La Constitución de los Estados Unidos requiere que los distritos electorales sean aproximadamente iguales en tamaño para que todas las personas tengan la misma representación en el proceso político.
On Tuesday, December 13th, the Congressional Progressive Caucus unveiled the RESTORE the American Dream for the 99% Act. The bill, if passed, would create more than 5 million jobs and save more than $2 trillion. This is a comprehensive plan to put America back to work by reversing the failed policies of the past, which the “Super Committee” could not achieve.
Proof that when laws to protect peoples’ democratic rights are put into practice, they can have a major impact on bringing more voices into the political process.
The assault on the right to vote witnessed in 2011 is historic in terms of its geographic scope and intensity. Legislation enacted in states across the country to require government-issued photo identification and/or prove citizenship to register to vote, make voter registration more difficult, and curtail early voting is nothing short of blatant vote suppression, the likes of which has not been seen in generations.
On the manner in which incarcerated populations are counted for purposes of redistricting. This issue has become increasingly important to the fairness of redistricting around the country.
Prison-based gerrymandering is the practice of counting incarcerated persons as “residents” of a prison when drawing legislative districts in order to give extra influence to the districts that contain the prisons. The U.S. Constitution requires that election districts be roughly equal in size, so that everyone is represented equally in the political process. But prison-based gerrymandering distorts our democracy by artificially inflating the population numbers — and thus, the political clout — of districts with prisons, while diluting the political power of all other voters.
Missouri is considering a bill requiring all voters to present government issued photo identification at the polls. The fact that Missouri is introducing a restrictive voter identification bill is particularly unfortunate considering the legislature passed such a bill in 2006 and it was struck down as unconstitutional under the state's constitution by the Missouri Supreme Court.
The No Representation Without Population Act would correct within the state of Maryland a long-standing flaw in the decennial Census that counts incarcerated people as residents of the wrong location.
When drawing legislative districts, New York State counts incarcerated persons as "residents" of the community where the prison is located, instead of counting them in the home community to which they will return, on average, within 34 months. This practice of prison-based gerrymandering ignores more than 100 years of legal precedent.
The Veterans Voting Support Act required that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) agree to state designations of its facilities as voter registration agencies under Section 7 of the NVRA.
Election Day Registration (EDR), which allows eligible voters to register and cast a ballot on Election Day, is a reform that reduces the unnecessary disfranchisement of eligible voters that may be caused by arbitrary registration deadlines.
Testimony of Demos Counsel Lisa J. Danetz before the United States House of Representatives Subcommittee on Elections on the challenges the National Voter Registration Act presents to public assistance agencies.