“How to Protect the Vote: Democrats face significant obstacles in the fight to strengthen voting rights”
Ari Berman writes for The Nation. … Continue reading
Category Archives: Voting Rights Act
“From Selma to Citizens United: The contested struggle for one person, one vote”
This item appears at Facing South. … Continue reading
Common Cause to Rep. Goodlatte: “Discrimination Isn’t a Thing of the Past”
Blog post. … Continue reading
“Honor King’s Legacy By Protecting Voting Rights”
Ari Berman: The film Selma movingly chronicles Martin Luther King Jr.’s fight to win the Voting Rights Act (VRA). It ends with King speaking triumphantly on the steps of the Alabama capitol, after marching from Selma to Montgomery. Five months … Continue reading
Rep. Conyers on the VRA and VRAA
WaPo profile: Conyers and House Democrats plan to spend this year drawing attention to ongoing concerns with voting rights after the Supreme Court invalidated parts of the Voting Rights Act in 2013. The court struck down sections of the law … Continue reading
Maureen Dowd NYT Column on “Selma” and LBJ
Here. … Continue reading
The VRAA, as Expected, is Going Nowhere in the New Congress
MSNBC: A top Republican has all but confirmed that Congress won’t move forward with legislation to strengthen the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which was badly weakened by the Supreme Court in 2013. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, who chairs the House Judiciary … Continue reading
“Supreme Court could rule on Wisconsin voter ID law”
Zack Roth reports for MSNBC. … Continue reading
“Rep. Lewis: ‘People Want To Gut The Voting Rights Act,’ ‘Take Us Back To Another Period’”
Video. … Continue reading
“Obama Administration Intervenes In Native American Voting Rights Lawsuit”
Think Progress reports. … Continue reading
“Challenge to Wisconsin Voter ID Law Heads to Supreme Court”
Tony Mauro reports for BLT. … Continue reading
“What ‘Selma’ Gets Right—and Wrong—About Civil Rights History”
Ari Berman reflects. … Continue reading
“Racial Voting and Geography in the United States”
Very interesting new draft from Brian Amos and Michael McDonald up on SSRN: Voters express varied levels of support for the parties’ candidates depending on where they live, be it in the South (Aldrich 1995; Carmines and Stimson 1989) or … Continue reading
“Voting Rights: One Way the GOP Might Reverse What Scalise Scandal Made Worse”
Hawkings Here (Roll Call): Whether Scalise can totally shed the taint from the incident won’t be known for several months. That will be determined in large part by potential congressional candidates and big-money donors, when they start either accepting or … Continue reading
“Erwin Chemerinsky: The importance of the Voting Rights Act”
OC Register oped. … Continue reading
“Reining in the Purcell Principle”
I have posted this draft on SSRN (for a March symposium on voting rights for the Florida State University Law Review). Here is the abstract: About a month before the 2014 election, the United States Supreme Court issued a series of … Continue reading
“Who disagrees with ‘Selma’s’ portrayal of LBJ? Blacks in the civil rights era.”
The Monkey Cage. … Continue reading
“The State as Witness: Windsor, Shelby County, and Judicial Distrust of the Legislative Record”
Bertrall Ross has posted this draft on SSRN (NYU Law Review). Here is the abstract: More than ever, the constitutionality of laws turns on judicial review of an underlying factual record, assembled by lawmakers. Some scholars have suggested that by … Continue reading
“Race and Voting Rights in Ferguson”
NYT editorial. … Continue reading
“What Matters in Selma; Critics say Ava DuVernay’s film isn’t fair to LBJ. That’s because it’s about a movement, not leaders.”
Jamelle Bouie writes for Slate. … Continue reading
“City emerges as new battleground on voting rights”
AP reports on Pasadena Texas: Pasadena is preparing to change the makeup of its city council in a way that city fathers hope fosters new development, but that some Hispanics allege dilutes their influence. The case could become a test … Continue reading
“First African-American Elected to Senate by Popular Vote Dies”
Roll Call: Trailblazing former Sen. Edward W. Brooke has died, the Boston Globe reported Saturday. He was 95. The Massachusetts Republican was the first African-American to serve in the Senate since Reconstruction and the first to be elected by popular … Continue reading
“Depiction of Lyndon B. Johnson in ‘Selma’ Raises Hackles”
NYT: “The debate isn’t just about L.B.J., but about how American politics works,” said Professor Zelizer, who teaches history at Princeton. “Is it a matter of powerful elected leaders, or average people who put their bodies on the line?” The … Continue reading
“Evidence That the Jim Crow Era Endures for Older Black Voters in the South”
NYT’s the Upshot reports. … Continue reading
North Carolina Seeks Supreme Court Review in Voting Case
Regular ELB readers will recall that there is a major voting rights lawsuit against the State of North Carolina for controversial changes in voting rules passed by the Republican-dominated state legislature last year. Plaintiffs sought a preliminary injunction to block … Continue reading
“NC Supreme Court upholds GOP-drawn legislative, congressional districts”
News and Observer: Twelve months after hearing arguments in the case, the N.C. Supreme Court issued a ruling Friday upholding the Republican-led redrawing of state congressional and legislative districts in 2011. But the NAACP and other organizations that challenged the … Continue reading
“Lawsuit claims racial discrimination in Ferguson voting”
MSNBC: School board elections in Ferguson, Missouri use a racially discriminatory system that is helping to keep blacks “all but locked out of the political process,” a new federal lawsuit alleges. The suit, filed Thursday morning by the American Civil … Continue reading
“Texas: Judge in Voting Rights Case Made ‘Winners Out of Clear Losers'”
BLT: “Lawyers for the state of Texas have accused a federal district judge of wrongfully awarding ‘a consolation prize’ of more than $1 million in attorney fees to groups that challenged the state’s redistricting plans.” … Continue reading
“What Do I Need to Vote? Bureaucratic Discretion and Discrimination by Local Election Officials”
White, Nathan, and Faller have this draft coming out in APSR. Here is the abstract: Do street-level bureaucrats discriminate in the services they provide to constituents? We use a field experiment to measure differential information provision about voting by local … Continue reading
“If The Supreme Court Reads This Study, It Could End Partisan Gerrymandering Forever”
Ian Millhiser writes. I was surprised to see no mention of Voting Rights Act requirements in drawing these districts. … Continue reading
“Studies Back Up That Few Elections Are Swung by Voter ID Laws”
Nate Cohn for NYT’s The UpShot: Last week, I wrote an article arguing that voter ID laws don’t swing many elections. This week, the Brennan Center for Justice says I have it “wrong” on voter ID. Yet, oddly, it’s hard … Continue reading
Democracy NC Claims Up to 50,000 Voters “Silenced” by New Voting Restrictions
See this release from Democracy North Carolina. I’m quite skeptical of the 50,000 figure, based upon how the group explains part of its calculations: How many voters were blocked by the new law? The number easily exceeds 30,000 and likely reaches 50,000, … Continue reading
“Glendale City Council to discuss scrapping at-large election system”
More fallout from the CVRA. … Continue reading
“Exclusive: new emails reveal efforts to redraw Florida political lines to favor Republicans”
Naples Daily News: More than 500-pages of emails kept secret during an ongoing redistricting legal battle shed light on the behind-the-scene efforts by a handful of GOP political consultants to influence Florida’s political lines, according to documents obtained by the … Continue reading
Race and Party, Cont’d
Political Polarization as a Social Movement Outcome 1960s Klan Activism and Its Enduring Impact on Political Realignment in Southern Counties, 1960 to 2000 Rory McVeigha David Cunninghamb Justin Farrellc aUniversity of Notre Dame bBrandeis University cYale University Rory McVeigh, 810 … Continue reading
“The Solid South Will Rise Again”
Important and concerning Charles Blow NYT column. A snippet: I’m reminded of the story that one of my brothers told about being transferred along with a white co-worker to Mississippi. He and the co-worker were shopping for homes at the … Continue reading
“Texas ID Law Keeps Hundreds of Ballots From Being Counted”
NYT First Draft. … Continue reading
“The SCOTUS Should Reject Alabama’s Congressional Districts”
Jim Sleeper writes at the Washington Monthly. As a reader points out, the Alabama case is about state legislative districts, not congressional districts. … Continue reading
“Did Race Play a Role in Alabama Redistricting?”
MHP discusses with Janai Nelson and Amy Howe. … Continue reading
The Critical Federalism Issue at the Heart of the Alabama Redistricting Cases
Justin here, with a thought on last week’s oral argument in two consolidated cases about Alabama’s redistricting process. There’s an issue lurking at the heart of the dispute that may be difficult to spot in the transcript. The cases concern the … Continue reading
“For Democrats, Turnout Efforts Look Successful (Though Not Elections)”
NYT’s The UpShot looks at some turnout data, including data on North Carolina early voting. That’s particularly important because there is controversy over whether the early voting changes made in that state decreased turnout or not. … Continue reading
“Impact of Texas voter ID law unclear”
The Houston Chronicle reports. … Continue reading
“Hispanic Voters File Lawsuit Against Pasadena And Its Voting Districts”
Houston Public Media on a new lawsuit. MALDEF is seeking Pasadena [corrected] “bail in” under Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act. … Continue reading
“Texas Matters: Could Texas Be ‘Bailed In’ The VRA?”
TPR reports. … Continue reading
Listen to Oral Argument Audio in SCOTUS Alabama Redistricting Case
The Court has now posted it here. … Continue reading
“Guest Blog: Janai Nelson, Race Reasoning in Alabama Redistricting: A View from the Supreme Court”
Here: If ultimately forced to draw a new plan in the current post-Shelby world, Alabama would no longer have Section 5 to rely on—for better or worse. Instead, it would have to take account of the Voting Rights Act’s other anti-discrimination … Continue reading
“Race, Politics and Drawing Maps; The Supreme Court Hears an Alabama Case on the Voting Rights Act”
NYT editorial begins: As long as politicians are entrusted with drawing legislative maps, they will use their pen to gain partisan advantage. Courts generally do not interfere with that process, but there are limits to this where race is involved. … Continue reading
“Podcast: The Supreme Court considers racial gerrymandering”
National Constitution Center: Rick Hasen from the UC-Irvine School of Law and Roger Clegg from the Center for Equal Opportunity join our Jeffrey Rosen to discuss one of the biggest Supreme Court cases this term, about the roles of race … Continue reading
“Loretta Lynch on Voting Rights, Terror Trials and the Press”
Mike Sacks for BLT. … Continue reading
SCOTUS Alabama Redistricting Roundup
How Appealing and SCOTUSBlog have extensive roundups. For my writing on the case see this SCOTUSBlog preview this Slate commentary and this SCOTUSBlog oral argument analysis. … Continue reading