voting rights
November 21, 2019 -
The plaintiffs in a racial gerrymandering lawsuit want a North Carolina court to block judicial elections in districts that were drawn last year by the state legislature. In the racially diverse city of Charlotte, three of the eight districts are more than 70 percent white.
November 8, 2019 -
Mildred Russell, an 89-year-old African-American woman, wasn't allowed to vote in a special election held earlier this year in Webster County, Georgia. It ended in a tie that her vote would have broken — so officials had to do the election over again this week.
November 6, 2019 -
In Texas, which has long debated changes to its system of partisan judicial elections, Republican leaders began pushing an appointment system just a few months after last year's Democratic sweep in Houston's judicial elections. One proposed bill would put an end to elected judges in urban counties.
October 22, 2019 -
After numerous colleges and universities were unable to meet the state's onerous requirements for allowing their student IDs to be used for voting, lawmakers tweaked the rules — and schools now face looming deadlines to reapply.
September 13, 2019 -
As the nation prepares for the 2020 election season, voting rights advocates testified before a House Judiciary subcommittee this week about the damaging effects of the Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act and how to improve protections for voters of color.
August 29, 2019 -
They are turning to the courts to challenge a controversial new state law that imposes civil penalties on groups and individuals who submit incomplete voter registration forms. The law was passed after a successful effort to register more young people and African Americans for the 2018 midterm election.
August 27, 2019 -
The latest gerrymandering lawsuit in North Carolina claims that when legislators changed judicial elections districts in Charlotte last year, they packed black voters into a few districts and violated a constitutional mandate for a "unified" state court system.