Tag: Voter Suppression (Page 3 of 4)

Restore the Voting Rights Act

June 22, 2016 / MCDC

Three years ago this week — on June 25, 2013 — 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.

The time is now to #RestoreTheVRA

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 Shelbycould 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.

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The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy

June 15, 2016 / MCDC

How Republican legislators and political operatives fundamentally rigged our American democracy through redistricting.

“With Barack Obama’s historic election in 2008, pundits proclaimed the Republicans as dead as the Whigs of yesteryear. Yet even as Democrats swooned, a small cadre of Republican operatives, including Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie, and Chris Jankowski began plotting their comeback with a simple yet ingenious plan. These men had devised a way to take a tradition of dirty tricks―known to political insiders as “ratf**king”―to a whole new, unprecedented level. Flooding state races with a gold rush of dark money made possible by Citizens United, the Republicans reshaped state legislatures, where the power to redistrict is held. Reconstructing this never- told-before story, David Daley examines the far-reaching effects of this so-called REDMAP program, which has radically altered America’s electoral map and created a firewall in the House, insulating the party and its wealthy donors from popular democracy.” -David Daley

Every decade, with recent results of the census in hand, legislative districts are drawn. Redrawing political lines is a powerful tool that determines who wins an election, controls the legislature, and ultimately which laws pass. In Virginia, legislators create the criteria and draw their own districts. This is a manipulative process known as gerrymandering, a ruthless and endless cycle of corruption intended solely to maintain a stranglehold on the legislative process by whichever party is in power following each decennial census.

Enough is enough. In a unanimous vote on June 13th, the Madison County Democratic Committee adopted a resolution drafted by OneVirginia2021 intended to help make politicians accountable to all Virginians through fair and competitive elections. We encourage all of our citizens to sign this bi-partisan petition to allow voters to choose their elected representatives instead of allowing politicians to manipulate elections by hand-picking their voters.

Supreme Court unanimously rejects GOP challenge to Va. redistricting plan

May 23, 2016 / MCDC

The court unanimously held that Reps. Rob Wittman and other Republicans from Virginia, including Reps. Randy Forbes and David Brat, lacked standing to pursue their appeal because none of them could show they were injured by the redistricting plan.

THE HILL

The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a Republican challenge to redistricting in Virginia, leaving in place a map that could prove more favorable to Democrats.

The court unanimously held that Reps. Rob Wittman and other Republicans from Virginia, including Reps. Randy Forbes and David Brat, lacked standing to pursue their appeal because none of them could show they were injured by the redistricting plan.

The case, Wittman v. Personhuballah, centers on Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District, which is now represented by Rep. Bobby Scott (D), the commonwealth’s only black congressman.

Two Virginia voters — Gloria Personhuballah and James Farkas — challenged the way the district was redrawn in 2012, arguing that the Republican-controlled legislature violated the Voting Rights Act by packing black voters into Scott’s district to make surrounding areas better for white candidates.

A lower court agreed and tossed out the Virginia redistricting plan. It elicited and ultimately settled on an alternative, neutral redistricting plan during the remedial phase of litigation.

In their appeal, Wittman, Forbes and Brat argued that, in the remedy for the unconstitutional 2012 plan, a portion of their electorate was replaced with Democrats, reducing the likelihood that they’ll win reelection.

The Supreme Court disagreed. In their six-page ruling, the justices said Wittman and Brat had not identified any evidence to support their claim of injury. Forbes, meanwhile, might have had standing to sue at the start of the appeal, the justices ruled, but doesn’t now.

Republican Reps. Bob Goodlatte, Morgan Griffith, Scott Rigell, Robert Hurt and Barbara Comstock, as well as two former House members from the state, Eric Cantor and Frank Wolf, also participated in this case, but only Forbes, Wittman and Brat claimed to have standing once the case got to the Supreme Court.

Democratic Party to sue Arizona over voting rights

April 14, 2016 / MCDC

“Arizona has a history of problems with guaranteeing the rights of their citizens to vote, and with this lawsuit we hope to stop it now in time for the 2016 general election,” said Marc E. Elias, the elections lawyer for Clinton’s presidential campaign. Elias is bringing the lawsuit on behalf of the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Arizona Democratic Party and several Arizonans. The Clinton campaign will join the lawsuit after it is filed on Friday, according to Democratic officials. Bernie Sanders is also joining the lawsuit, according to one of his senior aides.

Supreme Court Shoots Down #GOP Vote Rigging Scheme

April 5, 2016 / MCDC

The Supreme Court unanimously defended voting rights in a decision today that upheld the principle of one person, one vote by ruling against an effort to use to total voters instead of total population to draw up legislative districts.

The case was brought by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott as a way of trying to further shape the electorate to benefit Republicans, but the High Court saw through the scheme. As Justice Ginsburg wrote in an opinion that was signed on to by five of the other justices, “What constitutional history and our prior decisions strongly suggest, settled practice confirms. Adopting voter-eligible apportionment as constitutional command would upset a well functioning approach to districting that all 50 States and countless local jurisdictions have followed for decades, even centuries. Appellants have shown no reason for the Court to disturb this longstanding use of total population.”

The Supreme Court concluded that the plaintiffs had offered no reason to change one person, one vote and ruled against the conservatives who were trying to rig future elections by permanently reshaping the electorate to minimize urban areas and minority populations. The case of EVENWEL ET AL. v. ABBOTT, GOVERNOR OF TEXAS, was so egregious that the absence of a ninth justice on the court did not matter.