Number of the Day

Six: The number of states "already moving ahead with voter ID laws, some of which had already been rejected as discriminatory under the Voting Rights Act," less than 24 hours after the Supreme Court's garbage nightmare of a decision that essentially obliterated the Voting Rights Act.

Before 1965, when the law was first passed, state and local governments came up with ever-inventive ways to keep blacks from voting, forcing the federal government to launch countless legal battles. When Texas was prohibited from holding all-white primaries in 1927, for example, it passed a new law to allow the party leadership to decide who could vote. They chose an all-white primary.

"Early attempts to cope with this vile infection resembled battling the Hydra," said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in her fierce dissent of the Supreme Court's ruling.

"Whenever one form of voting discrimination was identified and prohibited, others sprang up in its place. This Court repeatedly encountered the remarkable 'variety and persistence' of laws disenfranchising minority citizens," she continued.

Since last year, 41 states have introduced some form of restrictive voting legislation, and of those 18 passed laws. Among the most popular are those that require voters to show a photo ID in order to vote, which proponents say helps to counter fraud — a phenomenon that almost never happens (pdf), analysts say.

This is particularly bad news in light of the fact that, in 2008, the Court upheld Indiana's bullshit voter ID law.

I consider the right to vote about as close to sacred as anything gets in my secular world, and I have nothing but unadulterated contempt for anyone who tries to deny that right. I am so fucking angry about the disenfranchisement that will happen as a result of this foolish, loathsome, utterly wrong decision. I urge you (again) to sign the NAACP's petition to Congress.

Buncha goddamn shameless cheats who can't win on the merits [sic] of their barfy robber baron policies, so they rig the game. A stolen victory feels just as good when you've got a lump of petrified avarice where your social conscience oughtta be.

[H/T to Amadi.]