DOJ: Solicitor General Noel Fransico Flies SCOTUS Request To Remand The Virginia Legislature' "Fill-In-The Blank" Lack Of Legal Standing Voting Rights Act Gerrymandering Case

This is case is supposed to be about racial gerrymandering, but it you take a second, much deeper look into the entire issue of redistricting, the U.S. argument is to remand to the lower court has nothing to do with the brown paper bag test.

It has to do with gerrymandering based upon an assigned, psuedo-scientific classification based upon  the residual of the peculiar institution; this case is about fraud.

Yes, as you have safely deduced based upon everything I do, this case is about TARP and the Virginia Housing Development Authority, which unsurprisingly looks like it was created the exact same way the Detroit Land Bank Authority was, meaning it was never incorporated, but the Virginia legislation allowed room enough in the statute to fill in the blank as to the Corporate Shape Shifter wanted to be, whenever they wanted, of course.

Here is the Virginia "fill-in-the-blank" law of its housing authorities.

§ 36-4. Creation of redevelopment and housing authorities.
In each locality there is hereby created a political subdivision of the Commonwealth, with such public and corporate powers as are set forth in this chapter, to be known respectively as the "__________ (insert name of locality) Redevelopment and Housing Authority" (hereinafter referred to as "authority"); provided, however, that any authority not now activated shall not transact any business or exercise any powers authorized under this chapter until or unless the qualified voters of such locality shall by a majority vote of such qualified voters voting in a referendum held as provided in § 36-4.1, have indicated a need for an authority to function in such locality. The referendum to determine whether or not there is a need for an authority to function (i) may be called by the governing body by resolution or (ii) shall be called by the governing body upon the filing of a petition signed by at least two percent of the qualified voters registered in the jurisdiction, asserting that there is need for an authority to function in such locality and requesting the governing body to call such referendum.
The governing body may by resolution call for a referendum to determine whether there is need for an authority in the locality if the governing body believes it is appropriate for one of the reasons set out in § 36-2. In the case of a town located within the county, the town council shall first obtain the concurrence of the governing body of the county and the county redevelopment and housing authority prior to scheduling a referendum.
In any suit, action or proceeding involving the validity or enforcement of or relating to any contract of the authority, the authority shall be conclusively deemed to have become established and authorized to transact business and exercise its powers hereunder if the voters of the locality have so indicated in a referendum held pursuant to § 36-4.1, that there is need for the authority.
1938, p. 448; Michie Code 1942, § 3145(4); 1946, p. 276; 1947, p. 138; 1952, c. 427; 1958, c. 533; 2006, c. 784; 2009, c. 78.

So, just to make sure I was not purporting any legal road blocks to a state legislature usurping the powers of a governor, I checked to see how many times one could "fill in the blanks" of this law.

I came up with 822 opportunities to fill in the statutory blank.

Michigan is trying to push legislation to allow the legislature intervene in suits of law, but former Governor Snyder vetoed.

This is a highlight from the brief:

 If the Court reaches the merits, it should vacate the district court’s judgment that race predominated in all 11 challenged districts and remand for further proceedings. To establish racial predominance, plaintiffs must meet a demanding standard. They must prove that race “was the legislature’s dominant and controlling rationale in drawing its district lines” and that the legislature thus “subordinated traditional race-neutral districting principles * * * to racial considerations.” Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900, 913, 916 (1995). 

So, the moral of the story is, there is no racial consideration when filling in the blank of a state law, particularly when the fake housing authority never incorporated to be able to open a bank account and cash a check, just like the Detroit Land Bank Authority, or the Detroit Land Bank Community Development Corporation, or whatever Ham Sandwich it answers to.

Besides, race is a residual of the peculiar institution of property classification law of the one-drop rule.

Just ask Elizabeth Warren.

And that is why the state attorney general could not bringforth this case because the fill in the blank law has no legal basis, and could be corporately fungible with a bit of white out.

The U.S. brief goes on to say, blah, blah, blah on legal standing against Writ of Certiorari because only the State Attorney General can represent a state, not the House, or rather the legislative branch.

I call stuff like this privatization, or rather, stealin' the children, land and votes.

This case is about forced migration of geographic targeted population of "The Poors" (always said with clinched teeth) for Public Private Partnership redevelopment.

I make understanding technology and law fun!

QUESTIONS PRESENTED

1. Whether appellants have standing to bring this appeal.

2. Whether the district court applied the correct legal standard in concluding that the Virginia legislature predominantly relied on race when drawing each of the 11 challenged majority-minority districts in Virginia’s 2011 House of Delegates redistricting plan.

SCOTUS 18 281 VIRGINIA HOUS... by on Scribd

Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©

 We Need to Build a Voting-Rights Movement

The time has come to translate widespread outrage about voter suppression into momentum for an actionable voting-rights agenda.

By John Conyers, Jr. and Barbara Arnwine

Dean of the U.S. House
of Representatives
John Conyers, Jr.

The spring of 1966 was a harrowing yet hopeful period in America’s electoral history. In March of that year, the Voting Rights Act survived a Supreme Court challenge from the attorney general of South Carolina. Civil-rights campaigners could finally breathe at least a tentative sigh of relief as public officials across the country began initial preparations for the first federal election following passage of the landmark law for which King and countless others had toiled for years.

Fast-forward 50 years, and the scene is just as harrowing, but—tragically—far less hopeful. Voter-suppression tactics in 2016 are spreading like a virus in our body politic. In the first presidential primaries since the Supreme Court gutted Section 5 of the VRA and opened the floodgates for passage of voter-suppression laws in states, the impacts are already evident. Whereas voting rights were ascendant in 1966, voter-suppression tactics are spreading in 2016. Whereas Congress was moving in the right direction in 1966, in 2016, it’s often conspicuously absent.

The challenge this year—the 50th anniversary of the implementation of the VRA—isn’t just

Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©

protecting free and open access to the ballot; it is also rekindling the fire that forced federal action on voting rights. This means reigniting a national movement for restoration of the Voting Rights Act, vigorous federal enforcement of electoral rights, and a reversal of anti-democratic state voter-suppression laws. With our country at a political turning point, time is of the essence.

As The Nation’s Ari Berman and others have methodically reported, the far-right’s well orchestrated voter suppression strategy—focusing on voter ID laws, purging of voter rolls, polling place reduction, and rolling back early voting requirements—has actually resulted in a rekindling of Americans’ 1960s-style resolve in defense of the right to vote. Look at Aracely Calderon, a naturalized citizen from Guatemala, who stood at the back of a 700-person, four-block line and waited five hours to vote in the Arizona primary. Or Dennis Hatten, an African-American Marine veteran, who endured seemingly endless bureaucratic hurdles to get a Wisconsin photo ID after being told his other forms of identification—including a veteran’s ID—were insufficient under that state’s new draconian voter-ID law. There is no shortage of courage and grit in the face of these abuses.

However, we need more than individual resolve to overcome the systemic injustice of voter suppression. We need a broad-based movement for legislative change. Many voter-ID laws—which 36 states have now enacted in varying forms—will have their first test in the 2016 general election. An analysis by Nate Silver for The New York Times shows that these laws can decrease turnout by between between 0.8 and 2.4 percent—a potentially decisive amount in highly competitive elections. Other academic research supports anecdotal findings that voter-ID laws have disproportionate impacts on minorities and immigrants, expanding the participation gap between white and nonwhite members of the electorate.

The time has come to translate widespread outrage about voter suppression into momentum for an actionable voting-rights agenda. The first step is building awareness of the legislative fixes that are available right now.

In the immediate aftermath of the Supreme Court’s disastrous Shelby ruling—which paved the way for widespread state voter suppression by eliminating the requirement that jurisdictions with histories of discrimination obtain Department of Justice preclearance for any changes to voting laws—there was hope that Congress would act to mitigate the damage. Then-House majority leader Eric Cantor traveled to Selma with Representative John Lewis’s civil-rights pilgrimage and declared his intention to find a bipartisan solution. Unfortunately, in the wake of Cantor’s departure, the Republican Congress has balked at even discussing the issue. Both the bipartisan Voting Rights Amendments Act, HR 885, and the Voting Rights Advancement Act, HR 2867, are viable options for Congress to turn the tide against state-based voter suppression tactics. While not a panacea, these proposed post-Shelby VRA fixes would help end voter-access crises of the kind already on display in Arizona, North Carolina, and elsewhere by restoring the preclearence requirement in up to 13 states.

Voter protection is just the start of a legislative agenda for election integrity–which must also address issues like modernization of voting machines, absentee balloting, willful misinformation, felon disenfranchisement, partisan election administration, untrained election staff, and many others. On April 21, we’ll be participating in a special briefing on Capitol Hill—including the Rev. William Barber, Ari Berman, and others—to draw attention to the crisis of election integrity and to identify policy options for restoring our democratic institutions. This is the first of a series of efforts to bring the rising passion for voter protection to the halls of Congress.

The cause of voter protection is unique in that it can unite people from across the disparate areas of the progressive movement. Whether someone cares most about civil rights, campaign finance, climate change, reproductive rights, or global peace—fair and transparent elections are an absolute requirement for success. Election protection demands a fusion movement.

We’ve seen what happens when people are mobilized and organized in strategic action to defend the right to vote. Though African Americans were nearly absent from voter rolls in the deep south in the early 1960s, by late 1966, just four of the traditional 13 Southern states had African-American voter-registration levels under 50 percent. By 1968, even Mississippi had a 59 percent registration rate among African Americans. That progress was directly attributable to an indefatigable people’s movement that achieved tangible legislative change.

This year, voting-rights advocates are rightfully rushing to address the short-term barriers to the ballot box—getting people the required IDs, ensuring the presence of adequate polling sites, and protecting people from being purged from voter rolls. This is essential work. But we must also seize this moment and build broad momentum for a long-term election integrity agenda that can take hold in municipal buildings, in statehouses, and on Capitol Hill. 

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Democratic Party Strips Candidate Of Civil Rights

In the political climate of trying to restore Voting Rights, the Democratic National Committee is attempting to disenfranchise, not just voters, but candidates.

Instead of a spirited time out to investigate and correct the data breach, the DNC, just, arbitrarily decided to suspend all of its rules and sever access to the Bernie Sanders campaign.

In a last ditched effort to restore due process to the campaign, the Sanders camp filed a lawsuit.

One does not just have the right to vote, but also the right to run for office.

I guess since key provisions of the Voting Rights Act were stripprd, the DNC has decided to push the envelope and gut it even further with its own take on the 15th Amendment.

Sanders sues Democratic Party

“The DNC’s unwarranted, unilateral suspension of the Campaign’s Voter Data access directly impacts one of the nation’s most important electoral races, and carries political implications on a national scale,” the suit says. 

“The DNC should not be permitted to tip the scales of the Democratic presidential primary without clear justification and contractual cause. The fairness of this pivotal national election should not be compromised because of security flaws introduced by the DNC and its vendor.”

The suit asks for "immediate restoration" of the campaign's access to the voter data system, damages "presently known to exceed $75,000.00" and whatever else "the Court deems just and proper."

Sanders’s campaign manager Jeff Weaver threatened earlier Friday that the campaign would take the DNC to federal court if the national party committee didn’t lift the suspension. But the DNC did not budge, arguing that it needed to restrict access in order to conduct a full investigation.

Sanders’ team only had hours to prepare the lawsuit, shown in some typographical errors present in the court filing. 

One senior Democrat told The Hill that while it’s clear the Sanders campaign committed a violation, the DNC has to be wary of not feeding into the narrative that it is aiding Clinton.  

“The DNC is very susceptible and has taken a lot of incoming attacks for being in the tank for Hillary and its response has to be proportional,” he said. 

“Not saying this isn’t proportional, but you have to be very careful.” 

He also noted that both sides are looking to take control of the message amid the controversy. 

The Sanders camp is recasting the story away from one about a Sanders staffer stealing data and emphasizing the alleged overreaction as proof that the DNC is in the tank with Clinton. 

The Clinton camp had remained quiet for the majority of the day, refusing comment outside of a brief and benign statement that summarized the situation. But that changed by the later afternoon, when spokesman Brian Fallon began to take a more aggressive tack on Twitter and the campaign hosted a press call with reporters early Friday evening. 

Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook called the data breach “egregious” on the press call and noted that the campaign’s voter file and information are “fundamental keys of our campaign.”

“This was not an inadvertent glimpse into our data, not a mistake,” Mook said. “They made 25 intentional and targeted searches of our data.” 

He also called on the Sanders campaign to stop "politicizing" and fundraising off of the DNC breach. The Vermont senator's campaign sent out a fundraising email Friday afternoon that called on supporters to sign a petition calling on the DNC to return the data back to Sanders.  

Bernie 2016 v Dnc Complaint

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Reps. Sensenbrenner and Conyers Lead Bipartisan Reintroduction of Legislation to Restore the Voting Rights Act

WASHINGTON – Today, House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) and House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers (D-Mich.) reintroduced the bipartisan Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2015.  The legislation aims to uphold the most vital principles of the historic law, which was first enacted 50 years ago.

Reps. Conyers and Sensenbrenner reintroduced the legislation in response to the Supreme Court’sShelby County v. Holder decision which struck down Section 4b, the core provision in the Voting Rights Act that determines how states are covered under Section 5 of the Act (which requires federal preclearance of voting changes by covered jurisdictions to protect against discriminatory voting measures).  The bill updates the coverage formula by making all states and jurisdictions eligible for coverage formula based on voting violations in the last 15 years. 

Dean of the U.S. House
of Representatives
John Conyers, Jr.

“The Voting Rights Act was designed to eliminate evolving legal barriers to the voting booth and to give minority voters an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.  The Supreme Court’s decision to invalidate the Section 4b formula for coverage under Section 5 is a critical blow to its future relevancy and will make it more difficult to challenge existing barriers” said Rep. Conyers, a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus who cosponsored the original Voting Rights Act in 1965.  “I have witnessed firsthand the stain that discrimination has placed on our democracy.  Though the Shelby County v. Holder decision struck at the heart of the Act, today, it is with much pride that my colleagues and I are reintroducing a renewed Voting Rights Amendment Act to reaffirm our constitutional commitment to protecting the right to vote.”

“The VRA is one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation ever passed.  Combating both discrimination and fraud is essential to ensuring Americans’ right to vote is protected.  Our legitimacy as elected officials relies on the integrity of the ballot box.  I urge my colleagues to support the VRAA because it is vital to our commitment to never again allow racial prejudices in the electoral process,” said Rep. Sensenbrenner.

President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law in August of 1965, and it has been reauthorized four times since.  President George W. Bush signed the most recent reauthorization into law in 2006, after the House voted 390-33 and the Senate 98-0 in favor of the legislation.

An outline of the legislation can be found here, and text of legislation can be found here.

Key provisions in the bill include:

·         Through a coverage provision based on current conditions, the bill establishes a rolling nationwide trigger that covers states or jurisdictions that have a persistent record of recent voting rights violations over the last 15 years.

·         Allows our federal courts to bail-in the worst actors for preclearance.  The current law permits states or jurisdictions to be bailed in for intentional violations, but the new legislation amends the Act to allow states or jurisdictions to be bailed in for results-based violations.

·         Greater transparency in elections so that voters are made aware of changes.  The additional sunlight will deter discrimination from occurring and protect voters from discrimination.

·         Allows for preliminary relief to be obtained more readily, given that voting rights cannot often be vindicated after an election is already over.

Additional original co-sponsors of the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2015 include: Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Charles Dent (R-PA), Jim Clyburn (D-SC), Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA), John Lewis (D-GA), Christopher Gibson (R-NY), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY),  Bobby Scott (D-VA), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Sheila Jackson Lee ( D-TX), Steve Cohen (D-TN),  Hank Johnson (D -GA), Pedro Pierluisi (D-PR),  Judy Chu (D-CA), Cedric Richmond (D-LA), David Cicilline (D-RI), Karen Bass (D-CA), Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), and Scott Peters (D-CA).

Voting Rights Acy 2015 Section by Section

Voting Rights Act of 2015

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