voting rights
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Supreme Court Declines to Hear Texas Appeal to Revive Strict Voter-ID Requirements
Score 1 for voting-rights advocates. On Monday the Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear an appeal by Texas that sought to bring back the state’s strict voter-identification requirements, which had been found to disproportionately affect minorities, Reuters reports. In July 2016, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the 2011…
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Read the Scathing 1986 Letter Coretta Scott King Wrote Opposing Sessions’ Federal Nomination
Updated Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2017, 1:02 a.m. EST: Elizabeth Warren attempted to read Coretta Scott King’s letter about Jeff Sessions on the Senate floor; but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) silenced her. Earlier: Coretta Scott King’s scathing letter in which she urged Congress to block the 1986 nomination of Jeff Sessions for a federal judgeship…
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Voting Rights, Already Under Siege, May Fare Worse Under Trump
During the Thanksgiving holiday, President-elect Donald Trump added a bit of fuel to the increasing nationwide debate over voting rights in the wake of his election. On Sunday, railing against a push for recounts in several states, Trump sent out a tweet with this baseless claim: “In addition to winning the electoral debate in a…
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7 Ways to Stay Safe and Sane This Election Day
This Election Day kind of feels like the day you’re scheduled to get your wisdom teeth pulled: You’ve gotta do it, and it’s gonna hurt, but you’re not sure how much it will hurt. For better or worse, we’re gonna have a new commander-in-chief-elect by the end of the day. Here are seven ways to…
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In Missouri, Everywhere: Voting Matters
Ever since this country was founded, access to the ballot has been intentionally restricted in order to keep people of color from voting. From North Carolina to Texas and Georgia, politicians are trying every trick in the book to stay in power. Rarely, however, does the attack on voting rights become as starkly illustrative of…
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8 Ways They'll Try to Stop You From Voting and How to Fight Back
It started in 2000, right after one of the narrowest presidential elections in history, and it surged again, right after President Barack Obama’s historic election in 2008: voter suppression. (Humph, wonder why.) From limited voting access, stringent ID requirements and gerrymandering to criminal disenfranchisement, voter suppression is on the rise. Why? Because one group of…
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Federal Judge Finds Ferguson, Mo., School Elections Unfair to Black Voters
A federal judge ruled Monday that the Ferguson-Florissant School District in suburban St. Louis must change its election process, after finding that the current school system is unfair to black voters, USA Today reports. According to the report, U.S. District Judge Rodney Sippel found that the current system illegally undermines the political power of black…
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Huge Win for Voting Rights as Appeals Court Strikes Down NC’s ID Law
In a major victory for voting rights, a federal appeals court struck down North Carolina’s stringent requirement that voters show identification before casting ballots, and also reinstated an additional week of early voting, the Washington Post reports. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit came to the decision Friday, vindicating…
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3 Years Later, the Ghosts of Shelby Still Haunt Us
Three years ago, the Supreme Court handed down a crushing ruling in the landmark case Shelby v. Holder (pdf). For reasons still mostly unclear to me (Chief Justice John Roberts partially opined that key provisions of the Voting Rights Act were “extraordinary measures” no longer needed because America’s legacy on race “had changed”), Section 5 of the…