Voting Rights
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The state’s recent legislative session shows how deeply Republicans fear Black voters will once again turn Arkansas blue
Once upon a time, the Arkansas state government was a solid blue oasis in the South. In 2006, Democrat Mike Beebe ran the state as governor while his party swept both chambers of the statehouse, as they had during every election since Reconstruction. Arkansas Democrats also controlled both seats in the U.S. Senate and held one of the state’s four congressional seats. Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, further raising hopes the state might continue to have a Democratic future. At the time, I was teaching in a rural Arkansas school in Helena, a majority Black town. My school…
Here’s how Nsé Ufot and the New Georgia Project are fighting the state GOPs’ latest attempt to suppress Black and Brown voters
Following Democrats’ stunning victories in Georgia in November and again in the January U.S. Senate runoffs, the Peach State has once again become ground zero for Republican voter suppression efforts. The latest iteration of their fight to shrink the vote is House Bill 531, which passed Monday in the Republican-controlled Georgia House of Representatives. The legislation adds new restrictions to in-person and absentee voting, including adding new ID requirements and limiting the early voting period that was so crucial to Democrats’ recent successes. The bill now heads to the GOP-controlled Georgia Senate, where an identical measure was introduced last month…
The Black Voters Matter co-founder is organizing voters ahead of Georgia’s Senate runoffs, but her work doesn’t end there
LaTosha Brown is exhausted after the longest election season in recent history, but she has no plans to take a breather. Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats are for grabs, and the runoff elections next month will decide which party controls the chamber. So Brown, co-founder of the organization Black Voters Matter, has been throwing herself into her work in the Peach State. …
‘When they walk into that booth, they have just as much power as the richest person in the United States.’
Two years ago, Floridians approved Amendment 4 to restore voting rights to most state residents who had previously served time for felony convictions. And although Republicans in the state tried very hard to undo that progress by requiring returning citizens to pay off outstanding court fines and fees before they could vote, thousands were able to vote this election season — including Desmond Meade, who spearheaded Amendment 4 as president and executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition.
“We have generated a renewed hope in communities and in individuals who thought their voice didn’t matter, or that they were…
The right is establishing a stranglehold over the federal judiciary that will last for decades
Retention is a problem that has plagued Donald Trump for his entire presidency. His cabinet picks have been notoriously short-lived: He has the highest turnover rate of any president in the past four decades. (The garrulous Anthony Scaramucci didn’t even last a full week as communications director.) Trump’s inability to make his picks stick has been a prime source of schadenfreude for liberals, who are quick to point to the White House’s never-ending game of musical chairs as evidence of its ineptitude. Yet the president may still get the last laugh. …
There’s good reason to be skeptical of the Supreme Court’s commitment to voting rights
The Trump administration wants you to believe that a citizenship question on the 2020 census would protect voting rights. In reality, it’s a threat to them.
Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that would decide whether the Trump administration can include a citizenship question on the 2020 census. The case involves all three branches of government: On the legislative side, per the 14th Amendment, Congress is charged with obtaining an “enumeration” (count) of the number of “whole persons in each state” once every 10 years for the purpose of determining the appropriate number of representatives…
