12-year-old Madison Kimrey of Burlington-founded NC Youth Rocks says she is "not a prop," after the North Carolina legislature passed voting restriction laws targeting young people, women, minorities, and the poor. Her speech is a powerful one, and shows that teenagers aren't as dumb as some their representatives claim.
Approximately one month before the registration cut-off for would-be voters in Virginia's November elections, 350,000 registrants in the state have had their right revoked. The sloppy voter purge comes after Virginia began sharing information with neighboring states to stop voters from casting multiple ballots, but is ripe with erroneous cancellations and possibilities for corruption.
Potential 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton kicked off a series of speeches on Monday with a call to combat what she called an "assault on voting rights." She assailed a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down a significant part of the Voting Rights Act and discussing what she sees as "deep flaws in our electoral system" as it relates to racial discrimination at the polls.
While many states work vehemently to take advantage of the recently overturned Voter Rights Act — we see you North Carolina — the state of Illinois has moved in the opposite direction. A new online voter registration bill was passed over the weekend and will be implemented by 2014.
Civil rights attorneys from the U.S. Justice Department contend a federal judge wrongly denied a request to establish satellite election offices for American Indians on three Montana reservations.
Polling places would be open to voters seven days a week - between 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and noon to 6 p.m. on Sunday. And in each municipality, there would be at least one public location for in-person early voting.
The most potent weapon in fighting discrimination at the ballot box was before the Supreme Court on Wednesday in a case that weighs the nation's enormous progress in civil rights against the need to continue to protect minority voters.
The justices were hearing arguments in a challenge to the part of the Voting Rights Act that forces places with a history of discrimination, mainly in the Deep South, to get approval before they make any change in the way elections are held.
If Republicans stop a wage hike at the federal level, they may be welcoming a barrage of minimum wage ballot initiatives that not only would allow states to forge ahead on their own, but also would increase progressive voter turnout.
In the wake of the defeat of the Voter Restriction Amendment, Minnesota Majority's Dan McGrath has been doing some soul-searching. Yesterday, he posted a lengthy apology at True North to share some of his conclusions:
