Blurts & Spasms

In answer to Quora question "How has the Supreme Court's decision in Shelby County vs. Holder impacted voter turnout among minorities?"

It's horrific. In several states it immediately inspired legislation that makes it much harder for the poor, the elderly and minorities to vote - and much harder for them to challenge voting restrictions moving forward. And of course we should remember that Section 5 was designed specifically for historic abuses in these very states. In very real terms, this demonstrates how important it is to avoid appointing activist ideologues to SCOTUS. For a thorough overview of the consequences, check out these links:

'Shelby County': One Year Later

Voting Rights Act: After Supreme Court Ruling, 2016 Election Could Endanger Black, Latino Rights

Also check out this Harvard study on the impact of voter ID cards on the poor:

http://today.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/FullReportVoterIDJune20141.pdf

And of course most of the voting restrictions in these states were created to counter totally non-existent "voter fraud." There is zero evidence to support the existence such voter fraud on a large scale (we're talking fractions of one percent of total votes in even the most egregious cases) - so this is just about conservative fear-mongering and the ongoing march of ALEC to control the election process (see Flurry of Voter ID laws tied to conservative group ALEC).

My 2 cents.

Comment from Bruce McKinney: "But did the ruling reduce voter turnout among minorities? The primary election is over. It can be compared to previous elections. What was the result?"

Bruce unfortunately that metric won't help us. Turnout simply has too many input variables (type of election, voter interest in current candidates, state of the economy, major issues in the news at that moment, number of voting locations, hours of those locations, etc.) to reflect impact of a change in law. In particular, the number of folks who show up to vote, but who can't do so for various reasons (long lines, unadvertised changing of voting locations, arbitrary changing of voting hours, misinformation about voting days, removal of folks from voting register, etc.) isn't consistently measured in turnout stats - and a LOT of this is going on right now all over the country. In fact there seems to be a concerted effort to disrupt voting access in just these ways. What we can measure are things like complaints or lawsuits...which have increased considerably...but of course those too have external factors involved, so they can't really be relied upon either. However, it's really clear what's happening if you look closely: take North Carolina's changes to voter registration rules - they are now out of compliance with other aspects of the NVRA (not just Section 5), but the obstructive changes happened immediately after the SCOTUS ruling. Now...are there metrics that clearly show that NC has disrupted countless people's ability to vote? Well....no. But that doesn't make the impact of their efforts any less deleterious - or their intent any less obvious. It's pretty clear what they are trying to accomplish...at least to me within a broader context. As to that context, I recommend perusing this paper: http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1159&context=bjalp.

My 2 cents.