Demos conducted a nationwide survey of low- and middle-income households in early 2012. The findings in this brief summarize the relationship between college costs and credit card debt, and its impact on students and their parents.
The Massachusetts lawsuit alleges that the Commonwealth failed to provide required voter registration services at public assistance offices, a violation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA).
Recommendations for the Special Joint Committee on Redistricting as it seeks to assess lessons learned after the 2010 Census and to set goals for the next Census redistricting process.
According to all available data, the voter participation rate of the first Americans, American Indians and Alaska Natives, is among the lowest of any ethnic group in the country. There are complex historical and cultural reasons that make the issue of voting among American Indians and Alaska Natives unique.
The report is timed to the two-day federal trial that starts tomorrow morning that will redraw Kansas’ legislative districts. If the Court were to adopt the House’s proposed map, Kansas would end up with a dubious distinction: having the nation’s most extreme instance of prison-based gerrymandering in a state legislative district.
By enacting H.B. 5024, Connecticut would become the 10th state to permit eligible citizens to both register and vote on Election Day and/or during the early voting period.
By passing this proposed constitutional amendment, and laying the groundwork to enact SDR, Maryland would become the 10th state to permit eligible citizens to both register and vote on the same day.
Virginia legislators are considering several bills that would make it more difficult for eligible persons to cast a ballot that will be counted, and would impose large costs for implementation. One bill requires photo identification in order to vote, while others require one of an enumerated list of identification documents. If the voter does not have identification he must sign a sworn statement of his identity and then cast a provisional ballot.
When someone from another country goes through the difficult process of becoming a naturalized American citizen, he or she should be entitled to full participation in our nation's democracy.
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.
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.