Today Aaron Blake of the Washington Post posted an excellent article entitled “Texas redistricting case: Five things you need to know.” The article is a great read for everyone who may not have been keeping up with Texas redistricting. After all, it’s not the most interesting holiday party topic these days unless you’re a policy wonk or politician. Amazingly it does come up at most of the candidate parties I’ve been to so far. Yes, we do love our Texas politics. The article walks towards what might possibly happen with decisions from SCOTUS and the two district courts involved. More importantly, the article hints at something several who have been watching this process think might happen. That is that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act might possibly be invalidated and thrown out, allowing for all states under preclearance requirements today to avoid that step in the process. So how important is Section 5 and do we still need it after 3 decades?
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Yesterday I blogged about the poor voter turnout we see for local elections and some of the trends seen in voting in America. The bottom line was that for elections that probably have the most direct effect on you as a citizen, those seem to have the least amount of turnout. In talking with some colleagues one comment was that voter apathy was a big contributing factor to turnout. Voters didn’t seem to feel like their vote really mattered in some cases. Then as I was reading my tech blog feeds I found out today the UK was voting on a referendum to change the method of voting from “First Past the Post” to “Alternative or Instant-Runoff Voting.” After doing some digging, the later seems like a more viable approach to helping voters take more stock in the system.
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Just when I thought we were finally getting on the same page about the oil spill caused by the Deepwater Horizon incident the politicians showed their true faces regarding the oil spill. This is really sad when you look at the damage of the spill and its impact to the region in the years to come. Since the incident happened millions of gallons of oil have poured into the Gulf with no complete relief in sight for months. Yesterday BP was able to finally secure a containment cap on the wellhead but officials are not sure if the cap will provide a secure enough seal to capture the escaping oil from the well. Video of the placement of the cap seemed to indicate the pressure of oil escaping may be too much for the cap but we can only rely on the expertise of BP and the government, something that’s proven wrong in the past. However, what really seemed to be the shocker of the day was the Republican response to the incident.
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Earlier this week the White House became embroiled in a little issue that started to boil over for no reason at all. The issue involved White House intervention in the Specter-Sestak race for the Senate in Pennsylvania. As reported by the New York Times today in an overview of the situation White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel requested former Pres. Bill Clinton to ask Sestak to “stand down” and allow Specter to win the primary without opposition. That should have been a non-story about two months ago. Instead it ended up becoming a distraction for the White House when more critical issues dominate the landscape. But why did it even turn into a fiasco? Read more…
As if there wasn’t enough to do in Congress Rep. Joe Barton-TX thinks the issue of the BCS should be dealt with in Congress. Feeling the BCS championship system is an issue our leaders should deal with in Congress he’s been pushing for overturning the BCS and instituting a playoff system. In fact he equates it to “communism.” Now it appears he’s rallied people to help push other members of Congress through with PAC dollars. The Playoff PAC has been formed to fight the BCS in Congress by supporting candidates or members who see things their way. Their first member to support is Rep. Barton, of course. But to elevate this to PAC level status and target candidates in support of their ideas? Too much time and money on their hands if you ask me. Read more…
Today the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 to let stand one of the central provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, that being Section 5 which requires preclearance by voting jurisdictions in a geographic area of the country with prior voting rights violations. The case before the Court driving the decision was Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District v. Holder (08-322) which I wrote about in a prior entry. More importantly the Court decided, in what is being considered as one of the most important cases of this Court’s term, to allow Congress the opportunity to effect changes to Section 5 that align with the current state of voting rights in America. Chief Justice John Roberts stated that “The historic accomplishments of the Voting Rights Act are undeniable, but the Act now raises serious constitutional concerns. The preclearance requirement represents an intrusion into areas of state and local responsibility that is otherwise unfamiliar to our federal system.” Read more…
Today Aaron Blake of the Washington Post posted an excellent article entitled “Texas redistricting case: Five things you need to know.” The article is a great read for everyone who may not have been keeping up with Texas redistricting. After all, it’s not the most interesting holiday party topic these days unless you’re a policy wonk or politician. Amazingly it does come up at most of the candidate parties I’ve been to so far. Yes, we do love our Texas politics. The article walks towards what might possibly happen with decisions from SCOTUS and the two district courts involved. More importantly, the article hints at something several who have been watching this process think might happen. That is that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act might possibly be invalidated and thrown out, allowing for all states under preclearance requirements today to avoid that step in the process. So how important is Section 5 and do we still need it after 3 decades?
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