The Supreme Court ruled on two major cases regarding gerrymandering on Monday. The decisions, a victory for Republican lawmakers in Texas and North Carolina, allow for the majority of the states’ voting districts to remain in their current design ahead of the 2018 elections.
In a 5-4 decision last week, the Supreme Court upheld an Ohio law that removes voters from voter rolls after four years of inactivity. This reversed the 6th Circuit Appeals Court’s decision finding that the Ohio policy violated the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, a law that bans removing voters from voter rolls for failing to vote. The decision fell along ideological lines.
This past weekend, thousands of feminist activists once again took the streets of cities and towns across the country for the Women’s Marches to protest a number of the policies and positions of the Trump administration and Republican controlled Congress including the dismantling of Title IX, the rollback of birth control coverage, the failure to protect Dreamers, and more.
On Monday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the state’s Republican drawn congressional districts were unconstitutional and ordered they be redrawn in the next several weeks.
Today, September 26, is National Voter Registration Day. First celebrated in 2012, National Voter Registration Day serves to raise awareness about voter registration deadlines so that all eligible voters are able to participate in upcoming elections.
August 26 is Women’s Equality Day, the 97th anniversary celebrating the day when the 19th Amendment went into effect mandating that the vote “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
United States District Judge Nelva Gonzalez Ramos handed down a decision to strike down Texas’s revised voter ID law (Senate Bill 5) on the basis that it continues to discriminate against African American and Latino voters. Judge Gonzalez Ramos issued a 27 page decision on the 23rd of August stating that the voter ID law violates the Voting Rights Act and is unconstitutional.
The term “gerrymandering” refers to the redrawing of legislative districts in order to achieve a balance of voters that will elect a specific kind of candidate.
The 2017 bill, SB 1933, would automatically register eligible individuals who have been entered into any number of state databases, such as the DMV, unless they opt out.
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear North Carolina’s appeal to reinstate their restrictive 2013 voting laws that had previously been struck down by a federal appeals court.
Voting rights protectors including the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP filed a lawsuit this week in federal court alleging that three North Carolina counties—Moore, Beaufort and Cumberland—illegally purged thousands of voters from the registration rolls, a disproportionate number of whom are African American.
Yesterday the Supreme Court deadlocked over North Carolina’s appeal to revive parts of the state’s 2013 voting laws that were recently struck down by a federal appeals court.
In the wake of July’s federal appeals court ruling overturning the majority of North Carolina’s 2013 election laws, the state’s 100 local election boards, all comprised of one Democrat and two Republicans, have had to file their own respective election rules with the state, and critics are calling them equally as egregious as the original laws.
On Sunday, for the first time in Saudi Arabia’s modern history, more than 900 women have registered to run for the municipal elections.
Congresswoman Terri Sewell is calling the closure of DMVs in mostly poor, African-American regions of Alabama- effectively cutting off access to obtaining voter ID- “unacceptable.”
Women in Saudi Arabia registered to vote over the weekend, preparing to participate for the first time in local elections this December.
North Carolina will begin state-wide early voting on Thursday, and unlike the 2012 presidential election, many students across the state will have no polling place on-campus, making it more difficult for students to exercise their right to vote.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued a blistering dissent after a ruling by the US Supreme Court this weekend threatened to disqualify more than half a million Texas voters from early voting.
With Ohio remaining a key presidential swing state, the voting restrictions could have national impacts if they remain in place.
Around 80,000 to 100,000 people from 32 states marched in Raleigh, North Carolina on Saturday to protest the state’s GOP-led legislature’s extremist attacks on human and voting rights and vital public assistance programs.
