Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse - 60th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery march

  This Sunday, leaders from throughout Alabama and the entire country will commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery March and the infamous Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. It was a momentous occasion and needs memorializing. 

Voting in unconstitutional districts: US Supreme Court upended decades of precedent in 2022 by allowing voters to vote with gerrymandered maps instead of fixing the congressional districts first

  For the 2022 midterm elections, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Alabama to use congressional districts that violated the law and diluted the voting power of Black citizens.

  A 5-4 vote by the Supreme Court in February 2022 let Alabama use these illegal districts during the election while the court heard the state’s appeal on the case known as Allen v. Milligan. In that case, voters had sued Alabama, arguing that its new congressional district map violated the Voting Rights Act by unfairly reducing Black voting power. Only one of seven congressional districts on Alabama’s new map had a majority Black population despite Black residents making up a quarter of the state’s population.

That redistricting argument sounds familiar

  Three federal judges order the Alabama Legislature to draw fair districts for Black voters. 

  Lawmakers drag their feet. They submit a plan. Judges reject it for limiting the ability of Black Alabamians to choose their leaders. 

  September 2023? 

  Nope. September 1965. 

What the Supreme Court’s surprise voting rights decision could mean for Alabama

  The Supreme Court surprised me. 

  You see, it’s become distressingly easy to predict how the nation’s high court will rule on issues. 

  The Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade? Horrifying. Insulting. Deadly to women. But we knew that this bench was going there. 

  I’ve spent way too many nights waiting for the Supreme Court to decide whether to allow an execution in Atmore to proceed. Whatever the merits of the condemned person’s appeal, they almost always allow the machinery of death to roll forward.

Civil rights legislation sparked powerful backlash that’s still shaping American politics

  For nearly 60 years, conservatives have been trying to gut the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. As a scholar of American voting rights, I believe their long game is finally bearing fruit.

  The 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder seemed to be the death knell for the Voting Rights Act.

Seven years after Shelby County vs. Holder, voter suppression permeates the South

  JoAnne Bland was only 12 when she collapsed in horror on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama in 1965. State troopers were brutalizing people all around her – including her sister – with tear gas, clubs, whips, and rubber tubing wrapped in barbed wire, simply because they sought the right to vote.

  Television footage of the “Bloody Sunday” attack sparked national outrage, galvanized public opinion in favor of Black suffrage, and mobilized Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act, which outlawed racial discrimination in voting.

The struggle for Native American voting rights

  November is Native American Heritage Month – a fitting time to honor the resistance and resilience of Native peoples, including their fight to be heard by and represented in the government that dispossessed them for centuries.

  The first inhabitants of this land have been expressly disenfranchised for most of U.S. history.

  Excluded from birthright citizenship, American Indians found that, unlike immigrants, there wasn’t a naturalization process for them because they were not considered “foreigners.” During Reconstruction, they were excluded from rights acknowledged by the 14th Amendment, which bolstered civil rights for formerly enslaved people.

Brett Kavanaugh threatens Americans’ fundamental right to vote

  Last week marked the 53rd anniversary of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). In the years since the VRA’s enactment, however, its protections have not gone unchallenged. In a 2013 decision in Shelby v. Holder, a conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court gutted Section 5 of the VRA, a provision that prevented certain jurisdictions from unilaterally manipulating their voting policies and procedures. This ruling allowed legislators to enact discriminatory laws that make voting more difficult for both people of color and low-income Americans. With the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy this past July, it is essential that the Senate demand a fair, independent nominee who will defend the fundamental rights of Americans.

  Brett M. Kavanaugh is not that nominee. Throughout his career, he has demonstrated a willingness to turn a blind eye to voter suppression and racial discrimination. If Kavanaugh is confirmed, Americans will almost certainly face further erosion of their voting rights.

Hank Sanders: Senate Sketches #1608: Our children are more powerful and smarter than we know

  Our children are powerful. Our children are far more powerful than we know. They can go where we cannot go. They can do what we cannot do. They can unleash explosive energies that seemed securely bound. They can move those of us who know we need to move but can’t move. Our children are more powerful than we know.

  The power of our children was on full display with the March for Our Lives. There were more than eight hundred thousand participants at just one march in Washington, D.C., our nation’s capitol. And there were more than eight hundred other marches around the world with hundreds of thousands of marchers. That’s great power. But the power of our children did not start with the children of today. It started a long time ago. I can’t go that far back, but I can personally go back more than half a century.

Hank Sanders: Senate Sketches #1574: Through the eyes of children

  Through the eyes of children. From the mouths of babes. We all, including children, have our perspectives. We reveal these perspectives through our words. On many national and state issues, we rarely view these issues through the eyes of our children. We rarely hear or read the words of our children. This is an opportunity to hear our children on voting. August 6th was the 52nd Anniversary of the signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act into law by President Lyndon Johnson. It is truly a historic day. It is also a good time to share the experiences of our children.

Alexandra Werner-Winslow: State legislators attack the right to protest

  Fifty-two years ago Friday, famed civil rights judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. issued a momentous federal court ruling that prohibited Alabama Gov. George Wallace and a local sheriff from interfering with voting rights marchers.

  It came 10 days after Bloody Sunday, the day protesters began marching to the Alabama Capitol only to be turned back and brutally beaten by state troopers and a sheriff’s posse as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.

  Four days after Johnson's ruling, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led more than 3,000 marchers across the bridge and then on to the steps of the Capitol in Montgomery – their right to protest upheld, their path unimpeded by law enforcement.

Hank Sanders: Senate Sketches #1552: Come with me as we share the continuing Jubilee experience!

  Come with me as we share the Bridge Crossing Jubilee on the 52nd Anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the Selma-to-Montgomery March and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. I cannot share everything because I could not attend all of the more than 40 events. I don’t even have space to share all I participated in over these five days. Come with me as we share the continuing experience of the Bridge Crossing Jubilee.

  Let’s start on Thursday of last week. I returned from a Senate session in Montgomery. Two television reporters had set up interviews about the Jubilee. I agreed to do the interviews in spite of the potential for negative publicity. I met them at Tabernacle Baptist Church. Rather than respond to the controversy, I tried to address the big picture: the Jubilee would go on; the forty-plus events would go on as planned; and only one event, the Jubilee Festival, would be moved.

Will Tucker and Cassie Miller: Systematic voter suppression — not 'voter fraud' — is the real cause for concern

  President Trump last week resurrected a big lie from the campaign trail, claiming that he lost the popular vote because as many as 5 million people voted illegally – all for his opponent.

  He offered no evidence. There is none. In fact, studies show conclusively that voter fraud is exceedingly rare.

  At best, Trump’s search for phantom voter fraud is a distraction from the very real voter suppression efforts carried out systematically by his own party – and from the recent, high-profile federal court decisions striking down those laws.

  At worst, it’s a precursor to a renewed push to suppress voting.

Hank Sanders: Senate Sketches #1540: Jeff Sessions cannot do justice as head of the Justice Department

  It was March of 1986. I was in Washington, D.C. before the Senate Judiciary Committee testifying against the nomination of Jefferson Beauregard Session for Federal District Judge. His nomination was not confirmed. Now, some 30 years later, we are faced with his nomination again. This time, it’s for United States Attorney General to head the U.S. Justice Department. This governmental agency helps pick all nominees for federal judges, U.S. attorneys and some other positions. More importantly, the Attorney General is charged with doing justice for all. In my opinion, Jeff Sessions cannot do justice as head of the Justice Department.

Liz Kennedy: Voter suppression laws cost Americans their voices at the polls

  The integrity of U.S. elections depends on every eligible American being able to cast a vote that is counted. Yet this year, the first presidential election in 50 years without the full protection of the Voting Rights Act, many Americans across the country were blocked from having their voices heard in the democratic process.

Voter suppression is real: Americans must remain vigilant

  In 2016, Americans will not have the full protections of the Voting Rights Act during a presidential election for the first time in 50 years. Signed into law in 1965, the Voting Rights Act protected the right to vote—the most fundamental pillar of American democracy—and ensured that all Americans, no matter their race or ethnicity, had access to the voting booth. This access was not easily achieved but was essential to ensure that the voices of all Americans could be heard. However, recent changes in the voting landscape have endangered this critical access ahead of next month’s election.

Protecting the right to vote in the 2016 elections

  The real measure of election integrity is that every eligible American can cast a vote that is counted. But this fundamental right is being threatened in the 2016 elections. Fourteen states will have new laws cutting back on voting rights and access in place for the first time in a presidential election. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court removed core legal protections for voting rights that were enshrined in the Voting Rights Act in its Shelby County v. Holder decision. Now, in further fallout from that decision, the U.S. Department of Justice, or DOJ, announced that the agency will cut back a key voting rights protection—the federal election observer program—that the country has relied on for more than 50 years to prevent voter suppression at the polls.

Racial and gender diversity sorely lacking in America’s courts

  This month a group of African American voters sued Alabama under the Voting Rights Act, alleging that its system of at-large elections for the state’s three appellate courts discriminates against black voters. Since 1994, every black candidate for the state’s 19 appellate judgeships has lost to a white candidate. As ThinkProgress noted, “At-large elections have been a common tactic across the country” to minimize the political influence of voters of color. A similar lawsuit was recently filed in Texas. Around 40 percent of Texas’ population is Latino, yet only 5 of the 76 justices who have served on the Texas Supreme Court since 1945—a mere 6.6 percent—have been Latino.

Sam Fulwood III: Voting rights victories are pyrrhic but worth celebrating

  Over the past month, a set of state-level voter suppression laws have fallen like shaky dominoes on a tilted floor.

  In decision after decision, courts have clearly and unambiguously rendered clear-eyed rulings—from Texas to Wisconsin to North Carolina to Kansas to Michigan to North Dakota—arguing that these state legislatures willfully pushed racist laws with the exclusive intent to restrict African Americans and other voters of color from exercising their franchise rights.

Hank Sanders: Senate Sketches #1493: Is democracy dying on the vines in the United States?

  Is democracy dying on the vines in these United States of America? There are some pervasive signs. My one vote won’t make a difference. My vote doesn’t count. Voting doesn’t change anything. The situation raises the question: is democracy dying on the vines in these United States of America?

  In President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address, he said, “Most of all, democracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesn’t matter; that the system is rigged in favor of the rich or the powerful or some narrow interest.” Is democracy dying on the vines?