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.
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.
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.
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.
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) has signed a law that will create publicly financed elections, reversing her previous opposition to a plan that advocates say will help curb money’s influence in District politics.
Bowser announced that she was throwing her support behind the Fair Elections Act, which was approved unanimously by the D.C. Council in February. The law, which will first affect elections in 2020, will steer millions annually toward the campaigns of local candidates and is aimed at reducing their reliance on deep-pocketed donors. [...]
Maryland became the 12th state to enact automatic voter registration on Thursday after Republican Gov. Larry Hogan declined to veto a bill that had passed the Democratic-controlled Legislature.
Currently, there are about 500,000 unregistered voters in Maryland, according to a 2017 report from its state government. An analysis from the progressive think tank Demos suggests that AVR could bring 400,000 of those Marylanders into the electorate.
The Black Census Project is intended to “give us a better sense of who black people are, where we are, and what we hope and dream for,” says Alicia Garza who also helped start the Black Lives Matter movement.
The 1993 law requires states to offer people the opportunity to register to vote when they interact with the motor vehicle agency and other state agencies. If someone wants to register to vote at the motor vehicle agency, the information provided on a driver’s license can also be used as a voter registration application for federal elections.
Between March 2017 and March 2018, union members’ approval of Trump fell 15 points, to 47 percent. In more than two dozen interviews with union members, many blasted Trump’s tax cut, arguing most of the benefits will flow to corporations and wealthy people. [...]
"The biggest issue facing police today is a crisis of public confidence. We have seen examples of racial discrimination, viral videos documenting misconduct, and widespread protest against incidents of police violence and the lack of accountability. Officers themselves report that it's a difficult time to be in law enforcement."
Millions of eligible voters remain unregistered. To fulfill the promise of the NVRA, states must do much more to ensure all Americans have a voice in our democracy.
Demos, the voting rights group that challenged Ohio’s voter purge law, said in a statement that the decision “threatens the ability of voters to have their voices heard in our elections.”
“The fight does not stop here. If states take today’s decision as a sign that they can be even more reckless and kick eligible voters off the rolls, we will fight back in the courts, the legislatures, and with our community partners across the country,” Demos senior counsel Stuart Naifeh said in the statement.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that Ohio could continue to use an aggressive process for removing people from its voting rolls, saying the procedure did not run afoul of federal voter protections.
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling to uphold Ohio’s controversial voter purge law spotlights the growing clout of right-wing “election integrity” groups that have aggressively bullied and sued states and jurisdictions into kicking thousands of voters off their rolls. [...]
“If states take today’s decision as a sign that they can be even more reckless and kick eligible voters off the rolls, we will fight back in the courts, the legislatures and with our community partners across the country,” Demos attorney Stuart Naifeh said.
