Showing blog posts tagged with Voter ID
Poll monitors work outside polling locations on Election Day to greet voters, answer questions and report problems. This year, more poll monitors than ever are needed. Restrictive photo ID laws have challenged the right to vote, the cornerstone of democracy. Despite victories in
Pennsylvania
, where the photo ID law will not be in effect, and the restoration of early voting in
Ohio
, the battle is not over.
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More than 200 union lawyers are prepared to combat any efforts
to intimidate voters or suppress the vote
and to ensure that everyone’s right to vote is protected between now (early voting is under way in many states) and Election Day.
The members of the AFL-CIO
Lawyers Coordinating Committee
(LCC)—union lawyers in law firms and union legal departments—are “on the front lines to protect the votes of working families,” said AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker in a telephone press conference today.
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More than 450,000 new voters from union households may be going to the polls Nov. 6 thanks to an ongoing voter registration drive by the union movement, says AFL-CIO Political Director Mike Podhorzer.
We're really proud that more union members are going to be engaged. Whoever they vote for, the fact is we're increasing civic participation.
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I’ll never forget my up-close encounter with vote suppression—and it’s the reason I’m so pleased today that a judge in Pennsylvania
ordered
elections officials there not to enforce a new voter ID law. That means Pennsylvanians who can’t show a photo ID when they go to the polls can still vote a regular—not a provisional—ballot.
My encounter with vote suppression was years ago, when I was a little girl and wanted a new pair of shoes. You can’t get new shoes now, my mother told me, because she had to save the money to pay her poll tax. That’s how important the right to vote was to my mother—she knew it was a sacred right that people had fought and died for and she was not about to treat it as anything less.
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A Pennsylvania state judge this morning
issued a partial injunction of the state's voter ID law
. Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson ruled that voters will still be asked to present a valid ID, and if they don't have one, they'll be asked to present one next time but will be able to vote in the Nov. 6 election.
Voters will not be required to return within six days to show a valid identification card, as was required by the law passed earlier this year.
We’ll bring you more details later. This ruling only applies to the Nov. 6 election.
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"
Court Order Confirms Students' Right to Vote in New Hampshire
" is a cross-post from the
New Hampshire Labor News.
Voting rights groups applauded Strafford Superior Court Judge John Lewis’ order to the Secretary of State to issue new voter registration forms for this election. The new registration forms will delete a paragraph that advised all voters they would be subject to registering a car and getting a state driver's license if they registered to vote. The order also instructs the Secretary of State to post new information on his website and to inform election officials in towns and cities to immediately begin using the corrected voter registration form. This decision is based upon the recognition that individuals who are in the state for a limited period of time, such as students or persons doing military duty, have an absolute right to vote here while living in New Hampshire, but are unable to get state driver's licenses because the motor vehicle law limits residents to those who intend to stay permanently or indefinitely.
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It sounds counterintuitive to those of us who remember our history and civics lessons on American democracy, but U.S. voter registration laws—from early registration deadlines to voter ID laws—are some of the most restrictive in democratic nations and keep large portions of the eligible voting population out of the democratic process.
Victoria Bassetti, author of
Electoral Dysfunction: A Survival Manual for American Voters
(a companion book to an upcoming PBS documentary set to air in October), writes in
The Washington Post
that voters in most nations are allowed to register and cast ballots on Election Day and governments proactively seek out voters and continually update voter lists. But:
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Approximately 10 million Latino voters could be disenfranchised thanks to new voting barriers enacted by legislatures and elected leaders in more than 20 states, according to an
Advancement Project study released Monday
.
The deluge of state-level voting restrictions passed in recent years has placed higher burdens on voters, even ones that
already are registered in states like Pennsylvania
. The Advancement Project study looks at requirements to prove citizenship and strict voter ID laws and how those affect Latino voters and people of color.
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