Voting Rights

North Carolina Anti-Voting Law Finished By Court Challenges

May 16, 2017 Derrick Robinson, www.lawyerscommittee.org Resist! Courts, North Carolina, Voting Rights

By Derrick Robinson for Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law - WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law issued the following statement regarding today’s Supreme Court move which leaves in place the 4th Circuit’s decision regarding North Carolina’s comprehensive voter suppression measure: “The Supreme Court’s move today now renders North Carolina’s law null and void, and brings to close a long and protracted battle over a law deemed one of the most egregious voter suppression measures of its kind,” said Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law president and executive director, Kristen Clarke. “We are pleased that the Supreme Court has left in place the 4th Circuit’s decision finding North Carolina’s draconian voter suppression measure unlawful because it discriminated against minority voters with ‘almost surgical precision.'” “The battle over North Carolina’s law reflects the fallout from the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder which gut a core provision of the Voting Rights Act. Had the Section 5 federal review process remained in place, North Carolina’s discriminatory voting law would likely have been blocked at the outset and never would have gone into effect.

North Carolina County Sued For Discriminating Against Black Voters

February 17, 2017 Kira Lerner, www.thinkprogress.org Resist! North Carolina, Racism, Voting Rights

By Kira Lerner for Think Progress - As Attorney General Jeff Session’s shifts the Department of Justice’s focusfrom protecting voting rights to investigating claims of nonexistent fraud, the rights of an increasing number of minority voters will likely go unprotected. But in that vacuum, a growing number of organizations and advocacy groups have said they will step up to protect voters. On Monday, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law filed the first major federal voting rights lawsuit of the year, alleging that Jones County, North Carolina’s voting system discriminates against African-American residents. Jones County is roughly one-third black, but the black population has not elected a candidate-of-choice to the Board of Commissions in over two decades. According to the lawsuit, this is due to the county’s at-large voting system — a Jim Crow-era tactic that allows localities with white majorities to dilute black voting power.

RESIST: 80,000 March In Raleigh For Voting Rights, Democracy & #MoralResistance

February 13, 2017 Staff, www.commondreams.org Resist! Democracy, North Carolina, Voting Rights

By Staff of Common Dreams - Outrage over the Trump administration helped bring tens of thousands of marchers to downtown Raleigh, North Carolina on Saturday. Trump and the policies he will try to enact with the GOP-led Congress on immigration, health care and civil rights motivated many at Saturday’s march. Rev. William Barber, president of the state NAACP branch and leader of the “Moral Monday” movement, said in a speech: “A racist and greedy extremism that came to power in North Carolina four years ago now controls the White House and the Congress in D.C. Millions are afraid.

Polling Places In Police Stations?

October 24, 2016 Mike Ludwig, www.truth-out.org Organize! Police, Voting Rights

By Mike Ludwig for Truthout - When civil rights groups learned that a county elections board planned to relocate the polling station for a predominately Black precinct in Macon, Georgia, to a local sheriff's office, they warned election officials that the move would unfairly discourage turnout. The officials didn't budge at first. Allegations of police brutality and the 2012 police killing of an unarmed Black manhave raised tensions in this southern community.

Strict Photo ID Laws Threaten Transgender Voting Rights

October 17, 2016 Sue Sturgis, www.facingsouth.org Organize! Transgender, Voting Rights

By Sue Sturgis for Facing South - In the upcoming election, number of states that will have in place strict voter ID laws requiring citizens to present government-issued photo ID at the polls: 8* Of those eight strict ID states, number in the South: 5. Number of transgender citizens whose voting rights are at risk because of those laws, with students, people of color and those with low incomes and disabilities likely overrepresented: over 34,000

The New Election Laws And The Suits Challenging Them

September 27, 2016 Sarah Smith, www.propublica.org Educate! 2016 Elections, Lawsuit, Voting Rights

By Sarah Smith for Pro Publica - There are 15 states with new voting laws that have never before been used during a presidential election, according to a report by the Brennan Center for Justice. These laws include restrictions like voter ID requirements and limits on early voting. Many are making their way through the courts, which have already called a halt to two laws in the past month — one in North Carolina and one in North Dakota.

New Suit ‘Makes Clear Voting Discrimination Is Alive And Well’

September 9, 2016 Andrea Germanos, www.commondreams.org Organize! Alabama, discrimination, Voting Rights

By Andrea Germanos for Common Dreams - With Alabama's three highest courts failing to reflect its racial diversity, the state now faces a federal lawsuit alleging a violation of the Voting Rights Act. The case (pdf), filed in federal court Wednesday in Montgomery, "makes clear that voting discrimination is alive and well across the state of Alabama," said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (Lawyers' Committee).

52 Years Ago, This Speech Changed Course Of Black Voting Rights

August 29, 2016 Keisha N. Blain, www.timeline.com Educate! Black History, Voting, Voting Rights

By Keisha N. Blain for Timeline - Fifty-two years ago, on August 22, 1964, Fannie Lou Hamer delivered arguably the most significant speech of her political career. The fiery civil rights activist known for her iconic line, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired,” spoke before a televised audience at the 1964 Democratic National Convention (DNC), held in Atlantic City, New Jersey. She had traveled all the way from Mississippi on behalf of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) — an organization that was established in April 1964 to challenge the all-white Mississippi delegation to the DNC.

Expanded Suit Alleges Alabama Violated Voting Rights Act

July 1, 2016 Anna Susman, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Alabama, Jobs and Wages, Lawsuit, Voting Rights

By Anna Susman for Popular Resistance - Birmingham, Ala. – A lawsuit filed in April against the state of Alabama for blocking Birmingham’s minimum wage increase expanded Thursday with the filing of an amended complaint that includes additional plaintiffs and defendants and a new claim that the bill signed by Gov. Robert Bentley nullifying the pay hike violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Alabama Legislative Black Caucus and nine individual black Alabama state legislators added their names to a suit initially brought by fast-food workers, the Alabama NAACP and Greater Birmingham Ministries charging the state acted illegally...

Thousands Rally In N. Carolina For ‘Moral Imperative’ Of Voting Rights

February 15, 2016 Jon Queally, www.commondreams.org Resist! North Carolina, Rally, Voting Rights

By Jon Queally for Common Dreams - Thousands of people marched and rallied in the frigid streets of Raleigh, North Carolina on Saturday morning to demand a restoration of voting rights and voice broad support for a new progressive agenda to counter the current policies of Gov. Pat McCrory and the Republican-controlled state legislature. Organized by the Move Forward Together Movement and the North Carolina Chapter of the NAACP, led by Rev. William Barber III, the demonstration attracted a diverse coalition of individuals and organizations who say the systematic attack on state services...

Alabama: IDs Mandatory But Shutters DMV Offices in Black Counties

October 3, 2015 Andrea Germanos, www.commondreams.org Educate! Alabama, Civil Rights, Voting Rights

Andrea Germanos for Common Dreams - Some observers say that Alabama's move to close dozens of drivers license offices is a discriminatory move that could trigger a civil rights probe. Here's why: in 2011 lawmakers approved a voter ID law requiring a government-issued ID to vote, and the 31 offices the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency set for closing—which the agency said was due to the $11 million cut in the new General Fund appropriation—will take a disproportionate hit on counties that are majority African-American. Columnist John Archibald writes that "Alabama just took a giant step backward." "Every single county in which blacks make up more than 75 percent of registered voters will see their driver license office closed. Every one," he continues, writing that the state "might as well just send an invitation to the Justice Department."

Ex-Felons And Advocates Rally For Voting Rights

August 11, 2015 Eddie Conway, www.therealnews.com Resist! Mass Incarceration, Re-entry, Voting Rights

By Eddie Conway in The Real News - What happens is in any organizing campaign or anything bottom-up, you have to build momentum. I think that this is, what it's going to do, it's going to amplify the voices of the people that don't have their voices. This is a conversation right now between the haves, the have-nots. You have an industry or administration that want to keep things the way they are. Then you have people that live in my district, District 45, where there's a high population of ex-offenders that want to see change.They want to have a voice, they want to be able to have that conversation in reference to job employment. In reference to the Second Chance Act. In reference to housing. In reference to transportation, the rail line coming. So many things that affect not only this generation but so many generations to come.

LBJ And The Speech That Changed America

March 22, 2015 Julian E. Zelizer, www.theatlantic.com Resist! Civil Rights, Elections, Racism, Voting Rights

Fifty years ago, Lyndon Baines Johnson delivered one of the most powerful pieces of oratory in presidential history. Standing before Congress at 9 p.m. on March 15, just a few days after the shocking violence that civil-rights protesters confronted during the march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge on “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Johnson called on members of both parties to pass a bill that ensured the federal government would take the steps that were necessary to protect voting rights. Delivering that speech was a courageous decision. When the grassroots civil-rights movement tried to force Johnson’s hand by creating unbearable pressure to send a voting-rights bill to Congress, the president might have ignored or stifled their dissent. Instead, he fully embraced their cause by connecting himself and his White House to the fate of this legislation. He didn’t equivocate.

From Selma To Citizens United: Struggle For One Person, One Vote

January 18, 2015 Chris Kromm, www.southernstudies.org Educate! Citizens United, Democracy, Martin Luther King Jr, MLK, Selma, Voting Rights

The 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches -- and the brutal backlash to them from Alabama state troopers -- galvanized national support for the Voting Rights Act, changing the balance of power in the South. Building on years of local organizing, "roughly a million new voters were registered within a few years after the [Voting Rights Act] became law," says historian Alexander Keyssar in his seminal book "The Right to Vote," "with African-American registration soaring to a record 62 percent." While Selma and the Voting Rights Act strengthened the voice of ordinary voters, Citizens United has heightened the power of mega-rich donors. By opening the treasuries of companies, unions and other groups to limitless political spending, the decision has fueled a spending spree on elections, especially by outside groups not tied to a candidate. According to a new report by the Brennan Center, outside spending in U.S. Senate races has doubled since 2010, to more than $486 million in 2014.

Moral Mondays Protest Restrictive Voting Law

July 8, 2014 Lauren McCauley, www.commondreams.org Resist! Elections, Moral Mondays, North Carolina, Protest, Voting Rights

Hundreds of people were turned away outside of a packed courtroom in Winston-Salem, North Carolina on Monday where inside voting rights activists demanded a halt to what they said was the most restrictive voter suppression legislation since the Jim Crow era, local news reports. The plea, brought forth by the North Carolina NAACP, is calling for temporary injunction of House Bill 589. The law—which was passed by the state legislature immediately after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act last June—mandates that voters show government-issued identification; rolls back early voting; and eliminates same-day registration as well as a high-school civics class that encouraged 18-year-olds to register to vote, among other provisions. "This law—passed by Speaker Thom Tillis, Senate Leader Phil Berger and their extremist counterparts and then signed by Gov. Pat McCrory—represents the most egregious attempt at voter suppression since Jim Crow," said Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, president of the state chapter of the NAACP. Speaking on MSNBC's The Reid Report on Monday, Barber explained that after the Supreme Court ruling—which eliminated federal government "preclearance" to changes made to voting laws in certain states, including North Carolina—the bill grew from 12 pages to 57 pages.

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