Editorials: It’s Time to Honor Dr. King’s Commitment to Voting Rights | Jose Calderon/Huffington Post

Among the many accomplishments in his all-too-short life, perhaps none was as important to Dr. Martin Luther King as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Dr. King understood that the single most important tool that African-Americans could use to unravel the worst elements of state-sanctioned discrimination was the ballot box. Decades before the Civil Rights movement emerged, communities across the nation had contrived a system of electoral exclusion that depended on a witch’s brew of poll taxes, literacy tests and “good character” clauses. When these obstacles failed to dissuade potential voters, violence or threats of violence offered a useful and effective supplement to the campaign of disenfranchisement.

Kansas: Kobach: No plans to ask lawmakers for dual-registration law | Associated Press

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach said Wednesday that he has no plans to ask lawmakers to ban voters who registered with a federal form from casting ballots in state and local elections. Instead, he said he may appeal or ask a judge to reconsider a state court’s ruling last week that he had no legal right to institute the state’s “dual registration” system, in which those who register using a federal form that doesn’t require proof of U.S. citizenship may only vote in federal races. Under that system, voters may only cast ballots in state and local races if they register using the state form, which requires proof of citizenship.

National: Partisanship Barges In on John Lewis’s Dream | The New York Times

In 1963, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream that, to the joy of millions of African-Americans, Barack Obama redeemed by winning the presidency. As the youngest speaker at that March on Washington gathering, John Lewis identified another dream. It, too, has been redeemed by the American political system. But the blessing has been decidedly mixed. On that sweltering August day, Mr. Lewis, the 23-year-old champion of voting rights, lamented the absence of an unequivocal “party of principles” from the political scene. “The party of Kennedy is also the party of Eastland,” Mr. Lewis said. “The party of Javits is also the party of Goldwater.”

Georgia: Fractious Fayette voting fight comes to an end | Atlanta Journal Constitution

A fractious political chapter in Fayette County came to an exhaustive end late Thursday night. County commissioners followed on the heels of the school board’s decision earlier this week to accept a settlement to end a 2011 lawsuit with the NAACP and a group of black residents who said the county’s at-large voting system kept blacks from getting elected to top county posts. County leaders fought hard during the last four and a half years to preserve the nearly 200-year-old at-large system but in the end grudgingly gave into a plan that calls for creating four districts and one at-large seat. It is a compromise from the map the county uses now which has five districts. The agreement, hammered out during two months of court-ordered mediation, must now get the blessing of the Georgia General Assembly. The county has until Jan. 25 to notify the Georgia General Assembly redraw the map created in the settlement.

Georgia: Fayette voting rights battle could be nearing an end | Atlanta Journal Constitution

A nearly five-year-old legal fight that has caused political and racial rifts in Fayette County may be coming to an end. The county school board voted unanimously Tuesday night to settle its part in a legal dispute with the NAACP and a group of black residents over how county government leaders are elected. The school board agreed to settle and adopt a new district map that calls for four voting districts and one at-large district, an obvious compromise toward the county’s ongoing push to bring back at-large voting. The county currently has five election districts. “This compromise settlement is in the best interest of the school system and the public,” the school board said in a prepared statement. “It allows for the continuation of some at-large seats, and eliminates the school district’s potential exposure to payment of over $1 million of attorney’s fees to the plaintiffs’ lawyers if the case were litigated further, which would have led to more appeals.”

Missouri: Ferguson Voting Rights Lawsuit Heads to Trial | Al Jazeera

A year and a half after a white police officer shot black teenager Michael Brown and left his body in the street in Ferguson, Missouri, the city continues to grapple with longstanding racial inequities. Since Brown’s death, community members have pushed for police reform and evened out the racial composition of the heretofore predominantly white Ferguson city council. Now three Ferguson residents are trying, with help from the American Civil Liberties Union and NAACP, to change a voting system that they say keeps African-Americans from having a voice on the local school board. Community members Redditt Hudson, F. Willis Johnson, and Doris Bailey are suing the Ferguson-Florissant School District and the St. Louis County Board of Elections in federal court over allegations that the district’s system for electing school board members violates the Voting Rights Act. The Missouri NAACP is also a plaintiff in the case, which goes to trial Monday.

Missouri: Voting on trial: ACLU case against Ferguson-Florissant goes to court | St. Louis Public Radio

Are African-American voters in the Ferguson-Florissant school district shortchanged because board members there are elected at-large? Or would dividing the district into subdistricts actually weaken the clout of black voters, not increase it? U.S. District Judge Rodney Sippel will hear arguments for both sides of the issue this week in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU claims that the racial history of the makeup of the board shows that African Americans do not have representation proportional to their population. Dale Ho, an attorney from New York who handles voting rights cases nationwide for the ACLU, says the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014 brought a sharper focus to the issue. But, he added, it really has been present since the 1970s, when the Ferguson-Florissant school district was created from the Ferguson, Berkeley and Kinloch districts under a federal court order.

National: Voting Laws Are Still Up In The Air In These States | Huffington Post

With just about 10 months until Election Day, ongoing courtroom battles over voting restriction have made it so that we still don’t know exactly when, and how, Americans in a number of states will be able to vote. Many of those battles originated with the Supreme Court gutting Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in 2013. Section 5 had barred states and jurisdictions with a history of racially motivated voting discrimination from enacting changes to their election laws without approval from the federal government or without going to federal court. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court eliminated the most effective part of the landmark 1965 civil rights act. States rushed to pass onerous measures, including requiring government-issued photo identification to vote, eliminating same-day registration and cutting early voting.

Texas: Group of Hispanic voters seeks docs in Pasadena voting rights suit | Houston Chronicle

A group of Hispanic voters that accuses the city of Pasadena of diluting its voting rights is asking that a political action committee with ties to the mayor turn over records of communications with voters. The PAC — Committee to Keep Pasadena Strong — has received funding from Mayor Johnny Isbell’s campaign coffers. It has been subpoenaed for records of communications with voters about local elections and Hispanic voters between 2013 and 2015, among other records, court documents show.

Editorials: In 2015, hope and fear on voting rights | Zachary Roth/MSNBC

At least for some Americans, it could be harder to vote in next year’s presidential election than in any for several decades. And yet, there are genuine reasons for new-found optimism about the state of U.S. voting rights. If that sounds hard to square, consider that perhaps for the first time this century, there’s now unquestionably more energy behind efforts to make voting easier than to make it harder. Continuing a trend that began after the 2012 election, numerous mostly blue states — with an important nudge from Hillary Clinton — have introduced, and sometimes passed, a slew of expansive bills, including one idea that could transform access to the ballot. Meanwhile, the march of major new GOP-backed restrictions that characterized the period from 2011 to 2014 essentially came to a halt. But voting rights advocates are a long way from celebrating. Nothing happened to undo existing restrictions, and the worst of them remain in place. And as 2016 approaches, the Roberts Court, with its conservative majority, looks likely to play the lead role in shaping the voting landscape going forward.

Arizona: Homeless face barriers to vote, disenchanted by politics | Cronkite News

Hidden behind the government district in downtown Phoenix sits a cluster of homeless shelters, food banks and clinics. Run by both religious groups and the City of Phoenix, each provides men and women basic living necessities and assistance with the transition out of homelessness, a period averaging about three months, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless. Of the services offered, few help those participate in one of the most basic civil rights of American citizens — the right to vote. Both local and national election processes present the difficult tasks of finding a ballot, getting to a voting place, accessing election information and acquiring the necessary identification to register and cast a vote.

Editorials: How to Block Minority Representation, Yesterday and Today | David A. Graham/The Atlantic

The ongoing battle over voter rights—or, depending on your partisan persuasion, voter fraud—is on one level a struggle over whether it’s more important to ensure that the most people possible can vote, and that voting laws don’t have a disparate racial impact; or whether it’s more important to ensure the sanctity of the ballot box against errors, regardless of how that might inconvenience minorities, young people, or other groups. (One salient point here is that most restrictions—reducing early voting, closing polling locations, requiring specific photo ID—hurt minority turnout, while evidence of fraud is practically nonexistent.) On another level, though, it’s a battle about history: whether the restrictions being enacted in red states are part of a new struggle over civil rights, or whether the struggle for racial equality is completed and these news laws are totally different. Proponents of voter-ID laws understandably wish to distance themselves from their segregation-era predecessors, for both moral and political reasons. Officials in Shelby County v. Holder didn’t argue that racist voter suppression never happened; they argued that strenuous protections were no longer necessary. The Court agreed and struck down a requirement that certain jurisdictions submit any changes in voting laws to the Department of Justice to assess whether they were discriminatory.

Florida: Ex-felons Struggle to Regain Their Voting Rights | The Intercept

The remnants of Hurricane Patricia were sweeping over Orlando, Florida, and Eddie Walker was soaked. It was a Wednesday morning in late October, and Walker, the pastor of In God’s Time Tabernacle, located in the downtown neighborhood of Parramore, had spent part of his morning repairing a jammed window in the white 2001 Chevrolet van that he uses to transport food donations from grocery stores and fast food restaurants across the city to his parishioners, many of whom are homeless or recovering drug addicts. When I found Walker behind his church, he beckoned me out of the rain and into the van’s cab. Walker is barrel-chested and of medium height, and his voice carries with a pastor’s booming resonance, even when he speaks quietly. I’d come to hear Walker’s life story, but from the start his cellphone continuously interrupted our conversation. Volunteers were calling to troubleshoot logistics. “Anything that you can get and you don’t have to pay for,” Walker pleaded into his phone, “order as much as you can, ’cause we can use all of it.”

Guam: Chicago responds to territory voting rights dispute | Pacific Daily News

The City of Chicago’s board of election commissioners Friday filed their response to an ongoing voting rights lawsuit filed by territorial residents. The suit is challenging laws that gives some overseas citizens and military members the ability to participate in federal elections, while others cannot. Neil Weare, an attorney in the case, said the case is also part of a broader effort to raise awareness about the issue of voting rights in the U.S. territories. Weare is a former Guam resident. Six former Illinois residents, all now living in Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, filed the case in Illinois’ federal cou

Hawaii: Guam plebiscite case similar, different from Hawaii | Pacific Daily News

A court case in Hawaii related to voting rights and race is similar to a case on Guam, but there are also important differences, an attorney involved with the Guam case said. The U.S. Supreme Court has halted the counting of ballots from a Hawaii election, which was held to select native Hawaiian delegates to draft a document for self-governance. The court has not issued an opinion on the issue, but halted the vote count pending further review. Attorney Christian Adams — one of the attorneys representing Guam resident Arnold Davis, who challenged Guam’s pending political status vote, saying it violates his voting rights — spoke in response to the case in Hawaii.

Alabama: U.S. Attorney reviewing voting rights lawsuit filed against Alabama | AL.com

The top federal prosecutor in North Alabama says she is reviewing a lawsuit filed Wednesday by groups challenging Alabama’s law requiring people to present photo identification before they can vote. “We received a copy of the lawsuit … We are certainly reading the lawsuit with great interest,” said U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance. But Vance said it was “too speculative” at this point on whether the U.S. Department of Justice would get involved in the issue. But, she added, “we are acutely concerned with protecting the right to vote.”

New Mexico: Tenth Circuit Overturns Sanctions in Voting Rights Case | National Law Journal

Plaintiffs lawyers who brought a challenge to a political redistricting plan in Albuquerque were wrongly ordered to pay $48,217.95 in attorney fees as a sanction for dragging out the litigation, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit found that U.S. District Judge William Johnson of New Mexico abused his discretion in calculating the amount of the sanction against the lawyers based on the date they received a damaging expert report from the city. The plaintiffs did not dismiss their case after receiving the report.

Editorials: States Are Falling Short In Providing Voter Access | Brenda Wright and Adam Ambrogi/National Law Journal

Shelley Zelda Small is a 62-year-old Los Angeles resident who believes in voting as a civic duty and has voted in every election since she was 19 years old. So when she moved from Encino, California, to West Hollywood in August 2014, and reported her address change to the Department of Motor Vehicles, she made sure to ask the DMV to update her voter registration as well. But when she arrived at her local polling place last November, she was told she was not on the registration rolls and was turned away – for the first time in her life, Small lost her opportunity to vote. The good news is that, due to a new law approved this last month in California and advocacy by national and California-based voting rights groups, the DMV will be adopting an automated voter registration process that will, in most cases, seamlessly update voter registrations when voters report a move — solving the problem for Small and millions more like her. In mid-November, another state took a major step in the right direction. Alabama, conceding that it had never truly complied with a registration law, settled a case with the U.S. Department of Justice. The agreement made important changes to how the state motor-vehicle agencies support voter registration for eligible Alabama residents. The case is notable because the DOJ has not brought an action against a state under the “motor voter” provision of the National Voter Registration Act since at least 2002. California and Alabama were not alone in needing to improve its registration process. It appears that many states are falling short on their obligations to make voter registration widely accessible at DMVs and other agencies serving the public, according to an extensive investigation by Demos, a public policy group. Potentially tens of millions of eligible ­voters are being left off the voter rolls as a result.

Kentucky: Governor Restores Voting Rights to Thousands of Felons | The New York Times

Weeks before he leaves office, the governor of Kentucky on Tuesday issued an executive order that immediately granted the right to vote to about 140,000 nonviolent felons who have completed their sentences. The order by Gov. Steven L. Beshear, a Democrat, was cheered by advocates for criminal justice reform and civil rights, who said it would place Kentucky’s policy more in line with others across the nation and was consistent with a trend toward easing voting restrictions on former inmates. Kentucky had been one of just three states imposing a lifetime voting ban on felons unless they received a special exemption from the governor. Florida and Iowa still carry the lifetime ban.

National: Governors Could Restore Voting Rights To Millions Of People If They Wanted To | Huffington Post

There’s a growing bipartisan consensus in Congress that restoring voting rights for people with felony convictions is a crucial aspect of criminal justice reform. But governors have a massive amount of discretion in deciding whether to reinstate voting rights for millions of ex-felons who are still denied the right to vote, as recent decisions in Kentucky and Iowa illustrate. On Tuesday, Kentucky’s outgoing Democratic governor, Steve Beshear, signed an executive order that would automatically restore voting rights to at least 140,000 former felons who have served their sentences. Kentucky is just one of just three states, along with Florida and Iowa, that permanently disenfranchises all people with felony convictions. Up until now, a Kentuckian with a felony conviction would have to individually petition the governor to have his or her rights restored. As in other states, permanent felon disenfranchisement disproportionately affects racial minorities. An estimated 1 in 5 African-Americans in Kentucky are disenfranchised, compared to 1 in 13 nationally.

Kentucky: Beshear calls news conference on voting rights | Courier-Journal

HeadIng into the final two weeks of his administration, Gov. Steve Beshear is scheduled to hold a press conference early Tuesday for an announcement on voting rights, an issue that has kept House Democrats and Senate Republicans at loggerheads for years. Officials did not provide details about the announcement, but lawmakers have long clashed over legislation that would restore voting rights to felons after they have completed their sentences.

National: Voting Rights: How to prevent long lines at the polls | Facing South

Long lines and wait times at the polls are a voting rights issue. During recent presidential election years, horror stories have emerged across the South and the country about voters having to wait in line for several hours to cast a ballot. While such extreme stories are rare, in 2013 a bipartisan commission decried the fact that some 10 million voters had to wait at their polling place for half an hour or more, arguing that “no citizen should have to wait in line for more than 30 minutes to vote.” Some states and localities do a better job of cutting down on wait times than others. A report released this month [pdf] by the Caltech/MIT Voting Project finds that geography — where a voter lives — is the single biggest factor in determining wait times. Drawing on two large election data sets, the report found “average wait times in 2012 ranged from 1.7 minutes in Vermont to 42.3 minutes in Florida — a difference of a factor of 25 between these two states.”

Editorials: A lawsuit that chips aways at representation rights | Henry Flores/San Antonio Express-News

A case soon will be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that may have far-reaching implications for how state legislatures should be redistricted. The political consequences of this case, Evenwel, et al v. Abbott, et al, however, reach even further. If the Supreme Court sides with the plaintiffs, the very fabric of political representation will change, voting rights of Latinos and African Americans will be diminished, and the axis of partisan political power will be irreparably transformed in Texas. The Evenwel plaintiffs argue that the way Texas draws its state senatorial districts violates the “equal protection clause” of the 14th Amendment because it contravenes the “one person, one vote” standard established in the landmark Baker v. Carr decision.

Editorials: Alabama falls short on voting rights | Montgomery Advertiser

Alabama officials were taken to the woodshed last week when they reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice on implementation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. The law includes a provision called “Motor Voter,” which requires states let anyone applying for or renewing driver’s licenses also register to vote. Alabama leaders have lawlessly ignored that mandate since it passed, but were busted in September, when the DOJ threatened to sue. As the Montgomery Advertiser’s Brian Lyman reported, Principal Deputy Attorney General Vanita Gupta wrote to Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange that the state had failed to comply with Section 5 of the law by not providing registration applications to those seeking licenses. Chastened for the perhaps intentional lapse, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency and Secretary of State now have to quickly jump through a series of hoops to bring the state into compliance.

District of Columbia: DC is Latest Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization Member | Huffington Post

At its 20th session in Brussels, Belgium, UNPO formally voted to accept the Nation’s Capital as a new member. The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) is an international, nonviolent and democratic membership organization. Its members are indigenous peoples, minorities and unrecognized or occupied territories who have joined together to protect and promote their human and cultural rights, to preserve their environments and to find nonviolent solutions to conflicts which affect them. The UNPO Presidency considered the application of the District of Columbia, alongside that of two other prospective members. Only the DC application met the formal requirements for membership. In recognition of its lack of self-determination, lack of voting representation in the national legislature, and potential unequal weight in Presidential elections, the District of Columbia was admitted as a member of UNPO through a vote by the Presidency Members. The UNPO found that the struggle for equal political representation in the Nation’s Capital clearly qualifies DC as an unrepresented territory.

Guam: Group files voting rights lawsuit | Pacific Daily News

While serving in the U.S. Army, Yona resident Luis Segovia spent an 18-month tour in Iraq, helping provide security during the country’s 2005 elections. He also served a 12-month tour in Afghanistan with the Illinois National Guard and another 10-month tour in Afghanistan with the Guam National Guard. Although collectively serving his country in both conflict areas for more than three years, Segovia, a former resident of Illinois and current staff sergeant for the Guam National Guard, can’t vote in presidential elections as a resident of Guam. “On Veterans Day, it’s hard to be treated like I am good enough to risk my life defending democracy, but not good enough to vote for my Commander-in-Chief,” Segovia said in an email.

Guam: Group files voting rights lawsuit | USA Today

While serving in the U.S. Army, Yona resident Luis Segovia spent an 18-month tour in Iraq, helping provide security during the country’s 2005 elections. He also served a 12-month tour in Afghanistan with the Illinois National Guard and another 10-month tour in Afghanistan with the Guam National Guard. Although collectively serving his country in both conflict areas for more than three years, Segovia, a former resident of Illinois and current staff sergeant for the Guam National Guard, can’t vote in presidential elections as a resident of Guam.

Editorials: Why it is finally time to give Irish emigrants the vote | Mary Hickman/The Irish Times

The vast majority of democratic countries in the world offer the right to vote to their citizens living abroad. Ireland is an exception to what is now the norm. Political rights are a central component of modern citizenship, and voting is a significant right in modern democracies and assumed to be enjoyed by all citizens, on a formally equal basis. Dismissing fears of a “hypothetical mass invasion of electors from abroad”, for instance, a 1999 Council of Europe report argued that “the issue has nothing to do with the number of people concerned, but is essentially a matter of fundamental, inalienable human rights”. The call for the introduction of voting rights for disenfranchised overseas citizens is growing louder. The Irish Government is now in danger of a case being taken against it at the European Court of Justice, challenging the restriction on voting rights and thereby forcing the State to act. Why has Ireland had such a chequered record on this issue?

National: Democratic Group Called iVote Pushes Automatic Voter Registration | The New York Times

As Republicans across the country mount an aggressive effort to tighten voting laws, a group of former aides to President Obama and President Bill Clinton is pledging to counter by spending up to $10 million on a push to make voter registration automatic whenever someone gets a driver’s license. The change would supercharge the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, known as the “motor voter” law, which requires states to offer people the option of registering to vote when they apply for driver’s licenses or other identification cards. The new laws would make registration automatic during those transactions unless a driver objected. The group, called iVote, is led by Jeremy Bird, who ran Mr. Obama’s voter turnout effort in 2012. It is betting that such laws could bring out millions of new voters who have, for whatever reason, failed to register even when they had the opportunity at motor vehicle departments. Many of those new voters would be young, poor or minorities — groups that tend to support Democratic candidates, Mr. Bird said.

Saudi Arabia: Women standing in local elections aren’t allowed to talk to men | The Independent

Saudi Arabian women standing for election will not be allowed to publish photographs of themselves or address men directly at campaign meetings. The government has published the list of the women who are standing in the local council elections next month. Women will be voting for the first time after they were granted limited voting rights in 2011 by the late King Abudullah. More than a 1,000 women have applied to become candidates for the election. But the candidates themselves are not too optimistic about their chances; the kingdom’s tight laws govern the separation of the sexes and make it hard to campaign.