Texas voting law builds on long legacy of racism from GOP leaders

  Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a bill on Sept. 7, 2021, that reduces opportunities for people to vote, allows partisan poll watchers more access, and creates steeper penalties for violating voting laws.

  The Republican governor argued that the legislation would “solidify trust and confidence in the outcome of our elections by making it easier to vote and harder to cheat.” Democratic opponents of the measure, however, said Republican legislators presented no evidence of widespread voter fraud during debate on the bill.

Voting rights advocates prep for perfect storm in 2020

  Carla Duffy and Janet Savage waited nearly three hours in the hot sun outside the George Ford Center in Powder Springs, Georgia to cast ballots in the state’s June 9 primary. Masked up to ward off the coronavirus, they were determined to vote despite lines that snaked down the street.

  After about 90 minutes in line, voters at the predominately Black precinct were told the state’s new voting machines were not working. In a scene that played out across the state, they were given paper ballots. The ordeal left Duffy and Savage with little confidence in Georgia’s ability to conduct a fair election in November’s presidential contest. The primary, for example, was originally scheduled for May 19 but was pushed back due to concerns about the pandemic, a delay that appeared to have little effect on the state’s readiness once voters arrived at the polls.

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.

I asked people why they don’t vote, and this is what they told me

  At least 40% to 90% of American voters stay home during elections, evidence that low voter turnout for both national and local elections is a serious problem throughout the United States.

  With the 2020 presidential election approaching, directives for people to “get out and vote” will be firing up again.

  Some people might be indifferent or simply not care, but many who forgo voting have legitimate reasons.

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.

Fighting an internal threat to our democracy

  In his recent testimony before Congress, Special Counsel Robert Mueller pointedly warned the nation about Russia’s ongoing attempts to meddle in our nation’s elections.

  All Americans, regardless of their political beliefs, should be gravely concerned about this threat from abroad. But we should be equally – perhaps even more – concerned about efforts to rig our elections from within.

  Since the U.S. Supreme Court gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, partisan politicians at the state level have enacted a wave of voting restrictions that have disenfranchised hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people.

Waging a new war on poverty

  The movement for racial justice in America is inextricably linked to the fight for economic justice.

  Prominent African-American activists like Frederick Douglas W.E.B. Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph, and Angela Davis recognized that black emancipation requires economic empowerment.

  That sentiment is probably no better exemplified in American history than by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s shift in messaging near the end of his life.

  King began to call for the redistribution of economic and political power in the United States, launching a national campaign that culminated in the Poor People's March on Washington in the summer of 1968. The march took place weeks after his assassination in Memphis, where he had traveled to rally support for the city’s striking sanitation workers.

Trump lies again about voter fraud

  The president is using a far-right tabloid to elevate baseless conspiracy theories and undermine our democracy.

  Studies have repeatedly shown that voter fraud is virtually non-existent. President Trump’s new claim, in fact, is about as valid as his false assertion in 2016 that millions of people voted illegally for his opponent. His own commission dissolved after finding no evidence to support it.

Long lines, broken machines, voter ID laws: Welcome to the neo-Jim Crow

  Felon disenfranchisement was designed to “preserve the purity of the ballot box,” or in other words, the whiteness of the electorate.

  By the time the Alabama Supreme Court issued that opinion in 1884, Florida had already beaten it to the punch. Florida outlawed voting for anyone convicted of a felony in 1868, at the very same time that it began to convict more black people of felonies.

  Exactly 150 years later, Florida voters finally overturned that discriminatory policy, re-enfranchising 1.5 million people in a single stroke last Tuesday. The news that Florida had passed Amendment 4, giving as many as 40 percent of the state’s black men the right to vote, was cause for celebration around the country and certainly here at the Southern Poverty Law Center, where we invested heavily to support its passage.

Conservative lawmakers are suppressing voters—Here’s what you can do to fight back

  Another election year, more voter suppression. Every election, eligible Americans—particularly people of color, young people, and Americans with disabilities—are forced to fight for their fundamental right to vote.

  For years, conservative lawmakers have systematically excluded and actively prevented these groups from making their voices heard in the democratic process. Suppressing the vote of people of color, for example, dates to the origins of America, when voting was reserved for white male property owners. Even with the 15th Amendment, racially motivated disenfranchisement—such as poll taxes, felon disenfranchisement laws, issuance of English-only voting materials, and discriminatory voter purges—has become a horrific and shameful electoral tradition in the United States. Young Americans and Americans with disabilities have also historically been targeted by voter suppression measures, such as strict voter ID laws that exclude student IDs as acceptable forms of identification and polling places that are noncompliant with requirements in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Hank Sanders: Senate Sketches #1619 - Do you see the Giant?

  I see the Giant. I want you to see the Giant. The Giant walks to and fro, powerfully impacting our lives every minute of every day. The Giant gives, and the Giant takes away. Do you see the Giant?

  I see the Giant. Sometimes it is the Big Good Giant. Sometimes it’s the Big Bad Giant. But it’s always the Giant. Do you see the Giant that’s impacting our lives in every way and at all times?

  We all feel the impact of the Giant. The Giant is always there. But so many do not see the Giant. The Giant protects some of us. It provides for some of us. It pushes some of us along. It lifts some of us. It carries some of us.

Voter purges prevent eligible Americans from voting

  On January 10, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute, et.al., a case that will determine whether states can remove individuals from voter rolls for simply failing to vote in previous elections. Every American has the fundamental right to vote, but from 2011 to 2014, Ohio removed a reported 846,000 registered Americans from its voter rolls for infrequent voting over a six-year period. This removal was in violation of the National Voter Registration Act.

Black voters turned out in Alabama — despite suppression

  When it came time to cast her ballot in the presidential election last fall, Dechauna Jiles voted at the First Assembly of God in Dothan, Alabama. But when she returned to her polling place last week to vote in Alabama’s special election, poll workers told her she was “inactive.”

  “That makes no sense,” said Jiles.

  The African-American woman had always voted at the First Assembly of God.

Kris Kobach wants to decide who has the right to vote

  Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has long had an appetite for nativist, anti-immigrant thinking.

  It led him to work as the legal counsel to a hate group. It led him to become the architect behind harsh anti-immigrant laws. And, recently, it led him to champion an anti-voter fraud effort at a time when restrictive voting laws frequently disenfranchise minority voters.

  Kobach began removing people from his state’s voter rolls in 2015, making anyone who did not provide proof of citizenship within 90 days ineligible to vote.

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.

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.

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.

Joshua Field: Creating a federal right to vote

  This week the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, a vital piece of legislation that was widely hailed as the nation’s most effective civil rights law. Shelby County, Alabama, had challenged the law, arguing that it was unconstitutional to require “covered” states and localities with a history of voter discrimination to get permission or “preclearance” from a federal court or the Justice Department before changing voting procedures.