NPR attempted to dismiss Justice Roberts point in regards to Black voter turnout in Miss. being higher than that of Mass.
The number of black citizens eligible to vote in Massachusetts is 236,000, while it is 721,000 in Mississippi, more than three times that number. Therefore, according to Census officials, when looking at the estimated turnout rate in Massachusetts, the voting percentage for African-Americans at first blush is estimated at 39.3 percent. But the margin of error is 11.5 percentage points, meaning that the black voter turnout actually could be as high as 50.8 percent (or, conversely, as low as 27.8 percent).
Now, look at Mississippi, where black turnout is listed at 48.7 percent. But because of the large size of the African-American population that was sampled, the margin of error is only 5.4 percentage points...
That means that factoring in the margin of error, the black turnout rate in Mississippi could be as high as 54.1 percent, or as low as 43.3 percent.
So, if you factor in the margins of error at their extremes — with Mississippi at the low end and Massachusetts at the high end — Mississippi could have had a black voter turnout rate that was 7.5 percentage points lower than Massachusetts.
Could. You'd think that a company with the resources and reputation would not leave an article with "could". Surely they would actually see if more firm numbers could be had. Well lets look at some numbers. First we have a link to
the black population of all Miss. counties. Then we have a link of the
2012 voter results for every county in Miss.
So for example, in Jefferson County, with an 85% black population, we can observe a 89.1% Obama vote (3,951 votes). Since we know that 85% of the population is black and that there is no way at all that the 15% of the population that is not black is representative of the vast majority of the votes. It is clear that the eligible and registered black voters had no problems going to the polls.
In Tishomingo county where Black people make up 3.7% of the population, Obama received 20.7% of the votes (1,643 ballots). We can note that: 1) There was no effective means of preventing people from voting for Obama since it is clear that a decent sized minority of non-blacks, 6 or 7 times the size of the total black population, voted for Obama.
In fact if one compares the two charts you will note that the votes for Obama correspond quite closely with the percentage of the black population. And this would also match up with the data that shows that African-Americans country wide voted for Obama at over 90%. Clearly then one cannot argue voter suppression with such evidence.
If we look at
Massachusetts population we find that only one county has a black population above 20% (Suffolk County). That county voted for Obama by 77.4% (223,896 ballots). No more than 24.6% of those votes could possibly be African American (44,780 ballots).
Which brings us to the position of The Ghost on the issue of the Voting Rights Act.
I have said on many an occasion that actual citizens do not need "voting rights acts" because actual citizens are covered under the 14th Amendment which reads, in part:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws...
The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Clearly the latter portion is why the Voting Rights Act is constitutional insofar as it supports the aforementioned claims of the amendment. If the federal government cannot show that the states under the "prior clearance" rule have abridged the 14th Amendment, then from what I can see, the requirement would be unconstitutional.
It is clear from the data that Justice Robert's point, however badly stated, is accurate. Not only are black people generally not being disenfranchised in MS. but it is quite correct that more black people voted in MS. than in MA AND did so in higher percentages. Therefore the situation in MS. is not what it was when the Voting Rights Act was implemented and those who wish to see those states still operate under the pre-clearance rule will have to make a better argument.
