Posts tagged voting rights
Holding Politicians Accountable
John Lewis's Long Fight for Voting Rights | The Nation
A must-read on congressman and civil rights hero John Lewis and his life-long fight for voting rights:
Forty-eight years after Bloody Sunday, Lewis is once again in the fight of his life, with conservative officeholders resurrecting voter suppression methods not seen since the 1960s and Supreme Court justices asserting that the federal efforts to combat historic discrimination in voting—reforms that Lewis nearly died to win—are no longer needed.”
Today’s the 20th anniversary of the National Voter Registration Act. Read this new report from Demos on how it’s worked and the “next era of voter registration.”
Here’s a plan we can get behind:
Convinced that the right to vote for all citizens isn’t fully protected under law, U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Nashville, is planning a long-shot proposal to add a 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
“What it would do is grant for the first time in American history a constitutional right to vote,” Cooper said Wednesday after announcing the proposal at a Nashville Bar Association luncheon during a strikingly personal speech that evoked race, discrimination and equality.
Oops: Conservative group (badly) photoshops out minorities in mailer opposing pro-voting legislation.
Uhh.
While this country has indeed changed, and real progress has been made, we are not yet at the point where the most vital part of the Voting Rights Act can be described as unnecessary or a product of a flawed political process.
The Supreme Court will begin oral arguments Wednesday on a case challenging Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Congressman John Lewis, a civil rights hero, knows why we still need it. We stand today with Lewis and all supporters of efforts to ensure the voices of regular people are heard - at the ballot box and in Washington, DC.
The right to vote is the most powerful nonviolent tool we have in a democracy. I risked my life defending that right. Some died in the struggle. If we are ever to actualize the true meaning of equality, effective measures such as the Voting Rights Act are still a necessary requirement of democracy.
Tweet of the day from League of Women Voters:
Liz Lemon said it best - Happy League of Women Voters Day! Today we celebrate 93 yrs of #votingrights: on.fb.me/12OgONv #fem2 #suffrage
— LWV of the US (@LWV) February 14, 2013
A big Liz Lemon high five to you, League of Women Voters:
The President should call for an “all of the above” approach to making sure our democracy is truly of, by, and for the people. That means a small-donor driven campaign system like the Fair Elections Now Act or the Grassroots Democracy Act and other policies to address the inequities and the gaping loopholes in our campaign finance law.
BillMoyers.com asked activists, academics, and others to write what they’d like to hear in President Obama’s State of the Union Address. Here’s what the Brennan Center wrote on voting rights.
Excerpt: “Our democracy is strongest when its citizens are empowered to have a voice in what kind of country they live in and how it is governed. That empowerment starts with the vote. No matter how we differ in terms of race, gender, wealth or any of the other classifications that divide us, on Election Day we are all equal.”
