Read more about the fight for democracy and voting rights from Democracy Docket’s desk. Use the drop-down menu to organize by topic.
Remember that suppressive provisions have already been successfully enacted this year in Texas, and that the legal challenges against them will have a significant effect on the state’s next elections.
Special sessions can mean the difference between bills passing or dying — and the circumstances under which they are called can spell the difference between protecting or restricting voting rights.
Over 145 bills proposed by Republican legislatures would reassign various powers of election officials and the executive branch to highly partisan legislatures. This “legislative seizure” could have sweeping consequences.
Republican legislatures in the states will continue to try and limit access to the ballot box no matter what. Until we have federal legislation like the For the People Act, our voting rights are in the hands of the courts and the people.
Republicans are determined to make it even harder to cast a ballot in 2022, despite state election officials pulling off a historic election in the midst of a pandemic with no documented cases of voter fraud in 2021.
With H.R. 1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act stalled in Congress, we asked our contributors to think beyond existing federal legislation and to share other new, bold, voter-centric policy ideas.
Voting rights activists have brought Section 2 claims under the Voting Rights Act against a variety of election laws including voter ID rules, registration restrictions, early vote requirements and redistricting legislation.
Statehood for Washington, D.C. is a pressing voting and civil rights issue. D.C. statehood would return self governance to more than 700,000 Americans and give them proportional representation in Congress.
Section 5 of the VRA was a powerful and effective tool to protect the voting rights of Black Americans, and it is vital that Congress strengthen and expand it in the face of unprecedented attacks on our democracy.
The state of voting rights in this country is concerning — but there are signs of hope. The VRA established a vital foundation and gives us a guide for what lasting and equitable voting rights reform can look like at the federal level.
Page 6 of 6