National: The Next Battles Over Voting Rights | The Atlantic

What happens when an election is declared unlawful? That’s exactly what voters in North Carolina and Wisconsin will soon find out, after courts found multiple congressional and state legislative districts in North Carolina to be racial gerrymanders, and several state legislative districts in Wisconsin to be political ones. The rulings in essence mean North Carolina’s 2012 and 2014 congressional elections were conducted using unconstitutional districts; though its 2016 elections were conducted under redrawn districts, the lines will need rethinking for 2018. And in both states, the rulings mean that the past three state legislative elections were partly unconstitutional, including ones held last month. But these court decisions hardly mean the voting issues in these two states are settled. The complex legal and political fights over voting there have been ongoing over the past six years, and will continue. And those battles have consequences outside the state borders, too. Both states’ cases could soon be argued in front of the Supreme Court, and have the potential to set precedent ahead of a partisan redefinition of electoral laws that appears likely nationwide over the next few years. The Court will consider a number of cases in these states that might reinterpret the Voting Rights Act, redefine gerrymandering, and change the way voting works. So what’s next?

Ireland: Calls strengthen for voting rights for Irish in Northern Ireland and living abroad | Irish Central

Pressure is growing on the Irish government to extend voting rights in Irish presidential elections to Irish citizens living in Northern Ireland and across the globe. Newry, Mourne and Down Council is the latest local authority to add its voice to the call for northerners and the diaspora to participate in future Presidential votes. Last month, Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams criticized Enda Kenny after the taoiseach rejected a proposed referendum in 2017 on the right of Irish citizens in Northern Ireland and in the diaspora to vote for the next President. The Taoiseach said the delay in holding a referendum was due to the need for officials to determine who would be included in a new franchise as well as the cost of the venture. Mr. Adams described the decision as “unacceptable and deeply disappointing.”

National: Voting rights advocates brace for ‘biggest fight of our lifetime’ during Trump administration | The Washington Post

Voting rights advocates are furious at President-elect Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and concerned that his administration will more vigorously adopt measures that will make it harder for some groups of people to vote. Some state and local election officials in recent years have cited the potential for voter fraud as the reason for enacting strict voter ID laws, requiring additional verification for people who want to register to vote and conducting mass voter purges. Trump’s promotion of the widely debunked notion of rampant voter fraud and the presence in his inner circle of political leaders who supported stricter voting laws send a troubling signal, say advocates who have spent the past several years fighting what they say are efforts to disenfranchise minorities, young, elderly and low-income voters. “They don’t want us to participate in this democracy,” said Cristóbal J. Alex, president of the Latino Victory Project. “We are gearing up for what will be the biggest fight of our lifetime.”

Editorials: Voting Rights in the Age of Trump | Ari Berman/The New York Times

In June 2013, the Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder that states with a long history of racial discrimination no longer needed to approve any proposed changes to their voting procedures with the federal government, as had long been required under the Voting Rights Act. That meant this year’s presidential election was the first in 50 years without the full protections of the act. What was the result? Fourteen states had new voting restrictions in effect in 2016, including strict voter ID laws, fewer opportunities for early voting and reductions in the number of polling places. These restrictions depressed turnout in key states like Wisconsin, particularly among black voters. Among advocates for voting rights, there was hope that a Hillary Clinton presidency and Democratic control of Congress would help reverse this situation. But with Republicans now in control of the presidency, Congress and two-thirds of state legislative chambers, the attack on voting rights is almost certainly going to get much worse.

National: Civil rights leaders say voter suppression laws influenced 2016 presidential election | McClatchy DC

Civil rights groups say a tangle of Republican-backed “voter suppression” laws enacted since 2010 probably helped tip the scale for Republican nominee Donald Trump in some closely contested states on election night. “When we look back, we will find that voter suppression figured prominently in the story surrounding the 2016 presidential election,” said Kristen Clarke, the president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Fourteen states had restrictive new voting laws on the books for the first time in a presidential election this year, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law: Alabama, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin. The laws included a mix of photo ID requirements for voters, cuts to early voting opportunities and curbs on voter registration activity. The laws, which were presumably enacted as a safeguard against voter fraud, began to spread nationally after the 2010 midterm elections, when large numbers of Republicans were swept into state offices.

Texas: Pasadena trial to begin amid uncertainty about voting rights under Trump | Houston Chronicle

The Houston City Council in 1979 consisted of eight men – seven Anglos and one African-American – including real estate developers, lawyers and a former major league baseball catcher. All were elected citywide, although five nominally represented geographic districts in which they lived. A year later the council had grown to 14 members, nine of them elected from single-member districts. The revamped body included three African-American men, one Latino man and two women, both Anglo. Some of the members elected under the new system would have a lasting impact on their city. Anthony Hall would serve as chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Authority board and as a top mayoral aide. Eleanor Tinsley would establish a legacy as a champion of parks and beautification efforts. Ben Reyes would become a leader of local Latino politics before serving time in federal prison for bribery. All of this happened because of lawsuits filed under the federal Voting Rights Act. Next week in a Houston federal courtroom, this landmark law will again be invoked in a challenge to an allegedly discriminatory council system, this time in a suburban city that’s undergone a dramatic demographic transformation.

National: Fear Is Driving Voting Rights Advocates and Vigilantes to Watch Polling Stations | The New York Times

Millions of Americans will cast their ballots on Tuesday under intense scrutiny both from vigilantes who fear the election will be rigged and from thousands of voting rights advocates who fear the tally will be distorted by intimidation and, perhaps, the suppression of a minority vote that may be crucial to the outcome. On one side are groups like the Oath Keepers, one of dozens of right-wing and militia groups responding to Donald J. Trump’s warnings about a stolen election. The organization has issued a nationwide “call to action” to its members, urging them to go “incognito” to polling stations on Election Day to “hunt down” instances of fraud. On the other side are more than 100 civic and legal groups, claiming at least 10,000 volunteers, and perhaps many more. They plan to deploy at polling places nationwide to watch for signs of voter intimidation and other roadblocks to voting. Election officials and observers say they are hoping for an orderly final day of voting, but they are girding for the possibility of fights, intimidation and, perhaps, worse. Adding to the anxiety is fear of Election Day hacking, perhaps by foreign interests. “I would say this is the most frightening election period I can remember in my adult life,” said Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert and professor at the University of California, Irvine.

Editorials: The world may change; but D.C. voting rights remain the same | Timothy Cooper & John Capozzi/The Hill

The last time D.C. residents went to the polls to cast a vote for or against a D.C. statehood referendum, 52 American diplomats and citizens were being held hostage in Tehran by the Ayatollah Khomeini; the AIDS-causing virus hadn’t yet been discovered, let alone controlled; and Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms had only been launched the previous year. The Cold War between East and West was at full pitch. Now China has become the world’s second largest economy and the Berlin Wall is no more. Even Eastern Europe’s democratic color revolutions have come and gone. South Africa has long since dismantled apartheid. In other words, most everything in the world appears to have changed since 1980; that is, except, of course, the non-voting status of District of Columbia residents. Our sorry political status remains conspicuously the same. We enjoy no right to equal congressional representation; nor, for that matter, are we permitted by Congress full local autonomy to run our daily affairs as only we see fit.

National: Voting Rights Groups Brace for Election Day ‘Chaos‘ | Roll Call

Voting rights advocates are preparing for a “perfect storm of chaos” on Election Day — and not just because a hurricane has already affected registrations in some key battleground states. Reports of voter disenfranchisement have already cropped up during early voting, the advocates say. Some Texas election officials are implementing a voter ID law that a federal appeals court struck down as discriminatory. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said he fears the election will be rigged and urged voters to “go out and watch the polls,” prompting fears of voter intimidation among minorities, particularly. This will be the first presidential election since 1964 without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down a key enforcement provision in the civil rights law that required certain states to check any election changes with the Justice Department. Because of that decision, the DOJ says it will send poll observers to far fewer states that have a history of disenfranchising voters this year. The department monitored 28 jurisdictions in 18 states in 2014 and 51 jurisdictions in 23 states in 2012.

Editorials: The Real Voting Problem in the 2016 Election | Zachary Roth/Politico

Donald Trump’s claims that the election will be “rigged” through voter fraud have become a centerpiece of his faltering campaign. There’s no evidence to support this incendiary charge, but the GOP candidate has been energetically spreading the notion that if Hillary Clinton wins, it will only be because thousands of illegal votes will be cast on Nov. 8. Polls now suggest that most Trump supporters fear the election could be stolen from their man. Trump is right that fairness is going to be a problem this year. He’s wrong about where the problem really lies. In fact, the real voting problem we face in 2016 is almost exactly the opposite of what Trump is complaining about: Officials in at least five states, including several key presidential battlegrounds, have been dragging their feet on obeying court orders to open up access to the polls. As a result, rather than an epidemic of illegal, fraudulent votes, the election is likely to see tens or even hundreds of thousands of people across the country deprived of their constitutional right to cast a ballot. The election wasn’t supposed to unfold this way. Over the summer and early fall, 2016 was shaping up as a landmark year for voting rights, as a string of federal court rulings struck down, blocked or loosened restrictive voting laws in key states across the country. In the three most significant decisions, North Carolina’s sweeping voting law was struck down, Texas’ voter ID law was significantly loosened, and a court required that Wisconsin promise to make voter IDs available on demand, seemingly blunting the impact of that state’s ID law. Voting rights supporters, who had fought for years against restrictions on who can register and when, breathed a cautious sigh of relief. But as Election Day approaches, what’s actually happening on the ground in those states reveals a troubling reality: Important as they are, court rulings can’t adequately protect voting rights if election officials simply don’t want to make things easy for voters.

Georgia: A growing conflict over voting rights is playing out in Georgia, where the presidential race is tightening | The Washington Post

A growing conflict over voting rights and ballot access is playing out in Georgia, where civil rights activists are trading accusations with Republican elected officials and where the stakes have risen considerably with the state’s new status as a closely watched battleground. Activists said this month that as many as 100,000 Georgia ­voter-registration applications have not been processed. One of the state’s largest counties offered only one early-voting site, prompting hours-long waits for many people at the polls last week. And the state’s top election official has refused to extend ­voter-registration deadlines in counties hardest hit by Hurricane Matthew. These developments have prompted harsh criticism from voting rights activists. Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit to extend registration for six counties affected by the hurricane. Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who oversees elections, responded by taking to Twitter to rail against “left-wing activists,” whom he accused of trying to disrupt the election.

Kansas: Federal appeals court: Right to vote constitutionally protected | Topeka Capital Journal

A federal appeals court laid out on Wednesday the legal reasoning behind its decision earlier this month that allowed thousands of Kansas residents to register to vote without providing documents proving their U.S. citizenship. The 85-page opinion from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals came a day after voter registration closed in Kansas for the November election. The appeals court had earlier this month upheld a preliminary injunction that forced Kansas to register people who filled out voter applications at motor vehicle offices. “There can be no dispute that the right to vote is a constitutionally protected fundamental right,” the appeals court wrote. The opinion released Wednesday essentially explained why the appeals court upheld U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson’s preliminary injunction requiring the state to register thousands of people for federal elections. The case was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of several prospective voters and the League of Women Voters.

Utah: Federal judge will not mandate San Juan County to make adjustments for Navajo voters in Utah | The Salt Lake Tribune

A federal judge denied a motion Friday that would have ordered San Juan County to take additional steps to ensure that Navajo voters have equal access to election polling sites. The Navajo Human Rights Commission and residents of the Navajo Nation in San Juan County filed a lawsuit in February, alleging the county had violated the federal Voting Rights Act by closing polling places and moving toward a mail-only voting system, hindering access to the ballot box. But for primary voting in June, the county opened three polling places on the reservation, saying it was bringing the sites closer to Navajos than they are to most white voters.

National: Hurricane Matthew and Its Effect on Voting Rights | The Atlantic

Hurricane Matthew brought utter devastation to Haiti and other islands in the Caribbean after it swept through the region early last week. In Haiti, the storm killed at least a thousand people; damaged infrastructure advancements the nation had made in its push to modernize; and delayed a presidential election originally scheduled for early October. While the problems it’s caused on the eastern United States have been less dire, the storm has nevertheless had serious consequences in many communities. And, as in Haiti, its aftereffects may have repercussions on the country’s upcoming presidential election as well. Efforts to calculate the political costs of a disaster—which are already ongoing in the case of Matthew—often generate callous, clinical results that don’t capture the length and breadth of those effects; they may focus on how displacement might benefit one candidate or the other, but can’t capture the human stories behind those missed votes. The most difficult exercise in a catastrophe’s aftermath is accounting for the things and people lost: the resulting health crises, the activities made difficult, the memories erased, and the strain of rebuilding. Worrying about political consequences can seem crass when people’s day-to-day lives are in ruins. Sometimes, though, the things victims have to lose are political in nature, making a discussion about politics unavoidable—and even necessary.

Nevada: U.S. Justice Department backs Nevada tribes on voting test | Deseret News

The Justice Department sided with two Nevada tribes’ interpretation of a key part of the U.S. Voting Rights Act and a judge said she will issue a ruling Friday in the native Paitues’ legal battle with state and county officials over minority access to the polls. U.S. District Judge Miranda Du listened to arguments during a daylong hearing Tuesday in Reno on whether to grant the tribes’ request for an emergency order establishing satellite voting sites on their Pyramid Lake and Walker River reservations in northern Nevada’s high desert. The tribes accuse Nevada’s Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, Washoe and Mineral counties of illegally denying tribe members voting access afforded to people in wealthier, mostly white neighborhoods. Members of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe living in Washoe County say they must travel 96 miles roundtrip to register to vote or to cast ballots in person in Sparks. Members of the Walker River Paiute Tribe in rural Mineral County say they have to go 70 miles roundtrip to Hawthorne. The lawsuit says that’s nearly twice as far as voters on Lake Tahoe’s affluent north shore would have to travel to vote if the county had not set up a satellite poll in upscale Incline Village.

Editorials: The Problem with Voting Rights in New York | Jeffrey Toobin/The New Yorker

It’s a truism of modern politics that Republicans have placed voting rights under assault in the states they control. Ever since the G.O.P. landslides in the midterm elections of 2010, Republicans have worked to restrict the right to vote in a variety of ways—by cutting back on opportunities for early voting, making absentee voting more difficult, and imposing photo-I.D. requirements at the polls, to name only the best known methods. In 2013, in Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court, with a majority of 5–4, gave Republicans the green light to continue their efforts by gutting the Voting Rights Act. The Shelby decision effectively ended the federal government’s supervision of voting rights in states, mostly in the South, that had histories of discriminating against minority voters.

Editorials: From Voting Rights to Voting Wrongs | Jacques Leslie/The New York Times

In August, when a divided Supreme Court let stand an appeals court decision striking down North Carolina’s photo ID requirement for voters, the matter might have seemed settled. The provision, which requires voters to present government-issued photo identification, strikes directly at people who don’t have driver’s licenses — the state’s poor and disabled, young adults and the elderly, and particularly minorities. The Fourth Circuit Court pointed out that the law deliberately targeted African-Americans “with almost surgical precision,” and deemed it unconstitutional. Yet more than a month after the appellate court ruling and days after the Supreme Court decision, election officials in North Carolina’s Alamance County sent packets to newly registered voters advising them on one page that photo ID was still required and on another page that it wasn’t.

Nevada: US judge sides with Nevada tribes in voting rights case | Associated Press

Two Native American tribes in Nevada have won an emergency court order in a federal lawsuit accusing the Republican secretary of state and two counties of discriminating against them under the Voting Rights Act. U.S. District Judge Miranda Du issued a temporary injunction in Reno late Friday requiring the establishment of satellite polling places on two northern Nevada reservations ahead of next month’s election in the Western battleground state. The Pyramid Lake and Walker River Paiute (PY’-ewt) tribes say their members are being denied equal access to the polls as a result of the long distances some must travel to vote early or cast ballots on Election Day.

Nevada: Judge rules partially in favor of tribes in federal suit | Reno Gazette Journal

A federal judge on Friday found partially in favor of two Native American tribes in their lawsuit against the Secretary of State’s Office and two Nevada counties in a voter disenfranchisement case. Federal Judge Miranda Du released her ruling late Friday afternoon which found in favor of the Pyramid Lake and Walker River Paiute tribes’ request for early in-person polling in Nixon and Schurz and Election Day in-person polling at Nixon. She denied the request for satellite voter registration sites in both places. “In this case, while injunctive relief would impose costs upon defendants, there is no indication it would interfere with the state’s ability to move forward with the November election as scheduled,” Du said in the ruling. “The public interest is served by the enforcement of the (Voting Rights Act of 1965) and the inclusion of protected classes in the political process.”

National: States Keep Weaseling Around Court Orders Blocking GOP Voting Restrictions | TPM

After a spree of favorable court rulings that softened or blocked Republican-passed voting restrictions, voting rights advocates are engaged in a new phase of trench warfare with a mere month left before November’s election and early voting in some places already underway. There was no time for civil rights groups to rest on their laurels after winning the high-profile legal challenges. In many states, such rulings were met with attempts to undermine or circumvent court orders meant to make it easier to vote. “You take a step back and it’s really appalling,” said Dale Ho, the director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project who has been involved in many of the legal challenges to state voting restrictions. “I mean the Department of Justice and other groups, we have all won the cases … you would have thought we would have been finished with this whole thing, when, up until Election Day, we have to stay on these people,” Ho told TPM. At times, it’s hard to pin down whether issues red states have faced in implementing court orders have been motivated by bureaucratic incompetence or something worse. But the pattern is undeniable. In almost every state where voting rights advocates have scored a major legal victory in recent months, they have had to threaten to drag state officials back into court over the shoddy job election administrators have done following the rulings.

Nevada: US Justice Department backs Nevada tribes on voting test | Associated Press

The Justice Department is siding with two Nevada tribes’ interpretation of a key part of the U.S. Voting Rights Act at issue in a legal battle with state and county officials over minority access to the polls. Lawyers for the two Paiute tribes are scheduled to go before a federal judge in Reno Tuesday with their emergency request for a court order establishing satellite voting sites on their reservations before the November election. They accuse Nevada’s Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, Washoe and Mineral counties of illegally denying tribe members voting access afforded to people in wealthier, mostly white neighborhoods. The counties say the sudden change would cost too much, and the state argues it has no authority to intervene. But the Justice Department said in a new filing Monday all three appear to be confusing voting rights with “voting convenience.”

Kansas: Kobach, ACLU reach agreement over DMV voters | The Wichita Eagle

Thousands of Kansas voters will be allowed to cast regular ballots in local, state and federal elections in November without providing proof of citizenship under an agreement forged by the American Civil Liberties Union and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. The agreement was announced Thursday, a day before Kobach was to appear in court for a contempt hearing. The hearing was canceled shortly after the agreement was filed in court. Federal Judge Julie Robinson had ordered Kobach in May to ensure that people who registered to vote at the DMV could vote in November’s election under the federal Motor Voter Act regardless of whether they had provided proof of citizenship. There were more than 18,600 such voters earlier this month. Kobach and the ACLU, representing the plaintiffs, disagree about what that order entails, but they have resolved the most pressing issues. Voters can cast their ballots unimpeded on Nov. 8 while the case continues to be litigated. Under the agreement, Kobach will instruct local election officials to send out a new notice “that unequivocally advises covered voters that they are ‘deemed registered and qualified to vote for the appropriate local, state and federal elections’ ” in the Nov. 8 general election.

Editorials: Courts need to protect rights of Kansas voters because Kris Kobach certainly isn’t | The Kansas City Star

In court after court, judges are being asked to protect the voting rights of thousands of Kansas citizens this year. And in case after case, the courts are coming down on the side of letting those Kansans participate in elections — despite the misguided efforts of Secretary of State Kris Kobach to keep them out of voting booths. Just this week, a U.S. Court of Appeals panel upheld an earlier ruling that Kansas couldn’t prevent citizens from voting because they didn’t provide proof of citizenship when registering. The most compelling reason offered by the court was that Kobach and other supporters of this tactic had provided far too little proof that any fraudulent voting was going on. That legal case comes on top of two others swirling around Kobach, including a potentially chilling one for his political career, which involves a contempt of court accusation.

Minnesota: State Supreme Court dismisses voting rights case from conservative group | Star Tribune.com

The Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a challenge from a conservative group seeking changes to how voter eligibility disputes over possible felony convictions are resolved during elections. In a 14-page ruling, justices said the lawsuit, filed by the Minnesota Voters Alliance, must first be heard in lower courts. “The broad-ranging challenges alleged here, which respondents dispute, should be addressed first in the district court, where any factual disputes can be fully litigated and resolved,” the court wrote in its opinion.

North Carolina: Court bars college dorm students from voting in Greenville County, director says | Greenville Online

If a college student who lives on campus at Clemson University wants to register to vote in Pickens County, they can just fill out a voter registration form and list their campus housing as their legal residence. Same with students at the University of South Carolina or the College of Charleston or any number of colleges in South Carolina. But not in Greenville County. If a college student who lives on campus at Furman University or Greenville Technical College or Bob Jones University or North Greenville University wants to register to vote in Greenville County, they’re more than likely out of luck. That’s because those students must complete an 11-question form with answers that satisfy the county’s Board of Voter Registration and Elections. If they don’t return the form within 10 days, the board will reject their registration. If they don’t answer every question correctly with enough information to establish their residence in Greenville, the board will reject their registration.

Editorials: Voting Rights: Will Court Protections Deliver? | Allegra Chapman/The American Prospect

The electoral dirty work done by dozens of state legislatures in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision Shelby County v. Holder is the focus of determined legal challenges by voting-rights advocates, and decisions are coming down at a dizzying pace. Not every court involved has come down in favor of voters, but there’s encouraging evidence that judges, including conservatives, recognize state laws purportedly passed to ensure “voting integrity” for what they really are: suppressive tactics. Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County, state legislators representing nearly half the country rolled back effective reforms and erected new barriers to voting. It was a throwback to the era before the 1960s, when Jim Crow laws finally triggered passage of the Voting Rights Act (VRA).

Editorials: North Carolina’s Fragile Voting Rights Victory | Scott Lemieux/The American Prospect

Of all the states that rushed to restrict voting after the Supreme Court’s disastrous 2013 ruling to strike down key Voting Rights Act protections, North Carolina moved the most aggressively. It enacted multiple voter-suppression measures, including voter-ID requirements, restrictions on early voting, and an end to same-day registration, Sunday voting, and pre-registration for teenagers. The day the law was signed, the ACLU and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice filed suit on the grounds that the statute discriminated against minority voters in violation of the 14th and 15th Amendments. After a bumpy ride through the lower courts, the law landed in August before the Supreme Court, which upheld a three-judge federal appeals court panel’s finding that its voter ID-provisions were unconstitutional. As Judge Diana Motz wrote in the three-judge panel’s unanimous decision, the requirements “target African Americans with almost surgical precision.”

National: Court disputes over voting laws often divide justices along party lines | Los Angeles Times

It’s no secret that partisan state legislators, once in power, frequently try to alter voting laws to give their party an advantage. But increasingly, when those laws are challenged in federal court, the outcome appears to turn on whether the judges or justices hearing the case were appointed by Republicans or Democrats. Last month, North Carolina’s Republican leaders were blocked from enforcing several new restrictions on voting that had been adopted over the fierce opposition of Democrats. They included less time for early voting and a requirement that a registered voter show one of several specific types of photo ID cards. A federal judge appointed by former President George W. Bush had upheld the full law in April, deciding the regulations were reasonable. They were struck down in late July by a panel of three judges of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, all of them Democratic appointees, who said the new rules violate the federal Voting Rights Act because they “target African Americans with almost surgical precision.”

Editorials: Voter Suppression in North Carolina | The New York Times

North Carolina Republicans are at it again. Barely one month after a federal appeals court struck down the state’s anti-voter law for suppressing African-American voter turnout “with almost surgical precision,” election officials in dozens of counties are taking up new ways to make it as hard as possible for blacks, and others who tend to support Democrats, to vote. A ruling issued by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals on July 29 invalidated most of a 2013 law. The court’s scathing opinion said that “because of race, the legislature enacted one of the largest restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history.” The law, passed by a Republican-dominated legislature, imposed strict voter-ID requirements, cut back early-voting hours and eliminated same-day registration, out-of-precinct voting and preregistration for those under 18.

Nevada: Tribes: Unequal polling access violates voting rights | Associated Press

Tribal leaders in Nevada asked a U.S. judge Wednesday to order the state and two counties to establish satellite polling places on reservations where they say Native Americans are being denied an equal opportunity to vote in the November elections. Two Paiute tribes filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Reno accusing Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske and Washoe and Mineral counties of discriminating by illegally refusing tribe members voting access afforded to people in wealthier, mostly white neighborhoods. Members of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe living in Washoe County say they must travel 96 miles roundtrip to register to vote or to cast ballots in person in Sparks.