Pirate's Cove

This is not something from some fringe bat guano insane lefty website: NBC News allowed this from Noah Berlatsky. This is a serious Hot Take from people unhinged over losing an election

Trump voters motivated by racism may be violating the Constitution. Can they be stopped?

If the Trump era has taught us anything, it’s that large numbers of white people in the United States are motivated at least in part by racism in the voting booth. Donald Trump ran an openly racist campaign for president, calling Mexicans rapists and criminals, regularly retweeting white supremacists and at least initially balking at repudiating former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Trump made it clear in his campaign that “Make America Great Again” meant that America was greater when white people’s power was more sweeping and more secure. White voters approved of that message by a whopping 58 percent to 37 percent.

But, see, in Liberal World, everyone who voted for Trump is a raaaaacist, so, y’all are all motivated by raaaaacism, even those who were actually voting against Hillary Clinton rather than for Trump (like myself).

Some politicians deny the evidence, no doubt because they don’t want to alienate white voters, including prejudiced ones. Other commentators try to parse whether Trump’s racism will be a winning strategy in 2020. Terry Smith, a visiting professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, offers a different response in his new book, “Whitelash: Unmasking White Grievance at the Ballot Box.” Rather than excuse racist voters or try to figure out how to live with their choices, he argues that racist voting is not just immoral, but illegal. The government, Smith says, has the ability, and the responsibility, to address it.

This sounds radical. But Smith argues that it’s in line with the Constitution and with years of court rulings. For example, Smith points out that racist appeals in union elections are illegal and that an election in which one side uses racist appeals can be invalidated by the National Labor Relations Board. Similarly, in the 2016 case Peña v. Rodriguez, the Supreme Court ruled that when a juror expresses overt bigotry, the jury’s verdict should be invalidated.

“When voters go to the booth, they’re not expressing a mere personal preference,” Smith told me. According to Smith, voters who pull the levers to harm black people are violating the Constitution. If the Constitution means that overt racist appeals undermine the legality of union elections, it stands to reason that they undermine the legality of other elections, as well.

Well, good luck making this happen. Wrongthink will be verboten! And, of course, they want to do away with voter ID, because it’s raaaaacist….say, isn’t it rather real racism to think that blacks are too dumb and/or poor and/or lazy to obtain a proper ID? It’s not really hard to do, and all states with voter ID laws will give people for free the proper ID for voting.

Even more ambitiously, Smith suggests expanding the Voting Rights Act to address the racist patterns of voting in Senate elections in the South. Because the majority of white voters in the South vote Republican, and because they outnumber black voters, there isn’t a single Democratic senator from the Deep South other than Doug Jones in Alabama, who may well lose his seat in 2020. Smith argues that we could remedy these disparate, racially motivated outcomes by creating Senate districts. Presumably, that would make it at least possible for black voters to elect a senator who would support their interests.

Ah, see, they want to change elections in areas they tend to lose in order to win.

It’s difficult to address injustice, however, if you’re unwilling to say injustice exists. Politicians and pundits, Republican and Democratic alike, have been unwilling to reprimand voters or hold them accountable. But voters are not well-intentioned innocents who are helplessly manipulated by malevolent leaders. They make important decisions as constitutional actors, for which they have moral responsibility. Racist voting isn’t an accident. It’s a choice that may violate the principles of our Constitution and our legal system. We should say so, and then we should find ways to reduce the harm it causes.

What about blacks who vote dis-proportionally for black candidates? Asians for Asians? Muslims for Muslims? Hispanics for Hispanics? And so forth? Will they be blocked from voting? Of course not. This is all an extension of Trump Derangement Syndrome, for Hillary getting beaten fair and square.

Say, what of Democrats knocking all the blacks out of the primaries?

Read: Hot Take: Trump Voters Motivated By Raaaaacism May Be Violating The Constitution »