Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Another partisan turn in the standoff over Voting Rights Act

Voting Right Act

Democrats G. K. Butterfield of North Carolina and Marcia Fudge of Ohio at a House Administration field hearing in May on alleged voting discrimination in Florida. Republicans disputed the Democrats' conclusions.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

House Democrats are continuing their push for stronger voting rights protections, releasing findings this week from a series of 2019 field hearings across the country on impediments to voting.

The 144-page report released Wednesday concludes that "the fundamental right to vote is under attack" and calls for congressional action.

But the report, prepared by the Democrats on a House subcommittee with jurisdiction over elections policy, does not include any of the views of minority Republicans, who said in a separate statement that they disagree with the Democrats' conclusions.

The usual practice in Congress is to include dissenting views in all committee reports, so the breakdown of that process is further evidence of Capitol Hill's ever more harshly partisan tone in general and its recent approach to voting rights in particular.


For decades, there was solid bipartisan support for perpetuating the Voting Rights Act, the 1965 law hailed as one of the crowning achievements of the civil rights movement. But all that changed six years ago after the Supreme Court effectively toppled a crucual pillar of the law, the requirement that the Justice Department or a federal court give advance approval to any changes in voting rules or laws in places with histories of voting discrimination.

The landmark 5-4 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder held that the method for deciding the places subject to this "preclearance" was based on unconstitutionally outdated evidence — but that Congress was welcome to come up with an updated system

In order to collect fresh evidence of ongoing voter discrimination, Democrats reconstituted the Elections Subcommittee of the House Administration Committee when they took control of the chamber this year. The Democratic chairwoman, Ohio's Marcia Fudge, then began conducting field hearings in eight states and the District of Columbia.

Thursday's report catalogued a variety of problems, including purging of valid voters from registration rolls, cutbacks in early voting, polling place closures and onerous voter ID requirements.

But in a separate document, the panel's top Republican, Rodney Davis of Illinois, says that despite the Democrats' efforts, they have "not produced a single witness that was unable to vote in the 2018 election."

The minority report also criticizes the partisan nature of the hearings and of the report, and points out that the House Judiciary Committee was farther along in carrying out a similar mission. Last month it approved a bill, proposed in February, to revitalize the preclearance requirement by adopting a new set of bad-actor standards. In other words, the GOP wrote, "It appears the Democrats had a solution in mind before the fact-finding process even began."

Even if the measure passes the House, the Republican-controlled Senate almost certainly would not consider it, so no new preclearance rules are in store before the 2020 presidential election.

The legislation says a state would be subject to preclearance if there were 15 or more voting rights violations in the last 25 years or 10 or more voting rights violations in the last quarter century when one of those was committed by the state itself.

Under that formula, 11 states including the four most populous — California, Texas, Florida and New York, plus Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia — would be subject to preclearance, according to an analysis by Facing South, a media platform for the Institute of Southern Studies.

Read More

Independent Voters Just Got Power in Nevada – if the Governor Lets It Happen

"On Las Vegas Boulevard" sign.

Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash. Unplash+ license obtained by IVN Editor Shawn Griffiths.

Independent Voters Just Got Power in Nevada – if the Governor Lets It Happen

CARSON CITY, NEV. - A surprise last-minute bill to open primary elections to Nevada’s largest voting bloc, registered unaffiliated voters, moved quickly through the state legislature and was approved by a majority of lawmakers on the last day of the legislative session Monday.

The bill, AB597, allows voters not registered with a political party to pick between a Republican and Democratic primary ballot in future election cycles. It does not apply to the state’s presidential preference elections, which would remain closed to registered party members.

Keep ReadingShow less
Voter registration

In April 2025, the SAVE Act has been reintroduced in the 119th Congress and passed the House, with a much stronger chance of becoming law given the current political landscape.

SDI Productions

The SAVE Act: Addressing a Non-Existent Problem at the Cost of Voter Access?

In July 2024, I wrote about the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act when it was first introduced in Congress. And Sarah and I discussed it in an episode of Beyond the Bill Number which you can still listen to. Now, in April 2025, the SAVE Act has been reintroduced in the 119th Congress and passed the House, with a much stronger chance of becoming law given the current political landscape. It's time to revisit this legislation and examine its implications for American voters.

Read the IssueVoter analysis of the bill here for further insight and commentary.

Keep ReadingShow less
Independent Voters Gain Ground As New Mexico Opens Primaries
person in blue denim jeans and white sneakers standing on gray concrete floor
Photo by Phil Scroggs on Unsplash

Independent Voters Gain Ground As New Mexico Opens Primaries

With the stroke of a pen, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham enfranchised almost 350,000 independent voters recently by signing a bill for open primaries. Just a few years ago, bills to open the primaries were languishing in the state legislature, as they have historically across the country. But as more and more voters leave both parties and declare their independence, the political system is buckling. And as independents begin to organize and speak out, it’s going to continue to buckle in their direction.

In 2004, there were 120,000 independent voters in New Mexico. A little over 10 years later, when the first open primary bill was introduced, that number had more than doubled. That bill never even got a hearing. But today the number of independents in New Mexico and across the country is too big to ignore. Independents are the largest group of voters in ten states and the second-largest in most others. That’s putting tremendous pressure on a system that wasn’t designed with them in mind.

Keep ReadingShow less
"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

Getty Images, Grace Cary

Stopping the Descent Toward Banana Republic Elections

President Trump’s election-related executive order begins by pointing out practices in Canada, Sweden, Brazil, and elsewhere that outperform the U.S. But it is Trump’s order itself that really demonstrates how far we’ve fallen behind. In none of the countries mentioned, or any other major democracy in the world, would the head of government change election rules by decree, as Trump has tried to do.

Trump is the leader of a political party that will fight for control of Congress in 2026, an election sure to be close, and important to his presidency. The leader of one side in such a competition has no business unilaterally changing its rules—that’s why executive decrees changing elections only happen in tinpot dictatorships, not democracies.

Keep ReadingShow less