Since the fools who stayed home in 2010 helped Republicans win state houses and state legislatures all over the country, Republicans have tried desperately to cement their gains by making it as difficult as possible for for people to vote if they are poor, old, working, disabled, and especially black. Yesterday the US Department of Justice (DOJ) rejected South Carolina’s racist voter ID law as a violation of the Voting Rights Act.

The Obama administration’s civil rights office is stepping up its fight with the Southern states over voting rights, announcing it will block a new South Carolina law that would require voters to show a government-issued photo identification before casting a ballot.

The Justice Department invoked the Voting Rights Act on Friday and said the new photo-identification rule could deny the right to vote for tens of thousands of blacks and other minorities.

"According to the state’s statistics, there are 81,938 minority citizens who are already registered to vote and who lack DMV-issued identification," Thomas E. Perez, the chief of the department’s civil rights division, said in a letter to South Carolina officials. He referred to a driver’s license issued by the state Department of Motor Vehicles, the most common form of photo identification.

Under current law, a South Carolina resident who is registered to vote can cast a ballot if he or she has a voter registration card and a signature on the polling list, Perez said.

South Carolina was one of many states to enact new laws earlier this year that tighten the rules for voting. Last week, Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. spoke out against these laws, describing them in the words of Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) as "a deliberate and systematic attempt" to prevent millions of elderly, low-income and minority Americans from voting… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <LA Times>

This has been too long in coming, as I was getting tired if saying that DOJ was investigating Republican laws designed to disenfranchise millions of Americans, with nothing to show for it. Hopefully this will be the first of many such decisions.

Ed Schultz interviewed Bernie Sanders on this and other subjects.

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