Dave Davis’s right to vote | Center for Equal Opportunity

I am proud to announce my first publication in the Guam Daily Post, which ran earlier this month:

On Sept. 1 at the federal courthouse, Dave Davis will argue that the much-discussed status plebiscite should at last be put out of its misery.

It is commonly understood everywhere else that, under the United States Constitution, the right to vote is violated when you parcel out voting rights based on your ethnic group.

But in Guam, it will take judges to enforce the law. The same thing happened, by the way, in Hawaii, and the Supreme Court ruled in Rice v. Cayetano that the state government there could not limit the right to vote to “Native Hawaiians.”

History repeating itself

A long time ago in the American South, states cooked up all sorts of ways to deny the right to vote to black Americans – poll taxes, grandfather clauses and even a pop quiz or two. Courageous white federal judges in the Deep South refused to play the same games. They saw through the ruse and struck down the laws as unconstitutional.

In Guam, who your parents or grandparents are determines if you have a voice in the status plebiscite. Mr. Davis, despite serving his country in the Air Force, didn’t have the right bloodlines to vote in the election regarding Guam’s relationship with the United States. He isn’t among the chosen.
Guam has advanced arguments that would be laughed out of any other American courtroom – that the plebiscite isn’t discriminatory, or it’s OK to give a chosen people a political voice. Already, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Court has rejected the lion’s share of Guam’s argument, finding that Mr. Davis suffered an injury because he wasn’t treated equally and that the plebiscite is an official election affecting government policy.

As Mr. Davis has put it in his argument to the court: “Classifying citizens into different groups with different political rights and permitting only one of those groups to register for and participate in a government-run election denies the disfavored groups their fundamental right to vote. It is, indeed, the antithesis of the principles that the (U.S. Constitution) adopts as a bedrock constitutional guarantee.”

Well said.

People in positions of power in Guam should take notice. It might help to be taken seriously by the United States if you play by the rules everyone in the United States follows.

Blocking access to the ballot because you don’t have the right blood is right out of the Jim Crow South or apartheid South Africa. It has no place where the American flag flies and the Constitution of the United States applies.

Missing in action in the case, by the way, is the Obama administration’s Department of Justice. Alas, the administration has consistently sacrificed its obligation to enforce the laws equally for all Americans on the altar of political correctness. This case is no exception.

Fortunately, the Center for Individual Rights and former DOJ attorney Christian Adams are representing Mr. Davis in his lawsuit to compel Guam to comply with federal law. In a better world, Mr. Davis would have the federal government on his side, too.

This case has dragged on too long and one hopes that the federal court will do what needs to be done and strike down the plebiscite law. Everyone deserves a voice on Guam’s future, not just those who have the chosen parents or grandparents.

Be careful what you wish for

And advocates of discrimination should be wary of what they ask for. The Chamorro population in Guam is now a distinct minority. Dave Davis’ interpretation of the law will prevent future majorities in Guam from enacting creative barriers to the ballot against Chamorros, like the plebiscite does to Mr. Davis.

So those who want to prohibit Mr. Davis from voting in the plebiscite should be careful what they wish for, because the next favored “ancestral” class might not be linked to Chamorro history, but some other group.

Epilogue: The argument before the court seems to have gone very well. Keep your fingers crossed. Oh, and I should note that the Center for Equal Opportunity had filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case mentioned above, Rice v. Cayetano, in which we successfully urged the Court to strike down a racially exclusive election in Hawaii.

* * *

Judicial Elections and Disparate Impact – Here’s another item regarding the intersection of race, courts, and elections.

The civil-rights Left appears to have a new priority: Attacking the at-large election of judges when this results in a politically incorrect racial and ethnic mix. It will instead be insisted that elections be on the basis of racially gerrymandered districts. Earlier this summer, there was a lawsuit in Texas; last week, the complaint was filed in Alabama.

This sort of challenge to at-large elections has long been a staple of the Left when it comes to city councils and the like. But, as distasteful as it is to have racially-defined districts for local politicians, having racially-defined districts for judges takes the yuckiness to a whole new level. Even Justice John Paul Stevens seemed to recognize that there might be some problems with that.

Get used to it. As the federal judiciary gets worse and worse, from the top down, the Left will get more and more creative in the disparate-impact claims it files. Voter ID? Of course not. At-large elections for judges? No way. A ban on felons voting? Don’t be silly, and this will apply to felons still in prison. And don’t be surprised to see lawsuits demanding that 16-year-olds be allowed to vote, and noncitizens as well, since Neanderthal restrictions like allowing only adult citizens to vote have a disparate impact on, for example, Latinos in many jurisdictions.

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