Louisville NAACP president Raoul Cunningham lamented a 2013 Supreme Court decision striking down a key portion of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
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Fifty years ago today, voting in the United States was changed forever.
“We will not, and we shall not, stop until victory is won”, Sweet-Love said. It inspired a nationwide movement that brought the Voting Rights Act to President Johnson’s desk 50 years ago today.
Let’s be clear: The recent laws passed in many states to restrict voting rights are not about reducing “voter fraud”.
Democrats had derided the Texas ID law for allowing voters to use concealed-carry permits for guns but not student IDs at the polls.
And he asserted that there are nearly “no instances” of people showing up to vote in somebody else’s name, what the voter ID laws were designed to stop.
If not for the law, he said, many African-Americans now serving in the legislature would not be there.
President Obama used the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act Thursday to urge Congress to update the law to make voting easier and fairer. “The right to vote means make decisions in the best interest of all citizens”, Jackson said.
He discussed the law at a national teleconference with Representative John Lewis of Georgia and Attorney General Loretta Lynch, both voting rights advocates. “It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears in order for blacks to have the right to vote, so it’s incumbent upon them to vote at every opportunity there is to vote”, said Clark.
The state of federal voting protections has been uncertain since 2013, when the Supreme Court blocked the act’s most potent enforcement tool, a requirement that numerous states, including Texas, with histories of discrimination receive federal clearance before changing election rules.
The League of Women Voters of the Bartlesville Area will host a voter registration event on September 22 at the Bartlesville Public Library, where volunteers will provide detailed information on topics ranging from new voter registration, precincts and access to non-partisan candidate information.
Metro Detroit civil rights leaders gathered Thursday to mark the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act and to pledge action against what they call efforts to suppress minority turnout.
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The Justice Department argued that the law would prevent as many as 600,000 voters from casting a ballot because they lacked an approved ID.
