Democracy Wire

This Saturday marks the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when 600 peaceful marchers, attempting to walk from Selma to Montgomery to protest the denial of voting rights to African-Americans, were attacked by police with tear gas and clubs.

A huge win came from the Cornhusker State yesterday. Nebraska's unicameral legislature, in a bipartisan move, defeated a photo ID bill that's hit the floor four years in a row. Thanks to the longstanding efforts of a strong coalition - including Common Cause Nebraska - the state has quashed legislation that could have denied 112,000 Nebraskans who don't have access to the prescriptive ID from exercising their right to vote.

As many recall, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 last year in Shelby County v. Holder to gut a key provision in the Voting Rights Act that for decades required states and jurisdictions with histories of discrimination to submit their proposed voting changes to a federal body for review before implementation.

While the President’s comments make it sound as if voter ID is not that burdensome, studies have shown that voter ID laws remain a major obstacle to the ballot box for a hundreds of thousands of Americans.