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" One of the more signifying moments in Wednesday&amp;#039;s oral arguments at the Supreme Court regarding the Voting Rights Act came when Chief Justice John Roberts asked Solicitor General Ralph Verrilli: &amp;quot;Do you know which state has the worst ratio of white voter turnout to African-American voter turnout?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I do not know that,&amp;quot; Verrilli answered. &amp;quot;Massachusetts,&amp;quot; Roberts responded, adding that even Mississippi has a narrower gap. Roberts late asked Verrilli if the latter knew which state has the greatest disparity in registration. Again, according to Roberts, it was the Commonwealth (God save it!) Plainly, it seemed to me, Roberts, who&amp;#039;d already asked Verrilli if it was the government&amp;#039;s submission that people in the South were &amp;quot;more racist&amp;quot; than people in the rest of the country, was having a bit of a nyah-nyah moment about northern liberal hypocrisy. (The way I knew that was that Antonin Scalia had sneered out the same point earlier.) Turns out it was more than that. Turns out that the Chief probably was cooking his own argument in a way that was thoroughly dishonest. Turns out that John Roberts may be something of a thumb-on-the-scale charlatan. The problem is, Roberts is woefully wrong on those points, according to Massachusetts Secretary of State William F. Galvin, who on Thursday branded Roberts&amp;#039;s assertion a slur and made a declaration of his own. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m calling him out,&amp;quot; Galvin said. Galvin was not alone in his view. Academics and Massachusetts politicians said that Roberts appeared to be misguided. A Supreme Court spokeswoman declined to offer supporting evidence of \u00ADRoberts&amp;#039;s view, referring a \u00ADreporter to the court transcript. On Thursday, Galvin tried to set the record straight. &amp;quot;We have one of the highest voter registrations in the country,&amp;quot; he said, &amp;quot;so this whole effort to make a cheap-shot point at Massachusetts is deceptive...In the November 2012 election, there was little difference in voter turnout in Boston neighborhoods with high concentrations of white or black voters. In Charlestown, where 80 percent of residents are white, 68 percent of voters cast ballots in November. In Roxbury, the traditional heart of Boston&amp;#039;s African-American community, about 64 percent of voters came out to the polls. Galvin and political scientists speculated that Roberts drew his conclusions using US Census Bureau data known as &amp;quot;The Current Population Survey,&amp;quot; which collects information on voting and registration every other year. Political scientists say this is one of the few national databases, if not the only one, providing state-by-state voting information. In an interview with public radio station WBUR on Friday morning, Galvin expanded his argument, pointing out that Roberts&amp;#039;s claim is accurate only if you use data from a survey that included minority citizens who are not yet, well, citizens. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;d think that a judge who&amp;#039;s already ruled in favor of voter-ID laws would realize the problem with using that survey,&amp;quot; said Galvin, shrewdly turning the knife. (We should pause here for a moment and discuss Billy Galvin. In the proudest and most full Massachusetts definition, he&amp;#039;s a pol. He is as unbeatable an elected state official as exists anywhere on the planet, and that includes North Korea. He has accumulated a great deal of power through the simple technique of not using it every chance he gets, and through picking himself the right spots. He is forever rumored to be running for higher office, and he never has. If he says John Roberts is being hinky, then John Roberts is being hinky.) Galvin&amp;#039;s case becomes even stronger when you consider it in the context of Adam Serwer&amp;#039;s survey of Roberts&amp;#039;s long career of trying to sink the Voting Rights Act. He&amp;#039;s had the knives out for it ever since he was an ambitious young Justice Department lawyer in the administration of Ronald Reagan, whose Justice Department was dedicated in many ways to rolling back the achievements of the civil rights movement at the behest of the various unreconstructed Confederates to whom Saint Ronnie owed his election. (This is something that gets left out of most Reagan hagiography. Google &amp;quot;William French Smith&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;segregated academies&amp;quot; some time.) Roberts made his bones in conservative legal circles specifically because he&amp;#039;s had the knives out for voting rights for 30 years. He&amp;#039;s not going to let a little thing like the truth stand in his way now. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a17656/the-chief-and-the-pol/>