Addressing Federalism and Separation of Powers Social Violence: The Ordinary Citizen Beyond Shelby County, North Carolina and Ohio and Voting Rights

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Davis
2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 649-662 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadine Suzanne Gibson

The Voting Rights Act created a method of oversight called “preclearance,” which was designed to prevent changes in state and local voting laws that may negatively affect minority groups. Following the ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, however, preclearance is no longer enforced. This study assesses the impact of recently implemented local voting restrictions on turnout across various demographic and political subgroups in North Carolina. Unlike other states, preclearance in North Carolina was implemented at the county level. Two approaches to the regression discontinuity-design are used to estimate de facto minority disenfranchisement. This study finds that the removal of Section 5 preclearance negatively affected Democratic primary turnout, but did not affect Democratic vote share. Secondary effects resulting in the removal of Section 5 preclearance may be responsible for disproportionately lower levels of overall turnout in formerly covered counties in 2016. Ultimately, the data suggest minimal effects on minority turnout rates.


2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-171
Author(s):  
Jonathan Rothchild

AbstractThis article develops a legal and theological critique of the Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder decision that dismantled portions of the Voting Rights Act. Defending the Voting Rights Act in light of four basic features of voting rights—access, participation, empowerment, and expression of conscience—I refute the Shelby decision in terms of its oversimplified notions of discrimination and its overly narrow construal of federalism as state sovereignty and equality. I draw upon Catholic social teaching's subsidiarity and Johannes Althusius's federalism to defend the individual and communal dimensions of voting rights. I examine post-Shelby developments, including voter-identification laws, and I argue that such laws are unfounded and have deleterious effects. I conclude by offering modest recommendations for a post-Shelby world, including continued roles for Congress and the Department of Justice, the use of intermediary organizations, and the rescinding of felon disenfranchisement laws.


Author(s):  
Lucas A. Powe

This chapter discusses the legal battles over the issue on voting rights in Texas. The Voting Rights Act, with its preclearance requirements for the South, was adopted in 1965 and reauthorized in 1970, 1975, 1982, and 2006. A few days after the 2006 reauthorization, the municipal utility district (MUD), created in Austin, Texas, in the 1980s, sued the U.S. attorney general, claiming that it should be allowed the advantage of the “bailout” (from preclearance) provisions of the Act. Edward Blum was the man behind the lawsuit. The chapter examines the MUD case and the one that followed it, Shelby County v. Holder. It also considers the efforts of Republicans to prevent voter fraud in the state through voter identification, resulting in SB 14, or voter ID bill, in the Texas Senate.


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