Democracy Wire

In the past week, as the Trump administration has sought an array of personal information about voters from state government databases, a bipartisan and nationwide assortment of state officials has undertaken a welcome and very constitutional defense of states’ rights to resist federal overreach.

Advancing voting rights, once a bipartisan objective, has fallen victim to intense partisan gridlock following the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, a ruling that effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA).

Texas lawmakers have ramped up efforts to deprive millions of Texans of the right to vote since the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder gutted key portions of the federal Voting Rights Act (VRA), the Texas Civil Rights Project charges in a new report.

Virginians are heading to the polls today to nominate candidates for governor in a contest that is likely to be seen nationally as a referendum on President Trump’s leadership

President Trump’s establishment of the Presidential Commission on Voter Integrity is “a futile attempt to justify… groundless claims that millions of people voted illegally, and a pretext for future suppression,” Sen. Chris Coons, D-DE, told a Washington forum on Wednesday.

Greater access to voting in North Carolina has been restored! The U.S. Supreme Court declined today to hear an appeal of a lower court ruling that a North Carolina voting law passed in 2013 is unconstitutional and discriminates against African-Americans.