Congressional Digest

    New Voting Laws

May 09, 2016
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Leading Democrats in the House sent a letter to the Justice Department on April 12 requesting a review of new voting laws nationwide following reports of problems experienced during primary elections in Arizona and North Carolina. Seventeen States have new laws in place this election year with provisions that include voter ID requirements, cutbacks in early voting, and registration changes.

Senior Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee and the chairs of the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Asian Pacific American Caucus, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus signed the letter.

The Justice Department is already investigating voting issues in Maricopa County, Arizona, where, during the recent primary election, there were abnormally long lines and allegations of disproportionate impacts on low-income, minority, student, and elderly voters. The letter also noted long waits by North Carolina primary voters and large numbers of provisional ballots for citizens in that State whose voting eligibility could not be verified. The letter stated:

“Though the impact of these restrictions in several States has been widely reported in the media, we are concerned that their impact may have escaped scrutiny in other States. We, therefore, request that the Civil Rights Division review the impact of recently implemented voting restrictions on primary elections to determine whether the Department should implement additional monitoring programs for the November general election.”

In its 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the formula in Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act that required some States and jurisdictions, based on their histories of voter discrimination, to obtain Justice Department approval for any voting law changes.

The Court held that the formula conflicted with the constitutional principles of federalism and “equal sovereignty of the States” and did not meet current needs, and left it to Congress to update it. House and Senate bills to do so have so far failed to get past the committee stage.

Meanwhile, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (NY-D) has proposed legislation to create a national online voter registration system to make registration more accessible, improve accuracy, and expedite voting at the polls. About half of the States currently provide online registration; Senator Gillibrand’s measure would expand it to the rest. The Voter Registration Modernization Act (S. 1088) is pending in the Senate Rules Committee.

For more background on this topic, see the October 2013 issue of Supreme Court Debates on “Reconsidering the Voting Rights Act” and the February 2008 issue of Supreme Court Debates on “Voter ID Laws.”

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