SCOTUS & the VRA

Initial thoughts at least vaguely inspired by today's decision to keep sec 5 (pre-clearance) but invalidate sec 4 (who's subject to pre-clearance).

It's without doubt that a lot has improved in nearly 50 years. It's without doubt that there is still racism out there; prejudice will likely always exist (not that that makes it okay). These things should be acknowledged, but they're not central to what I'm focused on right now.

It seems to me that "tilting" election laws for racial reasons is pretty well on its last legs. The generations that experienced a time when it was perfectly acceptable to express clearly racist opinions are aging rapidly now and will soon be dead or consigned to old fogey-dom.

Election law tinkering is very real, but it's pretty exclusively done for partisan political advantage. That set of motivations may have disparate racial impacts, but that's not the primary intent. The intent is to keep "our guys" in office rather than "their guys". But you know what? It's still wrong to "game" the system even if your motives are less despicable.

SCOTUS nominations

Confirmation battles have sometimes been monumental. Some nominations never even get to a vote. What options would a non-major POTUS have? Why not both "advise" and "consent"?

What I'm thinking is to put it in the laps of the Senate leadership. Produce a list of 10 that both the majority leader and the minority leader will sign off that they will bring to a vote and confirm. POTUS picks any one of the 10. They advise, POTUS decides, they consent. If they dither and fail to produce a list, bash them both regularly & repeatedly over the head (politically this plays so wonderfully into the narrative that the two parties are non-functional), then ultimately do it the old fashioned way (for which you have at least bought additional time for vetting).