Source: http://vrafortoday.org/category/voting-rights/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 06:26:01+00:00

Document:
Nearly two years after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in its Shelby County v. Holder decision, House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R. Va., made a breathtaking assertion.
While he is correct that we still have a VRA, the law is no longer “strong.” Since Shelby, and even since Goodlatte’s misguided statement, courts are showing that states freed from federal oversight have taken license to discriminate — resulting in a slew of evidence for Goodlatte to consider.
Earlier this month, a federal court found that Texas lawmakers drew House districts to intentionally discriminate against minority voters. The week before, another federal court ruled that Texas’ strict voter ID law “was passed with a discriminatory purpose in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act,” marking the fifth time since 2011 that a federal court has ruled against the ID law. Last month, some congressional districts in Texas were found to be drawn “with an impermissible intent to dilute minority voting strength or otherwise violated the Fourteenth Amendment” of the U.S. Constitution. And in January, a federal judge ruled that the city of Pasadena, Texas, was purposefully diluting Latino votes — making it the first jurisdiction in the country since Shelby to again need federal approval before changing its election laws.
That’s four rulings this year of intentional racial discrimination. And that’s just Texas.
Last July, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that North Carolina’s H.B. 589 was enacted with “racially discriminatory intent” to “target African Americans with almost surgical precision.” The decision meant that photo ID wouldn’t be required for the November 2016 election, and it restored provisions that H.B. 589 had eliminated, including a week of early voting, same-day registration, out-of-precinct voting, and a preregistration program for 16- and 17-year-olds. The law, which has become known as the state’s “monster voter suppression law,” was passed just weeks after Shelby.
Alabama’s voter ID law, also implemented in the wake of Shelby, will be on trial this September.
While the U.S. Supreme Court — now complete with Donald Trump’s justice — will likely ultimately decide the fate of these laws, Goodlatte and other Republican leaders in Congress shouldn’t be let off the hook for investigating what several federal courts have now called intentional racial discrimination.
We wrote to Goodlatte and Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, R. Iowa, last July when some of the most damning decisions were being handed down by the courts, urging them to hold hearings on the issue and to consider bipartisan bills to help restore the VRA. They did not respond to our letters, did not hold hearings, and have not acknowledged, in the wake of these rulings, that there’s a need to address voting rights.
Chairman Goodlatte claimed he was willing to look at new evidence of voting discrimination. Given the many recent examples, he needs to honor his promise and hold a hearing to examine this new evidence. When bills are reintroduced in this session of Congress, he and Chairman Grassley should consider those too. Claiming there’s no evidence of modern-day voting discrimination is no longer acceptable — especially if you refuse to investigate it.
This entry was posted in Voting Rights on April 30, 2017 by Editor.
A federal district court in Texas on Monday ruled that Texas’ strict voter ID law “was passed with a discriminatory purpose in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.” It was the fifth time a federal court ruled against the law.
The law, S.B. 14, was initially blocked in August 2012 under a provision of the VRA that the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated in its June 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision. But immediately after the Shelby decision, Texas – now freed from federal oversight – rushed to implement the law.
Post-Shelby, S.B. 14 was initially struck down by Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos – the same judge who ruled this week. In striking down the law in October 2014, Gonzales Ramos equated it to an “unconstitutional poll tax.” And in August 2015, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed that ruling.
After Texas appealed the ruling, the full Fifth Circuit in July 2016 ruled (9-6) that S.B. 14 violated the VRA because it discriminates against Black and Hispanic voters. The court also asked the district court to find a remedy to prevent 600,000 Texans who lack a required form of ID from being disenfranchised in the November 2016 presidential election.
The Fifth Circuit asked the district court to reexamine whether the law was actually enacted with a discriminatory intent. This week’s ruling answered that question: It was. Now, Texas could become the first state to be bailed back in to preclearance under the VRA, meaning it would once again need to have its voting changes reviewed by the federal government before implementation.
Texas isn’t alone. In July 2016, a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that North Carolina’s monster voter suppression law, H.B. 589, was enacted with “racially discriminatory intent” to “target African Americans with almost surgical precision.” The law was enacted in August 2013 – just weeks after Shelby.
Despite this renaissance of voting discrimination, the Republican Party’s 2016 platform strongly opposed litigation against states over ID laws like S.B. 14 in Texas and H.B. 589 in North Carolina. The platform also supported voter ID laws and failed to mention efforts to restore the VRA – even though S.B. 14, at the time found to be discriminatory by four federal courts, was implemented as a direct result of Shelby.
Like the party’s platform, Republican leadership in Congress has also ignored bills to restore the VRA. Bipartisan bills in Congress languished throughout the 114th session of Congress because Republican leadership failed to hold hearings on the bills.
Now, with a Jeff Sessions-led Department of Justice and a Supreme Court with Neil Gorsuch on the bench, the VRA may be poorly enforced and weakened even further.
This entry was posted in Voting Rights on April 12, 2017 by Editor.
Saturday, August 6, marks the 51st anniversary of the signing of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and with the 2016 general election less the 100 days away, voter discrimination is once again flourishing. We urge you to mark this anniversary by highlighting the need for Congress to restore the Voting Rights Act as soon as possible.
Since the Supreme Court gutted the VRA in 2013, states and cities have enacted a tidal wave of voter discrimination laws intended to restrict the right to vote for people of color, people with disabilities, students and others.
Recent court victories turning back a few of these laws have proven that that these efforts are widespread, require massive investments of time and money to litigate, and intentionally discriminate against voters of color. It took years of litigation to strike down intentionally discriminatory laws, meaning countless voters were denied the right to cast ballots in the 2014 mid-term election and in this year’s presidential primary – and there’s no way to get those votes back.
In North Carolina, a court recently found that the state targeted black voters “with almost surgical precision” when it enacted a monster voter discrimination law passed just weeks after Shelby County v. Holder.
In Texas, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit found the state’s voter ID law violates what remains of the VRA because it discriminates against Black and Latino voters. This was the fourth federal court to reach that conclusion.
In Michigan, a federal court overturned a ban on straight-ticket voting saying that it disproportionately targeted African-American voters and would lead to longer lines.
In North Dakota, a federal judge blocked the state’s strict voter ID law as unconstitutional because it placed “substantial and disproportionate burdens” on Native American voters.
In Kansas, a state judge blocked a state administrative rule that would have disqualified the votes of more than 17,000 Kansans who registered without providing proof of citizenship. The judge’s ruling came just days before a primary election.
The arduous process that went into getting these laws struck down was exactly what the VRA was designed to prevent. For every statewide law that can be litigated for years, there are countless city, county, and school board changes to voting districts, precinct locations, and new barriers to registering and voting that will never be litigated in court.
With less than 100 days until the first presidential election in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act, bipartisan bills to restore the law continue to languish in the House and Senate Judiciary Committees – and states and jurisdictions once covered by VRA preclearance have bullishly passed laws that were once blocked, or would have been blocked before Shelby.
As documented in the recent report, Warning Signs, rollbacks in voting rights in several swing states once covered by VRA preclearance could determine the outcome of 84 Electoral College votes and control of the Senate. The temptation to shave points off the participation rate of voters of color has proven too great to resist. Since Shelby, all five of these states – North Carolina, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and Virginia – have engaged in deceptive and sophisticated efforts to disenfranchise voters that will have an impact on the 2016 election.
And in an especially frightening move last month, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that its deployment of election observers would be “severely curtailed” because of Shelby. The federal observer program’s significant role – to detect discrimination and intimidation at the polls – is especially needed given that racially and religiously bigoted rhetoric is flourishing in this election.
The Voting Rights Advancement Act, introduced in both chambers of Congress in June 2015, has bipartisan support in the Senate. The Voting Rights Amendment Act, introduced in the House in February 2015, has bipartisan support as well. With Republicans in control of both chambers during the 114th session of Congress, neither bill has received even a hearing to examine evidence of discrimination. Republican chairs of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees – Bob Goodlatte of Virginia and Chuck Grassley of Iowa – are in charge of scheduling hearings, but have chosen not to.
Goodlatte and Grassley both voted to reauthorize the VRA just 10 years ago, when the House voted 390-33 and the Senate voted 98-0 to extend the law for an additional 25 years. So did Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. President George W. Bush signed the reauthorization in July 2006. In fact, each time the law has been reauthorized, it’s been by a Republican president (Nixon, Ford, and Reagan signed reauthorizations before Bush).
This stands in stark contrast to today, when most Republican lawmakers don’t just refuse to take legislative action – they refuse to admit voting discrimination exists in the first place. It’s time for Congress to return to its bipartisan tradition of protecting the right to vote for all eligible Americans.
This entry was posted in Voting Rights on August 5, 2016 by Editor.
At the Democratic Convention on Tuesday night, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder – the first African American in history to hold that position – made a bold, harrowing statement about the state of voting rights in the United States. Everything he said was true.
The right to vote is under siege.
Virginia. In 2012, Virginia passed a voter ID law that was approved by the Department of Justice (DOJ). But, after Shelby, the state legislature made the law significantly stricter, and it was implemented without additional DOJ review. Although about 200,000 voters lack a driver’s license in the state, a federal judge upheld the law in May.
Republicans are brazenly assaulting the most fundamental right of our democracy.
North Carolina. Just weeks after the Shelby decision, North Carolina passed a monster voter suppression law that cut early voting by a week, eliminated same-day registration, stopped the counting of out-of-precinct ballots, required photo voter ID, and ended pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-olds. A federal judge upheld the law in April, and the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to rule on it soon.
Laws are being passed to stop people from voting.
South Carolina. DOJ blocked a voter ID law in South Carolina in 2012, but approved it after the state agreed that voters could sign an affidavit if they lacked an ID – an important improvement given 178,000 registered voters lack a DMV-issued ID. For this year’s primary, however, officials in the state have confused voters about what’s really required.
Places to get the documents needed to vote have threatened to close in minority neighborhoods.
Alabama. Last fall, Alabama proposed closing DMV offices in every single county in which African Americans make up more than 75 percent of registered voters, with no similar proposal for DMV offices in other counties. Following backlash and legal threats, Governor Robert Bentley said he would re-open the offices – but just for one day a month. NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed a lawsuit against the state, and the U.S. Department of Transportation launched an investigation.
Modern-day poll taxes are real.
Texas. In October 2014, District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos, in a decision striking down the state’s restrictive voter ID law, wrote that the Texas law, implemented immediately after Shelby, “constitutes an unconstitutional poll tax.” Four federal courts have now ruled that the state’s law violates the VRA because it discriminates against Black and Latino voters, although Ramos’s ruling that it was intentionally discriminatory is still under consideration after a ruling by the 5th Circuit Court last week.
And there are plenty of other examples. Arizona, Florida, and Georgia – all competitive states in this year’s election – are no longer covered by Section 5 of the VRA. As a report we recently released notes, voter suppression unleashed in these states and others after the Shelby decision could determine the 2016 election. Holder’s statement Tuesday night may have sounded ominous, but that’s because voting discrimination – still persistent more than 50 years after the VRA – is precisely that.
This entry was posted in Voting Rights on July 27, 2016 by Editor.
At the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia on Monday night, Rep. Keith Ellison, D. Minn., slammed Speaker Paul Ryan, R. Wisc., for his inaction on voting rights.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court eviscerated the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in June 2013, Republican lawmakers in states no longer covered by the VRA have passed strict voter ID laws that disproportionately burden minority voters. Within minutes of the Supreme Court’s decision, then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott tweeted that the state’s strict voter ID law should go into effect immediately. The following day, Alabama said it would finally start enforcing the photo ID law it had passed two years earlier. And weeks later, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory signed a monster voter suppression law (H.B. 589) that included a voter ID provision.
Just last week, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit became the fourth federal court to say that Texas’ law violates the VRA because it discriminates against Black and Latino voters. A day before the 5th Circuit’s decision, a federal court struck down Wisconsin’s voter ID law as well. Speaker Ryan, who represents that state’s 1st congressional district, has been silent.
More than five months ago, Ryan told the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) that he supports a bipartisan bill to restore the VRA, but that he can’t do anything about it. The bill was introduced by fellow Wisconsin Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner, who championed the VRA’s last reauthorization signed into law 10 years ago this week.
Ryan’s refusal to act didn’t sit well with civil rights and voting rights advocates.
Ellison, a member of the CBC, revived this conversation on Monday night. While Congress is now on recess for nearly two months, Republican leadership continues to do nothing to restore the VRA or advance voting rights in any meaningful way. And as we approach the first presidential election in 50 years without the VRA’s full protections, action is essential.
This entry was posted in Voting Rights on July 26, 2016 by Editor.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Wednesday ruled (9-6) that Texas’ strict voter ID law violates the Voting Rights Act (VRA) because it discriminates against Black and Hispanic voters. The court also asked a lower court to find a remedy to prevent 600,000 Texans who lack a required form of ID from being disenfranchised in November.
The law, S.B. 14, was initially blocked under a provision of the VRA that the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated in its June 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision. But immediately after the Shelby decision, Texas – now freed from federal oversight –rushed to implement the law.
S.B. 14 was struck down two previous times – once by a Texas district court and later by a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court.
Despite these findings, the Republican Party’s 2016 platform, adopted this week in Cleveland, strongly opposes litigation against states over ID laws like this one. The platform also supports voter ID laws and fails to mention efforts to restore the VRA – even though S.B. 14, now found to be discriminatory by four federal courts, was implemented as a direct result of Shelby.
Like the party’s platform, Republican leadership in Congress has also ignored bills to restore the VRA.
If a lower court finds that Texas implemented the law with a discriminatory intent, as Judge Ramos did in her October 2014 opinion, Texas could be bailed back in to preclearance under the VRA.
This entry was posted in Voting Rights on July 21, 2016 by Editor.
Get involved on social media. Provide your followers with information about registering to vote and ask them to commit to voting this November. Click here to download sample social media messages to share throughout the week.
Share these flyers (pdf and png) – online and in person – to get the word out about National Disability Voter Registration Week.
Send out a press release to let your community know that you’re participating in the week and explain why it’s important. Click here to download a sample release.
That proposed legislation is currently stalled in Congress because, more than a year after its introduction, the Republican chairs of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees refuse to hold hearings.
For more about the campaign and National Disability Voter Registration Week, click here. And for more REV UP images and toolkits, click here.
This entry was posted in Voting Rights on July 11, 2016 by Editor.
Here’s what’s happened since — and how it could impact this year’s election.
Three years ago today, the U.S. Supreme Court in its Shelby County v. Holder decision gutted the Voting Rights Act (VRA), a civil rights law signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 to ban racial discrimination in voting. Within minutes of that decision, then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott tweeted that the state’s strict voter ID law should go into effect immediately. The following day, Alabama said it would finally start enforcing the photo ID law it had passed two years earlier. And weeks later, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory signed a monster voter suppression law (H.B. 589) that is still today being challenged in court — and for good reason. North Carolina voters like Dale Hicks, featured in the video below, couldn’t vote in 2014 because of H.B. 589.
Hicks isn’t alone. Voters across the country are facing new voting restrictions passed in the wake of Shelby. In their recent report, “Democracy Diminished: State and Local Threats to Voting Post-Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder,” NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) details both proposed and implemented state, county, and local voting changes in the last three years in jurisdictions formerly covered by the VRA. Beginning in June 2014, for example, Virginia had implemented a photo ID law even though nearly 200,000 voters in the state lacked a driver’s license. This list of voting changes goes on. And on.
We’ve already seen some of these changes in action because — in primary after primary this year — jurisdictions once covered by the VRA have made it harder for people to vote. Arizona’s largest county — with the highest number of minority voters — closed 60 percent of its polling places. In Brooklyn, entire buildings and blocks were de-registered from voting in a purge of 126,000 voters from the rolls. And in North Carolina and Texas, the strict ID laws implemented immediately after Shelby are preventing hundreds of thousands of voters from casting a ballot.
Five of the states previously covered by the VRA (Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas) are also competitive in this year’s general election — in the presidential race, but also some senatorial and gubernatorial races. In a new report, “Warning Signs: The Potential Impact of Shelby County v. Holder on the 2016 General Election,” The Leadership Conference Education Fund found that the voter suppression in these states unleashed by Shelby could impact this year’s election. Now that they’re no longer subject to oversight or accountability, each state has enacted its own set of voting laws that harm voters of color. Unfortunately, leaders in Congress have yet to show any interest in working to solve the problem.
One bill to help restore the VRA was introduced in January 2014. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D. Vt., and Rep. Terri Sewell, D. Ala., introduced a second legislative fix for Shelby in June 2015. Republican leadership in Congress has refused to take action on either. Unless Congress acts now, voters in 2016 will face the first presidential election in 50 years without the full protections of the VRA.
The time is now to #RestoreTheVRA.
This entry was posted in Voting Rights on June 25, 2016 by Editor.
WASHINGTON – Today, voting rights advocates and voters hosted a press call to discuss the impact of the Shelby County v. Holder decision on the 2016 presidential election and to kick off a week of action to restore the Voting Rights Act in advance of the third anniversary of Shelby, which falls on June 25.
Click here to listen to an MP3 of the call.
On the call, participants released a new report, Warning Signs, which profiles voter suppression activities in states that were once covered by Section 5 of the VRA and are host to competitive 2016 contests for 84 Electoral College votes, two Senate seats, and one governor’s seat. The report finds that, since Shelby, all five of these states – North Carolina, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and Virginia – have engaged in deceptive and sophisticated practices to disenfranchise voters that will have an impact on the 2016 election. The report is a collaborative effort of The Leadership Conference Education Fund, and relies on recent reports and materials from the ACLU, the Advancement Project, Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC, the Brennan Center for Justice, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the NALEO Educational Fund.
The call also discussed a nationwide week of action to restore the VRA, endorsed by more than 140 organizations with activities in places like Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Virginia, Texas, and many more.
Below are key quotes from the call.
This entry was posted in Editorials, Voting Rights on June 17, 2016 by Editor.
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R. La., has been better known for associations with white supremacist groups and hostility to civil rights issues than as a champion for voting rights. Will his recent commemoration of Bloody Sunday signal a turn for the House’s third highest ranking official?
Scalise’s trip to Selma was striking because in recent years he’s found himself in hot water over a speech he once delivered to the European American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO), a white supremacist, anti-Semitic, and neo-Nazi organization classified as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
After a sustained bout of public pressure and media scrutiny, Scalise issued a statement calling his attendance there a “mistake,” but his consistent record of hostility toward civil rights issues as a one-time Louisiana state legislator raised concerns among several civil rights leaders, as outlined in a letter from Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League.
Scalise agreed to meet with the two civil rights leaders a month later, where they urged him to cosponsor a bill to restore the VRA, to ask House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte to hold a hearing on the bill, and to help arrange a meeting between them and House Republican leadership regarding the legislation. Scalise failed to act on any of their requests and on August 6, 2015 — the 50th anniversary of the VRA — Henderson and Morial wrote to Scalise for a third time to express their profound disappointment.
“Your past actions have cast you as part of the problem. We invited you to join our efforts to become part of the solution,” Henderson and Morial wrote. Scalise ultimately took no action. That’s why his participation in the Selma commemoration stood out to civil rights advocates in attendance, like Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Scalise’s presence was conspicuous because — even after calling his 2002 speech a mistake — he has failed for more than a year now to work with civil rights leaders and move voting rights forward.
While Scalise’s trip to Selma this year represents a welcome symbolic gesture, commemorating the events of 1965 is no replacement for legislating in 2016 to ensure equal access to the ballot box. As part of House leadership, Scalise has a responsibility to serve not only the constituents in his district, but also the broader national constituency.
Scalise should join House Speaker Paul Ryan in supporting a VRA restoration, and he should take the additional steps of actually cosponsoring a bill and calling on Goodlatte to hold a hearing on it. Before this year’s presidential election — the first in 50 years without the full protections of the VRA — there’s still time for him to redeem his reputation and take meaningful action.
This entry was posted in Voting Rights on March 17, 2016 by Editor.

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