minority voting

Florida Senate Bill 90: Usual or Unusual Beast of Burden?

Election Law Society · October 22, 2021 ·

On May 6, 2021, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida signed Senate Bill 90 into law. While the Governor and his Republican colleagues in the Legislature heralded SB 90 for its election integrity and transparency measures, critics called foul, or rather “voter suppression.” SB 90 is Florida’s contribution to a flurry of state-led reforms sparked by the national discourse on the validity of the 2020 election. As a result of SB 90, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida now has a substantial election law docket. Petitioners assert a variety of claims (including ADA, Equal Protection, and Fifteenth Amendment claims), with claims regarding Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act featuring prominently.

A New Color Under the Voting Rights Act?: Part Two

Election Law Society · February 11, 2019 ·

This is part two. Part I can be viewed here.

Can white minority plaintiffs successfully prove a vote dilution claim under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA)?

Although a federal district court in the Northern District of Texas recently dealt with such a claim, it stopped short of answering this question by sidestepping the question.

Plaintiffs Anne Harding, Gregory R. Jacobs, Holly Knight Morse, and Johannes Peter Schroer challenged a Dallas County Commissioners Court district map from 2011 under Section 2 of the VRA and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment claiming that “the absence of a second county commissioner district that is capable of electing a representative of their choice” diminished their capacity to participate in the political process. [Read more…] about A New Color Under the Voting Rights Act?: Part Two

A New Color Under the Voting Rights Act?

Election Law Society · February 6, 2019 ·

Last August a federal court in the Northern District of Texas ruled on an election law case that, upon initial review, may seem run of the mill. Upon further examination, it is nothing of the sort.

The case dealt with a vote dilution claim under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), in which the plaintiffs claimed that their ability to elect an official of their choice in the Dallas County Commissioners Court election had been diminished by the way that the district map was drawn in 2011.

However, the claim itself is not unusual, but the oddity lies the status of the plaintiffs – white minority voters in Dallas County.

Native Alaskan Voter Language Assistance Implementation

Election Law Society · October 17, 2018 ·

By: Jakob Stalnaker

Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act requires certain covered jurisdictions to provide language assistance and bilingual election materials to language minority groups. The determinations are made every five years by the Census Bureau. The criteria for coverage include if either (1) more than five percent of voting age population or (2) 10,000 of the voting age citizens are members of a single-language minority group and do not “speak or adequately understand English adequately enough to participate in the electoral process.” There is an additional provision, covering jurisdictions with more than five percent of American Indian or Alaska Native population residing within an American Indian Area, meeting the same criteria if those citizens do not “speak or understand English adequately enough to participate in the electoral process” and the rate of individuals in that population who have not completed the fifth grade is higher than the national rate.

Why Go to Wisconsin?

Election Law Society · October 11, 2017 ·

By: George Nwanze

While Gil v. Whitford, the Wisconsin gerrymandering case presently before the Supreme Court, may be absorbing all the legal intrigue, one previously litigated issue involving Wisconsin’s elections has gone unnoticed. Particularly, the state’s voter identification laws and the suppressive effects it has had on voter turnout.

In the aftermath of the 2016 election, perhaps the most common retort of the electoral upset was, “Wisconsin should have gone to Hillary Clinton.” Wisconsin was typically viewed as a reliable Democratic state in presidential elections, as the last time Wisconsin went for a Republican for president was in 1984. However, this assertion was more of a visceral reaction to what many view as a poor political decision, rather than something that the data actual bears out. Fortunately, a recently released study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UWM), sheds some light on whether it actually mattered if “she went to Wisconsin.”

[Read more…] about Why Go to Wisconsin?