USSC guts the 1965 Voting Rights Act

Yesterday, in the case Louisiana v. Callais, the USSC pretty much finished killing off the rest what was left from what it had not already killed off in the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA). Now, states are free to weaken racial minority votes by gerrymandering them as much as possible. Gerrymandering voting districts to empower minorities is now officially unconstitutional. States legislatures can now reduce the number of minority politicians in their state as much as they possibly can with no regard for charges of racism. Instead, the USSC tells us that gerrymandering is not a matter of unconstitutional racial bias or racism. Instead, it’s just a matter of good faith partisanship. Link, link

That major piece of civil rights laws from the 1960’s is now dead and buried. For America’s radical right authoritarians, bigots and racists, this decision has been a long time in coming. Gutting the VRA was a key goal of America’s radical right authoritarian wealth and power movement ever since it was signed into law in 1965.

Packing, cracking, and stacking

After Callais, partisan gerrymandering that reduces the power of racial and ethnic minorities is legal. This is the new normal. The main ways to reduce the power of a group of voters are called packing, cracking, and stacking. Link, link, link

Packing puts a group of voters together in a single voting district to limit the group’s representation to 1 person. The packed group usually elects its preferred candidate in those districts by overwhelming margins. However, as intended, that wastes the group’s total voting strength, everywhere else. That group of voters is limited representation by 1 or a small number of seats even though its population would justify more.

Cracking splits the group up to dilute their votes to as few representatives as possible, preferably none at all. Here, the crackers spread a geographically concentrated group across multiple voting districts so that they are a minority in each. That usually prevents the targeted group from forming a majority and electing candidates of their choice anywhere. People in power to draw voting districts tend to pack disfavored voters into a few “sink” districts, and crack the rest across surrounding districts. That maximizes the power of whoever draws voting districts.

Stacking is the tactic of combining a minority community with a larger, higher‑turnout majority community. In those districts, the majority reliably controls the district despite voter diversity.

The upshot

With the Callais decision now being the law of the land, the brutal reality is that the 6 MAGA judges who dominate the USSC have now blessed “partisan” packing, cracking and stacking of minority voters as long as states can point to it being a matter of partisanship, not racial bias or racism. In a nutshell, it’s white power legalized. Obviously, white power will be most effective in most or all red states. Most of those states have chafed under and hated the VRA ever since 1965.

The USSC deals with the issue of white racism by saying that state legislators who are mostly white are operating in good faith. Thus they are not biased, or racists, but just good people trying to do their very best for everyone. So, when allegations of racial bias or racism are made as criticisms on those state officials’ honor, the USSC rejects that and says that “partisan” motives, not bias or racism, is a complete answer, even when packed, cracked or stacked Black or other minority voters lose their power.

In other words for the USSC, there is no such thing as racial bias or racism. State legislators are all just jolly good fellows packing, cracking and stacking in good faith partisanship, not racial animosity.

Q1: If gerrymandering for partisan purposes is just good faith politics, does that morally justify doing it?

Q2: Are elections stolen for voters who are disempowered by gerrymandering for either good faith partisan reasons, (at least implicitly) bad faith racist reasons, or a mix of both? Or, can an election only be stolen by widespread voter fraud or vote counting fraud?

Q3: Is the USSC’s unspoken belief in “colorblindness”, which ideologically sweeps away the idea that some legislators actually are racially biased or racists, a sincere belief by the 6 MAGA radicals on the USSC, or are five of them* actually white racists or bigots?

* Clarence Thomas is Black. His mind very likely justifies this differently from how the 5 white MAGA judges claim to justify it. Thomas may actually believe in MAGA’s colorblindness myth. But that story is too complicated to pack into a single blog post.