For those of you who weren't paying attention, back in May the Supreme Court put the final nail in the coffin of the Voting Rights Act. There was enormous angst on the left about this, with articles like the following pretty typical in the aftermath of the decision:

https://afj.org/article/the-supreme-cour...-complete/

Roberts was castigated, lots of anger all around, the CBC even went so far as to attempt to kill any College Sports Legislation b/c they thought that might, I dunno, somehow get back at Republicans or something? Anyway, what has been the fallout thus far?

Democrats will probably end up with 56 Senate seats and around 260 House seats. Either party has had more than 56 seats in the Senate only once since 1981. Neither party has had more than 258 House seats since 1993. A black man is quite likely to be elected as a Mississippi Senator for the first time since Reconstruction. Florida elected its first black Governor. Interestingly enough, those 2 men are from different parties, too.

This is just my personal thoughts on the matter, but I felt that 50 years ago, the VRA was an important tool to make sure that every voice was heard, but in recent years, rather than ensuring that minority voices were heard, it was often used to dilute the minority vote into a few very low number of majority minority districts. Now? Every candidate has to take minority voices into account. Sure, this was just one election, but I'd say that repealing Section 2 looks like it could end up being a very good thing for minority voters. Perhaps not for minority politicians, as reps from formerly minority majority districts will now need to appeal to all of their constituents instead of just 51% of them, but good for voters who perhaps don't want to be typecast as "minority" and would prefer to just be "American".

(Today 02:47 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  For those of you who weren't paying attention, back in May the Supreme Court put the final nail in the coffin of the Voting Rights Act. There was enormous angst on the left about this, with articles like the following pretty typical in the aftermath of the decision:

https://afj.org/article/the-supreme-cour...-complete/

Roberts was castigated, lots of anger all around, the CBC even went so far as to attempt to kill any College Sports Legislation b/c they thought that might, I dunno, somehow get back at Republicans or something? Anyway, what has been the fallout thus far?

Democrats will probably end up with 56 Senate seats and around 260 House seats. Either party has had more than 56 seats in the Senate only once since 1981. Neither party has had more than 258 House seats since 1993. A black man is quite likely to be elected as a Mississippi Senator for the first time since Reconstruction. Florida elected its first black Governor. Interestingly enough, those 2 men are from different parties, too.

This is just my personal thoughts on the matter, but I felt that 50 years ago, the VRA was an important tool to make sure that every voice was heard, but in recent years, rather than ensuring that minority voices were heard, it was often used to dilute the minority vote into a few very low number of majority minority districts. Now? Every candidate has to take minority voices into account. Sure, this was just one election, but I'd say that repealing Section 2 looks like it could end up being a very good thing for minority voters. Perhaps not for minority politicians, as reps from formerly minority majority districts will now need to appeal to all of their constituents instead of just 51% of them, but good for voters who perhaps don't want to be typecast as "minority" and would prefer to just be "American".

Well its not a good thing for white Democrats. Democrats swept the Georgia state elections. 6 of the 7 were Black women. 1 was a white male.