The U.S. Department of Justice filed suit yesterday to block North Carolina’s new voter suppression law that would disenfranchise more than 300,000 voters, mostly African American, young people and seniors. In a press conference, Attorney General Eric Holder said the law passed by the Republican-dominated legislature and signed by Gov. Pat McCrory (R) in August was a deliberate attempt to exclude voters of color. 

The years-long assault on workers’ and voting rights at state and national levels by corporate special interests and their political allies means, says a resolution on political action approved this afternoon by delegates to the AFL-CIO 2013 Convention:

It is crucial that our political action maximize the potential for workers to organize and bargain collectively.

The North Carolina legislature has moved to the extreme right in the 2013 session, passing a series of laws that assault the rights of the state's residents. The session comes to an end this week, but the damage from the laws that the Republican-led body has passed, and the governor is likely to sign, will be around for many years to come.

While thousands of North Carolina residents rally in opposition, the state legislature continues to push an extremist agenda that will harm the Tar Heel State's working families. The latest outrage is H.B. 74, which is targeted directly at the rights of not only workers, but local governments. A special section of the bill contains a giveaway to large agricultural manufacturers that would provide them a shield against farm workers organizing and bargaining for better rights. A separate bill, that has been a key target of "Moral Monday" protests, would make it harder for North Carolina residents to vote, creating the most restrictive voter suppression law in the country.

Apparently unwilling to face up to the North Carolina voters who are taking them to task each week for the extremist tea party/corporate agenda they are enacting, North Carolina legislators yesterday moved their normal Monday evening sessions back several hours to avoid the 12th Moral Monday protest at the state Capitol in Raleigh.

But once again, nearly 2,000 civil rights, union, student and other working family activists rallied yesterday evening to spotlight the legislature’s and Gov. Pat McCrory’s radical  actions, with a special emphasis on the continuing rollback of voting rights in North Carolina.   

Following the U.S. Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling in the Shelby County v. Holder case striking down a portion of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), several states immediately took steps to increase voter suppression efforts. The court ruled unconstitutional the formula used to determine which states and locales needed to get preclearance from the Department of Justice before making changes in voting process. In recent years, Republicans have ramped up efforts to limit the right to vote, particularly through the use of voter identification laws that require eligible voters to purchase state-issued IDs before they can cast their ballots.

A new voter ID law threatened to disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters who are mostly people of color in South Carolina last year. Florida officials tried to curtail early voting that could have kept African Americans and others from the polls. Texas went for a twofer in voter suppression with a restrictive voter ID bill and a redistricting plan that put the voting rights of millions of African Americans and Latinos at risk.

Thanks to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the federal government was able to step in and preserve the people’s right to vote. But now the same forces behind the nationwide voter suppression effort are looking to the U.S. Supreme Court to repeal Section 5 and arguments begin Wednesday.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to lift 30-year restrictions on a Republican National Committee (RNC) program that intimidates voters in communities of color. The Supreme Court did not comment on this decision. 

The restriction came about after the Democratic National Committee (DNC) sued the RNC for enlisting off-duty sheriffs and police officers to patrol polling places in minority precincts in New Jersey during a 1981 gubernatorial election. The next year, the RNC agreed not to carry out some programs it claimed were designed to combat voter fraud and to have the other reviewed by a federal court.

While government in Washington, D.C., remains divided and marked by long-term gridlock, governments in the states are much less divided. Of the 50 states, 37 now feature state governments where the governor and majorities in both legislative houses are controlled by one party—24 of those are controlled by Republicans. Extreme, anti-working family Republicans have repeatedly assaulted the rights of people in recent years and, by all accounts, the trend looks to expand in 2013. Working families are mobilized and fought back in 2012 and will continue to fight in 2013.  The response to the "right to work" for less push in Michigan was so strong, that governors in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin have since declared that they won't push for right to work in their states.

The United States should adopt a universal and automatic voter registration system to boost participation and ensure all citizens have the opportunity to participate in the democratic process, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said this morning.

Speaking to the Funders' Committee for Civic Participation (FCCP), Trumka said a strong and growing grassroots democracy movement needs to come together to “push back against the next wave of state-level attacks on the right to vote.”