The freedom to vote has faced serious challenges in recent years. New voting restrictions, rampant disinformation, threats to voters and election officials, and even violent attempts to overturn election results have led to growing concern about the future of our democracy and election process.
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Voting Rights
Voting Rights
Voting rights attorney Hilary Harris Klein of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice on the state Supreme Court’s recent controversial decision to revisit two rulings on gerrymandering and voter ID that were handed down just last December
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They packed the courtroom early, filling so many seats that a line stretched out the door of the building in downtown Raleigh that houses the North Carolina Supreme Court. In years past, many of the onlookers had been in handcuffs, jails and prison cells. Now they wanted access to the ballot box. Those in line were told the courtroom was full shortly before oral arguments began. The overflow crowd walked down the street to First Baptist Church to watch the hearing streamed live in a basketball gym. Below the projection screen was a sign with a simple demand: “Unlock Our Vote.”
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More than 50,000 North Carolinians can vote this fall thanks to a court ruling that restored the rights of people on probation and parole. But their gains are precarious. One hot afternoon in early October, Corey Purdie helped put the finishing touches on the exterior of the 300-square-foot house at Broad and Queen streets in New Bern, North Carolina.
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Republican lawmakers have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to end state court oversight of federal elections and pro-democracy advocates are pushing back It’s a pending U.S. Supreme Court case about the control of elections, a subject most people don’t think about every day. But Moore vs. Harper has become a rallying cry for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, Common Cause NC and other voting rights groups...
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Learn more about the campaign here: https://unlockourvotenc.org/
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Allowing those on probation and parole to vote marks the largest expansion of voting rights in North Carolina since the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Daquan Peters didn’t waste any time registering to vote on Wednesday. He hadn’t been fast enough last year, during a 10-day window between court proceedings where people like him, those who were home after spending time imprisoned for a felony but still on probation or parole, were briefly re-enfranchised.
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Since the 2020 election, Iowa has enacted one new felony and two new misdemeanor offenses targeting election officials. The state’s omnibus election law, passed in 2021, criminalizes election officials who fail to perform their duties, don’t adequately maintain voter lists, or interfere with other people performing their duties in or near a polling place. The first offense carries a potential five years in prison.
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During the 2020 election, Rhonda Briggins and her sorority sisters spent days providing voters in metro Atlanta with water and snacks as they waited in long lines at polling places. The lines for early voting and on Election Day at times stretched on for hours. As the national co-chair for social action with the Delta Sigma Theta sorority for Black women, Briggins felt compelled to help, and she and her sisters unofficially adopted one DeKalb County location where many elderly Georgians cast their ballots.
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The NC Board of Elections, in a 3-2 party line vote, rejected state Republicans’ request for signature verification on absentee ballots. Republicans wanted local elections officials to be able to compare voters’ signatures on their registration cards against signatures on requests for absentee ballots and on the returned ballots.
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In Moore vs. Harper, the GOP lawmakers advance the truly frightening idea that state courts have, effectively, no authority to review the legality of decisions that state legislatures make when it comes to federal elections.Southern Coalition for Social Justice co-executive director and chief counsel for Voting Rights Allison Riggs discusses the implications of the pending case.
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The North Carolina General Assembly brought its 2022 “short session” to a close last week. Well, at least, it kinda’ sorta’ did. Unlike in decades gone by in which the legislature generally adjourned in early summer, not to return until the following year, the current leadership on Jones Street prefers to keep the state’s supposedly part-time lawmakers yoyoing back and forth to the state capital. And so it is that the adjournment resolution approved by both houses last week...
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It’s a familiar childhood scene – perhaps even from your own. A group of cool, older kids engages in some kind of rebellious action or expresses a shared opinion on an issue of perceived import and soon thereafter, a younger sibling or friend, trying hard to keep up, attempts to mimic their behavior or statements. The younger kid never gets it quite right, or often, even fully grasps the substance of the subject matter, and their behavior will likely be barely acknowledged by the older ones...
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Florida authorities arrested a Black man while he was staying in a homeless shelter and charged him with voting illegally in a case tied to Republicans’ drive to root out election fraud. But Kelvin Bolton’s arrest raises questions about the rollout of Amendment 4, passed by Florida voters in 2018 to restore voting rights to Floridians with felony convictions.
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