In 2005, Indiana passed a law requiring voters to present a government issued photo-ID before they would be allowed to vote. The law was challenged by voting rights advocates and was upheld by the Appellate Court and ultimately, the Supreme Court. The Appellate Court concluded that the burden placed on potential voters to show a photo-ID was outweighed by the state’s interest in reducing voter fraud.
Last week, I wrote about the “separate but equal” two-tiered voting system that Arizona and Kansas want to implement that would create two separate ballots for elections; one with federal, state and local races for eligible voters who show proof of citizenship, like a birth certificate or passport, and another with only federal races for remaining voters.
"It's unbelievable, probably half the states in the country have bills in play and more than a dozen are seriously in the pipeline," Tova Wang of the left-leaning think tank Demos told TPM in an interview. "It's really unprecedented in terms of geographic scope. I've never seen anything like it certainly since I've been working on voting rights issues that voter suppression bills would be introduced in so many places at the same time."
Among the other states taking up the issue are Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas and Ohio. In all four of those states, Republicans advanced their Voter ID bills last week. Those states look to join the eight states that require photo ID and the 19 that require some form of ID, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The debate on voter ID is a clash between some people, many of them conservatives, who believe more restrictions are needed on voting and registration to rein in fraud, and others who think the process needs to be opened up to more voters, according to Miles Rapoport, who as secretary of state for Connecticut from 1995 to 1999 oversaw that state's election process.
Long lines, challenged ballots and two of the closest presidential elections in the country's history have touched off a landslide of propo
Steve Carbo, of the Democracy Project, a New York-based advocacy group that pushed for broader voter registration, said Iowa did far better than many states in implementing the provision.
Voter registration among the disabled and elderly in Iowa increased eight-fold between the 2000 and 2004 elections, Secretary of State Chet Culver said Wednesday.
Demos, a non-partisan election reform group, said higher voter turnout, especially among youth, reversed a decades-old trend of low electoral participation. The group said about 120 million voted in the Nov. 2 election, an increase of 15 million voters from 2000.
Election Day registration, or EDR, makes it possible for new voters, the recently relocated and those whose registrations were incomplete or lost, to participate without unnecessary hurdles, the group said.
A photo voter ID law signed by Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry is unnecessary, unfair, restrictive and intentionally discriminates against African-American and Latino voters, a coalition of civil rights groups will argue in a letter to the Justice Department on Wednesday.
To the Republican supporters of laws that would treat the poll booth like an exclusive nightclub that asks for photo ID and other qualifications before allowing entry, the answer to why anyone would oppose this is simple: They must not want to vote bad enough.
During his Senate hearing yesterday, Debo Adegbile, President Obama’s pick for Justice Department Civil Rights Division chief, was asked by Sen. Chuck Grassley if he would block state voter ID laws if confirmed. In his previous capacity, Adegible served as attorney and one-time acting president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which has been in litigation with Texas over its voter ID law for the past three years. Adegbile also twice argued before the U.S.
Could Massachusetts become the next state to enact Election Day Registration? If today’s passage by the Commonwealth’s Senate chamber of omnibus voting bill S.1975 serves as indication, it very well could.
What I learned from an Al-Jazeera America news segment last night: 16- and 17-year-olds in North Carolina could be arrested and charged as adults, in one of just two states in the nation where this is law.
We secured another win for voters in our Ohio voter purge case, A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI) v. Husted. Voters who were removed from the voter rolls in Ohio without adequate notice will now be able to participate in Tuesday’s midterms.
Yesterday, Demos and 4 other civil rights legal organizations filed an emergency motion to stop Texas from discriminating against voters of color and purging naturalized citizens who are eligible to vote from the voter rolls.
