Given this environment, what would happen if a philanthropic organization or individual like the Gate’s Foundation or George Soros put up money to get these people voter IDs and allow them to vote?
I wonder if these same justices would block something like that. And if they did it would basically sending a message that we don’t want you to vote at all. How could they justify that?
If money is free speech as per Citizen United then why wouldn’t spending money to help register voters be viewed the same way?
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Gerrymandering of congressional districts, the absurdly undemocratic Senate, the archaic electoral college, the perversion of speech to encompass billionaires money and insidious voter suppression schemes; these add up to democracy lost. This is why we have a Putin wannabe in the White House and a congressional majority willing to conspire with him to subvert the rule of law. This is why we have a Supreme Court majority ready to defend all of this and worse. If there is any hope of beginning to reverse this, a voter backlash will need to come in November. After that it will be too late, at least by peaceful means.
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Coastal liberals really need to grow up. In rural Virginia you can't go to the town dump without a photo ID. We handle our garbage here! IDs are needed to enter the local court house and certainly when we are called for jury duty! The same ID is required to use our wonderful town pool and recreation complex, let alone to access the numerous government support programs! No one lacks an ID who wants one!
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@Donna Gray the state of Virginia has trained its people like a group of performance seals genuflecting at every place they set up a check point.
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The Gorsuch-Kavanaugh Court, unless the Chief Justice disallows it because he has high regard for his own place in history and might not want it sullied by their fanaticism, will do the following, at least the following:
It will nullify Roe v. Wade and find a "constitutional" basis to find that laws have to do with reproductive termination lie outside the 10th Amendment powers of the states (so my state, your state won't be able to allow choice because there will be no choice allowed, period).
It will find that Justice Sullivan and the 5-4 majority was in error in finding gay marriage constitutional and so it will overturn that in its entirety.
It will further eviscerate at every opportunity the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
It will look for the case on which to hang over-turning as much, nearly all or all of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. They have been meaning to get that one for 50 years now and they mean to do it.
That's who these people are -- these men are. Three women on the court, who reflect the majority face of the population's majority gender; six men on the court, one a moderate, the other five of whom, including the African American one, represent the ever shrinking, ever more strident quadrant of the population, white men who are either angry, entitled, or both and yearn to turn the clock back to 1900.
Except these five now have the power to do that. Watch them do it and take from it one lesson
Vote, never miss an election. Vote.
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The short answer is that for demographic and racial groups that Republicans would rather didn't vote, voting will certainly become more difficult at best. Voter fraud will remain what it has previously been, a non issue, except in the minds of the mentally disturbed conspiracy mongers.
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Robed robbers of rights. The “originalists” like the 3/5ths clause and women not voting.
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The sad fact of the matter is that Neil Gorsuch and Bret Kavanaugh ... and presumably any more justices Trump nominates ... come from a list of the most radical-reactionary judges in the United States.
Trump campaigned on the promise that he'd nominate judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade, end affirmative action, end voting rights protections, provide "protection" for the views of white conservative Christians generally (including reducing separation of church and state and favoring conservative Christianity and white identity politics), ending equal rights advancements (women, LGBTQ , and most ethnic and racial minorities will now go back to where these conservatives feel they belong).
And of course it goes without saying that environmental protections will all vanish -- god will fix everything, or take us all with the rapture ... right?
So all of the voices on the right claiming and clamoring that Kavanaugh won't be "too extreme" are just trying to gull the easily duped.
If Kavanaugh isn't as radically extreme as the right hopes, then they'll be yelling about how they have been "betrayed" again. But don't bet on that. The names on that list come from a very select club ... selected to do exactly what they claim they'll do.
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Our increasingly Republican governments at the federal and state levels will mean less access to the right to vote for people who are not wealthy or white. That is one of their core goals and Kavanaugh's placement on the supreme court will just accelerate that trend.
But we should not overlook the many other ways in which our ability to select our government is perverted by the system, which one might almost call rigged. Partisan gerrymandering has been practiced by both parties and routinely disenfranchises even those of us who are able to cast votes. The electoral college is antiquated, byzantine and absurd yet shows not sign of being abolished. I vote in every election and yet I feel that I have had very little impact on the constitution of our government. One Koch brother can exert far, far more influence that many hundreds of regular Americans and I doubt that I will ever live long enough to see that change.
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