Massachusetts: Minorities sue Lowell over voting rights | Lowell Sun

A coalition of 13 Asian-American and Latino Lowell residents on Thursday filed a federal voting-rights lawsuit against the city, alleging that Lowell’s municipal election system discriminates against minorities. Plaintiffs say the use of citywide at-large elections for all seats on the City Council and School Committee dilutes the combined electoral strength of minority voters in Lowell, violating the federal Voting Rights Act, as well as the United States Constitution, according to a release from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice (LCCR), a Boston-based private, non-profit, non-partisan legal organization that provides pro bono legal representation to victims of discrimination based on race or national origin.

Texas: Republicans fear federal oversight as voter ID overhaul stalls | The Texas Tribune

With bill-killing deadlines looming, some Texas Republicans are trying to unstick legislation that would overhaul the state’s voter identification rules, saying failure to do so would torpedo the state’s position in a high-profile court battle over whether lawmakers disenfranchised minority voters. Inaction, they fear, would dramatically boost the odds Texas would return to the list of governments required to seek federal approval before changing their election laws.

Indiana: Marion County Election Board Sued Over Early Voting Access | WFYI

Common Cause Indiana and two branches of the NAACP filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday to challenge the law that governs early voting in Marion County. In 2008, two sites were established outside downtown Indianapolis that offered in-person early voting. But now they’re gone, meaning anyone in Marion County who wants to cast an early ballot has to make the trip to a single downtown office. Indiana law mandates that county election boards unanimously endorse early-voting locations. Julia Vaughn, policy director for Common Cause Indiana, says the lack of access has become a constitutional issue, and that it also violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Texas: Department of Justice will monitor Pasadena elections after voting rights ruling | Houston Chronicle

The U.S. Department of Justice is monitoring the Pasadena city elections as the suburb faces mounting federal scrutiny in the wake of a judge’s ruling that the city intentionally violated the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against Hispanics. Two observers will be present to ensure the elections this Saturday are conducted smoothly, said C. Robert Heath, an attorney representing the city in the voting rights case. But he said he didn’t know who asked for them, what their specific charge would be and which polling locations may be watched.

Michigan: Civil Rights Commission urges U.S. Supreme Court to review emergency manager law | Michigan Radio

The Michigan Civil Rights Commission wants the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a case against Gov. Snyder. That’s what commissioners decided with a 5-0 vote Tuesday. They ordered the Michigan Department of Civil Rights to file an amicus brief urging the high court to review the issues raised in the case Bellant v. Snyder. The case makes the claim that Michigan’s emergency manager law, Public Act 436, violates the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting power of people in certain communities, particularly African Americans.

National: New threat rising to Voting Rights Act | National Constitution Center

About four years after the Supreme Court took away the government’s strongest authority to protect minority voters’ rights, a backup power under the federal Voting Rights Act – weaker and harder to use – is now being threatened, just as federal courts have begun applying it. At issue now, as it was when the Supreme Court decided the case of Shelby County v. Holder in June 2013, is a form of government supervision of voting rights that goes by the technical term, “pre-clearance.” When operating against a state or local government, that means that officials cannot put any new voting law or procedure – however minor – into effect without first getting approval in Washington, D.C. Three cases now developing in federal courts based in Texas are testing whether the variation of “pre-clearance” will take the place of what the Supreme Court scuttled. And there are already serious challenges facing that prospect, in each of those cases.

California: Lawsuit: Santa Clara County Elections Run Afoul of Voting Rights Act | San Jose Inside

A new lawsuit claims the city of Santa Clara’s at-large elections violate state law by systematically discriminating against Asian-Americans. The city’s winner-take-all system dilutes minority votes and has prevented Asian-Americans from ever being elected to the City Council, according to the complaint filed last week by retired social worker Wes Mukoyama. In 2016 alone, five Asian-American candidates lost despite the fact that almost 40 percent of the city and a third of its electorate is of Asian descent. “Something is wrong when such a sizeable Asian-American population cannot elect candidates of its choice,” said Mukoyama, who’s represented by civil rights attorney Robert Rubin and the nonprofit Asian Law Alliance.

Michigan: Supreme Court could decide if Emergency Manager law violates Voting Rights Act | MLive.com

Attorneys are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case challenging Michigan’s emergency manager law, contending Flint’s water crisis now stands as evidence for “what happens when the government is allowed to run our communities based only on the ‘bottom line.’ “In filing a petition for a Writ of Certiorari Friday, March 31, Ann Arbor attorney and professor Samuel R. Bagenstos claims the emergency manager law is racially discriminatory and deprives citizens of their rights under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Editorials: Texas Needs a Remedial Lesson on Voting Rights | The New York Times

In Texas, which has for decades made an art of violating the voting rights of minorities, officials and lawmakers can’t seem to keep their hands clean. Now, the state may become the first to have its voting practices placed under federal oversight since the Supreme Court struck down a central part of the Voting Rights Act in 2013. A Federal District Court in San Antonio ruled on March 10 that the state’s Republican-led Legislature redrew congressional district lines in 2011 with the intent to dilute the voting power of Latino and black citizens, who tend to vote Democratic. In two districts — one encompassing parts of South and West Texas, and the other in the Dallas-Fort Worth area — the court found that mapmakers used various methods that violated the Constitution or the Voting Rights Act. In the former, a Latino-majority district, they broke up cohesive Latino areas, pulled in Latino voters with lower turnout rates while excluding those with higher turnout rates, and included more high-turnout white voters.

National: Trump, Sessions, Gorsuch and the New Battle Over Voting Rights | US News & World Report

When the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act four years ago, it gave the green light to state lawmakers eager to restrict access to the polls and eliminated the Justice Department’s role as traffic cop on whether those laws were necessary or appropriate. Activists then turned to the courts, with some success: Last year, federal judges struck down a North Carolina law mandating voters present a valid, government-issued photo ID at the polls, along with cutbacks on early voting, and the Supreme Court refused to hear the state’s appeal. While lawyers and civil rights leaders have won some big battles in fights over voter ID laws, diminished early voting and reductions in polling places, experts say the future of voting rights remains uncertain – due to changes in the political and legal landscape that swept in with President Donald Trump.

Texas: Analysis: Texas could find itself back in the voting rights penalty box | The Texas Tribune

Texas lawmakers intentionally discriminated on the basis of race when they drew redistricting maps in 2011, according to a long-delayed federal ruling delivered last Friday night. That could eventually force the state to redraw the districts for the 36 members of its congressional delegation. Three districts of those districts are invalid, the judges found, and reworking them could have ripple effects for the districts around them. But that business about “intentional discrimination” could turn out to be much more significant: The courts could order the state to get federal government permission for any future changes to its voting and election laws.

Editorials: Sessions tried to jail me for helping people vote | Evelyn Turner/USA Today

While my husband and I were trying to help black people vote in Alabama, Jeff Sessions was trying to put us in jail. Perry County in the 1960s was a hostile place to be black. To register to vote, a black resident needed to have a white “well to do” citizen to vouch for them. To enter the county courthouse, blacks had to use the back door. And to fight for our basic rights as Americans, we had to gather in the woods because so many black residents were afraid to be seen meeting in town. Despite vicious segregation and this climate of fear, civil rights leaders and ordinary black residents organized to seek the right to vote. My husband, Albert Turner, served as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Alabama field director and helped to lead voter registration efforts in Marion and Perry County. The U.S. Department of Justice and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy helped to support our voter registration efforts and secure our basic rights. Federal registrars sent by Kennedy worked out of the Marion post office basement and helped to register hundreds of black voters.

Texas: Voting rights case unsettles Pasadena as elections loom | Houston Chronicle

On the surface, at least, Pasadena’s City Hall was a happy place Tuesday evening as elected officials, city employees and residents filed in for a City Council meeting. Handshakes, hugs and small talk created a glow of bonhomie as everyone waited for the show to start. Yet a shadow hung over this sunny facade. These are troubled days for Harris County’s second-largest city as it absorbs the effects of ongoing voting rights litigation and prepares for a municipal election in May amid continued uncertainty about what the electoral map will look like. A blistering opinion by a federal judge, after a trial that drew national attention, depicted Pasadena as a place where public officials used taxpayer-funded time and resources in a relentless campaign to weaken Latino political influence; where Anglos enjoy superior public services; where residents referred to a Latino candidate seeking their votes as a “wetback;” and where another candidate felt obliged to conceal his Hispanic ethnicity to get elected.

Texas: Federal judge denies delay in Pasadena voting rights order | Houston Chronicle

Hours after candidates began filing paperwork to run for city office, a federal judge Wednesday denied a request by Pasadena officials to delay her order that the city election be run under an 2011 election scheme to protect the rights of Latino voters. Chief U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal in Houston said Pasadena should conduct its upcoming May elections based on eight single-member districts, throwing out the six single-member and two at-large districts that the judge ruled had diluted the clout of Hispanics.

Texas: In Texas, a Test of Whether the Voting Rights Act Still Has Teeth | The New York Times

Within days of the Supreme Court striking down the heart of the Voting Rights Act in June 2013, the mayor of this working-class industrial city set in motion a contentious change to the local election system that critics said was aimed at protecting white control of the City Council in the face of rapid growth in the city’s Hispanic population. It set off a furor, which was only inflamed when at a subsequent redistricting hearing, the mayor, Johnny Isbell, brought a gun. At another meeting, he ordered police officers to remove a council member for violating a three-minute speaking limit. Asked by SCOTUSblog why he was pursuing the change, Mr. Isbell replied, “Because the Justice Department can no longer tell us what to do.” But just after the new year, a federal judge ordered the Justice Department to do precisely that — making Pasadena the first municipality in the country ordered by a court to submit, against its wishes, to federal approval of its electoral system since the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision.

Michigan: Justice Department sues Eastpointe, cites voting rights violations | Detroit Free Press

The Justice Department is suing the city of Eastpointe, alleging that it violates the Voting Rights Act by denying black residents an equal opportunity to elect city council members of their choice. The lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday in Detroit, says no black candidate has ever served on the Eastpointe City Council and that white voters have consistently opposed and defeated black voters’ preferred black candidates. It seeks a court order that would force Eastpointe to change how its city council is elected. It currently consists of the mayor and four council members who serve staggered four-year terms. Of the 32,000 people living in Eastpointe in 2010, nearly 10,000 were black, according to the U.S. Census. Current estimates place the city’s black population at closer to 40%.

Michigan: US Justice Department files voting rights suit against Eastpointe | The Detroit News

No black resident has ever won office for council, school board or legislative district in this Macomb County city, even though one-third of its electorate is black, according to the federal government. The U.S. Justice Department blames Eastpointe’s electoral process, saying electing members by citywide popular vote — instead of by district — is racially discriminatory and violates the Voting Rights Act. The Justice Department on Tuesday filed a federal complaint seeking to end the practice, which city officials say has been in place since 1929.

Texas: With Deadline Looming, Pasadena Considers Whether To Appeal Voting Rights Verdict | Houston Public Media

City officials in Pasadena are pondering their options, now that a federal judge has ruled that the city’s method of electing local officials is unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal ruled late last week that the system discriminates against Latino residents. Up to 2013, Pasadena city council members were all chosen by single-member districts, drawn along geographic lines. Latino-backed candidates held four out of eight seats, and looked close to winning a fifth. Then the Supreme Court struck down portions of the Voting Rights Act. Within weeks, Pasadena Mayor Johnny Isbell began promoting a plan to switch to a mix of single-member districts and at-large seats.

Texas: Federal Judge Rules Pasadena Infringed On Latino Voting Rights, Orders Changes | Associated Press

A federal judge ruled late Friday that the the City of Pasadena promoted and implemented a voting plan intended to dilute Latino power at the polls. In a 113-page ruling (a link is below), U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal ordered city officials to revert to an eight-single-member City Council voting plan used before 2014. That was the year voters narrowly approved a plan that elected six members from districts and two at large. … Aside from restoring the previous voting plan, Rosenthal also said she will supervise the 2017 municipal elections in May and watch for any efforts to suppress Latino voting rights. The judge also ordered Pasadena to submit any future changes in its voting plan to the U.S. Justice Department for civil rights pre-clearance. One month after the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, Pasadena Mayor Johnny Isbell proposed changing the council’s structure to a mix of six single-member district seats and two at-large seats.

Texas: Federal judge: Pasadena deliberately worked to reduce voting clout of Latinos | Houston Chronicle

A federal judge in Houston dealt a major blow Friday to the City of Pasadena in a closely watched voting rights case, ruling that officials deliberately diluted the clout of Hispanic voters by revising the system for electing City Council members. Chief U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal ordered Pasadena to revert to its previous use of single-member districts for the upcoming May elections and ruled the city would need pre-clearance from the Department of Justice for any future changes. “In Pasadena, Texas, Latino voters … do not have the same right to vote as their Anglo neighbors,” Rosenthal concluded in the 113-page decision released late Friday. Patricia Gonzales, one of the plaintiffs who filed the federal lawsuit, said fairness can be restored to the city election system. “All right,” she said, when informed of the ruling. “Now each section will be able to vote on who they want and their voices will be heard. I’m very pleased with the outcome.”

California: U.S. Department of Justice frees Napa County of bilingual voting oversight | Napa Valley Register

Napa County is free of U.S. Department of Justice oversight on how it reaches out to Spanish-only speakers during elections, though that doesn’t necessarily mean the county will stop its bilingual ballot efforts. County Registrar of Voters John Tuteur attributes the county’s 82 percent Nov. 8 election turnout in part to its Spanish-language outreach. One of his primary responsibilities is to make certain every registered voter can cast a vote in an informed manner, he said. “We’re sticking with that goal,” Tuteur told the county Board of Supervisors at its Tuesday meeting. Still, with this and other recent elections developments, Tuteur wants to hear from supervisors and the community. He’s tentatively scheduled a Board of Supervisors election workshop for Feb. 28.

Texas: Pasadena voting rights case opens in federal court | Houston Chronicle

On the north side of Pasadena, mostly Latino residents live amid broken sidewalks, faulty drainage and pockmarked streets. On the south side of Spencer Highway, where most residents are white, municipal parks are manicured and the streets and sidewalks are better maintained. The disparity in infrastructure is at the heart of a voting rights case that opened in federal court Thursday in which a group of Latino residents is challenging the city’s newly revised system of government, saying it discriminates against minority voters and intentionally dilutes their power. By creating two at-large council seats and eliminating two of the eight district seats, the suit says, the city violated the federal Voting Rights Act, making it harder for Latino-backed candidates to get elected and leading to unfair allocation of resources.

Editorials: The Voters Abandoned by the Court | The New York Times

On Tuesday, for the first time in more than 50 years, Americans went to the polls to elect a president without a fully functioning Voting Rights Act — thanks to an insidious decision by the Supreme Court in 2013. Consider what has been happening in North Carolina, a battleground state with a history of racial discrimination in voting. Republican lawmakers and officials have gone to remarkable lengths to drive down turnout among black voters, who disproportionately favor Democrats. Among other things, they cut early voting hours and Sunday voting, and closed polling places in minority communities, despite significant public opposition. Even after a federal appeals court struck down the state’s outrageous voter-suppression law in July, saying that it targeted black voters “with almost surgical precision,” officials were scheming to work around it. On Monday, the state’s Republican Party issued a news release boasting that cutbacks in early voting hours reduced black turnout by 8.5 percent below 2012 levels, even as the number of white early voters increased by 22.5 percent.

Editorials: The Supreme Court Ruled That Voting Restrictions Were a Bygone Problem. Early Voting Results Suggest Otherwise. | Emily Bazelon/The New York Times

Tomorrow, and the early voting leading up to it, mark the first presidential election since the Supreme Court clipped the protective wings of the Voting Rights Act. In 2013, speaking for a conservative majority of five, Chief Justice John Roberts effectively eliminated the safeguards created by a provision of the law called Section 5, saying that Congress could no longer require states and counties with a history of racial discrimination to get the approval of the Department of Justice before changing local voting rules and practices. Roberts said things had “changed dramatically” since the 1960s, and these jurisdictions, which are mostly in the South, didn’t need oversight from the D.O.J. anymore. They could be trusted to treat minority voters fairly on their own. As evidence of change, Roberts pointed to the end of the literacy test and other methods of barring voter registration, which included the poll tax. But his conservative majority didn’t account for the hassle tax — the new price that minority voters disproportionately pay. In North Carolina over the weekend, people stood in line for hours in counties with large black and student populations. In a study of 381 counties covered by Section 5, about half the total number, the Leadership Conference Education Fund found 868 fewer places to vote than existed in 2012.

National: There Are 868 Fewer Places to Vote in 2016 Because the Supreme Court Gutted the Voting Rights Act | The Nation

When Aracely Calderon, a naturalized US citizen from Guatemala, went to vote in downtown Phoenix just before the polls closed in Arizona’s March 22 presidential primary, there were more than 700 people in a line stretching four city blocks. She waited in line for five hours, becoming the last voter in the state to cast a ballot at 12:12 am. “I’m here to exercise my right to vote,” she said shortly before midnight, explaining why she stayed in line. Others left without voting because they didn’t have four or five hours to spare. The lines were so long because Republican election officials in Phoenix’s Maricopa County, the largest in the state, reduced the number of polling places by 70 percent from 2012 to 2016, from 200 to just 60—one polling place per 21,000 registered voters. Previously, Maricopa County would have needed federal approval to reduce the number of polling sites, because Arizona was one of 16 states where jurisdictions with a long history of discrimination had to submit their voting changes under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. This part of the VRA blocked 3,000 discriminatory voting changes from 1965 to 2013. That changed when the Supreme Court gutted the law in the June 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision.

Texas: Report: Texas has closed most polling places since court ruling | The Texas Tribune

Five Texas counties rank among the top 10 nationwide for closing the greatest percentage of their polling places since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, according to a new report released less than a week before Election Day. And taken together, Texas counties have closed more polling places than any other state, the report found. According to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a civil rights advocacy group, since the high court found Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional — ruling that Texas and other states with history of racial discrimination no longer needed federal pre-clearance when changing election laws — Texas counties have closed at least 403 polling places. This will be the first election in 50 years conducted without the full force of the Voting Rights Act. Fisher, Medina, Aransas and Coke and Irion counties ranked the highest in polling place reductions, closing more than half of their voting locations. In terms of total polling places closed, Texas is followed by Arizona, which closed 202 polling places. Louisiana holds third place, with 103 poll closures.

Editorials: Without a modernized Voting Rights Act, there’s no such thing as an honest election | Jim Sensenbrenner/The Washington Post

On Tuesday, Americans will elect a president without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. The last time that happened they were deciding between Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater — more than a half-century ago. In 2013, the Supreme Court declared that voter discrimination was no longer a problem and effectively struck down the only portion of the act designed to stop discrimination before it affects an election. The court let stand the provisions of the act that allow lawsuits after a discriminatory law takes effect, but unfortunately, the United States has learned the hard way that there is no satisfactory cure for discrimination after an election occurs.

National: Why the Justice Dept. Will Have Far Fewer Watchdogs in Polling Places | The New York Times

For the first time since the days of poll taxes and literacy tests a half-century ago, the Justice Department will be sharply restricted in how it can deploy some of its most powerful weapons to deter voter intimidation in the presidential election. Because of a Supreme Court ruling three years ago, the department will send special election observers inside polling places in parts of only four states on Election Day, a significant drop from 2012, when it sent observers to jurisdictions in 13 states. And in a departure from a decades-old practice, observers will be sent to only one state in the South, where a history of discriminatory voting practices once made six states subject to special federal scrutiny. The pullback worries civil rights advocates, who say that Donald J. Trump’s call for his supporters to monitor a “rigged” electoral system could lead to intimidation of minority voters at polling places.

Mississippi: Voting rights activists fret over loss of election observers in Mississippi | The Kansas City Star

November’s presidential election is the first in more than 50 years in which the federal government won’t send a full complement of specially trained observers to monitor elections in states, like Mississippi, with long records of discriminatory voting practices. After the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder weakened a core provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the U.S. Department of Justice can deploy special election observers from the Office of Personnel Management only where authorized by a court order. Because of that requirement, the department will deploy a smaller number of its own staff attorneys and other personnel to monitor elections next month in roughly half the states. Unlike the special observers, the department staffers won’t have the authority to view activity inside polling places and locations where votes are tallied unless they get approval from local officials. That potential loss of access to real-time voting operations is causing concern among civil- and voting-rights activists about the integrity of Mississippi’s vote process.

National: Will The New Era Of Limited Federal Monitoring Still Protect Voter Rights? | NPR

This year’s presidential election will be the first in a half-century without the significant presence of federal observers at polling places. That’s because in 2013 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, and when the court wiped out that section, the statute that provided for election observers went, too. The landmark decision in Shelby County v. Holder doesn’t mean civil rights officials are totally disarmed. The Justice Department will still send out “hundreds” of “monitors” to oversee Election Day compliance. But the number is smaller than it was before, and monitors can only enter the polling place if local officials agree. Observers, by contrast, had a statutory right to be inside polling places. They were trained specifically for the task. There also were many more of them, and they had far more authority than monitors.