Texas’s repeated...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2waZ1mw
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