Three Anniversaries

One book-iversary, two Supreme Court decisions that define today's politics

Happy summer, voters! I know I’ve dropped the ball on posting lately. But with the first debate this week, deadlines approaching across the country for initiatives to secure spots on the ballot, the Supreme Court’s looming immunity decision, and three major anniversaries (one major only to me!) this week, it seemed like a great day to get back in the Substack swing of things.

This week marks the fourth anniversary of the release of Thank You for Voting. Just this week a friend sent me a photo of the kids’ edition with a prime spot in a great bookstore — it’s nice to know the book’s still out there, hopefully doing its job to encourage young people to vote. While my book was of course a world-shaking event (she says very much in jest), the other two anniversaries have so much to do with the current election.

I don’t need to do a deep dive on how much of an earth shaking event the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago, was. On the political front, the issue of abortion is one both parties are hoping will drive turnout this year, especially in those states that have, or are hoping to have, abortion-related initiatives on their November 2024 ballots. State legislatures and state courts having so much power over abortion and reproductive care law — I broke the hows and whys in a Brennan Center TikTok — make state legislature and state supreme court races all the more relevant. Prioritize learning about your candidates for those races; they just might be the most important races on your ballot this November.

Fourteen years ago this week, the Supreme Court decided Shelby County, stripping the Voting Rights Act of its most powerful tool, which was requiring states and counties with a history of racial discrimination to get pre-approval before they made changes to their voting laws.

I discuss in the book how states, Texas included, acted immediately (like, within hours), to pass laws they’d previously been forbidden to pass. Some of the laws passed since Shelby didn’t survive court scrutiny, but many did, and they’ve really mattered. The Brennan Center (I had nothing to do with this research, but it’s the most comprehensive look at a decade+ of Shelby) released a study this year showing how much the racial turnout gap — the gap in turnout between white voters and others — has increased since Shelby, and it’s especially increased in locations that used to require approval for voting law changes. This Q&A with Kareem Crayton, the Brennan Center’s senior voting right director, (which I did edit) is a quick and easy way to understand what’s happened since Shelby and how voting rights advocates are climbing uphill every.single.day to combat its effects.

And all of that doesn’t even discuss the upcoming fifth anniversary of Rucho, in which a conservative majority of the Court said there just wasn’t a single thing it could do about partisan gerrymandering, leaving curbing that (or often, not) up to, you guessed it, the states! (Fun fact: the attorney who argued that case for the League of Women Voters, Allison Riggs, is now a justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court. And, I’m doing a lot of book plugs, but if you’d like a quick-but-deep dive on what gerrymandering is exactly, there’s one in the book!)

Thanks for reading - I know Substack is all about the frequent posting, and I’ve failed there! (A new job will do that to a person!) But there’s no denying this election is coming, and there’s no doubt how important it is that you vote, and that you recruit everyone you know to vote. I’m here to help!