Voting Rights Act: Summaries

Starter 10: VRA Act Check-in

1. What adjectives best describe your experience trying to read and comprehend the Voting Rights Act?  List them!
2. What strategies did you use to help you understand it?  How successful were there?  Are there any strategies that you didn’t use that could have helped?

Class Review of VRA Act

1. Let’s go through each section and summarize the main idea(s).  See the handout linked on the docs page for a little help here!
2. Discuss:  Which of these sections do you think is most important today? Why?

Read this Washington Post article about North Carolina’s recent voting law controversy and jot down notes on the following questions:

1. What are the various arguments FOR and AGAINST North Carolina’s Voter ID Laws?
2. Which pieces of evidence in this article are more convincing to you and most inform your position?
3. Summarize, to the best of your ability, the legislative and judicial processes that have been involved in shaping North Carolina’s voting laws since 2010.  What questions do you have about those processes?

AM CLASS STOP HERE!  You skip the podcast, due to James Madison speaker.

Listen to and take notes on this Radiolab, More Perfect, “Imperfect Plaintiffs”-- start at 31:30 into the show:

Take notes on the following questions to help you pull out key ideas from this podcast:

1. What did Endward Bloom and his wife discover about districts when they were campaigning?
2. What was Bloom’s “beef” with the way districts were created?
3. What was Plessy v. Ferguson?
4. What was the Supreme Court’s ruling on the NAACP v. Virginia case on manufacturing litigation?

Small Group (6-7) Discussion
In your small groups, carry out a mini-seminar on the following questions:

1. Is Edward Bloom vs. 40,000 civil rights activists marching in the street a false paradigm?
2. Is Edward Bloom carrying the standard for Civil Rights in America?  To what extent?
3. Do you agree that manufacturing legislation should be counted as a form of freedom of expression?
4. Is this a legitimate pathway to contend with the problem of the Tyranny of the Majority?
5. Where do you stand on the issues outlined in the Washington Post article about voter discrimination? To what extent should states have voter ID laws? What kind? (Click on this map of the  U.S. that explains how to vote in each state for more ideas on the types of laws various states require. Scope out ColoRADo obviously).
6. Is it time for the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to end? Is it no longer needed?

HOMEWORK:

1. AM Class:  Finish WaPo article and questions if you didn't in class.  If you have time, listen to the podcast!
   
2. PM Class:  None