Rick HasenVerified account

As a country, we've passed constitutional amendments expanding the franchise and a Voting Rights Act to protect it. /1

So now all adult, citizen, resident non-felons have a formal right to vote. /2

And the struggle is over the rules Congress and the states impose to allow people to exercise that right. /3

While Congress has generally passed laws protecting the franchise, things have been different in the states. /4

Some states, with Republican legislatures and governors, have passed laws making it harder to register and to vote. /5

These Republican-passed laws are sometimes justified on anti-fraud grounds, or administrative efficiency, or public confidence. /6

But when it gets down to it, they are usually motivated by a desire to depress Democratic/minority turnout and gain political advantage. /7

As to the one-way ratchet argument "why can Democrats expand voting rights but Republicans cannot contract them?", /8

the answer depends on view of the franchise. If voting is about allocating power among political equals, then courts should not allow /9

states to make it harder for eligible voters to register and vote unless there's a real, not pretextual, reason for doing so. /10

But not all buy that we are truly political equals. And say if voters are "lazy" or don't care, voting should be tough to weed out "/11

"low information voters." Early voting is bad, on this theory, because people can't be trusted to know if they have enough info to vote /12

I'm firmly in the voting about sharing equal political power camp, so I find unnecessary voting restrictions against current US ideals /13

and I hope a new Supreme Court, through the Constitution and Voting Rights Act interpretation, sees it that way too. /14

People risked their lives to gain right to vote,but we need court protection until all agree to the right in practice not just in theory/end