This week marked the opening of the trial in the ACLU of Pennsylvania’s challenge to the state’s restrictive voter ID law. The trial began with testimony from Ms. Viviette Applewhite, a feisty 93-year-old African-American great-great-grandmother who uses a wheelchair. Ms. Applewhite, who once marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., has voted in almost every election for the past 50 years and cast her first vote for president for FDR. Despite her age and limited physical mobility, Ms. Applewhite traveled two hours from Harrisburg to Philadelphia to testify as to how she may not be able to vote in this year’s presidential election because she does not have has not been able to obtain an acceptable ID under the state’s new law.
As a former South Carolina State Election Commissioner, I hope that the U.S. District Court will see the new South Carolina voter ID law for what it is and block its implementation.
Hans von Spakovsky, in his recent article in the National Review, “Strike Down Section 5,” gets it wrong when he says the Supreme Court should hold Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional in the case now pending before it, Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder. The South, as a direct result of the Voting Rights Act, has changed, but that does not mean we no longer need Section 5, which requires nine states and parts of seven others with the worst and continuing histories of discrimination in voting to preclear their proposed changes in voting and show that they do not have a discriminatory purpose or effect.
By Laura W. Murphy, Director, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:44am
Watching President Obama take the Oath of Office four years ago was a historic moment I will never forget. I remember meeting him when he was an Illinois state senator...
Tomorrow, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold an important hearing entitled, The State of the Right to Vote After the 2012 Election. The timing is ripe for the committee to consider the state of our most fundamental right as citizens. Just six weeks ago, Americans went to the polls in large numbers to elect a president in spite of massive hurdles that interfered with their most fundamental right.
Do you know what you need in order to vote this year? How about your grandmother? Or your neighbor?
With a pivotal election less than two months away, we’re launching “Let Me Vote,” a nationwide voting rights campaign to make sure all Americans have the information they need in order to vote.
In a time when dozens of states are trying to make it harder to vote, we need to ensure that everyone—especially students, the elderly and communities of color—know their rights. We all need to fight back against voter restrictions, but in the meantime, we can beat these new barriers by getting ready to vote now.
Following a wave of voter suppression laws over the last few years, Texas passed a restrictive voter identification law, which unfairly burdened communities of color all across the state. The new law was rejected as discriminatory under the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In Arizona, Herta Weber, a U.S. Army and Navy veteran had her voter registration denied because of new burdensome state requirements for documentary proof of citizenship, despite the fact that she could easily register under the requirements of the federal National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) (the federal "motor voter" law).
During the signing ceremony of the Voting Rights Act, President Lyndon B. Johnson characterized the law as "one of the most monumental laws in the entire history of American freedom." Since that day, this landmark civil rights law has steadily and surely defeated and deterred countless discriminatory and varied barriers to the ballot.
