Put the Zombie of Voting Inequality Back in Its Tomb Already

Charles P. Pierce.--SS

Put the Zombie of Voting Inequality Back in Its Tomb Already:

Eric Holder's speech on Tuesday picked up where we let down LBJ after the civil-rights movement. But will 2012's new movement be enough?

Someone is still going to have to explain to me how the "Brooks Brothers Riot" that stopped the Dade County recount in 2000 wasn't a violation of the Voting Rights Act. Groups of individuals, many of them on the payrolls of various Republican congresscritters, were flown to Miami on corporate jets for the express purpose of disrupting a perfectly legal exercise of Florida's right to set its own election laws. They did this through the physical intimidation of the election officials in the building where those officials were performing their lawful duties under the law. (That said officials folded in the face of this intimidation is unfortunate, but beside the point here.) What I'm saying is, I'm still trying to catch up here.

On Tuesday, Attorney General Eric Holder took a big old whack at the efforts by Republican governors and Republican legislators to kill by a thousand cuts the voting rights of millions of Americans who do not much like Republicans in general. He gave his speech at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin. It so happens that it was on this very issue that LBJ gave the greatest...

(Much more after the jump)