Editorials: ‘A Big, Big Mistake’ in Voter ID Case | Jesse Wegman/New York TImes

Wisconsin officials say they plan to enforce the state’s controversial voter-ID law less than two months before the 2014 midterm elections, after the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit lifted a stay on the law on Friday afternoon. In April, a federal trial judge invalidated the law, finding that it would disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of eligible voters — largely poorer and minority citizens who tend to vote Democratic . The Republican-dominated legislature claimed the law was necessary to stop in-person voter fraud, but the judge found that to be virtually nonexistent. In July, the state’s supreme court revised the procedures for getting a photo ID to make it easier for those who could not afford one, or had trouble tracking down the necessary underlying documents, such as a birth certificate.

National: Voting rights cases may be headed back to Supreme Court | USA Today

The Supreme Court’s decision last year eliminating a barrier against voting procedure changes in mostly Southern states came with a caveat: Chief Justice John Roberts warned that the Voting Rights Act still included a “permanent, nationwide ban on racial discrimination in voting.” Now federal courts from Texas to Wisconsin are on the verge of deciding whether Roberts was right — or if what remains of the 1965 law after the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling is less able to stop states from making it harder to vote. An appeals court hearing Friday in the Wisconsin case, following a two-week trial in a Texas district court, might point the way back to the Supreme Court. Cases in North Carolina and Ohio also could be headed that way. Those states and others have made voting more difficult in recent years to combat what they claim are instances of voter fraud. Texas imposed strict new photo identification rules hours after the Supreme Court ruling. North Carolina cut back on early voting, same-day registration and provisional balloting. They were among 15 states freed in whole or in part from Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires states with a history of discrimination to clear any changes with the Justice Department. The high court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder struck down the list of states dating back a half century.

Editorials: Voter ID on Trial in Texas | New York Times

In April, a federal judge in Wisconsin invalidated that state’s voter-identification law, finding that it would disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of eligible voters in a phony attempt to prevent a problem — in-person voter fraud — that does not exist. Last week, the spotlight turned to the federal court in Corpus Christi, where the Justice Department and several advocacy groups are fighting Texas’ absurdly strict voter-ID law. Passed in 2011 by the Republican-dominated Legislature, the law accepts as proof of identity a concealed-weapon permit but not a student ID card. Laws like these used to be blocked by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which required that the federal government preapprove any voting rules enacted by states and localities with a history of discriminatory voting practices. But in a destructive ruling last year, the Supreme Court struck down Section 5 as unconstitutional. Only hours after that ruling, Texas resurrected its voter-ID law, which had been stopped by Section 5.

Editorials: Republicans should want more African Americans to vote. It’s the only way they can keep winning in the south | George Chidi/The Guardian

If I were a vote-scrounging Republican politician and I wanted to hustle up some black people’s votes, I would think it generally sound policy not to tell them that they’re too stupid to deserve a vote. State senator Fran Millar, a Republican from the affluent, majority-white Dunwoody section of majority-black DeKalb County here in Georgia, apparently doesn’t feel the same way. In a public Facebook post, he took exception to a plan by county CEO Lee May to open up an extra early-voting site in a South DeKalb mall “dominated by African American shoppers and … near several large African American mega churches”. “I would prefer more educated voters than a greater increase in the number of voters,” he added in a comment to his post. “If you don’t believe this is an efort [sic] to maximize Democratic votes pure and simple, then you are not a realist. This is a partisan stunt and I hope it can be stopped.” Well, yes. It is a partisan move. It shouldn’t be. The race of voters shouldn’t be a partisan predictor in an ideal world. But here in Georgia, the contests for governor and a US Senate seat are too close to call – and may turn on whether the Democrats can win as much as 30% of the white vote. Seven out of 10 white voters, minimum, are Republicans, and 90% of black voters are Democrats. Here, all politics are racial politics – and the contests are only close because the number of black and Latino voters in the state has grown so quickly.

Texas: Abbott defends Texas voter ID law | Houston Chronicle

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott insisted on Thursday that the state’s voter ID law has not adversely affected turnout, a day before testimony in a federal court case challenging the legislation is slated to end. “There is absolutely zero proof, zero proof, that there is any suppression of the vote whatsoever because of voter ID laws,” Abbott, the favorite to win November’s gubernatorial race, told the Houston Chronicle’s editorial board. The 2011 law, which took effect the following year, requires voters to show one of seven kinds of photo ID in order to vote, with or without a voter registration card. It was initially blocked after a federal court ruled that it discriminated against minorities.

Wisconsin: Federal appeals judges to hear Wisconsin voter ID arguments | Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

A panel of three federal appeals court judges in Chicago will hear arguments on whether to reinstate Wisconsin’s voter ID law on Friday, less than eight weeks before the Nov. 4 election. Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans in the Legislature in 2011 approved the law, which requires voters to show poll workers certain types of photo identification to vote. Litigation immediately followed, and judges at the state and federal level halted the law. The requirement was in effect for just one election, a low-turnout primary in February 2012. Two cases were brought in federal court, and U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman in Milwaukee heard them together. This April, he ruled the voter ID law placed an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote. He also determined it violated the federal Voting Rights Act because minorities are less likely than whites to have IDs for voting. Adelman found some 300,000 people in Wisconsin do not have IDs and wrote the voter ID law would “prevent more legitimate votes from being cast than fraudulent votes.” He ruled there was no rational basis for the law because voter impersonation — the only kind of fraud the voter ID law would curb — is nonexistent or virtually nonexistent. Supporters of voter ID disagree with that sentiment, saying voter fraud is difficult to detect and requiring IDs gives the public more confidence in election results.

Texas: Voter ID law’s fate could hang on details | MSNBC

Democracy. Equality. Racial justice. The struggle for voting rights has long been about concepts that go to the heart of the American ideal. But in a sleepy federal courtroom here on the Gulf Coast, access to the ballot for hundreds of thousands of Texans could turn on some far less high-blown concepts: bus schedules, identification cards – and dollars and cents. As the challengers to Texas’s strict voter ID law prepared to rest their case, they presented more evidence Monday in support of the key claims they laid out last week: that a massive number of Texans lack an ID that complies with the law; that blacks and Hispanics are more likely than whites to lack ID; and that getting an ID can be onerous, especially for the poor. The plaintiffs – represented by a team of over a dozen lawyers from the U.S. Justice Department, civil and voting rights groups, and private law firms – will wrap up Tuesday. The case is one of several currently underway that could have major implications both for access to the ballot this fall, and for the the ongoing state of the law protecting the right to vote. Wisconsin’s and Arkansas’s voter ID laws, Ohio’s cuts to early voting, and North Carolina’s sweeping voting law are all being challenged in court.

Wisconsin: Voter ID Law Before 7th Circuit This Week | WBAY

This week the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments over Wisconsin’s voter ID law. Multiple lawsuits have been filed since the state legislature passed the measure in 2012. In July the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled the law constitutional. But now a panel of three federal judges will question Friday whether the requirement to show a photo ID at the polls violates the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution, as Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen ask the law be reinstated for the November elections.

Alaska: Judge: Election officials broke voting rights law; must help Yup’ik, Gwich’in voters | Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

State elections officials broke a federal voting rights law by failing to provide sufficient election information in Alaska Native languages, a U.S. District Court judge ruled Wednesday, causing the state to scramble for improvements before the November election. Attorneys with the Native American Rights Fund filed a federal lawsuit in 2013 on behalf of four Alaska Native village councils and two Native men alleging the state violated the U.S. Voting Rights Act by failing to provide translated voting materials for voters who do not speak and read English. The villages — Venetie, Arctic Village, Togiak and Hooper Bay — as well as Manokotak resident Mike Toyukak and Alakanuk resident Fred Augustine, were denied their voting rights, because the state did not provide an election pamphlet translated to Gwich’in or Yup’ik, Gleason ruled.

Ohio: Husted to appeal ruling on early voting limits | The Columbus Dispatch

A federal judge blocked Republican-backed reductions in early voting opportunities in Ohio for the fall election today. U.S. District Court Judge Peter C. Economus granted a preliminary injunction against a GOP-backed bill that ended “Golden Week” — when people could register to vote and vote on the same day — and a February directive from Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted that lopped off some weekend and evening hours of early voting in some urban counties. Husted said he will appeal the ruling “because we can’t simultaneously treat people the same and differently. Today’s ruling kicks the door open to having different rules for voting in each of Ohio’s 88 counties, which is not fair and uniform and was not even acceptable to this court or the plaintiffs previously.”

Alaska: Native language speakers win lawsuit against state | Alaska Dispatch

A federal judge in Anchorage ruled Wednesday morning that the state elections division violated the U.S. Voting Rights Act by failing to provide ballot and candidate information in Native languages to Yup’ik and Gwich’in speakers in three rural regions of Alaska. In a big victory for Native rights advocates, U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason rejected the state’s assertions that it had done enough in Southwest Alaska and the Interior by providing bilingual poll workers and “outreach” personnel. Gleason said the state’s effort failed to provide “substantially similar” information in Native languages as it does in English. While the plaintiffs — two Yup’ik-speaking elders and four federally recognized village tribes — had sought to have all election materials made available in Native languages, Gleason focused on the official election pamphlet sent to all residents of Alaska in English. The state didn’t do enough to help voters with limited English proficiency gain access to the information in the pamphlet, she said.

Texas: In Texas voter ID trial, witnesses describe burden of getting ID | MSNBC

Sammie Louise Bates moved to Texas from Illinois in 2011. She wanted to vote last year, but all she had was an Illinois identification card, and under Texas’s strict voter ID law, that wasn’t acceptable. To get a Texas ID, Bates needed a birth certificate from her native Mississippi, which cost $42. That was money that Bates, whose income is around $321 a month, didn’t have. “I had to put $42 where it would do the most good,” Bates, who is African-American, testified Tuesday, the first day of the trial over Texas’s ID law. “We couldn’t eat the birth certificate.” Another witness, Calvin Carrier, described the difficulties his father, a Korean War veteran, had in obtaining an acceptable ID, thanks to errors on his birth certificate. Myrna Perez, the deputy director of the Brennan Center for Justice, whose lawyers are among those arguing the case for the plaintiffs, said those witnesses were there to show that “there are real people out there who don’t have the ID that’s needed. When you are limited income, it can be very challenging to scrape up the money that you need for the underlying ID, and it requires a tremendous amount of hoops to go through.”

Editorials: The Texas two-step and the Voting Rights Act | Scott Bomboy/Constitution Daily

The Justice Department and the state of Texas are tangling in two separate court cases that could determine how much of the Voting Rights Act is still enforceable. Last year, the United States Supreme Court moved to narrow the scope of the historic act, passed in 1965 as a watershed moment in the civil rights movement. The Act in its original form guaranteed the voting rights of minorities under the 14th and 15th Amendments, including a provision called Section 5 that required states with a history of discrimination to get federal government approval before changing their election laws. In 2013, the Supreme Court decided in Shelby County v. Holder that the formula used to decide which states had historically discriminated against voters was unconstitutional, and it asked Congress to devise a new coverage formula. The ruling effectively allowed nine states (mostly in the South) to change their election laws without federal approval, since there was little expectation that Congress could agree on a new coverage formula in the near future. But the Obama administration and the Justice Department, under Attorney General Eric Holder, vowed to use other parts of the Voting Rights Act to press its case where it believed voter discrimination existed. In Texas, the Justice Department is pursuing two federal court actions: one in San Antonio and the other in Corpus Christi.

Alabama: Court to weigh use of race in drawing political lines | USA Today

Democrat Quinton Ross has represented a pretty safe district in the Alabama state Senate since 2002, when 72% of its voting-age population was black. In his last two elections, he ran unopposed. When it came time to redraw the state’s political lines in 2012, however, Republicans who had won control of the state Legislature made it even safer for Ross, an African American. To replace voters who had moved away, they added 14,806 blacks and 36 whites to District 26, resulting in a 75% black majority. The Legislature’s artistry had the intended effect throughout the state, racially and politically. It solidified the ability of black voters to elect their favored candidates, as mandated by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And it made adjacent suburban and rural districts even more white – and more friendly to Republicans. “The district was already at a point where you had quite a few blacks,” Ross says. “Sometimes, you can just go overboard.”

Editorials: Sky-high stakes in Texas voter ID trial | Zachary Roth/MSNBC

For students at Prairie View A&M, a historically black university about an hour’s drive from Houston, the right to vote has never come easy. In the early 1970s—soon after 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds gained the franchise—the Waller County voting registrar began requiring that students answer questions about their employment status, property ownership, and other issues before they could be added to the rolls. He was stopped by a federal court, in a key ruling for student voting rights. A few years later, local officials tried to move school-board elections from April to August, making it harder for Prairie View students to vote—a scheme that was blocked by the Justice Department. Then in 2004, the local prosecutor sent a letter to election administrators saying Prairie View students weren’t automatically eligible to vote at their college address, and threatening the possibility of arrest, before backing down amid an outcry. That same year, the county tried to cut early voting hours on campus—again, it was stopped by the federal government. And in 2008, the county acknowledged in a settlement with the Bush Justice Department that it had rejected voter registration applications in violation of federal voting law, primarily affecting Prairie View students.

Editorials: Will Texas Get Away With Discriminating Against Voters? | Ari Berman/The Nation

Imani Clark, Aurica Washington, Crystal Owens and Michelle Bessiake are students at Prairie View A&M and Texas Southern University, two historically black colleges in Texas. They do not have a driver’s license or own a car, and do not possess one of the five forms of government-issued identification required by Texas to vote. They can no longer vote with their students IDs in Texas, where a handgun permit is a valid voter ID but a student ID is not. The four students are among the plaintiffs challenging the constitutionality of Texas’s voter ID law in federal court in Corpus Christi this week. The trial before Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos, an Obama appointee, is expected to last two to three weeks. In August 2012, a three-judge district court in Washington found that the law discriminated against black and Hispanic voters under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The court called it “the most stringent [voter ID law] in the country.” But after the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder freed states like Texas with a long history of voting discrimination from having to approve their voting changes with the federal government, Texas wasted no time in implementing the blocked law. “With today’s decision, the state’s voter ID law will take effect immediately,” Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announced hours after the court’s ruling. Groups like the Justice Department, NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Mexican American Legislative Caucus are now challenging the law under Section 2 of the VRA, which remains on the books.

Texas: Two Sides Cite Discrimination as Battle on Texas Voting Law Heads to Court | New York Times

Minority groups and Democrats in Texas have loudly opposed a state law requiring voters to show government-issued photo identification before casting their ballots. But one of the law’s biggest critics can be found not in Texas but in Washington — Eric H. Holder Jr., the United States attorney general. On Tuesday, in a federal courtroom in Corpus Christi, Tex., Justice Department lawyers will try to persuade a judge to strike down the voter ID law, the latest skirmish in a three-year legal battle over whether the law passed by the Republican-led Legislature in 2011 discriminates against blacks and Hispanics. If Texas loses the trial — which opens Tuesday and will last about two weeks — it could again be required to seek federal approval before making changes to its voting procedures, a level of oversight it was freed from by the United States Supreme Court.

Texas: Voter ID Law Goes To Trial : It’s All Politics | NPR

Dozens of lawyers will gather in a federal courtroom in Corpus Christi, Texas, on Tuesday for the start of a new challenge to the state’s controversial voter ID law. The trial is expected to last two to three weeks, but it’s unlikely to be the end of what’s already been a long, convoluted journey for the Texas law — and many others like it. First, some background: Texas’ Republican-controlled Legislature passed new photo ID requirements for voters back in 2011. Supporters said the law was needed to prevent voter fraud, although opponents noted that there was little evidence of such fraud at the polls. At the time, the state was covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which meant it needed federal approval for the law to go into effect, because the state had a history of discrimination against minority voters. The case ended up before a three-judge federal court in Washington, D.C., which in 2012 ruled against the state. It said Texas could not impose the new ID requirement, because the state was unable to show that it would not discriminate against blacks and Latinos. Under Section 5, the burden of proof was on the state to show that the law was nondiscriminatory.

Washington: Yakima may appeal voting rights ruling | Yakima Herald Republic

The Yakima City Council may yet appeal a federal court ruling that the city’s current election system violates the federal Voting Rights Act, but not for now. The council met in executive session for an hour Thursday morning with attorneys to discuss the city’s options. The city can either appeal the ruling, offer its own plan for a new elections system, or work with the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit, to attempt a compromise plan. After the closed-door meeting, which is allowed under state law to discuss legal action, Yakima Mayor Micah Cawley announced before gaveling the meeting to a close that the city would comply with the judge’s order. Cawley’s phrasing brought a stunned reaction from the small audience in attendance, who took it to mean the city would not appeal. Cawley later clarified that the city is still leaving its options open. “We’re not giving up any of our rights,” Cawley said after the meeting. “We’re going to comply with the judge’s order.”

Editorials: How to fix Yakima’s racially polarized elections | The Seattle Times

Last week’s federal court ruling ordering Yakima to discard at-large citywide elections in favor of a more representative process prescribes a needed fix, but leaves much of the rest of the state underrepresented at the local government level. The vast majority of Washington cities use at-large voting systems. That’s democracy, but not the most representative democracy. Subtly, and sometimes intentionally, at-large elections leave distinct geographic communities completely unrepresented. It’s why Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Washington: Federal judge rules against Yakima in voting rights case | Yakima Herald Republic

After two years of litigation, a federal judge has ruled in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union in its voting rights lawsuit against the city of Yakima, bringing potentially dramatic change to Yakima city politics. In a summary judgment issued Friday afternoon, the judge said the ACLU’s case was strong enough to vacate a trial and should move directly to the remediation phase, where both the ACLU and the city will present proposals for changing the way City Council members are elected. The ACLU already has proposed all-district voting for the seven council members. The ruling determined that Yakima’s current election system violates Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting the Latino community vote.

Alaska: Ballots fraught with issues for Yup’ik speakers | Al Jazeera

Ahead of tomorrow’s primary elections in Alaska, every voter in the state should have received a pamphlet that introduces the candidates, describes ballot issues and explains how to vote. The pamphlets are available in Spanish and Tagalog — but not Yup’ik, a language spoken by Alaska Natives, even though it is among the most commonly spoken languages in the state. At least 10,000 people speak Yup’ik, according to the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. It’s the second-most-spoken Native language in the U.S., after Navajo. Many speakers live in the community of Bethel or surrounding smaller rural villages in southwestern Alaska.

Washington: Justice Department file brief against Yakima in ACLU voting district case | Tri-City Herald

The U.S. Justice Department says part of Yakima’s defense against an ACLU voting rights lawsuit “lacks merit,” according to a brief filed in federal court Friday. The brief was filed in response to a motion from the city of Yakima asking the judge to dismiss the case without a trial through summary judgment. Yakima’s attorneys argue an ACLU expert witness’ examples of how City Council elections could be redistricted exclude criteria required by the federal Voting Rights Act, making them unconstitutional. But the Justice Department disagrees in a 13-page brief that says little else about the case, which has been in litigation since August 2012. The ACLU came up with seven redistricting proposals, including at least one Latino majority district in each example. Five of the proposed district maps were based on general population and two were based on citizen voting age population.

Alabama: Black groups tell Supreme Court Alabama districts biased | Montgomery Advertiser

The Alabama Legislature will be further racially polarized by new district boundaries that pack more black voters into certain districts than the law requires, state black political groups told the Supreme Court last week. The justices agreed in June to hear the complaint from Alabama that the Republican majority went too far in using race to redistrict itself in 2012. The result, according to black Democratic legislators, is unusually high black majorities in districts surrounded by districts that are even more white. “The Constitution does not permit states to stumble into such excessively segregated election districts, whether through good faith or bad,” wrote lawyers for the Alabama Democratic Conference, one of the groups involved in the case.

North Carolina: Court Rules Voting Rights Rollback to Stay In Place Until After Midterm Elections | The Atlantic

A federal judge has temporarily authorized North Carolina to implement a sweeping new law that threatens to reduce access to the polls, particularly for African-American, Latino, and young voters. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder, a George W. Bush appointee, is an early test of the Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holder decision, which overturned key parts of the Voting Rights Act. In 2000, North Carolina started rolling out efforts to make it easier to register and vote, only to yank those efforts back thirteen years later. When the state legislature was controlled by Democrats, it authorized counties to conduct up to seventeen days of early voting, including Sunday voting, which enabled black churches to transport parishioners to the polls. It also allowed citizens to register and vote on the same day. Sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds could preregister, often at their high schools, ensuring they’d be on the rolls when they turned eighteen. And voters who showed up at the wrong precinct could still cast ballots in certain races. From 1996 to 2012, the state’s ranking in turnout among voter-eligible adults shot up from 43rd to 11th, according to the United States Elections Project at George Mason University. African-American participation pulled even with white participation.

National: Cantor’s Legacy on Voting Rights Act Marked by Failure to Deliver | Roll Call

Passing a new Voting Rights Act in the GOP-dominated House was never going to be easy, supporters acknowledge. But with a powerful Republican such as Eric Cantor as an ally, hope flickered for nearly a year. Then came June 10 and the shocking primary defeat that tanked Cantor’s congressional career — taking with it, in all likelihood, any prospect for an update of the landmark 1965 civil rights legislation that had been weakened by a 2013 Supreme Court ruling. Even with Cantor as majority leader, said a House aide close to the VRA negotiations, “I would have speculated that it was certainly a very steep climb. That it was unlikely, but there was still hope.” But with the Virginia Republican out of the mix, the aide said, “it doesn’t appear we’re going to see it this Congress.”

Editorials: There’s No Good Argument For Voting Restrictions | Seth Michaels/TPM

In last week’s Kansas primaries, officials turned away a 97-year-old woman named Beth Hiller at the polling place. The reason? She didn’t have an ID with her. Thanks to a recent state law, Hiller had to get back on the shuttle and head back to her nursing home without getting to exercise her most basic right. In theory, conservatives are supposed to oppose laws that don’t solve a problem and have unintended consequences. But voter ID is the clearest example we have of a law that helps nobody and hurts lots of people — yet these laws have been a major priority for Republican legislators across the country. A report from the Brennan Center identifies 22 states, including Kansas, that have implemented new voting restrictions since the Republican wave of 2010. Take North Carolina, where unified Republican control was followed almost immediately by a sweeping set of changes restricting access to the polls. For no good reason, North Carolina cut out a week worth of early-voting days, ended same-day registration, and put a strict voter ID requirement in place, among other changes.

Editorials: Troubling Texas voting changes face court scrutiny | Carl Leubsdorf/Dallas Morning News

It’s August, and most of the federal government is on vacation. Members of Congress are on their annual August state or district “work period,” President Barack Obama is at Martha’s Vineyard, and the Supreme Court is off until early October. But not all of the federal machinery is idle, especially in Texas. In San Antonio, a three-judge federal court is hearing the latest arguments in a case challenging state legislative and congressional redistricting plans favorable to the GOP. Another court, in Corpus Christi, plans to hear a case Sept. 2 that questions the constitutionality of Texas’ voter identification law. The latter case exemplifies the Republican effort in states with GOP governors and legislatures to limit turnout among Democratic-leaning minority groups. The verdict could significantly affect the political futures of Texas and other states where the Justice Department filed or joined similar suits. Both Texas cases stem from the 2013 Supreme Court decision ruling unconstitutional the 1965 Voting Rights Act section that gives the department power to review in advance voting changes in states like Texas with a history of racial bias.

Editorials: Texas is wasting time and money in defending the GOP’s political advantage | Houston Chronicle

Texans know about lines, including the sword-drawn line Col. William Barrett Travis allegedly scraped through soon-to-be-bloody Alamo sand to distinguish the brave from the not-so-brave. These days a three-judge federal panel meeting a few blocks from the Texas shrine is examining in tedious detail a set of lines that won’t be erased by an early-morning breeze. They’re drawn, not in sand, but on computers. Since these lines will determine for years to come how Texans choose their elected representatives, the state’s politically invested are fighting almost as ferociously as the two armies that clashed at the Alamo. Unfortunately, the fight will last a good deal longer than the 13 days it took the Alamo to fall.

North Carolina: After loss in court, voting rights activists turn attention to mobilizing in the streets | Facing South

Following a federal judge’s decision last week to deny a request by the U.S. Department of Justice and civil rights groups to block North Carolina’s restrictive new voting law from being enforced during this November’s election, voting rights activists are turning their attention from the ongoing legal battle in the courtroom to organizing voters to turn out despite the new rules. “We will not falter in our efforts to mobilize until this extreme law is completely repealed,” said Rev. William Barber of the N.C. NAACP, one of the civil rights groups that sought the injunction. “Our movement against this voter suppression law is built on the legacy of those who have testified before us, with their feet and blood, to fight for equal rights in North Carolina and the nation.” On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas D. Schroeder declined to issue a preliminary injunction that would have prevented restrictive provisions in the voting law passed last year by the Republican-controlled North Carolina legislature and signed by Gov. Pat McCrory (R) from taking effect during this year’s general election. Those provisions include a shorter early voting period and an end to same-day registration, out-of-precinct voting and straight-party voting.