Category Archives: Voting Rights

Elections Have Consequences, Part The Infinity

Jonathan Shurberg September 21, 2015 No Comments

The nightmare that was the 2014 election of Larry Hogan as Maryland governor continues to reverberate throughout the state. Today’s seismic activity emanates from the offices of the Montgomery County Board of Elections, which is now under the control of a three member Republican majority led by James Shalleck. The elections board in every county in the state is controlled… Read more »

Voting Rights Win

Jonathan Shurberg August 6, 2015 No Comments

And out of Texas, no less. A unanimous three judge panel of the 5th Circuit (the country’s most conservative bench) threw out Texas’ 2011 voter ID law. From the Post: A federal appeals court struck down Texas’s voter-identification law Wednesday in a victory for President Obama, whose administration took the unusual step of bringing the weight of the Justice Department to… Read more »

The Voting Rights Act At 50

Jonathan Shurberg August 5, 2015 No Comments

The New York Times may still have a Clinton problem, but the editorial board gets the Voting Rights Act perfectly. For the first 48 years of its existence, the Voting Rights Act — signed by President Lyndon Johnson 50 years ago this week — was one of the most popular and effective civil rights laws in American history. Centuries of slavery,… Read more »

Voter ID Law On Trial in NC

Jonathan Shurberg July 14, 2015 No Comments

As usual, I agree completely with my hero Charlie Pierce. I still wanna be him when I grow up. In a federal courtroom down in the newly insane state of North Carolina, there is a story that practically everyone is missing due to their concentration on important national issues like whatever bilge oozed from the Trumpian piehole in the last half-hour…. Read more »

Clinton On Voting Rights

Jonathan Shurberg June 4, 2015 No Comments

As part of her generally leftward set of policy proposals and speeches, Hillary Clinton is delivering a speech taking on an issue near and dear to my heart: voting rights and voter suppression. This is a crucial issue that, between the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County decision and a group of mostly but not exclusively southern state legislatures, presents a direct threat to… Read more »

Supreme Court Bombshell?

Jonathan Shurberg May 27, 2015 No Comments

While we wait for the Supreme Court to decide the marriage equality cases - almost assuredly in favorable fashion at this point - the Court today unexpectedly accepted an election law case from Texas that could be explosive, and not in a good way. The issue is the now familiar principle of “one person one vote.” But who exactly qualifies as a… Read more »

Hogan Vetoes Voting Rights Bill

Jonathan Shurberg May 26, 2015 No Comments

Friend of the Blog and Baltimore City Delegate Cory McCray and colleague Prince George’s County Delegate Alonzo Washington today wrote a Baltimore Sun op-ed decrying Governor Larry Hogan’s veto of House Bill 980, which would have restored voting rights to felons sooner than current law allows. I’ve been active on election law matters for almost a decade now, and I… Read more »