No doubt the new International Energy Agency (IEA)'s latest World Energy Outlook will be cause for celebration for the fossil fuel industry. In it, IEA points to the strong oil and gas production in the U.S. and predicts that by within a decade or so, the U.S. will become the world's largest oil producer, surpassing Saudi Arabia and Russia. By 2030, North America could be a net oil exporter and, around the same time, the U.S. will likely be energy independent.
Democratic lawmakers say allowing voters to register and cast ballots on the same day would increase election participation, but some county officials worry that it would further complicate the voting process.
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States with same-day registration have turnout rates nearly 6 percent higher than states that don’t offer it, according to Demos, a progressive public policy research group.
I attended the oral argument in the Voting Rights Act case before the U.S. Supreme Court, and I came away even more convinced that the Court should uphold the contested parts of the law.
Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act requires that covered states "preclear" their proposed election law changes with federal officials. Nine states plus parts of seven others are "covered," and many of these areas are in the South.
Since NVRA was passed, citizens can now register to vote when they go to public assistance offices to apply for welfare or disability benefits, or at their local DMV when they apply for a drivers license — hence the nickname “Motor Voter Act” — and also allowed for mailed-in registration forms. The result was that over 30 million people registered via the new paths opened by NVRA in its first year.
A Supreme Court decision Monday that struck down an Arizona law requiring people to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote was hailed by voting-rights advocates as a big win. But several legal scholars say the ruling, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, could in fact set back the voting-rights cause in cases to come.
Q. How would you summarize the decision in a single sentence?
A. The court effectively rolled back an important provision of the Voting Rights Act, ruling that the act’s formula requiring federal preapproval of election changes for some states but not others was outdated because it was based on data from the 1960s and ’70s.
Q. Did anything in in it — or in the justices’ votes — surprise you?
A. I was not surprised by the votes of the particular justices.
Five Supreme Court Justices just rolled back the most effective civil rights provision in our nation's history. What should we do now?
One option is to declare "mission accomplished" and forget about race in politics.
That, however, will not work. Although we have made amazing progress in the past fifty years, too many state and local politicians still maintain power by manipulating election rules.
The Supreme Court dealt the Voting Rights Act a serious body blow Tuesday, but it did leave Congress an out. The court said, “Congress—if it is to divide the States—must identify those jurisdictions to be singled out on a basis that makes sense in light of current conditions.”
The Supreme Court just declared that the Civil War is no longer relevant to the history and administration of racial justice in America.
In a sense, the court's decision in Shelby County v. Holder validated a generations-long effort -- first by Democrats and later by Ronald Reagan and the Bush family -- to throw off the moral weight that slavery and the Civil War had placed on the South. [...]
The Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder is a setback for democracy — especially at the local level.
Overwhelming evidence shows that too many politicians continue to win elections by unfairly manipulating election rules based on how voters look or talk. The Court’s decision makes this problem worse. The biggest problem will be the manipulation of election rules for local offices that are often non-partisan and escape national attention.
The Supreme Court of the United States must be criticized for blindness, perhaps even willful ignorance of reality, in their recent decision gutting the Voting Rights Act.
Voting rights activists have seized upon a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in an effort to mitigate the damage done by the Supreme Court earlier this month in the case of Shelby County, Alabama v. Attorney General Eric Holder. According to Adam Serwer at MSNBC.com, the state of Texas may still be subject to the federal government’s approval before it can rearrange voting districts or make changes to election law.
The attack on voting rights in North Carolina is a shameful attempt by the state’s politicians to curtail access to the ballot, in ways devised particularly to discourage voting by African-Americans.
In the run-up to the 2012 presidential election, reports of harassment and intimidation at the polls were so rampant in North Carolina that the state's top election official was obliged to send a memo to his employees reminding them that they could call police if necessary.
Texas didn’t discriminate against minority voters. It was only because they were Democrats. And even if it did, the racial discrimination Texas engaged in is nowhere near as bad as the stuff that happened in the 1960s.
In June, five Supreme Court Justices rolled back the Voting Rights Act, widely considered the most effective tool in preventing discrimination in our nation's history. Section 5 of the act required that certain states and localities "preclear" proposed election changes with federal officials to ensure the changes were not discriminatory. The Court ruled that the formula used to determine which jurisdictions needed to get preclearance was outdated and unconstitutional. For those of us who care about voting rights, the question now is how do we respond?
The Justice Department on Thursday redoubled its efforts to challenge state voting laws, suing Texas over its new voter ID measure as part of a growing political showdown over electoral rights.
The move marked the latest bid by the Obama administration to counter a Supreme Court ruling that officials have said threatens the voting rights of minorities. It also signaled that the administration will probably take legal action in voting rights cases in other states, including North Carolina, where the governor signed a voter ID law this month.
The federal lawsuit filed to block North Carolina’s restrictive new voting laws is set to test the government’s ability to protect voting rights in the aftermath of a Supreme Court decision gutting the Voting Rights Act.