Analysis & Commentary
Voting Rights & Elections
Modernize Florida’s Voting System
In 2012, you can use your iPhone to deposit a check or track your fantasy team, but registering to vote is still stuck in the 19th century. Once again, Florida is in the middle of the war on voting, passing an election law last year that will make it even harder for tens of thousands of citizens to vote.
Authored by: Jonathan Brater
– 01/26/12
Make Sure Every Vote Counts
In November 2010, millions of New Yorkers voted on electronic, optical-scan voting machines for the first time. Citizens went to their polling places on Election Day, filled out paper ballots and fed them into brand-new machines. But tens of thousands of them did not count.
Authored by: Sundeep Iyer and Hazel Dukes
– 01/19/12
Reject Voter ID
Seniors, minorities, young people and the poor could lose their right to vote.
Authored by: Keesha Gaskins
– 01/11/12
Supreme Court Preview: Future of the Voting Rights Act
In advance of the Supreme Court's latest session, the Brennan Center calls attention to two important cases that could impact the future of the Voting Rights Act.
Authored by: Sidney S. Rosdeitcher and William J. Taylor, Jr.
– 01/05/12
Minimizing Special-Interest Power by Maximizing Participation
Fighting back against restrictive voting-rights laws and empowering small donors can help reclaim elections.
Authored by: Michael Waldman
– 01/04/12
Avoiding the Florida Nightmare in 2012
On Election Day 2000, tens of thousands of Floridians accidentally marked their ballots in ways that could not be read by the state’s voting machines. Their votes didn’t count. The identity of our next president hung in the balance for 36 days.
Authored by: Sundeep Iyer and Lawrence Norden
– 12/20/11
Poll Watchers Need to Respect Voters’ Rights
It has been a long time since voters were legally turned away from the polls in Texas because they were too poor to vote. Sadly, however, that hasn't stopped the King Street Patriots, a Houston-area political organization, from hosting a public discussion about whether existing laws make it too easy for poor people to participate in elections.
Authored by: Nic Riley and Tamara Marshall
– 11/28/11
Congressional Response to Wave of Voting Restrictions
As individual states have been introducing and passing new laws that restrict access to the ballot box, members of Congress are responding at the federal level. They have introduced legislation, announced Congressional hearings, drafted letters, and given passionate floor speeches to stand up for the right to vote. This page will be updated as new Congressional actions are initiated.
– 11/17/11
Letter to the Department of Justice on Texas’s Section 5 Submission
Texas's new law, which imposes a government-issued photo ID requirement for voting, will disproportionately burden minority voters and produce discriminatory effects.
– 11/16/11
Department of Justice Letter Seeking Texas Preclearance Denial
The Brennan Center for Justice, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the Texas State Conference of the NAACP submitted a joint letter to the Department of Justice, relying on extensive statistical evidence to show that Texas’ newly-passed voter ID restrictions will disproportionately harm minority voting rights in the state.
– 09/15/11