Former slave state officials wasted little time in announcing their intention to move forward with voter suppression laws that had previously been blocked under the Voting Rights Act—voter identification laws, early voting laws, even voter registration laws. But Democrats in Congress just as quickly announced their intention to pass an updated replacement for Section 4. Added to this past year’s electoral experience, when the response to voter suppression efforts lead to the highest minority voter turnout ever, the prospects are potentially disastrous for the GOP. In that respect, the conservatives’ over-reach in Shelby County may turn out to be less like Plessy, and more like an even more infamous case, Dred Scott, which tried to settle slavery as a political issue once and for all, but only ended up fueling the rush toward civil war and eventual emancipation.
Paul Rosenberg, at Random Lengths News