The editorial below also demonstrates the importance of the judicial branch. If we get a right-wing retard in office, they tend to appoint other right-wing retards to the bench. Liberals and Democrats tend to appoint a much more open-minded judiciary, often bending over backwards to be "fair" and appoint a right-wing-nut now and then, but that almost never happens when right-wing retards are doing the appointing.
And so the Republican response to a liberal President is to block as many judges as possible, until another right-wing retard can "take" office again.
If they had any shame, they'd be embarrassed. The often-touted reason for these racist laws is all of the "voter fraud" that has been taking place. However, study after study reveals that there is practically NO voter fraud going on, so they try to cloak their actions in even more cloudy terms, like "restoring the integrity of the ballot box". Gag me. Shall we talk about election fraud?
Honest Republicans (an oxymoron, I know) know that these measures are discriminatory, but they put them in place anyway. They also know that they will be challenged in court, but that challenge can often take a year or more to make it through the justice system, and in the meantime, an election or two can be held. So they are happy to squeeze out even one election that keeps minorities from the polls, because that may be enough time to get more right-wing retards into office.
Another Defeat for G.O.P Voting Schemes
The scurrilous campaign by Republican lawmakers in a number of states to disenfranchise qualified voters suffered another setback this week, when a federal judge ordered North Dakota to halt voter identification restrictions he said were blocking thousands of Native Americans from exercising their right to vote.
In blocking the 2013 law, a United States District Court judge, Daniel Hovland, noted that voter fraud — Republican politicians’ widely disproven rationale for tougher ID requirements — was “virtually nonexistent” in the state. He ordered the state to return to “safety net” protections used effectively for years at the polls, including a voter’s signed affidavit of eligibility, and far less restrictive documentation than the narrow ID requirements of the law.
The ruling was the sixth time in recent months that federal courts rejected unfair voter restrictions enacted by Republican-controlled legislatures in thinly veiled attempts at voter suppression timed for the presidential election.
Last Friday, a federal appeals court struck down the heart of a new North Carolina voting law found to block African-American voters with what it called “almost surgical precision” just as the black vote has been growing in power in that important swing state. In Texas, a federal court struck down elaborate ID requirements as unconstitutional, freeing more than 600,000 Latinos and blacks to vote this November. Other rulings have ordered retreats from blatantly unfair restrictions in Wisconsin, Kansas and Ohio. More lawsuits are in the courts, brought by minorities and voting rights defenders complaining that the laws interfere with voters who are thought to favor Democrats.
As the courts remove these crude hurdles one after another, Donald Trump has begun complaining that his presidential campaign may be facing a “rigged” outcome. Studies have established that fraud is a minuscule factor in American elections. But Mr. Trump told The Washington Post this week, “If you don’t have voter ID, you can just keep voting and voting and voting.”
In truth, the recent court decisions help “un-rig” the election by rejecting shamefully partisan strictures. In the North Dakota ruling, the judge found that more than 3,800 Native Americans could have been denied the vote in November in part because the Legislature’s new restrictions required specific residential addresses on ID documents — an obvious rebuff to the Indian reservation culture of using postal boxes for mail. This is the level of malicious voter suppression to which Republican statehouses have been stooping.
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