J. Christian Adams tweeted out tonight that not a single constitution conservative should support Ben Carson anymore because of his support for the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act:
Not a single constitutional conservative should support Ben Carson anymore First against #voterid, then Sharpton. http://t.co/Ppi8XXsJPp
— J. Christian Adams (@ElectionLawCtr) October 9, 2015
Here’s the CNN article he linked to:
CNN – Ben Carson said Thursday that he wants the Voting Rights Act protected, adding he’d like to hear Jeb Bush explain why he does not support its reauthorization.
“Of course I want the Voting Rights Act to be protected. Whether we still need it or not or whether we’ve outgrown the need for it is questionable,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “Maybe we have, maybe we haven’t. But I wouldn’t jeopardize it.”
This was in the big interview we posted earlier tonight so if you want to hear him elaborate on it, watch below. I’ve cued it up to the 4:00 min mark where it begins:
UPDATE: J. Christian Adams just explained his objection:
This is precisely what the racial-interest groups and the Democrats want — giving an attorney general like Eric Holder revived power to block state election laws by edict, as they did to Texas and South Carolina voter ID and citizenship verification in Florida and Georgia.
To recap, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 forced 16 states to obtain federal approval for every election law change no matter how big or how small. When a polling placed moved from a school library to a school gym, Washington, D.C., had to approve. The Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013 ruled that such federal oversight upset the constitutional balance by using circumstances from 50 years ago to justify federal intrusion into state power, and the Court extinguished the oversight.
Since then, the institutional left has sought to reassert federal power because it helps Democrats win elections. For example, prior to the 2012 Presidential race, the Justice Department stopped Florida from checking for noncitizens on the rolls. In 2009, the DOJ blocked Kinston, North Carolina, from having non partisan elections because, as the DOJ said, if the word “Democrat” is not next to the name of the candidate, black voters won’t know for whom to vote.
This is the madness that Carson is open to resurrecting.