Republicans Block Debate on Voting Rights On October 20, 2021, the US Senate held a vote on a voting rights bill, the Freedom to Vote Act, designed to secure the right to vote and stop the advance of restrictive laws being enacted in Republican-controlled states and jurisdictions across the country. That voting rights bill was blocked by Republican members of the United States Senate. Not one single Republican member of the US Senate voted for the Freedom to Vote Act voting rights bill. This marked the third time in 2021 that Democrats tried to advance a voting rights bill in response to nationwide restrictions being enacted by Republicans. In light of these developments, let's look at testimony submitted by voting rights organizations to the US Congress in Senate committee hearings…
Republican-led legislatures in several states including Georgia, Florida and Iowa have passed laws imposing new voting restrictions, and Texas, New Hampshire, Arizona and Michigan, among other states, are considering changes to their electoral systems. At the same time, hopes have dimmed on the left that Congress will pass two major election bills after Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, said he would not support abolishing the filibuster to advance such measures.Mr. Garland has said that protecting the right to vote is one of his top priorities as attorney general, and his top lieutenants include high-profile voting rights advocates such as Vanita Gupta, the department’s No. 3 official, and Kristen Clarke, the head of the Civil Rights Division. The division currently has about a dozen employees on its enforcement…
Grasping at every straw: Trump administration efforts to overturn election results included asking the Justice Department to probe whether Italy used 'satellites' to alter vote totals In the news today: Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin released a pomp-rich but substance-thin editorial announcing his opposition to a Democratic voting rights bill because ... Republicans don't like it. Former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows is now known to have pressured the Justice Department to open investigations supporting pro-Trump election hoaxes, an act apparently intended to further sow doubt on the election results in the weeks before Trump would mount a last-ditch attempt to overturn the election by organizing a mob of violent supporters to intimidate Congress into do so. Here's some of what you may have missed: Source link
“I think that Vice President Harris herself personifies the need for voting rights to be extended,” the Rev. Al Sharpton, who attended the speech in Tulsa, said in an interview. “When she’s on the phone or walks into an office, we’re looking at the reason we need voting rights.”Michael Waldman, the president of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, said that the decision to elevate Ms. Harris as the face of the administration’s work on the issue was a pivotal moment for the Biden White House given the number of voter suppression efforts that were moving forward — 389 bills in 48 states and counting, according to a tracker maintained the Brennan Center.“It has been decades since a Democratic White House has made…
The John Lewis Voting Rights Act now has bipartisan Senate support, as Sen. Murkowski (R-AK) has joined Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) in calling for reauthorization. Manchin and Murkowski wrote a joint letter to congressional leadership and provided it to PoliticusUSA:Dear Speaker Pelosi, Leader Schumer, Leader McCarthy, and Leader McConnell: When President Lyndon B. Johnson transmitted a draft of the Voting Rights Act to the House of Representatives, he asserted that it would “help rid the Nation of racial discrimination in every aspect of the electoral process and thereby ensure the right of all to vote.” As we look back on that quote today, 56 years later, we reflect not just on the positive impact this legislation has had on individual Americans’ ability to exercise their most fundamental right – the…
To Jackson’s tight-knit voting rights community, members of which view themselves as torchbearers in the mold of Mr. Figgers and Mr. Evers, it’s all evidence of a lingering absence of urgency.“If the people who were most impacted by this were white people, Democrats would’ve done something about this a long time ago,” said Rukia Lumumba, the executive director of the People’s Advocacy Institute in Jackson. Her brother is the mayor of Jackson and her late father also held that role. “They thought, ‘Oh, that’s just the South,’ and not that what we’ve experienced here was coming to the rest of the country.”Mr. Holder, who now runs a group that focuses on redistricting and ballot access, said he would encourage senators to eliminate the filibuster to pass the For the People…
While that is surely true, Republicans have received all corporate opposition to their racist legislative initiatives to curtail voting—particularly among voters of color—as a political attack. In turn, GOP lawmakers appear to be escalating the tensions to a kind of political armageddon. The most prominent GOP criticism came from corporate money grubber Mitch McConnell himself, who warned early last week that corporations could "invite serious consequences" if they continued to speak out. A day later, he tried to soften that statement a bit, conceding that corporations "certainly are entitled" to speak out politically. "My principal complaint," McConnell added of CEOs, "is they didn’t read the darn bill.” Well, hundreds of CEOs and the corporations they represent appear to have defied McConnell on both counts by continuing to speak out even after McConnell…
In today's news: Matt Gaetz, still. Americans who have served prison time are getting their voting rights back. Biden demonstrates it's possible to criticize the Chinese government without being a festering boil of bigotries, an approach that still baffles Captain Golf Dude and Republican candidates alike. Source link
Voting Rights IS Democracy Two smiling women stand outdoors and hold signs reading "Vote Baby Vote" and "Voting is People Power," c. 1970. (Photo by Gabriel Hackett /Getty Images)March 25, 2021 There is only one story today. It is not the coronavirus pandemic, although 547,000 of us have died of Covid-19, and a study today suggested that we could have avoided nearly 400,000 deaths if we had adopted masks and social distancing early on. It is not the coronavirus even though today President Joe Biden noted that we will reach 100 million vaccinations tomorrow and that he aims to reach 200 million vaccines by his 100th day in office…. It is not the situation on our southern border, where a surge of migrants apparently matches the seasonal pattern of people…
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Tennessee ProtestsProtesters are seen marching upon the Tennessee State Capitol building on June 4, 2020 in Nashville, Tennessee. Credit - Jason Kempin/Getty ImagesA new Tennessee law, signed by the governor this week, makes it a felony for protesters to camp out overnight on state property. If convicted, they could lose their voting rights and face up to six years in prison.Although some states are moving towards restoring voting rights for felons, it remains illegal for felons to vote in Tennessee.For more than two months, dozens of people had been sleeping outside the state capitol as they protested day and night against police brutality and pushed (unsuccessfully) to speak with Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee. “We want to see Governor Lee. We don’t wanna fight, we just wanna be free,” they chanted.…
As the Associated Press reports, the bill does a number of things including: Institutes a mandatory 45 day sentence for “rioting” Increases fines for blocking highways requires that protesters pay for any damage to state property makes assaulting a “first responder” a Class C felony with a 90 day mandatory sentence Most of these changes seem to be addressing events that supposedly occurred in other states, and which have been at the center a “cities in chaos” theme pushed by Donald Trump and Fox News. But the biggest change in the bill is that makes “illegally camping” on state property a Class E felony. What constitutes “illegal camping?” That’s left up to “the discretion of judges.” This charge was formerly a misdemeanor, generally resulting in a small fine. But under the…
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(WASHINGTON) — The Democratic-controlled House approved a bill Friday that would restore key sections of the Voting Rights Act that once required officials in all or parts of 15 mostly Southern states to receive federal approval before making changes to the voting process. The bill would amend the 1965 law to impose new obligations on states and local jurisdictions, essentially reversing a 2013 Supreme Court decision that tossed out a “pre-clearance” provision that determined which jurisdictions needed federal oversight of elections. The bill was approved, 228—187. Veteran Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., an icon of the civil rights movement, announced the tally in a sign of the importance Democratic leaders place on the measure. Just one Republican, Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, joined Democrats in voting for the bill. It now goes…
[embed]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYJqGuRZduE[/embed] WASHINGTON (Wednesday, June 24, 2015) – In the two years since the Supreme Court gutted core protections in the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, states and localities throughout the country have passed sweeping laws that disproportionately suppress the voting rights of African Americans and people of color. These laws have left voters without the protections they need to exercise their constitutional right to vote. To restore and advance the voting protections for all Americans, a group of Senate and House Democratic lawmakers joined together on Wednesday June 24, 2015 to introduce the Voting Rights Advancement Act (VRAA) of 2015. These Democratic members of Congress aim to utilize the momentum generated by the racist murder of nine African American ministers and church goers in Charleston, South Carolina, to push for…
Voting Rights: A Long Fight in the US References: History of Voting Rights Voting Rights Act of 1965 - US Department of Justice The murder of voting-rights activists in Philadelphia, Mississippi, gained national attention, along with numerous other acts of violence and terrorism. Finally, the ... Timeline: A History of the Voting Rights Act | American Civil Liberties ... VOTING RIGHTS ACT - MAJOR DATES IN HISTORY. The Voting Rights Act is a historic civil rights law that is meant to ensure that the right to vote is not denied... The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United ... The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States [ Alexander Keyssar] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. U.S. Voting Rights…
The Modern Voting Rights Movement, Single Member Districts, and Black Office Holding - http://www.blackpolitics.org Bloody Sunday BLOODY SUNDAY The Selma-to-Montgomery March for voting rights ended three weeks–and three events–that represented the political and emotional peak of the m… Editor’s Note – The modern Voting Rights movement can be traced to the 1944 decision of the US Supreme Court in Smith v. Allright to outlaw the White Primary. Authors Bernard Grofman and Chandler Davidson point out that shortly...
A final project me and a couple other group members put together for our African American studies class.
Single Member Districts and Black Office Holding The Modern Voting Rights Movement has transformed the United States of America. That movement basically encompassed three phases. First was the fight for African American voter registration. Second, was the mobilization of the newly registered voters to turn out at the ballot box and vote. The third phase was the struggle to break down institutional barriers which prevented African American citizens from being able to elect their candidates of choice. That third phase of the voting rights movement led to a revolution in African American office holding. Litigation and mobilization around Sections 2 and 5 of the Voting Right Act forced the creation of Single Member Districts across the South, enabling those who successfully registered to vote and turned out at the…
“The arrest and prosecution of Mr. Rogers should alarm all Texans,” said Andre Segura, legal director of the ACLU of Texas. “He waited in line for over six hours to vote to fulfill what he believed to be his civic duty, and is now locked up on a bail amount that most people could not afford. “He faces potentially decades in jail. Our laws should not intimidate people from voting by increasing the risk of prosecution for, at worst, innocent mistakes. We will continue to fight for justice for Mr. Rogers and will push back against efforts to further restrict voting rights.” The ACLU of Texas and attorney Nicole DeBorde Hochglaube are representing Rogers, who was released from jail after the nonprofit Bail Project posted his bail. “His story is infuriating — and…
Texas lawmakers on Saturday finished drafting a bill that would impose a raft of new voting restrictions, setting up the likely passage of what would be among the most far-reaching laws in Republicans’ nationwide drive to overhaul elections systems and limit voting.The bill would tighten what are already some of the country’s strictest voting laws, and it would specifically target balloting methods that were employed for the first time last year by Harris County, home to Houston. In addition to banning drive-through voting and 24-hour voting, which were used by nearly 140,000 voters in Harris County during the 2020 election, the bill would prohibit election officials from sending absentee ballots to all voters, regardless of whether they had requested them; ban using tents, garages, mobile units or any temporary structure…
HOUSTON — Voting in the 2020 election presented Zoe Douglas with a difficult choice: As a therapist meeting with patients over Zoom late into the evening, she just wasn’t able to wrap up before polls closed during early voting.Then Harris County introduced 24-hour voting for a single day. At 11 p.m. on the Thursday before the election, Ms. Douglas joined fast-food workers, nurses, construction workers, night owls and other late-shift workers at NRG Arena, one of eight 24-hour voting sites in the county, where more than 10,000 people cast their ballots in a single night.“I can distinctly remember people still in their uniforms — you could tell they just got off of work, or maybe they’re going to work; a very diverse mix,” said Ms. Douglas, 27, a Houston native.Twenty-four-hour…
Former President Donald Trump claimed Republicans have not made controversial voting restrictions in the state of Georgia strong enough out of fear of being called racists. “My reaction is the Georgia bill is far too weak,” Trump told Fox News personality Sean Hannity. “It’s just where you have to have signature verification. They don’t have it. Why don’t they have signature verification? You want matching. You want matching signatures. They have many things that they didn’t put in. Look, what happened is the governor and others were afraid to be called racists.” “So they gave a very weak bill,” he added. “And they’re called racists anyway. They had a much stronger bill a few weeks before this one came out.” Earlier this month, Trump said new voting restrictions passed in the state of…
Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia on Saturday issued a blistering critique of Major League Baseball’s decision to pull its All-Star Game out of the state over the new law there restricting voting, arguing that the move would deliver an economic hit to Georgians.Mr. Kemp, a Republican, framed the battle over voting rights in Georgia as a wholly partisan one concocted by Democrats, rather than a civil rights effort to protect access to the ballot as Republicans try to place new limits on voting across the country.“Yesterday, Major League Baseball caved to fear and lies from liberal activists,” Mr. Kemp said at a news conference, flanked by the state’s Republican attorney general, G.O.P. members of the legislature and grass-roots activists. “In the middle of a pandemic, Major League Baseball put the…
MARIETTA, GA - OCTOBER 18: Voters wait in line for up to two hours to early vote at the Cobb County West Park Government Center on October 18, 2018 in Marietta, Georgia. Early voting started in Georgia on October 15th. Georgia's Gubernatorial election is a close race between Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams and Republican candidate Brian Kemp. (Photo by Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)Following unexpected Democratic victories in Georgia in November and January, Republicans in the state Senate voted Monday to significantly curtail the right to vote. On Monday afternoon, the legislators approved a bill repealing no-excuse absentee voting, which 1.3 million voters used to cast ballots by mail in 2020, including 450,000 Republicans. They were also set to consider a bill on Monday evening ending automatic voter registration, which 5 million of the…
Voting machines. Our democracy depends on them to accurately record each and every ballot. You go to the polls, you cast your vote, your voice is heard. Right? Not so fast. “Russian attacks.” “Russian hackers.” “Russian hackers tried to break into U.S. election systems.” Because in 2016 — “The Russians managed to get us paranoid about the security of our own election systems.” But this year, experts are more confident that — “I think it is safe to say this is the most secure election we’ve ever held in the United States.” In 2016, Russia targeted vulnerabilites in election systems in every single state. “This was one of the most successful intelligence operations in modern history.” Now, there’s no evidence Russians altered votes, but — “It’s as if a cat…
