ST. LOUIS (KMOX) – Missouri makes a list of ten states at risk for “voter bullying,” in a report released by the voting rights groups Common Cause and Demos.
A swarm of right-wing loyalists with intimidation on their minds can be expected to descend on polling places in minority neighborhoods this November, two public interest groups warned government officials Monday.
In a new report titled, “Bullies at the Ballot Box,” Demos and Common Cause describe campaigns by conservative groups—particularly the tea party-affiliated True the Vote—to train and deploy as many as 1 million persons to police the polls.
A swarm of right-wing loyalists with intimidation on their minds can be expected to descend on polling places in minority neighborhoods this November, two public interest groups warned government officials Monday.
In a new report titled, “Bullies at the Ballot Box,” Demos and Common Cause describe campaigns by conservative groups—particularly the tea party-affiliated True the Vote—to train and deploy as many as 1 million persons to police the polls.
The November presidential election, widely expected to rest on a final blitz of advertising and furious campaigning, may also hinge nearly as much on last-minute legal battles over when and how ballots should be cast and counted, particularly if the race remains tight in battleground states.
The good folks at Demos, led by the indefatigable Liz Kennedy, released a report today about the legal underpinnings under what Demos predicts will be an epidemic of direct voter challenges at the polls themselves come November. This, alas, is neither new — challenging Hispanic voters at the polls in Arizona is how William Rehnquist got start in politics — nor is it particularly surprising. The new voter-suppression laws in several states are only half the plan.
Laws disenfranchising felons and ex-felons, many passed post-Reconstruction, were sometimes designed with the purpose of disenfranchising African American voters, and often were implemented to do so.
Recall your last voting experience: chances are you were packed into a school cafeteria, shuttled along to a table where someone checked your name off a long list of registered voters, and you cast your ballot before rushing to work.
Pennsylvania state court judge Robert Simpson refused to issue a preliminary injunction against the state’s controversial voter ID legislation today, despite allegations that the law was discriminatory and passed for partisan gain.
Today marks the 22nd anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, a civil rights law protecting people with disabilities from discrimination in public spaces and work places, among others. In 2010, nearly 1 in 5, or 56.7 million, Americans had a disability, according to a report released by the Census Bureau yesterday.
The days between the Fourth of July and Bastille Day on the 14th are known for fireworks on both sides of the Atlantic. This year, more rockets and firecrackers than usual were going off, but they were inside hearing rooms in the British Parliament and the U.S. Congress. Barclays bank announced that it had been fined more than $450 million by regulators from both countries, and its CEO, Robert E. Diamond Jr., and COO, Jerry del Missier, both resigned. The fines were part of a settlement that granted Barclays immunity from potentially worse punishment for its manipulation of interest rates.
For all the talk about the need for voter-identification laws, you’d think millions of Americans were impersonating dead people to get their candidates elected, or casting multiple ballots after breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Every day brings more reminders of the terrible unfairness that besets our country, the tragic reversal of fortune experienced by millions who once had good lives and steady jobs, now gone.
An article in the current issue of Rolling Stone chronicles “The Fallen: The Sharp, Sudden Decline of America’s Middle Class” and describes a handful of middle-class men and women made homeless, forced to live out of their cars in church parking lots in Southern California.
Celebrating Pennsylvania’s recent passage of a restrictive piece of voter ID legislation, Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R) stated, “Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done." This statement, shocking only for its honesty, reveals what many voting rights organizations have been saying for years: Changing the rules relating to voting is a kind of power grab, a partisan effort to change outcomes.
Though it fell in a rather busy week and didn't grab much attention, another Supreme Court decision last week should have ramifications for Connecticut. The ruling affirmed the constitutionality of a Maryland law that counts incarcerated persons as residents of their last legal home addresses, not the prisons, for redistricting purposes.
On Monday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling which upholds a lower court ruling, and area returning citizens are pleased by the court's ruling.
Supreme Court Justices agreed with Maryland's “No Representation Without Population Act” in a summary disposition which means meaning the Justices based their ruling on existing briefs and did not engage in oral arguments. A lower court ruled that in the case of Fletcher v. Lamone, Maryland officials cannot count a prisoner's incarceration address, and must count their last known home of residence.
The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed Monday a lower court's ruling upholding Maryland's new congressional redistricting plan, which counts inmates as living at their last-known addresses instead of in their prison cells. But it may not be the last word on the matter.
Some Republican lawmakers opposed to the map, drawn once each decade based on U.S.
The movement has drawn some support from financial circles. Wallace C. Turbeville, a former Goldman Sachs banker who now is a senior fellow at Demos, a public policy research organization in New York,submitted testimony last month for the Senate Banking Committee in favor of more banking regulation.