A spate of photo-ID laws passed by right-wing legislatures in the past few years is threatening the ability of even registered voters to cast their ballots. Many people think, “What’s the big deal? Everybody has ID.” Well, it’s not that simple.

New laws that have strict requirements for state-issued photo ID disproportionately affect blacks, Latinos, the elderly, the young and the disabled — demographics that turned out in record numbers in 2008 and overwhelmingly voted Democratic. For many people, the barriers are almost insurmountable. Elderly African Americans born during the era of segregation, for example, were often born at home and not issued the birth certificates now required in most states to get a state-issued photo ID. In Texas 600,000 registered voters lack the required state-issued photo ID to vote. In the United States as a whole, 21 million Americans don’t have state-issued photo ID.

Click here to read the full article on TheRoot.com…

“In the past, all we had to do was encourage people to register,” said Richardson, the senior pastor of the Grace Baptist Church of Mount Vernon, N.Y., and Port St. Lucie, Fla., and the chair of the Conference of National Black Churches. “Now it’s a different animal.”

Click here to read the full article on The Kansas City Star…

A coalition of voting rights groups is asking Gov. Rick Scott to stop a statewide effort to purge thousands of potential non-citzens from the voting rolls, and U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Boca Raton, also plans to ask the governor to stop the scrub.

Lawyers for the groups said in a letter to Secretary of State Ken Detzner that the voting purge is in violation of the National Voting Rights Act which prohibits systematic purging of the voter rolls 90 days prior to a general election. The purge effort falls within that 90-day prohibition because of Florida’s Aug. 14 primary.

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In an earlier, 2009 decision, the chief justice recognized that Congress has the power to enforce the 15th Amendment’s guarantee of a right to vote. But he warned ominously that the pre-clearance requirement in Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, and the formula under which states were subjected to it, raised “serious constitutional questions.”

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The cause of democracy received a crucial victory Friday when a D.C. Circuit court upheld a key component of the Voting Rights Act, a cornerstone of U.S. civil rights law to combat racial discrimination in voting.

America has made great progress toward guaranteeing the fundamental right to vote for all adult citizens, and the Voting Rights Act has played a critical role in that progress. As overwhelming bipartisan majorities of Congress found in 2006, the Voting Rights Act is still an important bulwark against efforts to discriminate in the voting process, to turn back the clock to an era when unfair laws and practices prevented too many of us from participating in our democracy.

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida’s quest to identify and remove non-U.S. citizens from the voter rolls was started at the direct urging of Gov. Rick Scott, the state’s former top elections official said.

Ex-Secretary of State Kurt Browning, who resigned this year, told The Associated Press that Scott asked him whether or not non-U.S. citizens were registered and if those people were voting. Browning explained to the governor during a face-to-face meeting last year that people who register and falsely claim they are citizens can be charged with a crime.

Click here to read the full article on MiamiHerald.com…

(CNSNews.com) – House Democrats introduced “comprehensive” voting rights legislation last week, which, among other things, would transform colleges into voter registration sites and allow for same-day registration.

In response to the voter identification laws that have sprung up throughout the country, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) introduced the “Voter Empowerment Act of 2012” (VEA) on May 17.

Click here to read the full article on CNSNews.com…