He Fought The Law And The Law Lost

Next week Bon and I are going to do our Year's Bests and Worsts for 2011, but I'll let you know right now that the biggest political story of the year continues to be the Republican efforts to disenfranchise minority voters in red states with voter ID laws.  Today, Eric Holder and the Justice Department slapped down South Carolina's voter ID law as a blatant effort to reduce minority voter turnout and eligibility in the state.

The Justice Department on Friday rejected South Carolina's law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls, saying it makes it harder for minorities to cast ballots. It was the first voter ID law to be refused by the federal agency in nearly 20 years.

The Obama administration said South Carolina's law didn't meet the burden under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which outlawed discriminatory practices preventing blacks from voting. Tens of thousands of minorities in South Carolina might not be able to cast ballots under South Carolina's law because they don't have the right photo ID, Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez said.

South Carolina's law was passed by a Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by GOP Gov. Nikki Haley. The state's attorney general vowed to fight the federal agency in court.

And that's what Republicans are counting on: another terrible Citizens United-style decision that will allow Republicans at the state level to put up as many obstacles to voting as necessary in order to maintain permanent control over the demographically shifting South and Midwest.

But the reality is that voter impersonation, which is what all these voter ID laws are trying to stop, simply doesn't exist.  The "unintended consequences" of "protecting our sacred vote" is to exclude thousands (and in the case of South Carolina, around a quarter million voters) from being able to vote at all.  That's the real point, and the Civil Rights Act still gives the Justice Department the power to stop idiocy like that...for now.

After SCOTUS gets this, who knows.  By the way, Supreme Court Justices?  Appointed by Presidents.

Chris Savage at Eclectablog has more on this decision and how it may apply to Michigan's Emergency Manager laws, too.