Speaker 1: Well, now it's time for our daily Bloomberg Law Brief,
Speaker 1: exploring legal issues in the news and Today, Bloomberg Law
Speaker 1: host Greg Store speaks with Kimberly Robinson, a Supreme Court
Speaker 1: reporter for Bloomberg b NA, and Rebecca Green, a professor
Speaker 1: at William and Mary Law School, to discuss how allegations
Speaker 1: of voter fraud and redistricting shape the historical U. S election. Kimberly,
Speaker 1: arguably the biggest court ruling of the year came in
Speaker 1: a case involving North Carolina's voting restrictions. Give us a
Speaker 1: quick synopsis of that place. Well, this is really an
Speaker 1: extraordinary decision. I think the important thing to keep in
Speaker 1: the back of your mind when I'm talking about this
Speaker 1: case is the fact that race and voting are very
Speaker 1: much correlated in the South, especially in North Carolina. So
Speaker 1: it turns out that most minorities tend to vote democratically.
Speaker 1: A court here struck down UH North Carolina's voter I
Speaker 1: D laws and some other restrictions that it said has
Speaker 1: had surgically UH singled out African Americans, and it was
Speaker 1: extored area. Because there are really two ways that a
Speaker 1: court can strike down UH. Some of these voting restrictions.
Speaker 1: One is if the effect has a discriminatory purpose. Um.
Speaker 1: That the other is the intent of the legislature is
Speaker 1: to discriminate against minorities. And that final one is what
Speaker 1: the court here said that you know, the legislature really
Speaker 1: intended to disenfranchise minority voters. Rebecca, let me ask you
Speaker 1: just a broader question as you look back on what
Speaker 1: do you think is that the big message of the
Speaker 1: big takeaway from this this year in election law? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So um. For me, as I sort of look back
Speaker 1: at it all, I think what is clear is the
Speaker 1: fragility of public confidence in our elections. You know, elections
Speaker 1: only work if the public has confidence in the outcome. Um.
Speaker 1: And that confidence was under explicit attack in two thousands sixteen.
Speaker 1: We have a long history, of course of the losing
Speaker 1: side alleging fraud in elections, but this year felt very different. Right.
Speaker 1: We had the integrity of the election being called into
Speaker 1: the question before uh election day. Uh. That said. What's
Speaker 1: extraordinary extraordinary also about two thousand sixteen is how smoothly
Speaker 1: the election actually went. Before the election, voting rates advocates
Speaker 1: were bracing for widespread problems at the polls. But as
Speaker 1: it happened, UM, with few a few exceptions, UH, the
Speaker 1: election proceeded without major incident. So I think the challenge
Speaker 1: going forward is figuring out how to shore up public
Speaker 1: confidence in our elections. Some think the way to do
Speaker 1: this is to tighten election rules UM. Others see this
Speaker 1: tightening as a pretext a way to restrict certain people
Speaker 1: from accessing the ballot. So figuring out how to navigate
Speaker 1: between those two perspectives seems to be the difficult task
Speaker 1: ahead that Skimberly Robinson, a Supreme Court reporter for a
Speaker 1: Bloomberg b NA, and Rebecca Green, a professor at William
Speaker 1: and Mary Law School, speaking with the Bloomberg's Gregg Store
Speaker 1: even us in a Bloomberg Law weekdays at one pm
Speaker 1: Wall Street Time here on Bloomberg Radio Now among the
Speaker 1: legal stories from Bloomberg Law. Dylan Roof has again been
Speaker 1: found competent to stand trial in last year's massacre at
Speaker 1: a church in South Carolina. They left nine parishioners dead
Speaker 1: at a Bible study. After a second hearing over his
Speaker 1: mental capacity, a judge ruled not only that Roof can
Speaker 1: be sentenced for his crimes, but can represent himself in
Speaker 1: those proceedings. The same jury the last month took less
Speaker 1: than two hours to find Roof guilty of hate crimes,
Speaker 1: obstruction of religion and other accounts. Returns to court tomorrow
Speaker 1: to be to begin to consider his sentence. Thus his
Speaker 1: morning's Bloomberg Lab Brrie. If you can find more illegal
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Speaker 1: Attorneys will find exceptional legal research and business development tools
Speaker 1: there as well. Visit Bloomberg Law dot com and Bloomberg
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