Pushback against voting restrictions gathers steam

[babylonsister]

Pushback against voting restrictions gathers steam
04/18/14 12:20 PM—Updated 04/18/14 01:10 PM
By Zachary Roth


From Virginia to Arkansas and North Carolina to Missouri, leaders, lawyers and citizens took significant strides this week to protect voting rights. It was the strongest sign yet that the pushback against Republican efforts to curtail access to the ballot box had gathered momentum.

In Virginia, the Democratic governor made it easier for ex-felons to get their voting rights back. Advocates filed a challenge to Arkansas’s voter ID law, and offered crucial new evidence about the impact of North Carolina’s cuts to early voting. And Missouri Republicans moved to establish limited early voting—a sign of the growing energy to expand ballot access in the state.

The efforts in Arkansas and North Carolina aim to further a strategy that’s been notably effective for voting-rights advocates in recent years: the use of the courts.

“Some politicians think they can get away with suppressing the vote. We’re putting them on notice with our legal challenges that they can’t toy with citizens’ fundamental right to cast a ballot. The people, and our democracy, deserve and demand better,” said Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project.

The week’s developments come on the heels of President Obama’s landmark speech earlier this month at the National Action Network, where he called out Republican efforts to make voting harder, and to connect today’s fight for voting rights today to the struggle to enfranchise southern blacks half a century ago.

“Americans did not stand up and did not march and did not sacrifice to gain the right to vote, for themselves and for others, only to see it denied to their kids and their grandkids,” Obama said.


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http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/voting-rights-push-gathers-steam?cid=sm_facebook

[brooklynite]

1. I'm not clear what the legal basis is for challenging cutbacks in early voting...

There are plenty of old-school Blue States that still allow voting only on Election Day.

[sheshe2]

2. Ooooh!

Love that picture~

?itok=lGjB9jZO

Separately, voting-rights advocates challenging North Carolina’s harsh voting law in federal court released some powerful evidence Thursday: Testimony by two leading voting experts showing that the law’s elimination of seven days of early voting—when 900,000 people voted in 2012—will lead to far longer wait times and reduce turnout, and will hit blacks hardest.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/voting-rights-push-gathers-steam?cid=sm_facebook

Thanks, great article, bsis.