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American Civil Liberties Union

The ACLU, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, was founded to ensure the promise of the Bill of Rights and to expand its reach to people historically denied its protections. For nearly 100 years, the ACLU has been our nation's guardian of liberty, working in courts, legislatures, and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and the laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country. The ACLU is now a nationwide organization with a 50-state network of staffed affiliate offices filing cases in both state and federal courts. We appear before the Supreme Court more than any other organization except the Department of Justice.

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News. Community. Debate. Levers for better democracy.

Voting

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Election officials in DeKalb County, Ga., "have encouraged, solicited, and acted on extraordinary voter challenges that extend beyond the routine list maintenance activities that are required by state and federal law," a suit contends.

One Georgian's crusade to clean the voter rolls spurs a lawsuit

A Georgia man is doing his part to keep the voter rolls clean. Or he's a guy with too much time on his hands.

Either way, someone named Lawrence Hoskins is a central figure in the latest voting rights lawsuit in the Peach State. He appears on page 14 of a 195-page complaint filed by civil rights groups against the Board of Registration and Elections in DeKalb County, a decidedly Democratic slice of Atlanta and its suburbs to the east.

The suit, filed Wednesday in federal court, alleges the election officials violated federal law and constitutional voting rights protections by failing to do enough to confirm the registration information of more than 50 people and then notify them before they were dropped from the rolls in the past two years.

Hoskins' role is perfectly legal under state law, which permits a registered voter to challenge another person's voting qualifications by filing a written complaint with a county.

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Voting

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Sen. Bernie Sanders is hoping for another round of strong support from young voters, but in New Hampshire there is confusion over the voting rights for college students from other states.

College students at heart of voting rights fight in New Hampshire primary

A day ahead of the New Hampshire primary, college kids are in the center of both the main voting rights fight and concern about confusion at the polls.

The issue is what students from out of state must do in order to vote legally in the first straightforward election of the 2020 Democratic presidential contest. The rules were changed by state law two years ago, with some Republican legislators saying their aim was to make it tougher for young people who grew up outside the Granite State to take part.

But civil rights groups, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, are encouraging every American citizen who's at least 18 years old and wakes up in New Hampshire on Tuesday to head to the polls — potentially causing anger and delays if election judges seek to turn them away.

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Voting

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The state Supreme Court said it was fair to make ex-felons like Erica Racz (seen registering to vote in January 2019) pay all monetary penalties before regaining the franchise. But it was only an advisory opinion.

Florida top court ruling on felon voting is hardly the final word

Republicans hoping to limit the newly restored voting rights of convicted felons in Florida have won the backing of the state Supreme Court. But it's really just a victory in the court of public opinion, because the justices issued only an advisory opinion Thursday while the real decision is up to the federal courts.

At issue is a law passed by the GOP-controlled Legislature last year to implement a state constitutional amendment approved in 2018 with the support of almost two-thirds of the electorate, restoring voting rights to about 1.4 million Floridians with criminal records.

It is the largest single expansion of voting rights in the country since 18-year-olds got the constitutional right to cast ballots half a century ago. But its reach could be sharply limited if Republicans successfully defend the financial curbs they want to impose.

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Voting

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When he was Kansas secretary of State, Kris Kobach was the main force behind a now-shuttered program to spot people who were registered to vote in more than one state. He later chaired President Trump's voter fraud commission.

Flawed multistate voter database turned off to settle civil rights suit

A controversial database used to check whether voters are registered in more than one state has been suspended until security safeguards are put in place.

Use of the Interstate Crosscheck program was put on hold as part of the settlement of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas on behalf of nearly 1,000 voters whose partial Social Security numbers were exposed by Florida officials through an open records request.

Kansas began operating the multistate program 14 years ago but it has not been used since 2017, when a federal audit discovered its security vulnerabilities.

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