Arkansas: Voter ID law causes chaos and confusion | MSNBC

Arkansas’s voter ID law was recently declared unconstitutional by a judge, who ruled that it violated the state constitution’s right to vote. But for now, the law is still in effect—and it created chaos and confusion in its first real test Tuesday. Just as troubling, the state’s election administrators are reacting with a collective shrug. Arkansas’s primaries, held Tuesday, were fairly low turnout affairs. But the state is playing host to a crucial and high-profile U.S. Senate race this fall. Among the problems reported from Tuesday: poll workers quizzing voters on their personal information, including address and birthdate, after being shown ID, and using electronic card strip readers to verify ID—both of which go far beyond what the law allows. Some voters without proper ID are said to have been wrongly denied provisional ballots. And large numbers of absentee ballots also are in danger of not being counted, thanks to the ID law. “We’re hearing from some pretty steamed voters,” said Holly Dickson, a lawyer with the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, citing “a smorgasborg of complaints and issues” about the law’s application. The ACLU is challenging the law in court.

Texas: Texas woman, 92, gets voter ID after struggle with state law | NY Daily News

A frail 92-year-old woman has earned her right to vote Tuesday after struggling with new voter identification laws sweeping across the U.S. Ruby Barber, a senior citizen in the small town of Bellmead, Texas, had been unable to vote because she could not find her nearly century-old birth certificate that she’d need to obtain a voter ID under a new state law. “I’m sure (my birth) was never reported because I was born in a farmhouse with a coal oil lamp,” Barber, 92, told the Waco (Texas) Tribune. “Didn’t have a doctor, just a neighbor woman come in and (delivered) me.” This was rectified Tuesday when the state was able to verify her citizenship by finding her birthday in a U.S. census taken in the 1940s, Barber’s son Jimmy Denton told the Tribune. Barber also showed her Social Security card, two utility bills and her Medicare card.

Editorials: How to advance voting rights through executive action | Lucy Zhou/The Hill

Voters across the country scored significant victories in the past few weeks. A federal judge struck down Wisconsin’s voter ID law, saying it violated the Voting Rights Act. A Pennsylvania ID law is dead after the governor decided not to appeal a decision ruling it unconstitutional. And two states passed laws expanding voter registration access. Still, fights continue in dozens of states, and a bill to strengthen the Voting Rights Act is stalled in Congress. At a time of historic dysfunction and congressional inaction, it is not enough to rely on the courts. It is high time for a greater executive role in safeguarding the right to vote. President Obama has the authority to act, and he must. After long lines marred the 2012 election, the president formed a bipartisan commission to identify best practices and new ideas to improve the voting experience. The commission’s final report, issued in January, contained potent recommendations for reform on the state and local level. Obama also spoke out recently on the grim reality of voting restrictions. “The right to vote is threatened today in a way that it has not been since the Voting Rights Act became law nearly five decades ago,” the president told a group of activists in April. These efforts to restrict the right to vote will not go unchallenged, he assured the audience. But if the president’s words are to be more than mere flourishes, he must assert his leadership through executive action. The Brennan Center for Justice recently released a proposal outlining several concrete steps Obama can take to improve elections in America.

Wyoming: Lawmakers weigh giving nonviolent felons right to vote | Star-Tribune

The Wyoming Joint Judiciary Interim Committee wants to consider automatically restoring voting rights to nonviolent felons after their incarceration or probation ends. The committee of state lawmakers ordered legislative staff Tuesday to draft a bill that would automatically restore voting rights, as part of a discussion about relieving the Wyoming Parole Board of the decade-old duty of restoring voting rights. The committee ordered a separate bill to relieve the Parole Board of restoring voting rights. Both bills will be discussed before the 2015 legislative session. Currently, the governor and Parole Board restore voting rights in Wyoming. The duty was given to the Parole Board in 2003. Board member Doug Chamberlain said restoring voting rights is time-consuming. This year, the board has already had 300 parole board hearings. If the board denies voting rights to someone who thinks he has the right, an appeal can take time, Chamberlain said.

Editorials: A strategy to cure Democratic voting | Steve Chapman/Dallas Morning News

Many years ago, as a college Republican, I spent one summer in Austin working for a candidate in a special election for the Texas Senate. It was a liberal enclave with many college students — unwashed, longhaired, pot-smoking students, it seemed to me — who were predominantly Democrats. The more students who came out to vote, the less likely our candidate was to win. So our campaign strategists came up with a plan. They sent mailings to all the registered voters in precincts near the campus. Many cards came back because the addressee had moved, as college students often do. Voters no longer at the address on file with election authorities were not eligible to vote. On Election Day, a fellow campaign worker and I went to a polling place to monitor voters. When they gave their names, we checked to see whether their mailings had come back. If so, we lodged an objection. The voters affected were not pleased. If we had been asked to defend our actions, I imagine we would have come up with something about upholding the law and assuring the integrity of elections. But the people running the campaign never said anything like that. What they said was that this was a great way to reduce the number of people voting for our opponent. It didn’t help, because he was too popular. But my superiors were not the last Republicans to figure that if you can’t get people to vote for you, you can try to keep them from voting at all.

Canada: Long-term expat Canadians win voting rights | The Canadian Press

More than one million Canadians living abroad are now eligible to cast ballots in the next federal election after a court struck down a law stripping them of their voting rights. While mass murderers have the right to vote, long-term expats “who care deeply about Canada” do not have the right, Ontario Superior Court Justice Michael Penny said in his decision. Penny found part of the Canada Elections Act, which bars expatriates who have lived abroad for more than five years from voting, is unconstitutional. “The (government) essentially argues that allowing non-residents to vote is unfair to resident Canadians because resident Canadians live here and are, on a day-to-day basis, subject to Canada’s laws and live with the consequences of Parliament’s decisions.”

Editorials: Welcome to the beginning of the end of the GOP’s voter-imposter performance | Arvina Martin/The Guardian

After Tuesday’s court ruling that the Republican-sponsored voter ID law in Wisconsin was going to prevent more real votes than fraudulent votes from being cast, Republicans who insist on pushing more states to adopt these overreaching laws are going to have to do some serious mental gymnastics to convince anyone that voter impersonation is a real issue, let alone a big enough problem to affect any election. US District Court Judge Lynn Adelman ruled that the law, passed by the state’s Republican legislature and signed by Governor Scott Walker in May 2011, places an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote and violates the Voting Rights Act because of its disproportionate effects on black and Latino voters. Judge Adelman agreed with the main point that voter ID opponents have long argued: there is virtually no voter impersonation – despite claims like that of State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, who told the Green Bay Press Gazette “We continue to see these isolated incidents of people trying to vote five, six times a day; people voting based on some sort of fraudulent documentation that’s offered.” Additionally, Adelman ruled that whatever voter impersonation does occur does not justify the potential infringement on citizens’ voting rights. “It is,” Adelman wrote, “absolutely clear that Act 23 will prevent more legitimate votes from being cast than fraudulent votes.” He added: The evidence at trial established that virtually no voter impersonation occurs in Wisconsin. The defendants could not point to a single instance of known voter impersonation occurring in Wisconsin at any time in the recent past.

West Virginia: Voters getting misleading info from group, Tennant says | The Charleston Gazette

Voters in at least eight West Virginia counties have been mailed “misleading and confusing” material that may make them incorrectly believe they aren’t eligible to vote in next month’s election, Secretary of State Natalie Tennant said Tuesday. The leaflets — mailed by the Americans for Prosperity Foundation — warn voters that if they do not update their voter registration, they may lose their right to vote in the upcoming primary election on May 13. The mailings included voter registration cards and prepaid return envelopes addressed to county clerks. Tuesday was the last day to register to vote for the May 13 primary, and a Tennant spokesman said the mailing could convince people whose voter registrations are perfectly valid that they aren’t allowed to vote.

New Caledonia: UN sends mission to New Caledonia ahead of election | Islands Business

The United Nations has sent a delegation to New Caledonia in the lead up to crucial municipal and provincial elections as supporters and opponents of independence joust over who should have the right to vote. The UN delegation arrived in New Caledonia in March in the midst of the electoral campaign for local town councils. The visit also coincided with the arrival of French judges charged with updating the electoral rolls for national elections to be held on 11 May. According to a UN statement, the objective of the visit is to monitor “New Caledonia’s provincial electoral process, especially the technical issues related to the electoral lists for the provincial elections in May, as well as to uphold the spirit and letter of the 1998 Noumea Accord in this process.” New Caledonia was relisted with the UN Special Committee on Decolonisation in 1986, and since that time the UN has maintained a watching brief over progress towards a referendum on self-determination in the French Pacific dependency.

Editorials: The struggle to restore voting rights for former prisoners | Journalist’s Resource

Even after felons pay their dues to society and leave prison, America sidelines them from the public square. Parolees and probationers are often perceived as undeserving of citizen benefits, and they have little power to assert their rights. Not only do governments often deny felons public resources such as Food Stamps, subsidized college loans, public housing and professional opportunities like licenses and contracts, it is also common for U.S. states to deny former prisoners the right to vote and otherwise exercise full and free citizenship. Felon disenfranchisement is the rule rather than the exception. Some 35 U.S. states deny voting rights when felons leave prison, restoring the right to vote only after the completion of terms of parole and probation. Effective lifetime disqualification prevails in a few states like Florida, Iowa, Kentucky and Virginia — where the right to vote can be restored for felons only on a case-by-case basis involving individual appeals leading to gubernatorial pardons. But felon disenfranchisement is not going unchallenged. Reform pushes are widespread — and a 2006 victory in Rhode Island offers room for optimism that full citizenship rights may, over time, be restored to former prisoners.

Editorials: Voting Rights & Wrongs | Commonweal Magazine

President Barack Obama recently joined former presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter at the President Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in Austin, Texas, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It is no exaggeration to say that the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act of the following year, were the most transformational political developments of the past century in the United States. It was a difficult, often violent struggle, but in the end what was implicit in the nation’s founding documents finally became explicit in federal law. The Civil Rights Act made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in public accommodations. The Voting Rights Act addressed discrimination in elections, ultimately dismantling a system that had shut African Americans out of voting booths for nearly a hundred years. A few days after his Austin speech the president was in New York City to speak to Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, and he took that opportunity to remind his audience that the struggle for equal rights never ends and to call attention to a disturbing political development. “The right to vote is threatened today in a way that it has not been since the Voting Rights Act became law,” Obama said. “Across the country, Republicans have led efforts to pass laws making it harder, not easier, for people to vote.” With uncharacteristic severity, Obama has called the effort to restrict voting “un-American.”

Editorials: Republicans Used to Support Voting Rights—What Happened? | Ari Berman/The Nation

During a speech on Friday at the National Action Network, President Obama made his strongest and most extensive comments yet on the topic of voting rights. “The right to vote is threatened today in a way that it has not been since the Voting Rights Act became law nearly five decades ago,” Obama said. “Across the country, Republicans have led efforts to pass laws making it harder, not easier, for people to vote.” The election of the first black president and the resurrection of voter suppression efforts was hardly a coincidence. New voting restrictions took effect in nineteen states from 2011–12. Nine states under GOP control have adopted measures to make it more difficult to vote since 2013. Since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in June 2013, half of the states (eight in total) previously covered under Section 5 have passed or implemented new voting restrictions. … Things weren’t always this way. In his new book about the Civil Rights Act, An Idea Whose Time Has Come, Todd Purdum tells the story of Bill McCulloch, a conservative Republican from Ohio who championed civil rights as the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee. The Politico excerpt from the book was titled “The Republican Who Saved Civil Rights.”

Canada: Senators recommend nine major changes to controversial elections bill | Vancouver Sun

The Harper government is getting some serious push-back from Conservative senators on its controversial overhaul of elections laws, with a Senate committee unanimously recommending nine major changes to the legislation. In an interim report to be tabled Tuesday, the Senate’s legal and constitutional affairs committee recommends that the government drop provisions to muzzle the chief electoral officer and the elections commissioner, The Canadian Press has learned. It also recommends removing another provision which electoral experts have said would give an unfair, potentially huge, financial advantage to established parties — particularly the ruling Conservatives — during election campaigns.

Editorials: Democrats finally make voting rights a top priority | Zachary Roth/MSNBC

For years, voting-rights advocates have been quietly urging Democrats and the Obama administration to fully embrace the fight over access to the ballot as a defining civil-rights issue of our day. This was the week when it finally happened. The heightened rhetoric, which came from President Obama and other heavyweights in his party, is the latest sign that voting rights are likely to be a front-burner issue when Americans go to the polls this fall—at least  if Democrats have their way. In a speech at the National Action Network convention in New York City Friday afternoon, Obama used his most forceful language yet on the subject to condemn Republican efforts to make voting harder. “The right to vote is threatened today in a way that it has not been since the Voting Rights Act became law nearly five decades ago,” the president said. “Across the country, Republicans have led efforts to pass laws making it harder, not easier, for people to vote.”

Illinois: Illinois looks to add right to vote to state constitution | MSNBC

Add Illinois to the list of states where voting rights could be on the ballot this fall. Land of Lincoln lawmakers are advancing a bill that would put a proposed constitutional amendment on voting rights before the state’s voters in November. The Democratic-controlled House overwhelmingly passed the measure Tuesday afternoon with strong Republican support, and it’s expected to pass the Senate, which also is run by Democrats. If approved by voters this November, the proposal would add to the state’s constitution an affirmative right to register and vote. Illinois joins Ohio, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and California, all of which may ask voters to weigh in on the issue of access to the ballot in November. But while Illinoisans and Ohioans may be considering efforts to protect the franchise, voters in those other four states could be mulling whether to impose new restrictions.

Texas: Barack Obama pushes voting rights in Texas | Politico

President Barack Obama on Wednesday joined the larger Democratic effort to spotlight voting rights ahead of this year’s midterms, blasting “active efforts to deter people from voting. Apparently it’s fairly active here in Texas,” he told supporters at a Houston fundraiser. “The idea that you’d purposely try to prevent people from voting? Un-American. How is it that we’re putting up with that? We don’t have to.” Attorney General Eric Holder delivered his own address to the group Wednesday in New York, recounting the Justice Department’s efforts on the issue since the Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act last year.

Indonesia: Vote Colored by Corruption Fatigue and a Fresh Face | The Irriwaddy

Tens of millions of Indonesians nationwide went to the polls on Wednesday to cast their ballots in parliamentary elections, with the vote coming ahead of a July presidential election in which the yet-to-be-chosen lawmakers will play a crucial role. With some 186 million eligible voters nationwide, the electorate of the world’s third-largest democracy has indicated in opinion polls leading up to Wednesday’s election that voters are looking for a departure from past governments that have appeared unwilling, or unable, to curb the corruption for which Indonesia is notorious. After speaking to more than a dozen Indonesian citizens this week in the capital Jakarta, this reporter found that the pre-poll surveying appeared to be borne out in attitudes on the street. “At first, I hesitated over whether to vote or not. But finally, I made up my mind—that I have to exercise my right to vote because it may be a good chance to push for change somehow,” said Arri Palapa, a 37-year-old resident of Jakarta who runs a small online business selling cosmetics. “I look at Indonesia and I’m sick of seeing Indonesia moving forward to nowhere.

Voting Blogs: Rethinking DC Representation in Congress | State of Elections

William & Mary’s Election Law Program and DC Vote co-hosted a symposium on Rethinking DC Representation in Congress on February 21, 2014 in Washington, DC. The symposium impaneled several highly regarded Constitutional law experts and voting rights advocates. Residents of Washington, DC have long lacked Congressional representation, notwithstanding over two centuries of advocacy by voting rights supporters. Despite a long history of amending the Constitution in order to enfranchise previously-ignored groups (African-Americans, women, and individuals between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one) legislators and federal courts have given short shrift to voting rights for residents of the nation’s capital. Maryland State Senator and American University Law Professor Jamie Raskin emphasized that for DC residents, “Constitutional democracy has broken down. It has never really existed.”

Canada: Court battle begins over McGill students’ voting rights | CBC

The case of five McGill University students who were refused the right to vote in the Quebec election went before the court Thursday morning and should be decided on by Friday. Constitutional lawyer Julius Grey requested an emergency injunction to allow the students to vote because Thursday was the last day to make revisions to the list of electors before Quebecers go to the polls on Monday. Because the students will only find out after the revision deadline whether they can vote or not, a legal mechanism could be used to permit them to vote in the event that the judge rules in their favour. But the lawyer for the director general of elections argued that the revisors have some judicial and authoritative powers, and ruling against them could call into question the entire voter registration system.

Illinois: Madigan’s voting rights amendment advances | Associated Press

A proposal by Illinois’ powerful House Speaker to thwart future voter suppression efforts advanced in the Legislature on Tuesday, a move that contrasts starkly with recent electoral restrictions put in place by surrounding swing states where Republicans have legislative control. The proposed amendment to the state constitution, which would appear on the November ballot if it receives a supermajority in both the House and Senate, would bar the Legislature from enacting new laws that would add new requirements in order to vote. Rep. Michael Madigan, who doubles as Illinois’ Democratic Party Chairman, told committee members Tuesday that the amendment would ensure that no one is denied the right to vote based on their race, color, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation or income, and that it “sends a strong message that in Illinois we believe every eligible voter should be treated equally.”

Canada: Jean-Pierre Kingsley: Election bill puts right to vote at risk | CBC

A change proposed by the Conservatives in their new election bill would “directly affect” some Canadians’ right to vote, former chief electoral officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley said Tuesday. Abolishing the process of vouching, which serves as proof of a voter’s identification, “will impact very negatively on the values of participation, impartiality and transparency,” Kingsley told a committee of MPs. “This will directly affect the constitutional right to vote of a significant number of Canadians without justification.” “Please. Please do not get rid of it,” he said.

Afghanistan: Candidates vie for Afghan women’s vote | Associated Press

The candidate strode down the aisle separating hundreds of male and female supporters at a campaign rally in Kabul. She shook hands with the women filling the chairs to her right. To the men on the other side, she simply nodded. Habiba Sarabi is the most prominent woman running on a ticket in the April 5 election to choose a successor to President Hamid Karzai. Sarabi once served as Afghanistan’s first female governor, and her current bid to become Afghanistan’s first female vice president is part of an effort to get out the women’s vote as candidates scramble for every ballot. Women “can affect the transition, the political transition,” she said in an interview after addressing the rally to support Sarabi and her running mate, presidential candidate Zalmai Rassoul. The event was held in a wedding hall in a Kabul district dominated by her ethnic minority Hazara community.

Canada: Neufeld says more than 100,000 to be disenfranchised under feds’ election bill, will testify at House Affairs Committee next week | Hill Times

The opposition parties have former B.C. elections chief Harry Neufeld at the top of their witness lists for testimony on proposed Conservative election law after he warned that “well over 100,000” electors will be denied their right to vote if the government goes ahead with plans to prohibit voter vouching for electors with no official ID. Mr. Neufeld, who conducted an exhaustive review of electoral law and rule compliance in the 2011 election, has challenged the government’s position that widespread irregularities he found in the way vouching was administered on election day were indicative of potential fraud, as well as the government claim that an Elections Canada voter information card is too unreliable to be also used by voters who have insufficient ID to prove their residence. Elimination of the two voter identification methods are among the most controversial aspects of Bill C-23, and are also on a list of measures in the legislation that the opposition says could benefit the Conservative party the most because electors who generally use either vouching or the information cards—which Elections Canada had planned to approve as official residence ID for the next election—have tended to support parties other than the Conservatives.

Iowa: Schultz’s crusade is out of sync | The Des Moines Register

Since he took office three years ago, Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz has focused more energy on revoking peoples’ right to vote than on getting eligible voters to turn out for elections. It seems to us Schultz has had it backward, and now it’s apparent a healthy majority of Iowans agree. According to The Des Moines Register’s Iowa Poll published March 10, a substantial majority of Iowans surveyed put a higher priority on making sure that “every eligible, registered voter has the opportunity to vote” than on making sure that “no person ineligible to vote slips through the cracks” to cast a vote. Seven in 10 poll participants said assuring the right to vote is more important than eliminating ineligible voters. Only a quarter saw it the other way around. The top priority favored by most Iowans ought to be the top priority of the state’s election officials, from the secretary of state to the 99 county auditors who run elections. That has been the priority of past secretaries of state, including most recently Mike Mauro and, before him, Chet Culver when he was in the job before being elected governor. Schultz, however, launched a relentless campaign to root out ineligible voters.

Editorials: European election: So what? | Deutsche Welle

During the last European Parliament election in 2009, fewer than half of Europe’s voters bothered to show up at the ballot box. What’s the EU doing to increase voter turnout – and what are its chances of success? For decades, the European Parliament in Brussels was seen as the place to put old politicians out to pasture. No wonder, then, that European citizens hardly spare much thought for Europe and its institutions. The numbers bear this out: Since the very first European election in 1979, voter turnout has steadily dropped. In 2009, only 43.3 percent of Germans exercised their right to vote, a figure also reflected in the average European turnout. The country with the lowest turnout was Slovakia, at 20 percent. There are many reasons that explain this voter disinterest, chief among them being that most European citizens aren’t familiar with the duties of the European Parliament and the extent of its authority. They’re unaware of how decisions made in Brussels and Strasbourg influence their daily lives.

Editorials: Put the right to vote into the Constitution | Jesse Jackson/Chicago Sun-Times

Monday morning I woke up — not with Georgia — but with Selma on my mind. Selma bears witness to the bloody and murderous struggle to end discrimination in voting on the basis of race. The demonstrations there led directly to President Lyndon Baines Johnson signing the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The 1965 Voting Rights Act was historic, designed to redress the unique history of discrimination against African Americans. But it was limited. It did not give each and every American citizen the explicit, constitutionally guaranteed federal right to vote. The 1965 Voting Rights Act has been effective and efficient. Sections 4 and 5 were its heart and soul because they provided for a prior review that prevented racial discrimination in voting. In the recent Shelby decision, a conservative majority of the Supreme Court cut the heart (Section 4) out of the law and left its soul (Section 5) as exposed as a cadaver on a funeral director’s table. Shelby said you can keep the car but you can’t have the keys. The car looks great, but it’s not going anywhere. Now we must all join together in an effort to fix the damage done by Shelby, and revive the heart of the Voting Rights Act.

Editorials: Don’t undermine Elections Canada | National Post

We, the undersigned — professors at Canadian universities who study the principles and institutions of constitutional democracy — believe that the Fair Elections Act (Bill C-23), if passed, would damage the institution at the heart of our country’s democracy: voting in federal elections. We urge the Government to heed calls for wider consultation in vetting this Bill. While we agree that our electoral system needs some reforms, this Bill contains proposals that would seriously damage the fairness and transparency of federal elections and diminish Canadians’ political participation. Beyond our specific concerns about the Bill’s provisions (see below), we are alarmed at the lack of due process in drafting the Bill and in rushing it through Parliament. We see no justification for introducing legislation of such pivotal importance to our democracy without significant consultation with Elections Canada, opposition parties, and the public at large.

International: One billion voters go to polls in most democratic month world has ever seen | The Guardian

April may traditionally be the cruellest month, but in 2014 it will also be the most democratic the world has ever seen. More than a billion people are eligible to vote in a sudden flurry of national elections in some of the world’s largest – and newest democracies. As well as the 800 million eligible to casts their ballot in India from 7 April, another 190 million have the right to vote in Indonesian elections on 9 April. In terms of size of electorate, India and Indonesia are the world’s first and third largest democracies. The US is second.

Canada: Conservative bill may ‘compromise’ elections, Marc Mayrand says | Toronto Star

The man in charge of elections in Canada has warned the Conservative government that voters are going to be turned away from ballot boxes in significant numbers in 2015 and that the new “Fair Elections Act” may create real unfairness among the political players. Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand was blunt when he spoke to one of the lead Conservative MPs during an often-testy Commons committee meeting on Thursday. “In the next election, if those rules go through, you will see in your riding how many people will be sent away,” Mayrand told MP Tom Lukiwski. “And that will be an issue.”

National: U.S. Democrats launch push to expand voting access | Reuters

With the help of former President Bill Clinton, the Democratic Party launched a national drive on Thursday to expand voting opportunities and fight back against what it calls restrictive voting laws. The program will establish permanent procedures and staff in each state to help register and educate voters, and work with local officials to expand access to the polls in the November elections and beyond. Voting laws have been the subject of partisan fights since 2011, when a wave of Republican-sponsored state laws began to impose stricter identification requirements on voters or restrict access, including by cutting back on early voting sites and hours. Republican supporters say the laws, many of which have been blocked by the courts, are needed to prevent fraud. Democrats say they are designed to limit the ballots of minorities and low-income voters who tend to support Democrats.