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Mark Rush

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    Balance of Power

    Congress needs to fix plenty of things, but not the Supreme Court

    Mark Rush
    September 29, 2020
    U.S. Supreme Court
    Drew Angerer/Getty Images
    Rush is a professor of politics and law and director of the center for international education at Washington and Lee University.
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    Voting

    Saving the Voting Rights Act: Virginia as a case study for reform

    Mark Rush
    April 15, 2020
    Virginia Capitol

    Lawmakers in the Virginia Capitol have an opportunity to transform the quality of elections, according to Washington and Lee University professor Mark Rush.

    matejphoto/Getty Images

    Rush is a professor of politics and law and director of the center for international education at Washington and Lee University.

    Enactment of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 remains a celebrated landmark in American history. It's time to celebrate the law's potential anew by making some big changes in how state legislatures are elected. My home state of Virginia illustrates the merits of doing so.

    First, a quick refresher course: The law enacted 55 years ago put an end to literacy tests, poll taxes and a host of other discriminatory practices that had kept minority voters from gaining access to the polls. To protect them from being gerrymandered out of power, Section 2 forbade discriminatory redistricting or other practices that would deny minority voters an equal opportunity "to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice."

    Section 2 has generally been implemented through what can best be described as the "affirmative gerrymandering" of election districts to include enough minority voters that their candidate of choice would win.

    On the one hand, this represents nothing less than retributive justice: Districts across the country had been drawn for decades to make sure minority voters could not elect their preferred candidates, so redrawing them to enhance minority representation was a way to redress the impact of that discrimination. On the other hand, in assuring the election of more minority legislators, the country — courts, legislators, litigators and experts — took away perhaps the greatest promise of the Voting Rights Act: to give minority voters a choice on Election Day. This was because the switch worked only because newly gerrymandered, winner-take-all elections ensured minority representation opportunities.

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