Editorials: Will State Courts Fill a Void on Voting Rights? | Joshua A. Douglas/The Atlantic

In recent years, as the U.S. Supreme Court has limited its protections of the right to vote, some state courts have stepped in to fill the void. State judges have looked to their state constitutions—which are more explicit in conferring the right to vote—to provide relief from onerous election laws. And, in doing so, they have shown how these documents can be powerful tools to improve America’s democracy. Forty-nine of the 50 state constitutions explicitly grant the right to vote to their citizens (Arizona is the only outlier), and just over half of them also provide further protection to the democratic process by requiring elections to be “free and equal” or “free and open.” Some state courts, such as in Missouri, Pennsylvania, Arkansas—and most recently Delaware—have analyzed their state constitutions in an increasingly expansive way, going beyond federal law to protect voting rights.

Washington: Latino Voters Are Making History in Yakima, Washington | Huffington Post

Around the nation, voting rights for people of color are under attack. But in central Washington, an historic advance for Latino voters is taking place in the wake of a legal victory by the ACLU. In the City of Yakima, Latinos account for approximately one-third of the voting-age population and approximately one-quarter of its citizen voting-age population. Yet, in 37 years, no Latino has ever been elected to the Yakima City Council. In the absence of Latino representation on the City Council, issues of interest to the Latino community in Yakima have been met with indifference. Now things are changing in this agricultural community of 93,000. Five Latino City Council candidates are on the ballot in Yakima’s November general election. Two of the five candidates are running in the same district, so that district is certain to have a Latino representative. However, it is possible that one, two or three other Latinos may also be elected.

Voting Blogs: The Good News, and Bad News, About Voting Rights in America | Project Vote

The year before a major election has brought about a flurry of legislative activity impacting voter eligibility and election procedures. Each week, Project Vote tracks such legislation and voting-related news throughout the country. Our biannual Legislative Threats and Opportunities report summarizes and highlights the information obtained from three areas: our ongoing bill tracking effort, our work with local advocates and officials, and a compilation of information on related factors like the partisan makeup of legislatures and state election officials. The report provides an important snapshot of activity by issue area and by state so we can reflect on current trends and prepare for the future. The good news: Recent policy trends favor voting rights expansion and election modernization over unnecessary restrictions that limit access to our democracy. Comparing the rates of both bill introduction and successful bill passage, proposals expanding voter access far outpaced those seeking to limit and restrict the right to vote. While positive legislation covered many areas, from restoring voting rights for disenfranchised felons to providing early voting, online registration and automatic registration dominated the year.

Georgia: Fayette voting case awaits mediator’s direction | Atlanta Journal Constitution

Parties in a legal battle over Fayette County voting rights are awaiting direction from an Atlanta mediator on how or if the case can be resolved without going to trial. Fayette County officials and the NAACP and a group of black Fayette residents met all day Wednesday with Steven J. Kaminshine to try to settle the matter. Kaminshine is dean and law professsor at Georgia State University. The meeting ended Wednesday without an agreement reached between the two sides. Consequently, another meeting is likely once data collection is complete. It’s unclear when the next meeting will be.

Ukraine: Local Elections: New law, old problems | New Eastern Europe

Since Petro Poroshenko assumed the presidency of Ukraine, the majority of discussions about the future of Ukrainian democracy have been consumed by external factors. This has been for good reason. Russian troops invaded, then annexed Crimea in early 2014; at the same time, Russia initiated another war front in eastern Ukraine, which claimed over 6,000 thousand lives and has displaced over one million Ukrainians. In addition to a severe human cost, the Russian war carried a huge economic cost by bringing to a halt various industrial enterprises in the Donbas region. However, the political fate of the country is equally dependent on internal factors particularly the improvement of procedural democracy. Ukrainian local elections, scheduled for October 25th 2015, are another important step for the development of Ukraine’s democratic politics. First, local elections will be held according to their regular five-year election cycle; the elections are an important step in the decentralisation process being discussed by President Poroshenko. Second, they will be conducted according to a new set of electoral laws that look to increase representativeness and strengthen the role of political parties. However, this latest round of elections is unlikely to introduce higher levels of transparency into the electoral process or bolster the role or function of political parties in Ukraine.

Editorials: Alabama remains front line of voting rights battle | Hillary Clinton/AL.com

In Alabama, without an ID, you can’t vote. Yet Governor Bentley’s administration announced plans this month to close 31 driver’s license offices across the state, including in every single county where African Americans make up more than 75 percent of registered voters. The closings would make getting driver’s licenses and personal identification cards much harder for many African Americans. That would make voting much harder, too. As many Alabamians have said in recent days, that’s just dead wrong. Governor Bentley is insisting that the closings had nothing to do with race, but the facts tell a different story. Fifty years after Rosa Parks sat, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. marched, and John Lewis bled, it’s hard to believe Americans are still forced to fight for their right to vote—especially in places where the civil rights movement fought so hard all those years ago. The parallels are inescapable: Alabama is living through a blast from the Jim Crow past.

Cambodia: No Voting Rights for Cambodians Abroad | Khmer Times

Ry Sovanna is a Cambodian citizen, but in 2013 he was not able to exercise one of his most basic rights – voting. Mr. Sovanna was living in Thailand at the time, and there was no way for him to file his ballot in the Cambodian elections. As a scholarship student in Bangkok with a heavy course load, he couldn’t make the trip back home to cast his vote. “I did not have a chance to vote…because based on Cambodia’s law there is no voting abroad,” he said. “I’m just an ordinary citizen. I just want to vote.” Mr. Sovanna, who has since returned to Phnom Penh, was just one of roughly one million Cambodians who live outside the country. Unless they come back to Cambodia during the election, under current laws these citizens do not have any way to participate in elections. There are no polling stations abroad, and there is no way to file votes by mail.

Editorials: The Biggest Questions Awaiting the Supreme Court | The New York Times

The court’s new term, which starts Monday, will jump right back into high-profile constitutional battles like voting rights, affirmative action and the death penalty, as well as a new attack on public-sector labor unions. And the justices may well agree to take up issues of abortion and contraception again, in cases that could further strip away reproductive rights. The decisions last term showed a court willing to take into account the effects of the law on individual lives. This term, the justices have many opportunities to show that same type of awareness. The legal principle of “one person, one vote” got its fullest expression in the 1964 case Reynolds v. Sims, which ruled that state legislative districts must contain roughly equal numbers of people. Before then, district populations varied widely, an intentional practice that gave more power to rural white voters than those in the more diverse cities. While the court has never defined who counts as a person, the vast majority of states count all people who live in a district, even if they are not eligible to vote.

Kansas: Young voters, Wichitans top Kansas’ suspended voter list | The Wichita Eagle

A statewide list of 36,674 suspended voters – those who tried to register to vote but did not meet all the requirements – will start to disappear this week. A new rule proposed by Secretary of State Kris Kobach will remove people who have been on the list for more than 90 days if they haven’t shown proof of citizenship. Before, they would have stayed on the list until they resolved their registration problem. The majority of those people? Young, unaffiliated voters. An Eagle analysis shows that more than 40 percent of people on the state’s suspended voter list are under 30. More than half are unaffiliated with a party, while 18 percent are listed as Democrats and 22 percent are listed as Republicans. Since a proof of citizenship law championed by Kobach went into effect in 2013, more than 16 percent of people who have tried to register to vote have been placed on the suspended voter list. The list had grown to 36,674 people by this month – up from 27,131 in October last year.

Montana: Secretary of state discusses tribal letter on voting | Great Falls Tribune

The secretary of state on Monday said she would review a letter from the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council who are pressing her to establish satellite voting offices for Native Americans in 10 Montana counties. In a meeting with William “Snuffy” Main, Linda McCulloch said she is a “fan” of satellite offices and voting rights but could not give a definitive answer to the requests made in the letter as it had been in her possession less 24 hours. She said she was looking at the possibility of a directive but could not elaborate as to what the directive would say. Earlier this month, The Rocky Mountain Tribal leaders called on her to “issue a directive to Montana counties that have American Indian Reservations within their boundaries telling the counties that they must establish satellite voting offices for in-person absentee voting and later voter registration on those Indian Reservations within their boundaries for the 2016 general election. “

Cambodia: ‘Bad Karma if Monks Lose Voting Rights’ | Khmer Times

If the Ministry of Interior refuses to issue new identification cards to the country’s estimated 50,000 monks so that they can vote in the next election, monks will find other ways to make their voices heard in the electoral process, two national leaders of monks told Khmer Times yesterday. “The ruling party will lose more support if monks are not allowed to vote,” Venerable But Buntenh, leader of the Independent Monk Network for Social Justice, said. He suggested it would be bad karma to deprive monks of their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote. “We have a lot of support through our religious activities and we can disseminate information to people and tell them that we have been deprived of the right to vote,” he said.

Minnesota: Voting rights’ next frontier: 16 year-olds? | MinnPost

In most U.S. states, a typical 16-year-old can drive a car, get married, hold a job and pay taxes on the income they earn from that job. Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison believes there’s another thing 16-year-olds should be allowed to do: vote. Last week, Ellison tweeted, “I think the voting age should be lowered to 16. What do you think?” It wasn’t the first time he had expressed his view about the voting age; he did so in 2012, also on Twitter. Speaking with MinnPost last week, Ellison says he was inspired to take up the cause a few years ago, recalling a visit with high school students in Minneapolis. “One of the students said to me, ‘How come we can’t vote? We pay sales tax and payroll tax.’ I said, it makes a lot of sense to me. What could go wrong if 16-year-olds could vote? A lot could go right.” Continued visits with high school students have shored up that point of view: Ellison says he is frequently impressed by the knowledge of high school students, adding that they sometimes know more about the issues than adults.

Switzerland: Think tank: give foreigners local voting rights | SWI

A Swiss think tank is urging Switzerland to give foreigners greater voting rights at the local level, such as allowing foreign residents to stand for local political office. Such a measure will help integration, it argues. A new study by the Swiss think tank Avenir Suisse, published on Tuesday, reveals that foreigners have local voting rights in 600 municipalities across Switzerland, out of a total of 2,596. But rights are very unevenly spread regionally, among 575 communes in French-speaking Switzerland, 22 in the German-speaking canton of Graubünden and three in the small German-speaking canton of Appenzell Outer-Rhodes. The absolute number of politically active foreigners was still relatively small, the study found. In the 317 communes that responded to the survey, currently 148 non-Swiss hold legislative positions and 19 hold executive office posts.

Myanmar: Monks Claim Victory as Rohingya Muslims Stripped of Voting Rights | AFP

With a smile, Myanmar’s most notorious monk boasts of the sleepless nights he endures on his self-appointed quest against the country’s Muslims – one that he claims has helped strip voting rights from hundreds of thousands of the religious minority. Wirathu, whose anti-Muslim campaign has stoked religious tensions in the Buddhist-majority nation, said he spends most nights at his tranquil Mandalay monastery glued to his computer screen, streaming images from some of the world’s most violent Islamic terrorist organizations. He then posts messages to his 91,000 Facebook followers, helping foment the idea that Buddhism is under threat. “Many days I don’t sleep at all,” the monk, who goes by one name, told AFP, adding his work is so arduous that he lacks the time enjoyed by President Thein Sein and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to “have family meals and put on make-up.” Myanmar’s Muslims, who make up at least 5 percent of the 51-million population, have a long history of involvement in public life. But they have faced increasing marginalization under the current quasi-civilian government that replaced junta rule in 2011.

Saudi Arabia: Women can now cast a vote and run for office | PBS

Voting rights for Saudi women took another step forward this week. Female candidates began registering to run in upcoming municipal elections — and for the first time, women will be able to vote for them. Voter registration began in mid-August and goes through mid-September. Sunday marked the start of candidate registration for the Dec. 12 municipal elections. The developments came ahead of King Salman’s visit to the White House on Friday, when he and President Barack Obama are expected to discuss counterterrorism efforts, the conflicts in Yemen and Syria, and the Iran nuclear agreement.

Virginia: McAuliffe Restores Voting Rights for More Than 10,000 Virginians | Associated Press

Gov. Terry McAuliffe says his administration has restored the voting and civil rights of more than 10,000 Virginians with criminal records. The Democratic governor said Monday that more Virginians have had their rights restored under his watch than under any other governor in a four-year term. That process allows an ex-offender to vote, run for public office and serve on juries. McAuliffe has made several changes to the process, including allowing residents to submit their application before they’ve paid their court fees.

Kansas: Kris Kobach says voter registrations without ‘proof of citizenship’ need to go | The Kansas City Star

More than 30,000 incomplete voter registrations have piled up in Kansas — most waiting for applicants to submit the now-required “proof of citizenship” documents. Secretary of State Kris Kobach says he knows how to fix the problem. He wants a new rule that allows election officials to toss out uncompleted applications after 90 days. The proposal will be the topic of a hearing this week. Simple housekeeping, he says. The wholesale dumping of potential voters, critics say, and for no good reason. Even Hillary Clinton weighed in last week. A tweet from her presidential campaign account called Kobach’s proposal a “purging” and a “targeted attack on voting rights.” Kansas’ rules on voter ID and proof of citizenship championed by the Republican secretary of state have stirred up controversy nationally and close to home. Voting rights groups say the regulations muck up a system that wasn’t broken and, in the process, reduce voter participation.

Myanmar: Rights group urges Myanmar to prevent Rohingya disenfranchisement | Bangkok Post

A US-based rights group has urged Myanmar to prevent the exclusion of hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya from voting in crucial November elections after the minority were stripped of their identity cards earlier this year. The Carter Center also warned that growing anti-Islamic hate speech in the Buddhist-majority nation could see religious tensions flare during the upcoming campaign period. Myanmar authorities began collecting temporary identification documents from minority groups, mainly the displaced Rohingya in western Rakhine state, in April — a move which takes away their voting rights.

Hawaii: Federal lawsuit filed to block Native Hawaiian election | Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Four Native Hawaiians and two non-Hawaiians filed a lawsuit Thursday in U.S. District Court in Honolulu seeking to block a “race-based” and “viewpoint-based” election planned this fall as a step toward establishing a sovereign Hawaiian government. The lawsuit, which was filed against the state of Hawaii, Office of Hawaiian Affairs trustees and other “agents of the state,” argues that the election violates the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act by using race and political qualifications to determine voter eligibility. The Native Hawaiian Roll Commission recently published a list of 95,000 Native Hawaiians eligible to vote for delegates later this year to a governance aha, or constitutional convention to be held next year. The election is being overseen by an independent group, Na‘i Aupuni, which is funded by OHA grants through the Akamai Foundation.

Washington: Yakima Urges High Court to Overturn Election District Makeup | Spokane Public Radio

The City of Yakima has latched onto the coat tails of a Texas lawsuit before the nation’s highest court seeking to limit the principle of “one person – one vote.” Last February, a Spokane federal judge ordered the city to elect council representatives by district, rather than at large, reasoning that Latino candidates could not gain a political foothold under the at-large system.

California: Voting Rights Restored to 60,000 Ex-Felons | Mother Jones

Yesterday, about 60,000 former felony offenders in California were officially granted the right to vote. Earlier this week, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla announced that the state would settle litigation over laws that had barred low-level felony offenders under community supervision from voting. In 2011, California lawmakers passed bills to reduce overcrowding in state prisons by diverting low-level felony offenders to county jails and community supervision, in which recently released prisoners are monitored by county agencies. Then-Secretary of State Debra Bowen told election officials in December 2011 to extend the state’s ban on felon enfranchisement to those offenders, noting that being under community supervision was “functionally equivalent” to parole. Civil rights groups filed a lawsuit last year to challenge Bowen’s directive.

National: Martin O’Malley calls for constitutional amendment on voting rights | CBS

As he pitched himself to black voters in South Carolina Tuesday, Martin O’Malley called for a constitutional amendment to protect every American’s right to vote. “Many Americans don’t realize that the U.S. Constitution does not affirmatively guarantee the right to vote,” he said in an email to his supporters. “Passing a constitutional amendment that enshrines that right will give U.S. courts the clarity they need to strike down Republican efforts to suppress the vote.” O’Malley is specifically advocating for the passage of legislation introduced in the House in January, which states, “Every citizen of the United States, who is of legal voting age, shall have the fundamental right to vote in any public election held in the jurisdiction in which the citizen resides.” The bill was referred to the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice.

California: Voting rights intact for lower-level California felons | San Francisco Chronicle

Tens of thousands of Californians who served sentences for nonviolent felonies will be allowed to vote after their release under an agreement announced Tuesday by the state’s top elections official, who reversed his predecessor’s policy. Secretary of State Alex Padilla said he was dropping an appeal filed by fellow Democrat Debra Bowen, who was sued after declaring the former inmates ineligible to vote in December 2011. Bowen appealed a judge’s ruling last year in favor of the plaintiffs in the suit. In dropping that appeal, Padilla, who took office in January, said he wanted to ensure that lower-level felons who were sent under Gov. Jerry Brown’s “realignment” program to county jail as a way to remedy state prison overpopulation retained their voting privileges.

Georgia: Judge calls for district election to fill vacant Fayette seat | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A federal judge granted an injunction against Fayette County, requiring the county to use district voting to fill a vacant district seat created by the death of the county’s first black commissioner last month. U.S. District judge Timothy C. Batten Sr. cited in his 36-page decision, the timing of the Sept. 15 special election and that Pota Coston was elected under district voting – a plan he ordered in 2013 – as his reasons for granting the preliminary injunction requested by the NAACP, which has been in three-year legal fight with Fayette over its electoral system.

North Carolina: Closing arguments delayed in voting rights trial | News & Observer

The federal judge presiding over the North Carolina voting rights trial agreed Thursday to give the state more time to prepare for closing arguments, pushing them to Friday. Thomas Farr, a private attorney representing state legislators who shepherded the 2013 election laws through the General Assembly, told U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder he needed more time to cross-examine rebuttal witnesses. On Thursday morning, attorneys for the NAACP, League of Women Voters, U.S. Justice Department and others challenging key provisions of the 2013 election law changes asked experts and voters about testimony presented by attorneys representing the state. The challengers’ witnesses offered rebuttal to testimony from state experts and election board workers.

Florida: Highest court must settle redistricting | The Tampa Tribune

Last week, the Florida Supreme Court ruled congressional maps drawn by the Legislature following the 2010 census resulted in political gerrymandering, and thereby were unconstitutional. The justices ordered new districts be created within 100 days. This follows a ruling a year ago by Judge Terry P. Lewis that two of Florida’s congressional districts were unconstitutional and “made a mockery” of the voter-approved Fair Districts amendment, and thus had to be redrawn. I guess they’ll get it right eventually. The court ruled that lawmakers specifically must redraw eight of the state’s congressional districts, which will end up affecting all 27 of them in some way. Locally, this includes the 13th and 14th Districts, now held by Reps. David Jolly and Kathy Castor. The reshaping will threaten incumbents and possibly entice some challengers who otherwise might not have run for office (see Crist, Charlie). In other words, we might end up with some competitive races, which is what the Fair Districts amendment was designed to produce.

North Carolina: ‘This is our Selma’: North Carolina voting rights trial threatens 50 years of progress | The Guardian

A landmark voting rights trial that opens in North Carolina on Monday will determine the way the 2016 presidential election is conducted in the state and could have long-lasting implications for the politics of the American south. The federal district court in Winston-Salem is expected to take at least two weeks to consider a legal challenge to the state’s recent changes to its voting laws, which are widely regarded to be among the most restrictive in the country. Republican governor Patrick McCrory, in his official capacity, and the state itself will be on trial, accused of intentionally discriminating against black voters in an attempt to drive down turnout within this traditionally Democratic-voting community.

Editorials: Why North Carolina Is the New Selma | Ari Berman/The Nation

 On the first day of the federal trial challenging North Carolina’s new voting restrictions, thousands of voting-rights activists marched through downtown Winston-Salem. They held signs reading, “North Carolina Is Our Selma” and “50 Years After Selma Voting Rights Still Matter.” At first glance, the comparison between the Selma of the 1960s and the North Carolina of today seems absurd. Before the VRA was passed, only 2 percent of African-Americans were registered to vote in Selma, the most segregated city in the South. Today, largely because of the VRA, 68 percent of black North Carolinians are registered to vote and black turnout exceeded white turnout in the past two presidential elections.  But there’s a crucial similarity between Selma in 1965 and North Carolina in 2015—both show the lengths conservative white Southerners will go to maintain their political power. The billy clubs and literacy tests of yesteryear have been replaced by subtler and more sophisticated attempts to control who can participate in the political process.

North Carolina: Effects of changes on minorities at crux of North Carolina voting trial | Associated Press

Changes to North Carolina’s voting access rules finally go to trial this week, with a judge ultimately determining whether Republican legislators illegally diminished the opportunity for minorities to participate in the political process. The U.S. Justice Department, voting and civil rights groups and individuals sued soon after the General Assembly approved an elections overhaul law in summer 2013. After interim arguments reached the U.S. Supreme Court last fall, the trial begins Monday and expected to last two to three weeks addresses the crux of the allegations. Provisions being argued in a Winston-Salem federal courtroom reduced the number of days of early voting from 17 to 10, eliminated same-day registration during the early-vote period and prohibited the counting of Election Day ballots cast in the wrong precinct.

California: Fullerton agrees to voting districts in settling lawsuit | Los Angeles Times

Fullerton officials have settled a lawsuit alleging that the city’s at-large elections violate California’s Voting Rights Act, agreeing to create a district-based system that would then need voters’ approval. The suit, brought in March by Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles and the ACLU of Southern California on behalf of resident Jonathan Paik, argued that at-large voting prevented Fullerton’s minority populations from electing their preferred candidates. A city is stronger when residents feel heard through the democratic process. – Belinda Escobosa Helzer, ACLU Orange County and Inland Empire.