A Big Legal Victory for Voting Rights in Florida, and a Rebuke Against its Republican Governor
James Borchuck/Tampa Bay Times/ZUMA My colleague, and MoJo’s resident Big Brain on all things voting, pointed out this major legal win in Florida on Friday: A group of 20 people with felony convictions was suing the state over a new law requiring them to repay any fines or fees they owed before they could register…
GOP Congressman Says DC Statehood Would Make It Harder for His Staff to Park
Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty When Congress held a hearing Thursday on the possibility of statehood for Washington, DC, Republicans came prepared with all the usual arguments for why district residents shouldn’t be represented in the US House and Senate. DC statehood might violate the Constitution, they claimed. DC wouldn’t be able to support itself financially, they worried.…
Civil Rights Groups Challenge Trump’s “Racially Discriminatory Scheme” to Skew Redistricting
President Donald Trump, accompanied by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, speaks about the 2020 census in the Rose Garden of the White House, Thursday, July 11, 2019. Alex Brandon/AP In July, the Trump administration abandoned its push to add a controversial question about US citizenship to the 2020 census after the Supreme Court blocked the move.…
Report: More than 1600 Polling Places Have Closed Since the Supreme Court Gutted the Voting Rights Act
Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty In 2013, the Supreme Court gutted a core provision of the Voting Rights Act: The requirement for certain states with a history of voter discrimination to “preclear” changes in their election rules with the federal government. For decades, the 1965 law helped secure the right to vote for hundreds of thousands…
North Carolina Judges Toss Out Gerrymandered Maps as Unconstitutional
Paul C. Ridgeway makes comments as a three-judge panel of the Wake County Superior Court presides over the trial of Common Cause, et al v. Lewis.Gerry Broome / AP On Tuesday, a panel of three judges ruled that legislative districts drawn by Republican lawmakers for state legislative races “do not permit voters to freely choose…
How to Stop Russia From Attacking and Influencing the 2020 Election
The Russians are coming. That’s the message about the 2020 election from FBI Director Chris Wray (who this summer said Moscow is determined to interfere in the next presidential contest) and from former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats (who warned that Vladimir Putin’s regime and other foreign actors will concoct new methods for messing…