Month: August 2012

The civil rights icon issues a call—"All of us should be up on our feet"—to protest partisan voting restrictions this election season.

-By Andrew Cohen

August 26, 2012-

And the major paused for about a minute, and he said, troopers advance. And you saw these men putting on their gas masks. They came toward us, beating us with nightsticks, bullwhips, tramping us with horses, releasing the teargas. I was hit in the head by a state trooper with a nightstick. My legs went from under me. I thought I was going to die. I thought I saw death.

… Read More

-By Andrew Harris

August 25, 2012- Ohio’s Republican secretary of state was sued by his Democratic predecessor over a directive that makes early-voting hours uniform in all 88 of the state’s counties in part by eliminating weekend balloting.

Secretary of State Jon Husted issued the order Aug. 15. Former Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, together with the advocacy group Fair Elections Ohio and a voters’ referendum committee, claimed Husted violated their constitutional rights in a complaint filed today in federal court in Columbus.

Husted’s action revived portions of a repealed Ohio law, effectively reinstating parts of the statute that curbed or eliminated weekend early voting, the plaintiffs said. They seek a declaratory judgment that the directive and other actions are unconstitutional. Husted set uniform hours for in-person absentee voting after the Ohio Democratic Party said times were being expanded mostly in Republican-leaning counties.

… Read More

… Read More

-by Ari Berman

August 20, 2012- Earlier this month I reported how Ohio Republicans were limiting early voting hours in Democratic counties, while expanding them on nights and weekends in Republican counties.

… Read More

Voter ID isn't conservatives' only strategy to thwart minority voters. Just as bad? Laws disenfranchising ex-felons

-By Erik Nielson

August 17, 2012- Earlier this week, Pennsylvania Judge Robert Simpson, a Republican, upheld Pennsylvania’s new law requiring voters to show a valid photo ID. He dismissed the plaintiff’s claim that the law will effectively disenfranchise tens of thousands of Pennsylvania voters, with a disproportionate impact on minorities, who are far less likely to have access to government identification. The law is now headed to the state Supreme Court.

… Read More