Congress ‘Has a Role to Play’ in Setting National Voting Rights Standards

By Mark Hedin | Trice Edney Wire (TriceEdneyWire.com) – A series of contradictory rulings by the Supreme Court in cases involving redistricting highlight the need for Congress to set national voting rights standards. The first shots in America’s Civil War were fired in the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Four years later, former slaves in the city honored Union soldiers who had died in captivity there, initiating the annual Memorial Day holiday. Today, Charleston is again at the crossroads of the struggle for civil rights with a recent Supreme Court decision that effectively dilutes Black voting power. The May 23 ruling written by Justice Samuel Alito allows South Carolina’s Republican-dominated state legislature to “crack and pack” Charleston’s Black voters. The ruling allows 62% of Charleston’s Black voting population, about 30,000 voters, to be shifted – or “cracked” – out of the state’s tightly contested 1st& Congressional district and packed into the neighboring 6th& district, represented for 31 years now by Black Democrat James Clyburn. At the same time, the 1st& district will become 86% white as it is expanded into rural regions where white, Republican-leaning voters have been more dominant. The South Carolina ruling concludes a dizzying array of gerrymandering...