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.
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.
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.
Twelve years since the enactment of the NVRA, states across the country have regularly failed to comply with public assistance voter registration requirements.
After evaluating the progress of 10 federal agencies in responding to President Biden’s Executive Order on Promoting Access to Voting, we find that most federal agencies have room for improvement.
Evaluating ten states across a spectrum of voter removal practices on an important but often overlooked voting barrier: voter purges. Purges played a part in more than 19 million voters being removed between the 2020 and 2022 general elections.
This resource guide is intended to help advocates and local leaders make common-sense improvements to current voter removal practices and oppose bad bills that limit access to the ballot.
As states impose new voter suppression tactics, the push for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act is crucial to ensure equal voting rights for all.
