The Supreme Court's Tuesday night decision clearing Alabama to use a congressional map that federal judges found was built on intentional racial discrimination wasn't just a voting rights ruling, according to former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance. It was a signal flare, and Democrats had better be paying attention.
In her Civil Discourse newsletter, Vance called the decision the culmination of a 13-year assault on Black voting power that began with Shelby County v. Holder, accelerated through last month's Callais ruling gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and landed with this week's per curiam order blessing maps that a three-judge panel had already found were tainted by intentional discrimination.
The court's majority leaned on the Purcell principle, the doctrine against last-minute judicial interference in elections, to justify its ruling. The irony, Vance argued, wasn't lost: the same court that handed Alabama Republicans a major victory used an anti-interference rule to run direct interference in an ongoing election.
"Political parties try to earn your vote; authoritarian movements find ways to win without it," Vance quoted Fair Fight's Lauren Groh-Wargo.
Vance delivered a blunt antidote: voter registration, voter education, rides to the polls, and relentless turnout. In the 2022 midterms, fewer than half of eligible Americans voted. With Alabama set to hold new special primaries in August under the new maps, Democrats face a compressed timeline to respond.
"Nothing defeats a gerrymander like unexpected turnout," Vance wrote. "Let's go."
