Mississippi poster, 1963
Now that we've lost our national consensus that it's a good idea for more people to vote, I've found myself wondering whether the current Congress could pass the Voting Rights Act if it were before them now.
When I floated this question in here, Rachel sent over this bit on what else Congressman Todd Akin said when he was talking about rape and pregnancy -- namely the problems with having federal protection for the right to vote:
Well, first of all when you talk about elections, specifically, elections historically have always been a state thing. And I didn't realize how important or how good that was until we had that very close race, that second race with George Bush, and you had something that goes wrong in Florida. And I'm thinking, it sure is good the states manage this and not the federal government otherwise you have to rehold the whole election process. So I do think the states having a say in terms of how they do the voting in their own state. That was a good principle laid down in the past.
Akin's office later clarified his remarks to reflect that he does consider voting a fundamental right.
This One Man, One Vote poster comes from Mississippi in 1963, two years before the Voting Rights Act passed. The history behind that image is American amazing. And I'd like to think Congress today could pass the Voting Rights Act readily, except that it's the same law state Republicans come up against when they make voting harder. And at the national level, Republicans have put support for making voting harder in their platform.
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State's rights trump voting rights!
The Fifteenth Amendment (Amendment XV) to the United States Constitution prohibits each government in the United States from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude" (for example, slavery). It was ratified on February 3, 1870.
The Fifteenth Amendment is one of the Reconstruction Amendments.
AMENDMENT XXIV
Passed by Congress August 27, 1962. Ratified January 23, 1964.
Section 1.
The right of citizens of the United
States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President,
for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative
in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State
by reason of failure to pay poll tax or other tax.
Section 2.
The Congress shall have power to
enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
And if the 15th Amendment were actually enforced there never would have been a voting rights act! Unfortunately people only believe in "the Constitution" when they feel that it's "their rights" being infringed! Welcome to Jim Crow 2012!
They hate this part, too
They seem to hate our Constitution
So true, Zora Renee. The cheery picking of the constitution to fit an agenda, much like with the bible.
No the VRA would not pass today. It would be some liberal something or other and get watered down them blocked in the senate, like everything else.
"states rights trump voting rights!"
Care to re-think that one, or did your Id get out front of your censor?
What?Ain't that the mating call of the right winged loon?
I don't want to believe that it couldn't pass today, but it would probably require at least as much effort as expended in the passage of health care reform, and be at least as watered-down.
Vulture/Voucher 2012
Proving Two Rights DO Make a Wrong!
;-)
Here is something else from the Constitution, which in a way is even more fundamental than the other things that have been referenced: "The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators." (Article I, section 4, paragraph 1)
The part about Senators should be read/ignored in light of the 17th Amendment, but in general the meaning is: state regulation of elections, except when Congress says otherwise. Akin doesn't seem to be aware of this bit of constitutional law.
Thank you Monk! Your point carries across far better than my attempt did.
"And I'd like to think Congress today could pass the Voting Rights Act readily,..."
Good luck with that cause I'm thinking that the "Voting Rights Act" would fail miserably!
vothing rights act hell! i don't think this bunch would pass the thirteenth amendment.
Pretty sure this bunch wouldn't be able to make the argument for ratifying the constitution.
To answer the Title Headline, NO. It would be lucky to come up for a vote let alone pass, while the current Republican House has control.
This Congress couldn`t pass gas !
Congress could never pass the Voter's Rights Act without at least a dozen amendments to ensure that people of color, people of certain religions, and people of certain political slants don't get to vote.
Sure, they could. But I don't think they would. i think they would obstruct the whole thing, start playing the race card again, and end up with people paying to vote. Sounds familiar, right? They are already making voting hours less available, they have to have a photo ID to vote in some cases, they are purging registered voters off the registration lists, so they will be unable to vote unless they reregister.
At LEAST they are letting them know. Instead of showing up to vote and being told you are not registered. HOPEFULLY they are letting them know. What if they aren't?
NO.
I came to post the same thing!
We certainly could not get the idea of public libraries off the ground today. "Free books for poor people? At taxpayers' expense?!? How would we 'monetize' that? And who gets 'naming rights?"
Public institutions, along with voting rights for all, need to be preserved!
actually, new public institutions have to be built. and then anybody who claims to be a patriot and supporter of the constitution could be institutionalized there.
done in one.
I'm surprised they pass anything the way they all fuss and fight
The congress can not pass anything unless the religions who own the us government allowed it. They are in fact machines fueled by money and without the proper mixture of money and foolish BS they will not only refuse to start but will stay home.
I feel like I live in a foreign world. Why do the Republicans fight everything in the constitution? There are laws and rules and they try to change each and every one.
REALLY !! you have got to be joking, this president has no idea what the U.S Constitution is or stands for or why we have it, or have any respect for it. He dose what he wants and is an laughing point in other countries ...he could care less about it or our founding fathers, The man has been in office for 4 years and nothing , now he's for gay rights ,women rights , and now the dream act, to make sure he gets reelected. Dose he think the American people are stupid, Why didn't he attack any of these issues and not wait 100 days before the election .Come on wake up. vice president BIDEN is such a double standard , who says "their going to put yall back in chains ,. This administration is a disgrace and to think he is second in line is frighting !!!! W e were sold a bag of goods and he failed and needs to step a side ... this PRESIDENT is the most divisive i have ever seen.
sally~ try reading the Constitution, I beg people to read it.
http://constitutionus.com/
Sally, I cannot believe that you see it this way. Obama is a constitutional scholar and professor. Please, please read the constitution for yourself. And don't forget the centuries of interpretive laws that decided on how to handle the intent of the constitution. If you ignore the massive amount of law which has become the foundation of our system of government, you go back to a time when slavery was still legal, when women could not vote and where we the people didn't get to elect our own state congressmen and women.
dear sally frothingatthemouth:
bad spelling and grammar aside, your obvious trolling is obvious. you worry about biden being "a heartbeat away" and i'll bet you voted for palin (not michael, unfortunately) to be in just that position. and don't get me started on cheney being there - he doesn't even have a heart.
obama may not have lived-up to our ideals, but at least when he changes it's for a reason. not just because the wind blew that way in the last five minutes.
and, by the way, your use of four exclamation points puts you one short of terry pratchett's rule that five is the sure sign of a disturbed mind. perhaps you misplaced that last one - it's probably with your marbles.
Why is it that everytime I hear a person saying this or see it written on a blog it always comes from a person who attempts to do EVERYTHING they can to be divisive, factually incorrect, incoherent on the US Constitution, etc. Projection must be a new food cause wayy to many Americans are getting fat off it.
On the contrary, Sally Toedfish, I live overseas and President Obama is very well respected, unlike Romney who recently gaffed his way through Europe and Israel, insulting people everywhere he went.
My question is, what do these people think when they go to the polls to vote these despicable candidates into office?
This is something I will NEVER understand!
Hell no! And, if the 19th Amendment were to be voted on again (with only men allowed to vote), it would never pass in the majority of states.
I doubt it. I also doubt if the Bill of Rights would pass today. That's what scares me.
The Voting Rights Act was just a legislative flexing of muscle that enforced the already existing 15th Amendment. The truth is that it is a largely redundant piece of legislation and only needed to be put in place because of the discriminatory voting practices taking place largely in the south that were not being countered by the Federal authorities in those areas (because they agreed with the practices - YAY for prejudice).
It is important to remember that the Constitution does NOT guarantee anyone the right to vote. It only prevents States (who have the right to define who can and can't vote in their states) from creating eligibility requirements based on age, race or sex. States are well within their Constitutional boundaries to require voters to prove residence, as well as age, in order to cast a ballot.
JUst for comparison, Canada, the paradigm for how Liberals think the US should run, requires either a photo ID, two other valid forms of ID that verify residence, or a sworn statement by the voter and another elector who can vouche for the eligibility of the voter. I don't hear them complaining.
The 24th Amendment made voting free in the US, which means that if a State required a Photo ID a requirement, it would need to provide free ID's for those who couldn't pay, or they would be found in violation and the law stricken down. That make you feel more comfortable?
Why don't we just go ahead and require putting a chip in everyone so we can monitor whereabouts and say, "our records show you were not where you said you were"? Vote invalidated.
Claiming to know what everyone thinks reiterates the authoritarian mode; of certain folks.
But, I refer you to my 1.3 comment.
There are several instances of having to bolster what was in the former laws that conflict with the founders' day of legal slavery and women were property.
Always nice to see another Southernist moron come along. Go stick your head back where the sun doesn't shine, you worthless PoS.
You make this argument as though there is already a void in such a requirement. All 50 states require that you register to vote before you are allowed to cast a ballot and all 50 states require that you prove residency before you can register- although each state varies on how exactly you go about proving your residency. Voter ID will not change this; voter ID is a proposed amendment to currently existing legislation that will require that you show an ID when appearing in person to vote. There is no evidence that voter ID will reduce fraud or indeed make the electoral system more integral, but there is evidence that it will disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters for no apparent reason.
I should also point out that yes the US Constitution does in fact delegate that you have a right to vote in the 15th Amendment and it is tentatively false for you to present otherwise. However the 15th Amendment does not deny states the right to regulate the vote. Regulating something is not necessarily an inhibition to that something unless the regulation is done in such a way as to intentionally prevent people from exercising that right. It is humorous that the right wing cannot distinguish the difference between a right and a regulation. When discussing gun regulatory policy we see this obfuscation in full swing. Being in favor of voter ID is contradictory to the argument that any regulation denies gun ownership, yet it is because of that obfuscation that this poster is now defending the limitation of the vote. Hypocrisy strikes again!
That's a disingenuous argument. We do have rules about "voter ID" but they are so easy to meet that no one is kept from voting.
If you don't have an ID card with a photo in Canada, you have a second option: two pieces of ID (not all of which have to have a photo): an Identity card and an original document showing your name and address:
Identity Cards
Original documents
(with name and address)
This is why you don't hear us complaining, no one is changing the rules at the last minute to make sure we liberals can't vote out the conservative PM we all love to hate.
Sorry for posting twice in a row but wasn't able to finish my thought before being rudely interrupted by real life ...
What's even more ridiculous about using Canada's voter ID laws (and the lack of complaint thereof) to bolster your support of these new restrictive state Voter ID laws is that, in Canada, the voter IDs we need to vote are what used to be acceptable in the USA for voting but which are now considered inadequate.
We don't have to have a special card that says we're eligible to vote. And believe me, if the Conservative Party tried to mandate that we all had to trudge over to some government office that is only open one day a week or doesn't even exist in our town to get a "special voting card", you'd most certainly hear us complaining!
First, I'm not from the South. I'm from Ohio - and while Cincinnati does have it's share of backwards people, I'm not one of them. If I had to choose a camp, I'd call myself Libertarian, although, as you can see by my post, I'm not *really* a Libertarian either. I believe in the Constitution. Why? Because as systems of Governments go, having a Representative Republic is actually very good and very stable. We even created rules for how to change the Constitution when the needs arise. The founding fathers limited who could vote because they knew what we seem to have forgotten; the masses are stupid.
As for being a moron, well TCinLA, I forgive you for your behavior and insults. It's very easy to sling mud when you hide behind the Internet. Take note, I'm using my real name, not an alias. I stand in front of my convictions, not behind them. I think my articulation and lack of rhetoric defines my intelligence, not my ability to choose one side or another.
Cartoonthenews! - Actually, there is no place in the Constitution that gives EVERY American the right to vote. The 15th Amendment only prevents States from creating voting qualifications that prevent someone from voting based on race, color or previous condition of servitude. in 1870, Black men still had a hard time voting, particularly in the South - as did citizens of Asian decent. At this point, you still have to be a property owner in many states, but most slaves were given their "40 acres and a mule", so they qualified - they just couldn't get to the polls without risking life and limb. Later, the 19th Amendment added a person's sex to that list, thus giving women suffrage. It was the 24th Amendment, though, that opened the flood gates for voting. That one eliminated poll taxes, which made it so that the poor could vote - which they previously could not do. Still, a state could make it so that, say, the unemployed could not vote. I'm not saying I want that, but there is nothing in the Constitution which prevents it. Though, I daresay that it would be fought to the Supreme Court and this court would probably force the repeal of the law.
80sGirl-2483822 - I'm only stating that presenting SOME form of ID is a good idea. Here's why. UNder the current system in most states, since NONE of our state and federal agencies share information, it's possible for a person to register, then die before casting a ballot. Death records are public, as are voter registrations, but most states do not reconcile the two. So, lets say I work for the Widget party and I want more votes. I find people who already voted, take them to a new polling location and give them the information of the dead person so that they can vote again. This can be done countless times. ANd because no ID is required to cast a ballot, only to register, this can and does happen. Requiring an ID to vote is common sense. The only people who would want to fight it are people who don't want the system to change. Period. There's no reason a person shouldn't be able to prove their eligibility to vote when they cast their ballot. None. If they are unwilling to do so, they are saying they don't want to vote.
While we do have the right to vote, that voice is limited to one vote - one time. That's it. That's our voice. We either begin to reorganize the entire governmental system so that we know who is alive and eligible and who isn't, or we just simply ask people to show some ID when they vote. I don't understand why this is such a horrible thing to ask.
But, the GOP aren't asking for "some" form of ID ... they're demanding a new type of voting-specific ID. If the argument is that some way of identifying yourself is the point, then why aren't more types of ID's permissible the way it is in Canada?
Besides which, while I do understand your scenario, there have been investigations into voter fraud and those have turned up very close to zero instances of fraud. So, why is it such a horrible thing to make these new voter ID laws less of a rush? Why not phase them in as has been done in other states?
This Congress? No.
"Just wondering: Could Congress pass the Voting Rights Act now?"
So my first thought was a regretfully pessimistic reply of, "Could Congress pass anything meaningful right now?!"
Moving on...
They could, but would they? I think the answer to that is yes (with a but) and a firm no, for these reasons.
YES: BUT, Republicans would insist on putting several restrictions on it, and Demarcates would cave to many of them just to get it signed into law.
NO: Obama would support it, hence the republican congress would appose it.
Just rereading my comment...LOL...Demarcates! Oye!
If Romney claims he counseled people in a position of religious authority, what kind of religious counsel did he give? Because everything he has said so far would only benefit the extreme wealthy with no caring of anybody else. What did he tell poor people barrow from your parents to create a business or go to school? Romney has no form of empathy or sympathy in him and he has proven it every day so far. Romney as any form of religious authority apparently is like a robotized moron with a lot of nonsense talk. Romney hasn’t even come close to even living by the standards of Jesus, how can you even expect such a man to even be a religious authority of anything? Romney and his fellow cronies of the past Bush and Chenney administration, Republicans, extreme wealthy, and extremists of hatred are the same crap that has been told of them, power craving, corrupt, hypocrites, greedy, arrogant, and deceivers. Romney you and your fellow cronies are nothing of the light, except to push that dark agenda of yours with lies and no truth. You Romney are nothing but an insult to what it is to be a Christian.
Romney's not a Christian. He's a Mormon.
But Romney claims he is a Christian.
You really think the party of the Southern whites who were happy setting dogs loose on voting rights demonstrators would vote for the Voting Rights Act? These Southernist scum would vote exactly the same way the Southernist scum voted in 1965, the difference being that there are now lots of Southernists who aren't found in the South.
I am pretty sure today’s GOP would find a way to block the 13th amendment abolishing slavery; 15th amendment granting black men the right to vote; 16th amendment establishing the income tax; 17th amendment providing for direct election of Senators; 19th amendment providing women the right to vote; 23rd amendment allowing for DC to vote in Presidential Elections; and the 24th amendment abolishing the poll tax.
Me too! I know they would do just that Bob. Unbelievable and horrifying transformation of the GOP ever since ol' Regan decided that it was "Mourning in America" (Intentional word swap.)
Don't forget, ALL of them voted and the President signed a bill that eliminated out 5th, 6th and 14th Amendment rights already.
NONE of them care about the Constitution on EITHER side of the aisle.
If Grover Nortquist could get his way the 16th would be gone now.
Chris Do you have any idea what it takes to repeal an amendment? I thought not. No President can just "eliminate" them.
Could Congress pass the Voting Rights Act now?
Ah ha ha ha ha ha....
You do good snark sometimes.
It would never get on the floor of the TeaHadi House, and if it did, DeMint and his clown friends wouldn't allow a vote, either.
The way things are now we would be hard pressed to get the 19th amendment passed. I bet the only thing both sides would agree is "Both houses need and deserve a raise." Now that bill would be passed.
In Florida a state id issued ID card costs $25.00. So under Florida's voter ID law isn't that a poll tax that was forbade in the 24th Amendment?
Only if FL requires a state issued Photo ID to vote with no alternatives. Even then, someone would need to challenge the law in court.