Voting Rights Strike Back

Courts have begun weighing in on GOP voter suppression efforts, and they've stopped those laws at least for now in Texas, Florida and today in Ohio.

A federal district court judge restored final weekend early voting to Ohio, per an Obama campaign suit:  “Plaintiffs will suffer irreparable injury if in-person early voting is not restored the last three days before Election Day, and there is no definitive evidence before the Court that elections boards will be tremendously burdened,” Economus wrote.

The judge even cited Bush v. Gore in his ruling, which grants a preliminary injunction.  However, Ohio's GOPer government is appealing, and the court of appeals in Ohio is very GOPer friendly.  So this one isn't over.

Nor is Pennsylvania, where the state supreme court begins reviewing that voter ID law in two weeks.

It's not quite over in Texas either.  This week the voter ID in Texas was struck down in a unanimous decision by a three judge panel in federal court, all appointed by G.W. Bush.  Notably the court used the 1965 voting act to apply the finding that the law's impact would "fall most heavily on the poor and that a disproportionately high percentage of African-Americans and Hispanics in Texas live in poverty."  The Texas GOP government is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, and this court left open the possibility that a nondiscriminatory voter ID law could be crafted.  

But registration repression by law is over in Florida. After a federal court judge said he would remove all of the harsh restrictions on registration this week, the GOPer Florida government is capitulating.

Florida appeals are done, their law is dead, but the damage may have already been done.  New Democratic voter registration in the state has so far collapsed.  Registration rates have increased in recent months but there's way too much ground to make up.  The Obama campaign has so far said they aren't worried, those voters registered in 2008 are still there.  But with Ohio looking pretty good, Florida seems to be shaping up as the biggest challenge.

In general, however, these court decisions coming one after another are a good sign.  Courts watch each other just as they rely on precedents.  The fact that these laws remain on the books and in the news so far into the campaign have already done damage, simply by confusing people about whether or not they can register or vote.  But to be ultimately successful, they must have a measurable impact on the outcome in November.

Which means it's up to voters to be determined that they aren't going to have their most fundamental self-governing right taken away by cynical totalitarian politicians.