Supreme Illogic

Imagine a country with fifty states, each of which operates semi-autonomously, even concerning national issues, such as the election of the chief executive and members of the national legislature. Now imagine that each of these states is allowed to write laws that determine who may and may not vote, where they must live for those votes to actually matter in the outcome, and for whom they may and may not vote. Stop imagining. That place is called the United States of America. Just this week, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that South Carolina may keep a redistricting map that essentially eliminates any possibility that a predominantly black area could ever elect a black Representative to Congress. The Court found that the evidence of racial basis is circumstantial. Of course, racial bias would be unlawful and the map would need to be redrawn. Instead, the Court declared that the map merely reflected partisan bias, the intent of one party to increase its voting edge by altering how votes are distributed geographically. The illogic behind this ruling is staggering. First of all, there is no reason I can fathom to allow a nation’s regions, provinces, states, counties, and/or municipalities to determine the rules for elections that are national. Is such a country a country or just a loose confederation of independent states? Secondly, the Court acknowledges that the partisan argument coincides perfectly with the racial claim. In South Carolina, blacks overwhelmingly vote for Democrats and whites overwhelmingly vote for Republicans. Even if partisanship is the reason for redistricting, absurd in its own right, the (un)intended effect is to deny the minority race of its proportionate representation. In this case, partisanship equates perfectly with racism. The Court’s ruling is purely race-motivated semantics.