"The precarious position of voting rights"

Advancement Project co-director Penda Hair's article at MSNBC.com, which begins:

Voting is the cornerstone of democracy – at least, it should be. But American democracy shifted dramatically on June 25, 2013, when the Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holder decision gutted a landmark provision of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). A majority of justices struck down the coverage formula for the VRA’S Section 5, which had required federal pre-approval of new voting practices in mostly southern states, effectively halting its protections. The court acknowledged that “voting discrimination still exists,” and noted that Section 2 bans voting discrimination on the basis of race throughout the land.

 

This month, the power of Section 2 to combat such wrongs was put to the test in the U.S. Supreme Court, with cases seeking to stop voting restrictions under Section 2 in North Carolina and Wisconsin. The high court’s divergent decisions in these cases – recognizing the harm of unjust policies in one state, but failing to see the damage to voters in another – illustrate how post-Shelby voting rights are in a tensely precarious position.