National: Justice Department sues Texas over voter ID law | The Washington Post

The Justice Department on Thursday redoubled its efforts to challenge state voting laws, suing Texas over its new voter ID measure as part of a growing political showdown over electoral rights. The move marked the latest bid by the Obama administration to counter a Supreme Court ruling that officials have said threatens the voting rights of minorities. It also signaled that the administration will probably take legal action in voting rights cases in other states, including North Carolina, where the governor signed a voter ID law this month. The Supreme Court in June invalidated a key section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that had forced certain jurisdictions to receive approval from the Justice Department or a federal court before changing their voting laws. The ruling, however, did not preclude the Obama administration from using other sections of the law.

Editorials: U.S. sues Texas over voter ID | Lyle Denniston/SCOTUSblog

The Justice Department went to court again on Thursday to challenge the legality of Texas’s voter ID law — a law that Texas says it has put back into effect since the Supreme Court freed the state from federal court supervision.  In that new lawsuit and in a new maneuver in a pending case over new election districting maps for Texas, the Department will be asking that the state be placed back under court oversight over all of its election laws, for at least a decade.  Both new moves were announced ina press release.  The legal filings are not yet available. “We will not allow the Supreme Court’s recent decision to be interpreted as open season for states to pursue measures that suppress voting rights,” Attorney General Eric Holder said. “The Department will take action against jurisdictions that attempt to hinder access to the ballot box, no matter where it occurs.” Holder said the Texas filings were “the latest action to protect voting rights, but will not be the last.”  That statement may have been a signal that the Obama administration will also mount a legal challenge to the sweeping new North Carolina law limiting voting rights in that state.

Texas: DOJ to Texas: Voter Suppression Will Not Stand | The Nation

In one week last August, federal courts found that Texas’ voter ID law and redistricting maps were discriminatory and violated the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court’s recent decision invalidating Section 4 of the VRA, which previously covered Texas, tragically wiped away those rulings. Now the Department of Justice is once again stepping in to fight for voting rights in the Lone Star State. The DOJ announced today that it is objecting to Texas’ voter ID law under Section 2 of the VRA and will also seek to join a similar lawsuit against the state’s redistricting maps. Last month, DOJ asked a court in Texas to force the state to approve its voting changes with the federal government for a period of time under another provision of the VRA, Section 3, based on a finding of intentional discrimination in the restricting case. The federal courts found last year that Texas’ new maps for Congress and the state house were “enacted with discriminatory purpose.”

Editorials: Against a “Post-Racial” Voting Rights Act | Spencer Overton/American Prospect

In June, five Supreme Court Justices rolled back the Voting Rights Act, widely considered the most effective tool in preventing discrimination in our nation’s history. Section 5 of the act required that certain states and localities “preclear” proposed election changes with federal officials to ensure the changes were not discriminatory.  The Court ruled that the formula used to determine which jurisdictions needed to get preclearance was outdated and unconstitutional. For those of us who care about voting rights, the question now is how do we respond? Some have argued that Congress should update the Voting Rights Act by passing ambitious election reforms. Such proposals include mandating shorter voting lines, making registration more convenient, and passing less restrictive identification requirements. For example, Sam Issacharoff and Richard Pildes—both New York University law professors who advised the Obama campaign—argue that we should look beyond the race-discrimination approach and adopt general election reforms that are race-neutral. The effort to update the Voting Rights Act, however, should focus on preventing voting discrimination—not general election reforms. Promoting broader access is a critical democratic goal, but it is distinct from the goal of preventing voting discrimination. By analogy, a tax deduction for mortgage interest promotes access to home ownership, but separate laws are still needed to prevent banks from engaging in predatory lending—different problems require different solutions. Voting discrimination is real, and broad election reform is not sufficient to address it.

Texas: Voter ID Debate Heats Up as Dallas County Joins Fight | The Texas Tribune

A fight against the state’s contentious voter ID laws escalated this week when Dallas County became the first Texas county to claim that the requirements would disenfranchise thousands of eligible voters. In a 3-2 vote on Tuesday, the Dallas County Commissioners Court voted to join U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, in a lawsuit urging a federal district court to issue an injunction against the voter ID law. The law requires voters to present one of seven forms of state or federal identification or a so-called election identification certificate, which can be obtained from the state’s Department of Public Safety. On Wednesday in an appearance on MSNBC, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins applauded the commissioners’ decision. Jenkins said 220,000 of 1.1 million total registered voters in Dallas County indicated they did not have the required forms of ID to vote. “Dallas County just could not sit idly by while the state’s Republican leaders disenfranchised African-American and Latino voters,” Jenkins said, adding that Hispanics are 46 percent more likely to lack the required form of ID to vote, according to the U.S. attorney general.

Editorials: North Carolina’s speedy vote suppression tactics show exactly why the Voting Rights Act was working | Rick Hasen/Slate Magazine

Usually it takes years to judge when the Supreme Court gets something very wrong. Think of Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the court in the 2010 campaign-finance case, Citizens United, freeing corporations to spend money on elections. He wrote that the “appearance of [corporate] influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy,” a point that remains hotly debated even as the amount of money in federal elections skyrockets. But the conservative justices’ decision this past June in Shelby County v. Holder, striking down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, has already unleashed in North Carolina the most restrictive voting law we’ve seen since the 1965 enactment of the VRA. Texas is restoring its voter ID law which had been blocked (pursuant to the VRA) by the federal government. And more is to come in other states dominated by Republican legislatures. Substituting their own judgment for that of Congress, the five justices in the Shelby County majority expressed confidence that the act’s “preclearance” provision was no longer necessary, and that there would be ample other tools to fight discrimination in voting. That the conservative justices have already been proven wrong a few scant weeks after the decision came down offers little solace for the voters of North Carolina, who ironically will have to try to fix the problem using the very mechanism of voting—which the North Carolina legislature is inhibiting.

Michigan: Republican Vote Suppression Hitches Ride on Detroit’s Woes | Bloomberg

According to a study released this month by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, only 54 percent of Americans have a driver’s license before their 18th birthday. One survey found that 46 percent of people in the U.S. ages 18 to 24 would choose access to the Internet over access to their own car. Auto companies are in a panic over teens’ declining interest in their product. The AAA report cites a precipitous “downward trend” in licensing rates among high school seniors, with 85 percent reporting that they had a license in 1996, but only 73 percent reporting that in 2010. The decline increasingly has implications for voting behavior, as well. At least 22 states have introduced Voter ID laws, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. North Carolina just enacted a whirlwind of vote-suppression tactics that, as Rick Hasen writes here, has already made a mockery of the Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holder ruling, which claimed it could curtail the Voting Rights Act without significant impact.

Texas: Abbott goes on voter ID offensive | San Antonio Express-News

Attorney General Greg Abbott on Monday took aim at a civil rights lawyer who — according to a news story — advised folks in South Texas to ignore the state’s voter ID law when casting ballots in an upcoming local election. In an August 13 Rio Grande Guardian story, Jose Garza, a lawyer for the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, is quoted saying he thinks Texas’ voter ID law is unconstitutional, and that he “needs practical examples of registered voters being denied the right to vote. The photo ID legislation may be the law of the land in Texas but I believe it is unconstitutional. The only way you can challenge it is to find people who have been denied the right to vote because they did not comply with this specific term,” Garza said, according to the story. Keep in mind: Abbott declared voter ID will “take effect immediately” after the U.S. Supreme Court in June suspended the section of the Voting Rights Act that forced Texas to get a federal OK before implementing changes to election law (Attorney General Eric Holder said in July he will ask a court to require Texas to receive preclearance from the Justice Department for voting laws because of a history of discrimination).

Editorials: Get to Know Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act | Abby Rapoport/American Prospect

arlier this summer, the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the most potent provision of the Voting Rights Act: Section 5, which had required nine states and a number of individual counties with long histories of voter discrimination to clear any new election law changes with the feds. In the weeks since the decision, voting rights advocates have been searching for new strategies to protect voting rights. And now, in recent days, a previously ignored portion of the Voting Rights Act has become a key tool in the fight. Advocates—as well as Attorney General Eric Holder—are hoping Section 3 will prove to be a powerful tool in the face of an onslaught of voting restrictions from Republican legislatures—and can at least partially replace the much stronger voter protections the Supreme Court took away. Since that Supreme Court decision, the states that had been covered by Section 5 have run roughshod over voting rights. Texas has set about implementing a voter ID law—previously nixed by the DOJ under the Section 5—that would require some people to drive 176 miles round trip on a weekday to get the government-issued photo ID they’ll now need to vote. In Florida, Governor Rick Scott has announced he would re-start a purge of non-citizens from the voter rolls. North Carolina, for its part, passed what is likely the most sweeping set of voting restrictions since the original Voting Rights Act was passed.

Editorials: Here’s Where Rand Paul Can Find ‘Objective Evidence’ of Vote Suppression | Andrew Cohen/The Atlantic

Dear Senator Rand Paul:

If you want to be president of the United States one day, if you want more people to take you seriously as an independent thinker within the Republican Party, if you want to lead your party back to control of the Senate, or if more modestly you want simply to tether yourself to some form of reality, you are going to have to stop making false and insulting statements like you did Wednesday when you declared: “I don’t think there is objective evidence that we’re precluding African-Americans from voting any longer.” I guess it all depends upon your definition of “objective evidence.” On the one hand, there are the factual findings about evidence and testimony contained in numerous opinions issued recently by federal judges, both Republican and Democrat, who have identified racially discriminatory voting measures. And on the other hand, there is your statement that none of this is “objective.” It’s a heavy burden you’ve given yourself, Senator — proving that something doesn’t exist when we all can see with our own eyes that it does. Last August, for example, three federal judges struck down Texas’s photo identification law under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act because it would have led “to a regression in the position of racial minorities with respect to their effective exercise of the electoral franchise.” Those judges did find that some of the evidence presented to them was “invalid, irrelevant or unreliable” — but that was the evidence Texas offered in support of its discriminatory law. You should read this ruling before you talk about minorities and voting rights.

National: Southern Discomfort: Republican voter ID initiatives are making it hard to rebrand the GOP as open to black voters | Slate Magazine

On Monday, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed an omnibus voting standards bill into law. In a video message, he talked only about the voter ID portion of the law and assured citizens that only “the extreme left” opposed the law, for its usual crazy, extreme reasons. He neglected to mention that he’d just cut back on same-day registration and in-person early voting. Hours later the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People sued the governor, arguing that he and legislators had “evidence that African-Americans used early voting, same-day voter registration, and out-of precinct voting at higher rates than white voters.” On Wednesday, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul spoke at the Louisville Forum and fielded a question about voter ID bills. “The interesting thing about voting patterns now,” offered Paul, “is in this last election African-Americans voted at a higher percentage than whites in almost every one of the states that were under the special provisions of the federal government. So really, I don’t think there is objective evidence that we’re precluding African-Americans from voting any longer.” While Paul was speaking, the Republican National Committee announced a special 50th-anniversary commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. It would take place a few blocks from the Capitol, and feature the party’s lone black member of Congress, state legislators from Oklahoma and Louisiana, the party’s black committee members, and two once-rising black Republican stars who lost their last elections.

Editorials: Our Failure to Stop You from Voting Means We Weren’t Trying to Stop You from Voting | American Prospect

North Carolina recently passed what can only be described as an omnibus voter suppression law, including a whole range of provisions from demanding photo IDs to cutting back early voting to restricting registration drives, every single one of which is likely to make it harder for minorities, poor people, and/or young people to register and vote. It’s not just the Tar Heel state—across the South, states that have been freed by the Supreme Court from their prior obligation under the Voting Rights Act to get permission from the Justice Department before changing their voting laws are moving with all deliberate speed to make voting as difficult as possible. Since these are Republican states, these laws are going to pass (some have already), and I think it’s worth addressing what is fast becoming the main argument Republicans use to defend them. They’ve always said that their only intent was to ensure the “integrity” of elections and protect against voter impersonation, a virtually nonexistent problem. But they recently realized that they’ve got a new, and seemingly compelling, piece of evidence they can muster against charges of voter suppression. Many voter-ID laws were passed over the last few years (the Supreme Court upheld voter ID in 2008), and as Republicans will tell you (see for example here or here), turnout among blacks hasn’t declined, and in some cases has gone up. Blacks even turned out at a slightly higher rate than whites overall in the 2012 election. As Rand Paul recently said, “I don’t think there is objective evidence that we’re precluding African-Americans from voting any longer.”

North Carolina: Civil Rights Groups Vow to Overturn Voting Reform Law | ABC

North Carolina’s sweeping and restrictive new voting law is facing multiple legal challenges from civil rights groups that argue it discriminates against black and young voters. Republican Governor Pat McCrory signed the bill Monday, which goes into effect in 2016. Among other things, the law requires voters to bring state-issued photo IDs to the polls, cuts down early voting time by one week, eliminates same-day voter registration, and bans pre-registration for youth voters who will turn 18 on Election Day. The American Civil Liberties Union, along with two other groups, immediately filed a legal challenge that argues the law attempts to suppress minority voters, thereby violating the Constitution and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The NAACP has filed a similar suit.

Editorials: North Carolina law takes war on voting rights to a new low | The Washington Post

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Shelby v. Holder decision, which gutted significant portions of the Voting Rights Act, it’s difficult to say which of the many recently passed voter-suppression bills constitutes the greatest threat to that most sacred of American freedoms: the right to vote. The contest has several leading contenders, but the winner just might be North Carolina’s especially draconian bill, signed into law on Monday. The bill includes the usual provisions that have come to characterize the quiet assault on the franchise: a shortened early-voting period, the elimination of the state’s successful same-day registration program and, of course, a strict photo identification requirement despite any evidence of voter fraud in the state.

North Carolina: Governor signs sweeping voter ID bill into law | Los Angeles Times

One of the nation’s most restrictive voter ID bills was signed into law Monday by North Carolina’s Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican. The new law requires voters to show government-issued ID cards, with polling places not allowed to accept college ID cards or out-of-state driver’s licenses. The law also shortens early voting by a week; eliminates same-day voter registration; allows any registered voter to challenge another voter’s eligibility; and ends popular preregistration for high school students. Republicans have said the law will combat voter fraud and restore integrity to voting, but they have offered no evidence of voter fraud in the state. Civil rights groups and many independent analysts say the law is a blatant attempt to curb voting by blacks, students, the poor and other groups that tend to vote Democratic. The law takes effect for the 2016 elections. Civil rights groups have threatened to sue the state and Atty. Gen. Eric Holder has said the Justice Department may pursue legal challenges to voter ID laws passed by several states, including North Carolina. North Carolina Republicans introduced the so-called Restore Confidence in Government Act after the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in June. The court overturned the Act’s requirement for Justice Department “pre-clearance” for any changes to voting laws in certain states.

Editorials: Texas and the Voting Rights Act: Bigotry for the right reasons | The Economist

Last month Eric Holder, the attorney-general, asked a district court to make Texas “pre-clear” any proposed changes to its election procedures with the federal government. Texas was doing this as a matter of course in every election for the last 40 years: it was subject to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). That section requires jurisdictions with a history of discrimination against minority voters to get approval from either the Justice Department or a federal district court in Washington, DC before changing their election procedures to ensure those changes have “neither discriminatory purpose or effect”. But the Supreme Court’s ruling in Shelby County v Holder last June made Section 5 vestigial. The court found that the formula used to determine which jurisdictions must pre-clear changes was outdated, but it did not, as some VRA opponents had hoped, find Section 5 a violation of the tenth amendment. Hence Mr Holder’s turn to the previously little-used (because little-needed) Section 3 of the VRA, which lets courts mandate pre-clearance for jurisdictions found to be violating the 14th- or 15th-amendment guarantees of equal protection and access to the ballot. In this case, Mr Holder argues, the violation stems from state redistricting plans proposed in 2011—plans that a federal court already rejected, saying that they “provided more evidence of discriminatory intent than [the Court had] space, or need, to address.”

Hawaii: U.S. Supreme Court May Hear Appeal on Hawaii Reapportionment | Honolulu Civil Beat

Hawaii’s drawn-out process to settle on its political district boundaries isn’t quite finished. On Friday, the plaintiffs who are suing the state Office of Elections over its 2011 reapportionment plan appealed their case to the U.S. Supreme Court. The appeal was filed just one month after the U.S. District Court in Honolulu rejected the plaintiff’s claim that the plan is unconstitutional. The claim is based on the fact that the plan removed more than 100,000 military personnel, their dependents and out-of-state university students from district populations. Five of the eight plaintiffs, including congressional candidate and state Rep. Mark Takai, are military personnel, dependents or veterans. Attorney Robert Thomas said his clients want to see district lines redrawn to include military personnel stationed in Hawaii.

Editorials: McCrory offers shallow rhetoric to justify North Carolina Voter ID law | Charlotte News Observer

Even as Gov. Pat McCrory put pen to paper Monday, specifically the pen that signed the Voter ID bill into law, two lawsuits were on the way in federal court, a third was being readied for state court, and U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District was asking U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to use his authority to ensure voting rights in this state. McCrory mouthed the rationalizations of Republican ideologues in the legislature who have been giving the governor his marching orders for six months. The governor said the new law would prevent voter fraud. He didn’t bother to mention that voter fraud is about as big a threat in North Carolina as an invasion of dinosaurs (excepting the Republicans on Jones Street). And he of course didn’t linger on the other parts of the legislation clearly designed to give Republicans an advantage in future elections, blatantly political maneuvers: no more straight-ticket voting, which is favored by more Democrats than Republicans; no more same-day registration and voting, again something shown to be used more by Democrats; early voting periods will be shorter, and early voting also tends to draw more Democrats; no more pre-registration for students younger than 18, as the young tend to lean Democratic.

Texas: Texas AG Acknowledges GOP Redistricting Decisions Made 'At The Expense Of The Democrats' | Huffington Post

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) explicitly referenced Texas Republicans’ gerrymandering tactics in a court brief earlier this month, acknowledging that districts were redrawn in 2011 to minimize the clout of Democratic voters. In July, Attorney General Eric Holder filed a lawsuit, arguing that the state should be required to undergo some form of preclearance with districting plans. A month before, the United States Supreme Court had struck down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, meaning that the Texas redistricting plan was no longer subject to federal preclearance requirements.

National: Congress Shows No Urgency on Voting Rights Act | Alaska Public Media

In June, the United States Supreme Court struck down a key formula of the Voting Rights Act. Section IV of the 1965 law determined which states needed to get federal approval before changing any voting laws. Alaska was one of nine states subject to that rule known as preclearance. Immediately following the ruling, a frustrated Attorney General Eric Holder condemned the decision. “Existing statutes cannot totally fill the void left by today’s Supreme Court ruling,” Holder said. “And I am hopeful new protections can and will pass in this session of Congress.” Congressional action is highly unlikely anytime soon. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his opinion that voter discrimination still exists. The court did not invalidate the entire act, just the formula determining which states need federal scrutiny. Those states include Alaska, and there have always been those in the states who have thought that was unfair, including Governor Sean Parnell, who ordered the state to join the lawsuit against it.

National: John Lewis: Still Marching on Washington, 50 Years Later | New York Times

John Lewis was the 23-year-old son of Alabama sharecroppers and already a veteran of the civil rights movement when he came to the capital 50 years ago this month to deliver a fiery call for justice on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. As we prepare to cover the anniversary of the march and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s beloved “I Have a Dream” address, we want to hear from people who were there. Mr. Lewis’s urgent cry — “We want our freedom, and we want it now!” — was eclipsed on the steps that day by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech. But two years later, after Alabama State Police officers beat him and fractured his skull while he led a march in Selma, he was back in Washington to witness President Lyndon B. Johnson sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Today Mr. Lewis is a congressman from Georgia and the sole surviving speaker from the March on Washington in August 1963. His history makes him the closest thing to a moral voice in the divided Congress. At 73, he is still battling a half-century later. With the Voting Rights Act in jeopardy now that the Supreme Court has invalidated one of its central provisions, Mr. Lewis, a Democrat, is fighting an uphill battle to reauthorize it. He is using his stature as a civil rights icon to prod colleagues like the Republican leader, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, to get on board. He has also met with the mother of Trayvon Martin and compared his shooting to the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till.

North Carolina: Race at Center of North Carolina Voting Law Battle | ABC

North Carolina’s sweeping new voting law is facing multiple legal challenges from civil rights groups that argue it discriminates against black and young voters. Gov. Pat McCrory signed the bill — one of the toughest voting measures in the country — into law on Monday. It requires voters to bring photo ID to the polls, cuts down early voting time by one week, eliminates same-day voter registration and bans pre-registration for youth voters who will turn 18 on Election Day. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), along with two other groups, filed a legal challenge that argues the law attempts to suppress minority voters, thereby violating the Constitution and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The NAACP has filed a similar suit. “Today’s lawsuit is about ensuring that all voters are able to participate in the political process,” Allison Riggs, a staff attorney for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, said in a statement. “Taken together, the new restrictions in this law will disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of eligible voters, depriving many of our most vulnerable citizens from being able to easily exercise a constitutional right.”

Voting Blogs: Thoughts on the Road Ahead in North Carolina | Election Law Blog

Today North Carolina’s governor signed one of the most restrictive voting laws in the Nation. I have been trying to think of another state law passed since the 1965 Voting Rights Act to rival this law but I cannot. It is a combination of cutbacks in early voting, restrictions on voter registration, imposition of new requirements on voters such as photo identification in voting, limitations on poll worker activity to help voters, and other actions which as a whole cannot be interpreted as anything other than an effort to make it harder for some people—and likely poor people, people of color, old people and others likely to “skew Democratic”—to vote. And yet I don’t expect that the entirety of this law will fall through one of the lawsuits filed or to be filed against it.

Editorials: North Carolina’s Attack on Voting Rights | The Daily Beast

For the first time since her 2008 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton has stepped into the partisan politics of the moment. Speaking to the American Bar Association’s annual meeting in San Francisco yesterday, the former secretary of state slammed a “sweeping effort to construct new obstacles to voting, often under cover of addressing a phantom epidemic of ‘election fraud.’” What’s more, she argued, we must fix the “hole opened up” by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Shelby County v. Holder which gutted a core provision of the Voting Rights Act. Otherwise, she warned, “[C]itizens will be disenfranchised, victimized by the law instead of served by it and that progress, that historical progress toward a more perfect union, will go backwards instead of forwards.” That Clinton gave a speech on voting rights was fortuitous, since yesterday was also when North Carolina Republicans passed a sweeping set of changes to the state’s election law. These measures were proposed just one week after the Court’s ruling, and were rushed through the state legislature. GOP Governor Pat McCrory calls them “common sense” measures, designed to “ensure the integrity” of the ballot box and “provide greater equality in access to voting to North Carolinians.” And that’s true, if you rob those words of their actual meaning.

National: The coming war over voting rights | Politico.com

State lawmakers from around the country crowded into a packed room Monday at the meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures to learn more about the impact of the Supreme Court’s recent decision striking down the Voting Rights Act as activists gear up for a new battle over the ballot box. The panelists that led at the NCSCL gathering in Atlanta said there’s so much interest in possible voting changes that more chairs had to be brought in for the larger-than-expected crowd that topped 100. With legislatures in most states out session at the time, both sides – those who favor additional restrictions and those want to stop any such efforts – are planning for what could be a long and complicated fight in the months ahead – from the Statehouse to the town council. “It’s a quiet before the storm period, and it’s hard to tell when the storm is going to hit,” attorney Jeffrey M. Wice told POLITICO after the panel. “No one expects Congress to act, and there’s also a wait and see approach to see how far think tanks and legal defense organizations go to bring lawsuits to expand [VRA] challenges.”

National: Clinton Calls for Action to Protect Voter Rights | New York Times

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton waded into the battle over voting rights on Monday in the first of a series of speeches in which she says she plans to address some of the most pressing issues in Washington. Mrs. Clinton, in remarks delivered at the American Bar Associationconference here, condemned the recent Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act, which has paved the way for states to pass laws that would require voters to present government-issued photo identification at the polls. Mrs. Clinton, like many Democrats and voting rights groups, argued that the court’s ruling would limit voters’ participation, particularly among minorities, the poor and younger voters who disproportionately cast their ballots for Democrats. Texas, Mississippi and Alabama all announced that they would move ahead with strict voter identification requirements, and on Monday, Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina signed a similar measure.

North Carolina: Sweeping Voter Suppression Law Is Challenged in Court | The Nation

Today, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory signed the nation’s worst voter suppression law. The sweeping law requires strict government-issued photo ID to cast a ballot, cuts the number of early voting days by a week, eliminates same-day voter registration during the early voting period, makes it easier for vigilante poll watchers to challenge the validity of eligible voters and expands the influence of unregulated corporate money in state elections. Two lawsuits were filed today challenging the voting restrictions as racially discriminatory in federal court under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. A third challenge, to the voter ID provision, will be filed in state court tomorrow morning. The lawsuit brought by the North Carolina NAACP and the Advancement Project alleges that the law violates Section 2 and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments because it “imposes unjustified and discriminatory electoral burdens on large segments of the state’s population and will cause the denial, dilution, and abridgement of African-Americans’ fundamental right to vote.” It alleges that five provisions of the law disproportionately impact African-American voters—the voter ID requirement, the cuts to early voting, the elimination of same-day voter registration, the refusal to count out-of-precinct provisional ballots, and the increase in the number of poll watchers.

Editorials: What North Carolina’s New Voter ID Law Does for the GOP | The Atlantic

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed into law the toughest voter ID rules in the country on Monday, and shrunk the number of days allowed for early voting. McCrory says the new law is “common-sense.” But the numbers show the law will have, as Reid Wilson explained for National Journal, “undeniable political ramifications.” Democrats tend to vote early. Republicans tend to vote absentee. The law makes big changes to in-person voting while leaving rules for absentee ballots mostly the same. The North Carolina NAACP and the ACLU have each filed lawsuits challenging the law as racially discriminatory under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The ACLU wrote in a statement Monday, “the suit specifically targets provisions of the law that eliminate a week of early voting, end same-day registration, and prohibit ‘out-of-precinct’ voting.” A third suit is expected to be filed Tuesday morning, also by the ACLU, challenging the voter ID portion of the law. According to The Nation, the plaintiffs in this third suit will be “college students who will not be able to vote in North Carolina because they have out of state driver’s licenses and their student IDs will not be accepted, and elderly residents of the state who were not born in North Carolina and will have to pay to get a birth certificate to validate their identity.”

Voting Blogs: Greg Abbott’s curious brief | Texas Redistricting

Last week, the State of Texas filed a brief responding to arguments that Texas should be ‘bailed in’ to preclearance coverage under section 3 of the Voting Rights Act. The brief makes any number of technical and procedural arguments, and the courts will have to sort through those in due course. But it’s worth pausing to consider two of the more far-reaching claims in the brief. The first of these is the claim that the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby Co. means that ‘bail in’ under section 3 is now limited to situations like those that existed in the Deep South in the 1960s and that:

To suggest that Texas has engaged in or will engage in 1960s style ‘common practice of staying one step ahead of the federal courts by passing new discriminatory voting laws’ is absurd on its face.

Now, set aside, for the moment, Texas’ recent history of doing things like trying to re-draw CD-23 – in not one but two successive redistricting cycles – to take away the ability of Hispanic voters to elect their candidate of choice. Or its long record of other Voting Rights Act violations. Instead, stop and ponder this: Texas wasn’t originally subject to preclearance under section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. That’s right. Although it’s sometimes forgotten today, Texas didn’t become covered under section 5 until the 1975 amendments to the Act.

Editorials: Texas Asks Court To Nuke The Voting Rights Act — Forever | ThinkProgress

When the Supreme Court dismantled a key provision of the Voting Rights Act last June, there were two small silver linings in this decision. The first was the possibility that Congress could revive the regime killed by the Court, where states with particularly poor records of racialized voter suppression must “preclear” their voting practices with the Justice Department or a federal court before those practices can take effect. The second potential silver lining is Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act, which allows a state to be brought back under the preclearance requirement if a court finds that it engaged in “violations of the fourteenth or fifteenth amendment justifying equitable relief.” Now, however, Texas wants to destroy these two silver linings as well. And there is a fair chance that the conservative Supreme Court will allow them to do so.