William & Mary Law School | Election Law Society
By: Yang Cao
Although the Supreme Court has made section 5 of the Voting Rights Act essentially ineffective by declaring section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional, the legacy of section 5 remains. The non-retrogression standard of section 5 is unsuitable to the current political situation of the United States and it has created problems in the past that continue to impact the United States today.
[Read more…] about The Legacy of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act
By: Elizabeth Brightwell
My fiancé and I just became homeowners in Richmond, Virginia. Our small, Cape Cod is located on Patterson Avenue, a main thoroughfare for Richmonders in the Near West End. Our new neighborhood attracts many young people, some with children and most with dogs. Most of our neighbors lead a Richmond-centric life, sending their children to Richmond’s Mary Munford Elementary and spending weekends in the city. [Read more…] about (Dis)respecting Communities of Interest
By: Shawn Syed
“Lazarus” is a name associated with a simple story. A subject dies. The Subject is then restored and is suddenly alive. Lazarus has been explored in songs, movies, and other forms of narrative. The 82nd Texas Legislature’s Senate Bill 14 (SB 14) is the legal world’s example of Lazarus.
Our Lazarus, SB 14, allowed the following to be accepted as voter identification: Texas Driver License, Texas Election Identification Certificate, Texas Personal Identification Card, Texas Concealed Handgun License, United States Military Identification Card, United States Citizenship Certificate, or United States Passport. The most notable form of identification that was not included was a student ID. The first four could only be issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety. The Texas Department of Public Safety has been in the news for other reasons recently. The Texas Department of Public Safety proposed closing 87 driver’s license offices as a solution to cut down wait times. In effect, this would hinder the ability of people trying to get certain forms of acceptable identification under SB 14.
[Read more…] about The Story of Texas SB 14: A Legal Lazarus
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.
[Read more…] about Native Alaskan Voter Language Assistance Implementation
By Aaron Barden
There was a lizard on the floor of the James City County (JCC) government building’s Board of Supervisors meeting hall on August 8th, 2017. I was there to watch the board consider OneVirginia2021’s resolution, which in most cases does little more than declare support for non-partisan redistricting. But JCC’s resolution was different. The resolution had a paragraph tacked to the end that would have changed the County’s local redistricting procedure from a citizen board with no criteria-based restrictions (preventing use of party, no incumbency protection, etc.) to a reliance on the Board’s staff to draw the lines with such restrictions. [Read more…] about Can Virginia Become a Redistricting Unicorn like Iowa?