voting rights

August 2, 2019 - Though an amendment added to the U.S. constitution during the height of the civil rights movement prohibits poll taxes, many states continue to effectively impose them by requiring people who've completed felony prison sentences to pay fines and fees before they can register to vote.

July 18, 2019 - A judge recently ruled that the North Carolina legislature lost its power to amend the state constitution after federal courts ruled that it was unconstitutionally gerrymandered by race. Now new evidence suggests that lawmakers misled judges to buy time to pass the amendments.

July 15, 2019 - Across the South, voting rights advocates argue that judicial elections violate the Voting Rights Act by depriving communities of color of representation on state courts. Federal courts are hearing lawsuits in Arkansas and Alabama, where the state supreme courts are all white.

July 3, 2019 - Amid the current assaults on voting rights by Republican-led statehouses in the South, some Democratic presidential candidates have traveled to Southern states to release proposals for election reforms that would create new standards for combating discriminatory practices and expand voting access nationwide.

June 28, 2019 - Despite the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to address partisan gerrymandering, North Carolina courts this summer could decide if the extreme partisan manipulation of legislative districts violates the state constitution. Files that belonged to a deceased redistricting guru could shed light on the process, but the parties to the lawsuit are arguing over access to them. 

May 22, 2019 - The Democrat-controlled N.C. Board of Elections has appointed a new executive director on a party-line vote. She'll be responsible for running two special congressional elections this year and implementing the state's new voter ID law, which is facing a lawsuit filed by voters who could be disenfranchised. 

May 10, 2019 - Earlier this year Texas officials threatened to remove from the state's voter rolls tens of thousands of people they alleged were not citizens. Warning that the state was using bad data, voting rights advocates sued and won — and now Texas must pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorneys' fees. It's not the only state to jeopardize citizens' voting rights over bogus claims of non-citizens voting.