No taxation without representation.
Republicans propose to tax all Alabamians, but deny Black voters fair representation. How did that work out for the British?
The U.S. Supreme Court issued a shadow docket ruling that gives Black voters a majority in only 14% congressional districts in Alabama a state with a 27% Black population. Three Trump appointed, McConnell pushed justices vote to allow the maps to stand for the 2022 elections.
How did Alabama Republicans draw voting district maps that squeeze 27% of the Black voting population into a single district? Follow this StoryMap created with ArcGIS Online to understand the Republican gerrymandering scheme.
Share this map freely with this link https://arcg.is/u8feT0
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Republican racial gerrymandering
"The U.S. Supreme Court paused a district court’s preliminary injunctions requiring Alabama to draw a new congressional map that contains two majority-Black districts. This means that the state’s current map — which only contains one majority-Black district — will effectively be in place for the 2022 elections. Justice Brett Kavanaugh stated that he voted to stay the preliminary injunctions because Alabama’s election schedule is fast approaching and altering district lines now could cause “significant cost, confusion, or hardship.”
In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, points out that the state’s primary election is four months away, with absentee voting scheduled to begin at the end of March — two months after the district court’s preliminary injunction rulings. Justice Kagan asserts that “To reverse that decision requires upsetting the way Section 2 plaintiffs have for decades—and in line with our caselaw—proved vote-dilution claims.” Justice Kagan admonishes the court’s majority for granting the stay without full briefing or argument, writing that the decision “does a disservice to Black Alabamians who under that precedent have had their electoral power diminished—in violation of a law this Court once knew to buttress all of American democracy.” - Excerpted from Democracy Docket
John Lewis
"The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (VRAA) takes on issues of discrimination in voting by updating and restoring the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) that the Supreme Court gutted in 2013 and 2021. The VRA required that states with a history of discrimination in voting get the Department of Justice to approve any changes they wanted to make in their voting laws before they went into effect, and in the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, the Robert's Supreme Court struck that requirement down, in part because the justices felt the formula in the law was outdated." - Heather Richardson
"For decades, voting rights have been a national goal, their protection a national obligation. Now the Voting Rights Act is gutted by the Supreme Court, Congress cannot pass vital legislation, and the Big Lie has taken hold. Some states are moving backwards, even as other states aim to build a modern and inclusive democracy. If we do not want to find ourselves a house divided, we must renew the drive to make our democracy a national mission again." - Brennan Center
TakeAway: Fight racial voter suppression and call out partisan, activist judges who condone it.
Deepak
DemLabs
