MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow has for a long time covered stories about the GOP’s various efforts at minority voter suppression, the latest one being the effort by North Dakota Republicans to suppress the vote of Native Americans in the state who were key to Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp‘s win in 2012. According to Maddow, right after Sen Heitkamp’s win in 2012, North Dakota state GOP officials embarked on a scheme to suppress the vote of her key Native American voting base.
The GOP suppression scheme of choice was to require all Native Americans to present an ID with a street address in order to vote, something they knew many tribal IDs don’t have because they live in reservations. According to O.J. Semans, Executive Director of Four Directions, a Native American advocacy group, “The street addresses is very common maybe in cities but on reservations, street addresses literally do not exist.”
So you ask, “Well @Emolclause if Maddow has covered a lot of GOP voter suppression stories why is this North Dakota case special?” Here’s why. According to Maddow, a very troubling pattern is developing. Unlike in previous cases where such blatant GOP voter suppression tactics were being easily struck down in federal court, now it appears that the conservatives at the Roberts Supreme Court are increasingly affirming these shocking GOP voter suppression tactics–yeah you heard that right–the conservatives in the Roberts Supreme Court are helping the GOP cheat in elections.The conservative majority at the Roberts Supreme Court knows full well that imposing the street address requirement on Native American voters in North Dakota will suppress their vote but they still affirmed the challenged GOP state law–the height of injustice.
Sadly the injustice by the conservative majority at the Roberts Supreme Court doesn’t end there. Maddow recently did a story about how Texas GOP officials are trying to suppress the vote of students at the predominantly Black Prairie View A & M University which is located in predominantly White Whaler County(you’ll probably remember Whaler County due to Sandra Bland). At issue here is whether the Black PVAMU students should vote in Whaler county simply because they attend school there. According to Maddow a decades old Supreme Court precedent already settled this issue in the Black students’ favor but now Texas @GOP officials are bringing the issue back because of a recent Roberts Supreme Court decision.
Maddow’s guest Mike Siegel a Dem congressional candidate said, “This very late change to the voting status of the students is something that would not have been allowed under the previous version of the Voting Rights Act. Texas used to be in pre-clearance and this is something that because its an impediment to voting wouldn’t have been allowed but for that recent Supreme Court[Roberts] decision that invalidated part of the Voting Rights Act.”
Bottom line one is left wondering what the founding fathers would think of the Roberts Supreme Court which is now literally helping a major political party disenfranchise voters of color? It is already very hard for Americans to respect the Roberts Supreme Court which now features Kavanaugh given his very shady confirmation process. Now that on top of that the court is literally helping GOP to disenfranchise minority voters, only God knows what the future holds for the once hallowed High Court.
For those of you very happy with @Emolclause’s activism don’t shy away from the “tip jar” below on your way out