The U.S. Constitution (the First Amendment especially) is treated as a sacred document by the elitist media -- until it gets in the way of black Democrat politicians getting a leg up on winning seats in Congress.
A story posted to NPR Thursday by Ashley Lopez and Miles Parks, on the Supreme Court outlawing Louisiana’s race-based redistricting, “Thrown-out ballots and map confusion: Voters are losing the redistricting battle,” argued that upholding constitutional requirements risked making voters lose their faith in voting.
After more than two decades working in elections, including four years as Virginia's top voting official, it takes a lot to surprise Chris Piper.
But the frenzied redistricting battle of the past few months — including a congressional map in his home state thrown out by a court after people voted to approve it, and certain elections postponed in Louisiana and Alabama after mail ballots already went out — has done it.
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"The biggest impact on voters is confusion," Piper said. "'Where do I go vote? Who is even my elected representative? Or, which district am I even in?'... There's the potential for them to not know who they're voting for."
Much of the focus of the ongoing redistricting war has been on which political party will come out on top in the race to control Congress.
But it's voters who will pay a cost, say voting experts and voting rights advocates, in the form of discarded votes, diminished voting power and a democratic process that is increasingly complicated to navigate.
NPR, like other liberal media outlets, often describe their own side's arguments in non-ideological terms -- people upset over the Republicans are "voting experts and voting rights advocates."
NPR pitied some early voters.
The Supreme Court decision struck down a Louisiana congressional map, and the state's Republican governor, Jeff Landry, postponed voting for U.S. House primaries so state lawmakers could enact new district lines.
"Allowing elections to proceed under an unconstitutional map would undermine the integrity of our system and violate the rights of our voters, Landry said in a statement.
His announcement came days before in-person early voting was set to begin — and well after absentee ballots were mailed to voters. Tens of thousands of absentee ballots had already been cast....
NPR ignored that Virginia had a similar dilemma with early voting, which was partly why the state's Supreme Court struck down the state's Democratic-backed redistricting scheme narrowly approved by voters.
"This is sort of entering this cautionary danger zone for us as I look at everything that's happened in the last two weeks," Sarah Whittington, advocacy director at the ACLU of Louisiana, told NPR....
Whittington said rules changing at the last minute, for explicitly political reasons, drives home a sense that many people already feel: that the system is rigged against them.
Again NPR ignored that over a million early voters in Virginia were denied being able to weigh in on the redistricting issue when casting their votes in the 2025 House of Delegates elections.
Chris Melody Fields Figueredo — the executive director of Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, which helps progressive groups pass policy changes — criticized the Virginia court for overturning the will of the people.
The ballot measure drew 51.7 percent of the vote after the Democrats spent more than $70 million pushing it out on TV.
On Thursday’s All Things Considered, reporter Sam Gringlas conjured up visions of Jim Crow II over moves by Louisiana Republicans to eliminate one of the state’s two majority-black districts in response to the Supreme Court declaring them unconstitutional, using talking heads to make his point.
SAM GRINGLAS: For 91-year-old James Verrett, the ruling was a gut punch. He protested for voting rights after returning from military service abroad as a paratrooper, only to find Louisiana still treated him second class.
JAMES VERRETT: I've been beaten with billy sticks, dogs and tear gas. But now, the Supreme Court and the state courts are making it back up to where it was.
Rep. Cleo Fields, back in Congress, provided a blast from the past in more ways than one.
GRINGLAS: ....Louisiana is one of several Southern states now slashing districts no longer protected by the VRA. From his Baton Rouge office, with a view of the state Capitol, Fields sees echoes of the late 19th century, when the Jim Crow era reversed gains in Black representation.
