Early in a life of service, LaFayette did the risky groundwork for the voter registration campaign in Selma, Alabama
Bernard LaFayette, the advance man who did the risky groundwork for the voter registration campaign in Selma, Alabama, that culminated in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, has died.
Bernard LaFayette III said his father died Thursday morning of a heart attack. He was 85.
Continue reading...Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Al Sharpton, Donald Trump and more react to death of the civil rights leader at the age of 84
Three Democratic former presidents led a wealth of tributes to Jesse Jackson, a “titan” of the civil rights movement and “one of America’s greatest patriots” who has died at the age of 84.
Joe Biden said history would remember Jackson as “a man of God and of the people”, calling him in a social media post : “Determined and tenacious. Unafraid of the work to redeem the soul of our Nation.”
Continue reading...Outside the supreme court, protesters invoked the legacy of civil rights giants with a key Voting Rights Act plank at stake
Wearing a T-shirt proclaiming “We won’t Black down”, Wanda Mosley had made the trip from Atlanta. “I had to be here because the Voting Rights Act is on life support,” the 55-year-old explained. “Today the court will synthesise the arguments and decide if they’re going to kill it – or allow it to live.”
Mosley was among a few hundred protesters who gathered in warm October sunshine outside the supreme court on Wednesday. Inside the building, whose facade was obscured by scaffolding, justices were weighing arguments in a case involving Louisiana electoral districts and section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Continue reading...President also wants to ban most voting by mail in push stemming from baseless claims related to 2020 election loss
Donald Trump has said he will issue an executive order to mandate identification for all US elections, a move likely to be challenged in court as unconstitutional.
“Voter I.D. Must Be Part of Every Single Vote. NO EXCEPTIONS! I Will Be Doing An Executive Order To That End!!!,” the US president said on Truth Social late on Saturday.
Continue reading...State follows Texas’s lead in Trump’s push to gain more House seats for Republicans in 2026 midterms
The Missouri governor, Mike Kehoe, has moved to help the Republican party gain an additional seat in Congress, calling a special legislative session to redraw congressional districts in his state.
Kehoe’s announcement on Friday followed a pressure campaign from Donald Trump, who has urged Republican states to reshape district boundaries to more heavily favor Republicans, boosting the party’s chances of maintaining control of the House of Representatives in 2026.
Continue reading...Trump’s plan to boost Republican House seats in the midterms through gerrymandering has provoked a reaction
The mid-decade redistricting war looming between Republicans and Democrats is exposing an idea that’s corroding American democracy – voters may not matter that much in determining who controls the US House.
After Texas Republicans unveiled a Donald Trump-fueled plan to pick up five additional US House seats last month, the California governor, Gavin Newsom, unveiled a plan on Thursday to throw out districts drawn by an independent commission and put in place new ones that would add five Democratic seats in response. Republicans are also expected to push ahead with plans to redraw maps in Ohio, Missouri, Florida and possibly Indiana, in their favor.
Continue reading...Fifth circuit, seen as primed for the Maga era, hears arguments challenging state’s newly created maps
A federal appeals court heard arguments Tuesday in a case that could further erode voting rights protecting minority voters or solidify that Louisiana’s legislative maps diluted Black voters’ power.
The fifth circuit court of appeals, which hears cases brought for appeal from Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, will weigh in on Nairne v Landry, a case in which a federal judge in Louisiana ruled the Republican-controlled legislature had violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act with its newly created maps.
Continue reading...Voters in key swing state will be able to cast provisional vote if they forget to put mail-in ballot in secrecy envelope
Pennsylvania voters will be able to cast a provisional vote if they make an error and forget to put their mail-in vote in a required secrecy envelope, the US supreme court ruled on Friday, a decision that could lead to thousands more votes being counted in a key battleground state where the presidential race is extremely tight.
The supreme court announced its decision on Friday on its emergency docket, giving no reasoning for its ruling, which is customary in emergency cases.
Continue reading...Senate approves bill extending funds until December two hours after House passes it, sending it to Biden’s desk
US Congress passed a three-month government funding package on Wednesday, sending the bill to Joe Biden’s desk and averting a shutdown that was set to begin next Tuesday.
The Senate approved the funding package just two hours after the House passed the bill on Wednesday afternoon, as lawmakers raced to return to their home districts six weeks before election day.
Continue reading...Judge dismisses election board member’s lawsuit because of an incorrect party name, but she is allowed to refile
A lawsuit arguing that county election board members in Georgia have the discretion to refuse to certify election results has been dismissed on a technicality, but the judge noted it could be refiled.
Fulton county election board member Julie Adams filed a lawsuit in May asking a judge to declare that the county election board members’ duties “are discretionary, not ministerial, in nature”. At issue is a Georgia law that says the county officials “shall” certify results after engaging in a process to make sure they are accurate.
Continue reading...A secret election by white town council blocked Newbern mayor Patrick Braxton from serving for four years: ‘we can put this behind us’
Patrick Braxton, the first Black mayor of an Alabama town that has not held elections in several decades, has spent the last four years fighting to be recognized. Finally, after an extensive legal battle, he and the town officials who refused to acknowledge him as mayor have reached a settlement, according to federal court documents.
Per the settlement agreement, Braxton will be officially be seated as the mayor of Newbern, Alabama, and be able to fully serve in this capacity for the first time in nearly four years, pending approval by by Judge Kristi K. DuBose of the Southern District of Alabama.
Continue reading...Rejection by three-judge panel fuels new uncertainty about district boundaries as state prepares for congressional elections
A new congressional map giving Louisiana a second majority-Black House district was rejected on Tuesday by a panel of three federal judges, fueling new uncertainty about district boundaries as the state prepares for fall congressional elections.
The 2-1 ruling forbids the use of a map drawn up in January by the legislature after a different federal judge blocked a map from 2022. The earlier map maintained a single Black-majority district and five mostly white districts, in a state with a population that is about one-third Black.
Continue reading...Planned bill to ban already illegal practice is latest Republican step to spread falsehoods about immigration and voter fraud
Donald Trump and the House speaker, Mike Johnson, plan to push for a bill to ban non-citizens from voting, the latest step by Republicans to falsely claim migrants are coming to the country and casting ballots.
Voting when a person is not eligible – for instance if they lack US citizenship – is already illegal under federal law. It is unclear what the bill Johnson and the former president will discuss in their Friday press conference at Mar-a-Lago will do to alter that. But it is one more way for the former president to focus on election security and to ding the Biden administration over the situation at the US-Mexico border, a key issue for likely Republican voters this November.
Continue reading...Appeals court rules Mason, now 49, did not know she was ineligible when she voted in 2016 and throws out conviction
A Texas appeals court has thrown out a five-year prison sentence for Crystal Mason, a Texas woman who was sentenced for trying to cast a provisional ballot in the 2016 presidential election that was rejected.
Mason, now 49, attempted to vote in Fort Worth in the 2016 even though she was ineligible because she was still on supervised release – which is like probation – for a tax felony. She has always maintained she had no idea she was ineligible and only tried to cast a ballot because her mother urged her to.
Continue reading...Shasta county’s Kevin Crye fought off recall effort, but a far-right official who pushed election conspiracies lost the race for his seat
Shasta county voters returned a mixed verdict on the ultra-conservative politics the rural enclave in northern California has become known for, ousting one far-right local official and offering another a political lifeline.
County residents on 5 March resoundingly declined to re-elect Patrick Jones to the board of supervisors, the county’s governing body. Jones, a leader of the local far-right movement, had repeatedly, and baselessly, argued that county and US elections are being rigged. Jones’s opponent, Matt Plummer, won the race for the seat with nearly 60% of the vote.
Continue reading...Steve Kramer and two Texas companies spoofed president’s voice to suppress turnout in New Hampshire
A political operative and two companies that facilitated a fake robocall using AI to impersonate Joe Biden should be required to pay thousands of dollars in damages and should be barred from taking similar future actions, a group of New Hampshire voters and a civic action group said in a federal lawsuit filed on Thursday.
The suit comes weeks after Steve Kramer, a political operative, admitted that he was behind the robocall that spoofed Biden’s voice on the eve of the New Hampshire primary and urged Democrats in the state not to vote. Kramer was working for Biden’s challenger Dean Phillips, but Phillips’s campaign said he had nothing to do with the call and Kramer has said he did it as an act of civil disobedience to draw attention to the dangers of AI in elections. The incident may have been the first time AI was used to interfere in a US election.
Continue reading...Merrick Garland warns of efforts to disenfranchise Black voters and says court decisions have weakened the 1965 Voting Rights Act
The right to vote in the US is under attack, with sustained efforts to disfranchise Black voters, US attorney general Merrick Garland told a Selma church service commemorating the 59th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday police attack on civil rights activists.
Garland said decisions by the supreme court and lower courts since 2006 have weakened the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Continue reading...Supreme court rejects Democratic lawsuit challenging new maps drawn by Democratic governor Tony Evers
The liberal-controlled Wisconsin supreme court on Friday rejected a Democratic lawsuit that sought to throw out the battleground state’s congressional maps, marking a victory for Republicans who argued against the court taking up the case.
The decision not to hear the congressional challenge comes after the court in December ordered new legislative maps, saying the Republican-drawn ones were unconstitutional. The GOP-controlled state legislature, out of fear that the court would order maps even more unfavorable to Republicans, passed maps drawn by the Democratic governor, Tony Evers. Evers signed those into law on 19 February and urged the court to take up the congressional map challenge.
Continue reading...September decision finding Republicans discriminated against Black voters with reconfigured districts overruled on appeal
A Florida appellate court ruled on Friday that lawmakers do not have to redraw the state’s congressional map, reversing a September decision that found Republicans discriminated against Black voters when it reconfigured districts in the northern part of the state.
The ruling from the first district court of appeal is the latest development in a long-running legal battle over Black representation in the state. In 2015, the state supreme court imposed a district that stretched from Jacksonville to west of Tallahassee in order to give Black voters there a chance to elect the candidate of their choosing. From 2015 until 2022, voters in the fifth congressional district elected Al Lawson, a Black Democrat, to represent them. But in 2022, Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, went out of his way to dismantle it, chopping it up into four majority-white districts that all elected Republican candidates.
Continue reading...State assembly map may be the most gerrymandered in US, and lawsuit could end more than a decade of Republican dominance
Wisconsin’s supreme court will hear oral argument on Tuesday in a high-stakes lawsuit seeking to strike down the maps for the state’s legislature. The result could bring an end to what may be the most gerrymandered districts in the United States and upend politics in Wisconsin.
The case, Clarke v Wisconsin Elections Commission, could bring an end to more than a decade of Republican dominance in the Wisconsin legislature. In 2011, Republicans drew districts for the state legislature that were so distorted in their favor that it made it impossible for them to lose their majorities. Last year, the state supreme court implemented new maps that made as little change as possible from the old ones when lawmakers and the state’s Democratic governor reached a redistricting impasse.
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