From ThinkProgress:

Though Republican election officials in battleground states sought to dampen voter turn out of traditionally Democratic voters through by instituting identification requirements and limiting early voting hours, a new analysis of census data by the Associated Press shows that African Americans “voted at a higher rate than other minority groups in 2012 and by most measures surpassed the white turnout for the first time.”

…

More significantly, the battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida and Colorado would have tipped in favor of Romney, handing him the presidency if the outcome of other states remained the same.

African Americans outperformed their voter share, representing 13 percent of total votes cast in 2012
while making up 12 percent of the population — despite facing great obstacles to exercising the franchise.
A poll conducted by Hart Research poll immediately after the election reported that 22 percent of African-Americans waited 30 minutes or more to vote, compared to just 9 percent of white voters. A more thorough analysis from Massachusetts Institute of Technology confirmed that black and hispanic voters waited nearly twice as long to vote as whites. In Florida, home to the longest lines, at least 201,000 people may have been deterred from voting by the long waits.

Black youth was also far more likely to be asked to show ID, a study by professors at the University of Chicago and Washington University in St. Louis found, and many did not even try to vote because they lacked the required identification.

Obama forms commission on long lines to vote

(CNN) – Taking steps to make good on a pledge from his State of the Union Address, President Obama signed an executive order Thursday that establishes a bipartisan panel to address long lines at polling stations and other voter irregularities…
The panel only has the power to make recommendations. State and local authorities are tasked with administering elections and ultimately have the final say on resource allocations. Moreover, only Congress has the power to create national standards around early voting, voter ID laws and means of registration.

New Voter Suppression Efforts Prove the Voting Rights Act Is Still Needed

(The Nation) By my count, 235 new voting restrictions have been introduced in forty-four states over the past three years.

Here’s the breakdown of where such laws have been introduced in 2013.

• Mandating a government-issued photo ID to cast a ballot: Arkansas, Connecticut, Iowa, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Washington, Wyoming

• Restricting voter registration drives: Illinois, Indiana, Montana, New Mexico, Virginia

• Banning election-day voter registration: California, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska

• Requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote: Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia

• Purging the voter rolls: Colorado, Indiana, New Mexico, Texas, Virginia

• Reducing early voting: Arizona, Indiana, South Carolina, Texas, Wisconsin

• Disenfranchising ex-felons: Virginia.

(On the plus side, thirty states have also introduced measures to make voting easier by adopting online voter registration, election-day registration, expanded early voting and the restoration of voting rights for ex-felons.)….

The continued push to restrict the right to vote reveals the extent to which conservative power remains deeply embedded in the states, thanks to the 2010 election and subsequent aggressive gerrymandering by GOP state legislatures to protect their majorities. To combat this imbalance, Howard Dean’s group Democracy For America is launching a new effort to flip state legislatures from red to blue. The group will start, fittingly, in Virginia this year, and then expand to Iowa, Michigan and Pennsylvania in 2014. DFA plans to spend $750,000 targeting five seats in the Virginia House of Delegates in 2013.

From The Oyez Project:

The Fourteenth Amendment protects every person’s right to due process of law. The Fifteenth Amendment protects citizens from having their right to vote abridged or denied due to “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” The Tenth Amendment reserves all rights not expressly granted to the federal government to the individual states. Article Four of the Constitution guarantees the right of self-government for each state.

The Civil Rights Act of 1965 was enacted as a response to the nearly century-long history of voting discrimination. Section 5 prohibits eligible districts from enacting changes to their election laws and procedures without gaining official authorization. Section 4(b) defines the eligible districts as ones that had a voting test in place as of November 1, 1964 and less than 50% turnout for the 1964 presidential election. Such districts must prove to the Attorney General or a three-judge panel of a Washington, D.C. district court that the change “neither has the purpose nor will have the effect” of negatively impacting any individual’s right to vote based on race or minority status. Section 5 was originally enacted for five years, but has been continually renewed since that time.

Shelby County, Alabama, filed suit in district court and sought both a declaratory judgment that Section 5 and Section 4(b) are unconstitutional and a permanent injunction against their enforcement. The district court upheld the constitutionality of the Sections and granted summary judgment for the Attorney General. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that Congress did not exceed its powers by reauthorizing Section 5 and that Section 4(b) is still relevant to the issue of voting discrimination.

Question
Does the renewal of Section 5 of the Voter Rights Act under the constraints of Section 4(b) exceed Congress’ authority under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and therefore violate the Tenth Amendment and Article Four of the Constitution?

ORAL ARGUMENT OF BERT W. REIN ON BEHALF OF THE PETITIONER

Chief Justice John G. Roberts: We’ll hear argument first this morning in Case 12-96, Shelby County v. Holder.

Mr. Rein?

Bert W Rein: Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court:

Almost 4 years ago, eight Justices of the Court agreed the 2005 25-year extension of Voting Rights Act Section 5′s preclearance obligation, uniquely applicable to jurisdictions reached by Section 4(b)’s antiquated coverage formula, raised a serious constitutional question.

Those Justices recognized that the record before the Congress in 2005 made it unmistakable that the South had changed.

They questioned whether current remedial needs justified the extraordinary federalism and cost burdens of preclearance.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor: May I ask you a question?

Assuming I accept your premise, and there’s some question about that, that some portions of the South have changed, your county pretty much hasn’t.

Bert W Rein: Well, I–

Justice Sonia Sotomayor: In — in the period we’re talking about, it has many more discriminating — 240 discriminatory voting laws that were blocked by Section 5 objections.

There were numerous remedied by Section 2 litigation.

You may be the wrong party bringing this.

(more…)

From ThinkProgress:

A bill introduced by Montana state Rep. Steve Lavin would give corporations the right to vote in municipal elections:

Provision for vote by corporate property owner.

(1) Subject to subsection (2), if a firm, partnership, company, or corporation owns real property within the municipality, the president, vice president, secretary, or other designee of the entity is eligible to vote in a municipal election as provided in [section 1].

(2) The individual who is designated to vote by the entity is subject to the provisions of [section 1] and shall also provide to the election administrator documentation of the entity’s registration with the secretary of state under 35-1-217 and proof of the individual’s designation to vote on behalf of the entity.

The idea that “corporations are people, my friend” as Mitt Romney put it, is sadly common among conservative lawmakers. Most significantly of all, the five conservative justices voted in Citizens United v. FEC to permit corporations to spend unlimited money to influence elections. Actually giving corporations the right to vote, however, is quite a step beyond what even this Supreme Court has embraced.

From NYT

Jerome Gray, a 74-year-old black man, has voted in every election since 1974 in this verdant little outpost of some 4,000 people halfway between Mobile and Montgomery. Casting a ballot, he said, is a way to honor the legacy of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a civil rights landmark born from a bloody confrontation 70 miles north of here, in Selma.

The franchise remains fragile in Evergreen, Mr. Gray said. Last summer, he was kicked off the voting rolls by a clerk who had improperly culled the list based on utility records.

A three-judge federal court in Mobile barred the city from using the new voting list, invoking Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires many state and local governments, mostly in the South, to obtain permission from the Justice Department or from a federal court in Washington before making changes that affect voting.

That provision is also at the heart of one of the marquee cases of the Supreme Court’s term, Shelby County v. Holder, No. 12-96, which will be argued on Feb. 27. It was brought by Shelby County, near Birmingham, and it contends that the provision has outlived its purpose of protecting minority voters in an era when a black man has been re-elected to the presidency.

…

The court in Mobile this month said the case before it, concerning Evergreen, was simple: because the city had not obtained preclearance from federal authorities, it could not revise its voting list using utility records. Nor could it use a municipal redistricting plan enacted by the City Council that had concentrated black voters, who are in the majority, into just two of the five districts, limiting black voting power.

It is not clear when the municipal election, originally scheduled for last August, will be held.

From ThinkProgress:

Virginia Republicans took the first step to move a GOP plan to rig the Electoral College forward in that state. Similar plans are under consideration in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

The Republican election rigging plan targets blue states that President Obama won in 2008 and 2012, and changes the way they allocate electoral votes to give many of these votes away for free to the Republican candidate for president. Under the Republican Plan, most electoral votes will be allocated to the winner of individual Congressional districts, rather than to the winner of the state as a whole. Because the Republican Plan would be implemented in states that are heavily gerrymandered to favor Republicans, the resulting maps would all but guarantee that the Republican would win a majority of each state’s electoral votes, even if the Democratic candidate wins the state as a whole.

The Center for American Progress Action Fund released a white paper detailing how this Republican election-rigging plan works — including this rather striking visual demonstration of just how effectively Republicans gerrymandered six states that are likely targets of their plan:

(more…)

From CampusProgress:

It’s been widely reported that young voters (18-29) made the difference in re-electing President Obama, but Pew released a new report showing that young voters played a bigger role than expected.

While Obama’s national support among young voters was slightly down from 2008 when they supported him by 2 to 1 margin, a closer look reveals that his 2012 victory was even more dependent on the Millennial vote. The reason? In 2012, Obama narrowly lost voters 30 and older (a group he won in 2008) to Romney, 48-50. With that shift, he needed a boost from young voters much more than he did in 2008, and they came through for him, especially in the critical swing states where the race was closest: Ohio, Virginia, Florida, and Pennsylvania.

In each of those four states Obama lost among voters over 30 but won 60 percent or greater support from young voters.

Additionally, the overall, youth share of the electorate was up from 18 percent in 2008 to 19 percent in 2012. The increase is noteworthy not only because all signs leading up to the election pointed to a smaller showing from young voters than in 2008, but also because the total number of young people eligible to vote is up substantially. About 16 million young people turned 18 in the last four years, and as Millennials continue to come of age, their political power will only increase.

A big shift happened in the final weeks before the election (just as in 2008), when interest surged among young voters, who once more came out in force to support Obama.

However, the president’s support among young voters was not absolute. Indeed, the unprecedented level of diversity among Millennials was a key factor in his carrying the demographic overall. Obama’s support was highest among African-American and Latino voters generally and so the fact that so many young voters are among these groups was critical to the president’s success with Millennials.

…

The key issues that Pew identifies as having strong support from young people include:

• 59 percent believe the government should do more.
• 53 percent support expanding or maintaining Obamacare.
• 68 percent believe undocumented immigrants should be given a chance to achieve legal status.
• 64 percent believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
• 66 percent believe their state should legalize marriage equality.
• 61 percent believe the U.S. economic system favors the wealthy.