News Clips

• August 9, 2010  |  New York Times A Welfare Check and a Voting Card Increased voter registration in Ohio and Missouri is a result of Lawyers’ Committee Litigation.
• July 1, 2010 Lawyers’ Committee Settles NVRA Suit Against New Mexico Motor Vehicle Agency The Lawyers' Committee settled its lawsuit against New Mexico for its failure to offer voter registration at the state's motor vehicle offices in violation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.
• June 16, 2010 Competing Redistricting Amendments In Florida Florida voters face competing redistricting amendments this year.
• June 15, 2010 New York Senate Passes Anti-Deceptive Practices Bill On June 15, 2010 the New York State Senate passed S2554B, “The Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act,” by a vote of 33-28. The Lawyers’ Committee’s New York Election Protection leadership played an important role in the bill’s passage, working with the Senate on the legislation, testifying in front of the committee last year, and sending a letter of support on the eve of the vote.
• June 4, 2010 Lawyers' Committee Legal Director Addresses Electoral and Campaign Finance Reform During Recent Panel Discussion, "How Broken is Our Democracy? And How Should We Fix It?" Lawyers' Committee Legal Director Jon Greenbaum joined other leading experts and advocates during a June 1st conference co-sponsored by Demos, AmericaSpeaks, Everyday Democracy, the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School and the Brookings Institution to discuss electoral and campaign finance reform.
• May 24, 2010 South Carolina House Passes Voter ID Bill On May 5, 2010, despite strenuous objections of Democratic members, Republican Representatives of South Carolina’s General Assembly pushed a bill through the House that would require voters to present a photo-ID prior to voting.
• May 3, 2010 Lawyer's Committee Letter of Opposition to Missouri's HJR 64 and HB 1966 On May 3, 2010, the Lawyers' Committee sent a letter of opposition to the Missouri State Senate regarding House Joint Resolution 64 and House Bill 1966. The opposition letter argued that both peices of legislation would create an "unprecedented regime of disenfranchisement that falls disproportionately on seniors, minority voters, low income voters, students and young voters, and voters with disabilities."
• April 28, 2010 Lawyers' Committee Comment Letter to DOJ On April 27, 2010, the Lawyers’ Committee sent a comment letter to the U.S. Justice Department objecting to changes the State of South Carolina is seeking to impose on the Fairfield County, South Carolina school district. The district is governed by a seven-member elected board, of whom six are African-American; however, under legislation enacted by the state two additional members would be appointed by the all-white local legislative delegation and the board’s budgetary authority would be transferred to a finance committee also appointed by the delegation. The changes are being reviewed by the Justice Department pursuant to its preclearance authority under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
• April 14, 2010 Lawyers' Committee Challenges Voter Eligibility Standards in Virginia On April 13, 2010, the Voting Rights Project sent a letter to Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli II concerning recent reports that the Governor of Virginia is imposing new requirements for nonviolent ex-felons who seek restoration of their civil rights, including their voting rights. The letter reminded Attorney General Cuccinelli that changes to voter eligibility standards in Virginia must receive preclearance under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act before they can lawfully be implemented.
• December 15, 2009 Settlement Agreement Reached in Harkless v. Brunner The Lawyers' Committee and its co-counsel reached a settlement agreement on November 25 in a major lawsuit, Harkless v. Brunner, brought under Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act against the Ohio Secretary of State and the Director of the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services ("DJFS"). The plaintiffs in the case were Lorain resident Carrie Harkless, Cleveland resident Tameca Mardis, and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).
• December 11, 2009 Moving Voter Registration Toward a Digital Democracy Yesterday, the Lawyers' Committee submitted a response to an open public notice from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) titled "Moving Toward a Digital Democracy." Based on our experience as the leader of the Election Protection coalition, the largest non-partisan voter protection effort in the country, the Lawyers' Committee focused on the pressing need to upgrade and modernize the process of voter registration nationwide.
• November 19, 2009 Ohio House Passes Election Reform Bill In an article today, The Columbus Dispatch reports on the Ohio House passing a bill that would change ”virtually all aspects of the voting process.”
• September 30, 2009  |  National Law Journal & Legal Times Civil Rights Groups Seek International Help on Felony Voting Lawyers' Committee's Marcia Johnson-Blanco discusses needed attention to the issue of felony disenfranchisement and to put a human rights framework on the issue.
• September 17, 2009 Indiana Court of Appeals Strikes Down Burdensome Voter Identification Law The Court of Appeals of Indiana unanimously decided in League of Women Voters v. Rokita that Indiana's government-issued photo identification requirement for most in-person voters violates the Indiana Constitution's Equal Privileges and Immunities Clause.
• September 9, 2009 Lawyers' Committee Partners with ACLU and Sentencing Project to File Felony Disenfranchisement Petition
• September 8, 2009 Lawyers’ Committee Urges Federal Court to Enjoin Implementation of Georgia’s Discriminatory Registration Program On Friday, September 4, 2009, the Lawyers' Committee (along with its coalition partners) urged a federal court in Georgia to issue an injunction preventing the state of Georgia from implementing its discriminatory citizenship verification program for voter registration.
• August 31, 2009 Voter Registration Modernization is Gaining Momentum! A bipartisan group of officials, including former Senators Thomas A. Daschle and John C. Danforth, as well as Trevor Potter, former general counsel for John McCain's presidential campaign and Mark Elias, lead lawyer for Al Franken's 2008 recount, have come together in support of modernizing our antiquated voter registration system. The Lawyers' Committee applauds the Committee to Modernize Voter Registration's support of this critical reform.
• August 29, 2009 Lawyers’ Committee Urges DOJ to Reject Georgia’s Discriminatory Registration Program On Friday, August 29, 2009, the Lawyers' Committee (along with its coalition partners) urged the Department of Justice (DOJ) to continue to block the efforts of the Georgia Secretary of State to implement a discriminatory voter registration verification program that threatens to disenfranchise numerous persons eligible to vote in Georgia.
• August 28, 2009 Lawyers’ Committee Fights for Student’s Voting Rights in Virginia The Lawyers’ Committee has been an active member of the Virginia State Board of Elections Task Force on Residency, fighting to ensure students across the Commonwealth will not be prevented from registering to vote where they go to school. During last year’s historic elections, ambiguity in Virginia’s residency requirements made it difficult for students to register to vote in several jurisdictions across the state.
• August 17, 2009 Advocating for Election Reform in Pittsburgh Voting Rights Project Campaign Manager, Eric Marshall, moderated a panel on modernizing our nation’s antiquated voter registration system at the 2009 Netroots Nation convention in Pittsburgh, PA on Saturday, August 15, 2009. In its fourth year, Netroots Nation is a national gathering of progressive leaders and activists that “inspire[s] action and serve as an incubator for ideas that challenge the status quo and ultimately affect change in the public sphere.”
• July 9, 2009 Lawyers' Committee and Partners File 2 Major Voter Registration Lawsuits Citing clear evidence that hundreds of thousands of low-income Indiana and New Mexico residents have illegally been denied the opportunity to register to vote, the Lawyers' Committee and its partners filed lawsuits on Thursday, July 9, 2008 against officials in both states for violations of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA).
• June 26, 2009 Lawyers' Committee Legal Director Quoted in Kansas City Star The Lawyers' Committee's Jon Greenbaum was quoted in the Kansas City Star today discussing the settlement reached with the state over its implementation of the National Voter Registration Act, "'The lawsuit has led to a 2,000 percent increase in the number of people registering to vote at Missouri public assistance agencies,' Greenbaum said. 'We appreciate that since they've been under court order, Missouri's Department of Social Services has been a national model in showing how to implement this law.'"
• June 25, 2009 Bipartisan Support for Voter Registration Modernization The former general counsels to the Obama and McCain presidential campaigns, Bob Bauer and Trevor Potter, published a forceful op-ed in support of modernization our nation's antiquated voter registration system today in the Washington Post.
• June 25, 2009 Settlement in Missouri is a Victory for Low-Income Voters In a victory for low-income voters, the Lawyers' Committee and its partners reached a settlement with the state of Missouri that will continue a program that has already resulted in over 100,000 new voter registrations collected at public assistance agencies in just a few months.
• June 16, 2009 Why the Voting Rights Act Matters On the eve of the Supreme Court's ruling on the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the New York Times highlighted the Lawyers' Committee's recent victory in Georgia as evidence to why the law is so vital.
• June 1, 2009 DOJ Blocks Discriminatory Georgia Voter Registration Verification Program On Friday, May 29, 2009, the Department of Justice, using the authority granted under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, blocked changes Georgia made to its voter registration verification program that would have disenfranchised countless eligible voters in a letter sent to Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker.
• May 22, 2009 Lawyers' Committee Urges DOJ to Object to Discriminatory Georgia Law On May 19, the Voting Rights Project submitted a comment letter to the U.S. Department of Justice urging the Attorney General to file an objection under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act to Georgia's program for verifying the citizenship and identities of certain voter registration applicants.
• May 4, 2009  |  National Journal A Bad Time To Cut Voting Rights Protections
• April 28, 2009 Sound the Alarm ... Civil Rights, Still At Risk With the historic election of Barack Obama as this nation's first African American president, we still are in a time where we must "sound the alarm" and heighten awareness of the ongoing struggle for racial justice and equality across the country as never before. The racial contradictions in our society are in many ways peaking instead of waning. Nowhere is this truer than in this term of when the U.S. Supreme Court is slated to hear nine civil rights cases, almost a record number.
• April 27, 2009  |  Gannett Washington Bureau (TheNewsStar.com) High Court to Tackle Voting Law
• April 25, 2009  |  American Constitution Society High Court Set To Consider Case Challenging Voting Rights Act On Wednesday, April 29, 2009, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder. This critical case is expected to decide the constitutionality of the preclearance requirement of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The Lawyers' Committee, representing a defendant-intervenor in the case, filed a lengthy brief with the Court defending the statute's constitutionality. The following is an article that appeared on the American Constitution Society's blog, by Mark Posner, senior fellow in the Voting Rights Project, that discusses the issues presented by this case.
• April 21, 2009  |  Washington Afro American Supreme Court to Weigh Voting Rights Act Challenge
• March 18, 2009  |  Los Angeles Times Conservatives invoke Obama in Voting Rights Act challenge
• March 16, 2009  |  Voice of America US Supreme Court to Rule on Important Challenges to Civil Rights Laws
• March 11, 2009 Jonah Goldman Testifies Before Senate Rules Committee Director of the Lawyers' Committee's National Campaign for Fair Elections, testified before the Senate Rules Committee about the effects of our flawed voter registration system on the 2008 election.
• September 7, 2008  |  New York Times Voter Registration by Students Raises Cloud of Consequences
• August 8, 2008  |  New York Times The Right to Vote