Welcome to Amicus Slate Supreme Court podcast.

I am Dahlia Lithwick and I cover the courts for Slate.

Another week, another seven days of inaction by the U.S. Senate on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Merrick Garland.

This Saturday marks the 227th day since President Obama tapped Judge Garland for that vacancy on the Supreme Court bench.

But in case you've been holding your breath, you should probably let it out after 227 days.

Because since you and I last chatted, Senator John McCain of Arizona promised that, quote, we will be united against any Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton, if she were president, would put up.

Now, his campaign quickly walked that back, and Arizona's other senator, Jeff Flake, followed up last week by telling Politico that he was encouraging his colleagues to move forward with hearings in a lame duck session.

Taking an affirmative position somewhere in between his two colleagues, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley announced that if Clinton becomes president, he would not, quote, Stonewall any person she nominates for the vacancy on the court.

He said, quote, I think we have a responsibility to very definitely vet, if you want to use

that word, vet, whoever nominee that person puts forward.

Confused? Well, so are we. But we suspect there will be many, many more opportunities to be

confused about all this in the near future.

So we thought we would dedicate this week's podcast to that little thing on everyone's mind called voting.

We don't just mean the election.

We mean that right to go to the polls and pull the lever for your preferred candidate.

Later on in the show, we're going to be joined by the Brennan Center's

Wendy Weiser to consider the impact of Donald Trump's ominous warnings about vote fraud,

but first, we turn to a major voting rights case out of Ohio. This case centers on voting

regulations passed in the wake of Shelby County. That was the 2013 Supreme Court decision

that more or less gutted the heart of the Voting Rights Act.

And the case has been working its way up through the court system there, even as the clock has been ticking down to election day.

Earlier this week, the lawyers challenging the regulations filed an emergency motion with the U.S. Supreme Court asking that the regulations be put on hold for this election.

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