There has been media storeies about the softening of the Black vote ….
The blame put on President Biden ‘s policies vs Donald Trump’s second run for the Presidency and the Middle East humanitarian situation….(The vote Biden isn’t gonna be the vote for Biden)
A New York Times piece points to 2013 US Suprmem Court decesion to gut the Voting Rights Law as a contributing factor in helping Red states cutingt back access to Black voters….
Georgia, with its long history of the suppression of Black voters, has been ground zero for fights about voting rights laws for decades. The state has often seen stark differences in turnout between white and nonwhite communities, with the latter typically voting at a much lower rate.
But not always: In the 2012 election, when Barack Obama won a second term in the White House, the turnout rate for Black voters under 38 in Lowndes County — a Republican-leaning county in southern Georgia — was actually four percentage points higher than the rate for white voters of a similar age.
It proved to be temporary. According to new research by Michael Podhorzer, the former political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., by 2020, turnout for younger white voters in Lowndes was 14 percentage points higher than for Black voters of the same age.
What happened in between? It is impossible to tell for certain, with many variables, such as Obama no longer being on the ballot.
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But a growing body of evidence points to a pivotal 2013 Supreme Court decision, Shelby County v. Holder, that knocked down a core section of the Voting Rights Act. The court effectively ended a provision requiring counties and states with a history of racial discrimination at the polls — including all of Georgia — to obtain permission from the Justice Department before changing voting laws or procedures.
The result has been a slew of laws that included restrictions to voting, like limiting voting by mail and adding voter ID requirements. (One new Georgia provision, which restricts most people from providing food and water to voters waiting in line within 150 feet of a polling place, was featured in a recent episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”)
Connecting the dots
For years, political scientists and civil rights leaders argued that the high court’s decision would lead to a resurgence in suppression of historically marginalized voters because local and state governments, many in the South, no longer needed federal permission to change voting laws and regulations. Two new studies bolster that theory….
More…..