By and 5-4 vote today, June 25, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court has sanctioned the return of apartheid in nine states in our union that have a long legacy of blocking black and Latino voters.
The Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that required nine states, all but one former Confederate states, to seek pre-clearance from the U.S. Justice Department prior to changing election laws. The states are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.
Blatant racist attacks on the U.S. electorate have been the deliberate strategy of the Republican Party, in particular, since its theft of the 2000 presidential election in Florida.
In 2000, the Republican Party overtly embraced old-fashioned Jim Crow tactics, targeting former felons as a pretext for stripping 90,000 poor and minority voters from the voting rolls. A majority of the illegally purged voters were African American.