The Fabled Modern Republican Commitment to Civil Rights

So the state of Georgia passed an unconstitutional law forcing people to show an ID card purchased from the state in order to vote. Lest there be any question about the intention of this legislation, the bill’s sponsor “told the Justice Department that if black people in her district ‘are not paid to vote, they don’t go to the polls,’ and that if fewer blacks vote as a result of the new law, it is only because it would end such voting fraud.” This law was accepted as being consistent with the Voting Rights Act by Bush’s hack appointments over the objections of career lawyers at the DOJ.

So what’s the next move? Easy: 1)stop even allowing professional, expert lawyers to offer recommendations, and 2)appoint the only one of five lawyers who–unlike the two levels of courts who have reviewed it–thought the Georgia poll tax was legal to (I swear I’m not making this up) the Federal Elections Commission! And the lawyer in question was also a strong advocate of the practice, famous from Florida 2000, of “regular purges” of felons, people who have the same name as felons, people who have vaguely similar names to felons, black people who once received a ticket for jaywalking, etc., from the rolls.

But in 1920, it was conservative Southern Democrats who wanted to disenfranchise African-Americans, which is far more relevant!