On Sunday, June 5, Democracy North Carolina held a conference in Durham led by Adam Sotak to discuss developing bills that are threatening equal voting rights. If passed, these NC bills will:
Require voters to show a government-issued photo ID when they vote. This will create a new barrier to voting for 450,000 NC citizens, mostly seniors, low-income voters, women, youth and African Americans.
End Sunday voting, even though 37,000 citizens used it in 2008. This will explicitly affect African American churches and the Souls to the Polls campaign.
Reduce the days and hours in the Early Voting period, even though 60 percent of all NC voters used this option in 2008.
Stop voters from registering during Early Voting by eliminating Same-Day Registration, a right used by 250,000 NC voters in 2008.
Stop pre-registration for teenagers, even though 37,500 future voters used the program in 2010 to signal their desire to be active citizens.
End the NC Public Campaign Fund that gives voters more diversity in their choice of top judges and provides statewide judicial candidates a way to run without accepting big donations from special interests.
To take action, contact your legislators at 919.733.4111 and tell them that you oppose these changes, or visit www.democracy-nc.org for more ways to get involved.
Information courtesy of Democracy North Carolina.
On May 25, the Southern Coalition for Social Justice executive director Anita Earls spoke at the America Healing conference about the importance of community engagement and redistricting issues. Redistricting, or regrouping people within newly drawn district lines, has a large impact on whose voices are given representation and can directly affect the outcome of elections. In light of the recent census, fair redistricting has become a pressing issue. In response, SCSJ has highlighted some key ways to involve individuals and communities in making certain that the lines are drawn in a way that ensures fair and equal representation for the next ten years.
1) Know the options. SCSJ utilizes a mapping software called Maptitude to draw sample districts that show what representation would look like with each option. Organizations with staff members who are familiar with this software can access the program remotely, or an SCSJ cartographer can offer assistance and alternative options. For more information, contact allison@southerncoalition.org.
2) Ask the right questions. What will be the procedures and process for redrawing the district lines and are they written? If the process hasn't been decided, who will decide, and when, and how? Who are the staff people who will be involved in analyzing Census data to assist with redrawing the lines? SCSJ can provide a more complete list of questions and assist in interpreting the answers.
3) Host a forum to educate the community. Contact SCSJ to see if a staff member would be available to provide resources and expertise regarding the importance of knowing and advocating for redistricting rights.
4) Attend a public hearing. Lawmakers are more likely to respond to an engaged community.
For more information go to http://redistrictinginstitute.org/.
Yesterday, a federal judge dismissed a challenge to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Section 5 is an essential tool for defending minority voting rights because it requires changes to voting practices have approval from the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) to ensure they do not unfairly burden minority voters.
White residents of Kinston, NC sought to institute non-partisan elections, which, by their own admission, would place minority voters at a disadvantage. When the DOJ objected to the change, proponents of the non-partisan elections filed suit to challenge the constitutionality of Section 5. The Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) asked the court to dismiss the case, Laroque v. Holder.
Anita Earls, Executive Director of SCSJ, noted: “Our clients, African-American residents and voters in Kinston and the state NAACP, want to see the protections of the Voting Rights Act remain in place, and this dismissal is one step in that direction.”
Laughlin McDonald, Director of the ACLU Voting Rights Project, said: “The federal district court properly rejected the challenge to the constitutionality of Section 5, which has been called 'the heart' of the Voting Rights Act. Without it, all attempts to rectify generations of inequality in our democracy through this vital law are meaningless. We applaud the court's decision.”
For more information, please contact SCSJ Voting Rights Attorney Allison Riggs at allison@southerncoalition.org.
Anita Earls works to make the voting process more open and transparent
August 3, 5:21 PMNC Statehouse Examiner, Martha Brock
Anita Earls has a resume that could easily land her a high paying job litigating for a top law firm. In fact her first job after graduation from Yale Law was with the famous civil rights firm headed by Julius Chambers. Earls later served in the Clinton Administration as Janet Reno's Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at US Department of Justice.
Instead of cashing in on her impressive credentials and experience Earls works for a small non-profit group in Durham. Earls is executive director and founder of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ), a position she has held since September 2007. From 2003 to 2007, she was director of advocacy at the UNC Center for Civil Rights.
She is also one of the three Democrats appointed by Governor Perdue to the State Board of Elections in 2009. She was one of the two new appointees, the other being Republican William Peasley of Raleigh.
The SCSJ has a wide scope of action and its goals are to
1. Create a worker-managed entity that is a fulfilling community to nurture and sustain social justice work and workers.
2. Provide the highest quality legal advice and to poor and minority communities engaged in social change efforts.
3. Bring the best social science research (whether litigation or policy-related), communications strategies and community organizing skills to serve community priorities.
4. Have substantive priorities that are community-determined.
5. Build coalitions across community lawyering organizations in the South and between national organizations and local community groups
Recent projects have centered on promoting work involving the census so that everyone, especially minorities, who are traditionally under-counted, can be included in the 2010 Census.
The work on the Census is key to its current priority, preparing for the redistricting state legislatures in 2011. Earls has extensive experience in voting rights litigation and argued a case involving two US House Districts in NC before the US Supreme Court defending the maps drawn by the NC General Assembly.
Two training sessions were sponsored last week in Durham in preparation for the upcoming redistricting in 2011. The expert witness for attorneys training was closed to the public, but the other people who participated are experts in cartography (map making). The session for attorneys lasted all week and ended on Saturday, July 31.
Earls says, "We already know generally about the populations shifts and we need the final census data." Then her group will focus on "resdistricting and getting legislatures to represent all citizens at all levels of governments from the local school board to the federal level."
While SCSJ works with several Souherrn states including North Carolina, Earls is very familiar with NC and its voting patterns and problems resulting from past mapping used to create the voting districts. She says that the population shift in NC has meant that the population in the East, where the minority population numbers are high, has fallen. Most of the growth has been in urban areas including the Raleigh-Durham area and Mecklenburg County.
Earls says SCSJ really wants to see the process of creating the US House Districts and legislative districts a more open and transparent process. "We want to make it so a citizens' organization could propose their own redistricting map--for example, the Wake School Board.districts."
"Maybe three or four community groups could form coalitions and could work together."
The organization's web site has a wealth of information on voting rights and related topics. To check it out go
State Supreme Court to hear Libertarian-Green ballot access case
July 27, 6:28 PM · Brian Irving - Raleigh Libertarian Examiner
The North Carolina Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the Libertarian Party et al vs. The State of North Carolina, et al Thursday, September 9 at 9:30 a.m. This is the party’s challenge to the constitutionality of North Carolina’s ballot access laws.
The lawsuit filed in September 2005 claims North Carolina's ballot access restrictions violate the state constitution, which guarantees that all elections shall be free and that with very few restrictions every voter shall be eligible for election by the people to office.
The North Carolina Green Party joined the case as an intervenor in April 2006.
In May 2006, Wake County Superior Court Judge Robert Hobgood ruled in favor of the State. The Libertarians and Greens appealed, but the appeal was denied in October 2009 in a 2-1 split decision by the N.C. Appeals Court.
Since Justice Ann Maria Calabria dissented, the parties could appeal the case to the state’s highest tribunal.
A coalition of civil rights and public policy advocacy groups from across the political spectrum submitted a joint amici curiae brief in support of that appeal in February.
They are the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, Democracy North Carolina, FairVote Action, the League of Women Voters-NC, Common Cause, North Carolinians for Free and Proper Elections, the John Locke Foundation, the N.C State Conference of Branches of the NAACP and the N.C Center for Voter Education.
The North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law submitted a separate amicus brief. The brief was written by Jason Kay, a senior staff attorney with the institute. He called the appeals court decision a watershed decision for constitutional law with implications far beyond North Carolina.
Richard Winger, the foremost national expert on ballot access, testified that North Carolina's two percent threshold for petition signatures to get on the ballot was a “a terrible burden, in effect, it's a gigantic filing fee...” for third parties.
He said that only four times in U.S. history has a new or previously unqualified political party met a petition requirement as high as North Carolina's 2008 requirement of 69,734 signatures.
“ The lower courts have tended to treat the case as being solely about the number of signatures needed to get on the ballot,” he said in his newsletter Ballot Access News. “However, the case also challenges the state’s refusal to let a party qualify in just one district or county, if it is unable to qualify statewide,” he said. “It challenges the state’s refusal to let voters register into unqualified parties.”
Winger said that the suit also challenges the law that denies ballot-qualified parties to be listed on the the state income tax checkoff form, unless they have registration of at least one percent. “That provision has probably been responsible for the Libertarian Party losing $35,000 in donations that otherwise would have gone to the party,” he said.
In North Carolina, a person convicted of a felony loses her right to vote until she completes all terms of her sentence, including probation or parole. The person regains the right to vote the day she completes her term. This reinstatement of voting rights, however, is not being executed in compliance with North Carolina state law.
A recent survey, conducted by Democracy North Carolina and tabulated by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, indicates that the majority of Parole Officers are not properly informed of, nor executing NC 163-82.20A: “Voter Registration Upon Restoration of Citizenship.”
This law charges the Department of Corrections, Administrative Office of the Courts, and the Board of Elections to inform persons completing sentences for felony convictions that her or his right to vote has been restored, and to provide the person with an opportunity to register to vote.
In January 2010 Democracy North Carolina conducted phone interviews with 84 probation and parole officers in North Carolina. The law states “(a)t a minimum, the program shall include a written notice to the person whose citizenship has been restored, informing that person that the person may now register to vote, with a voter registration form enclosed with the notice.”
However, when asked, only 6 out of 84 Parole Officers report that he or she provides persons leaving the system with a voter registration form.
Non-compliance with this law has racially disparate impacts on voting rights. Currently in North Carolina 73,113 people have been stripped of their right to vote. Despite comprising only 21% of North Carolina’s population, 57% of disenfranchised voters are African American.
If current practices continue, the number of legally or practically disenfranchised African American voters will expand exponentially. As each person completes their sentence, but is not adequately informed of the right to vote, disenfranchised voters remain disenfranchised even after their right to vote has legally been restored. As felony convictions continue, over time the current 42,000 disenfranchised African American North Carolinians could become 84,000 disenfranchised African American North Carolinians. In a state already struggling for racial equity in voting, the impact of noncompliance with the Voter Registration Upon Restoration of Citizenship law is great.
The Southern Coalition for Social Justice along with Democracy North Carolina and other Coalition partners are pressuring state lawmakers to expand probation and parole officer compliance with this law and other practices within the criminal justice system that discourages voter participation.
Stay tuned for more information on racial justice and voting rights as we prepare for an upcoming Community Census and Redistricting Institute in late July.
Municipal underbounding occurs when impoverished communities of color are excluded from the boundaries where city services are provided in prospering towns.
The conference will allow participants facing similar problems in California, Washington, New Mexico, Oregon, and Mississippi to see its impact via community tours of Jackson Hamlet, Midway, and Waynor Road. SCSJ will also provide background information on the history and prevalence of municipal underbounding and promote discussion of strategies for effectively combating it. Please contact Chris Brook for more information about the conference.
On January 5th the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an important ruling holding that the Voting Rights Act prohibits the State of Washington from denying the right to vote to persons in prison because of racial discrimination in that state's criminal justice system. The opinion in the Farrakhan v. Gregoire case has the immediate result of declaring that all citizens of Washington State, including all those currently in prison, have the right to register and vote.
The opinion is significant for the rest of the country in at least two ways:
First, it demonstrates the type of evidence that persuaded a court that there is racial discrimination in the criminal justice system. The factors present in Washington State are also true of other states. These Plaintiffs presented research by University of Washington sociologists demonstrating that blacks are 70 percent more likely — and Latinos and Native Americans 50 percent more likely — than whites to be searched in traffic stops. The research also showed that blacks are nine times more likely to be incarcerated than whites, despite the fact that the ratio of arrests for violent crime among blacks and whites is less than four-to-one. After reviewing the studies the Court held that the evidence "speak[s] to a durable, sustained indifference in treatment faced by minorities in Washington's criminal justice system — systemic disparities which cannot be explained by 'factors independent of race.' " The implication of this racial discrimination for voting rights is that 25 percent of black men in Washington State were ineligible to vote.
Second, the case illustrates how the Voting Rights Act’s guarantee of equal participation in democracy extends beyond redistricting to all aspects of elections and voting. In the Voting Rights movement, we have become accustomed to thinking of at-large election methods as the main barrier to equal opportunity in the political process, but other modern day barriers remain. The court in this case held that discrimination in the criminal justice system, leading to racially disproportionate rates of disenfranchisement, is another institutional barrier to equal participation.
Read the full text of the ruling here.
Breaking News: Supreme Court Ruling on Voting Rights Act, Court Upholds Full and Equal Right to Vote
On Monday, June 22nd, in a case in which SCSJ joined an amicus brief submitted on behalf of grassroots organizations in the south, the Supreme Court did not strike down any part of the recently reauthorized Voting Rights Act as unconstitutional and instead held that all jurisdictions should be allowed to "bailout" if they have compiled with the Act's requirements. SCSJ argued to the Court that Section 5 of the Act, the "preclearance" requirement, is an important protection for minority voting rights. That provision will now continue to be in effect. Click here to read the Court's 8 - 1 decision.
SCSJ co-authored this amicus brief, filed in the U.S. Supreme Court to support the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act Reauthorization. The brief refutes appellants' argument that private litigation under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act can provide an adequate substitute for the protection offered by Section 5 preclearance. For individual minority voters, the cost and effort required to pursue Section 2 cases are insurmountable barriers to private enforcement, a problem made more acute by the small number of practitioners in covered jurisdictions who are willing and able to take such cases. This creates a perverse incentive - all too often realized - for officials to continue suspect practices because they know most voters cannot challenge them. In contrast, Section 5 deters such practices. Amici have seen Section 2 and Section 5 operate in the complementary fashion that Congress intended. Where minority voters in covered jurisdictions cannot find a lawyer or afford to pay one, Section 5 provides the means to redress new violations of their rights. And where minority voters are able to get their day in court, Section 5 provides the assurance that their hard-won and expensive battles will not be in vain if a jurisdiction repeats similar violations. Thus, Amici's experience confirms the determination of Congress that there is a persistent need for timely enforcement capable of deterring illegal voting schemes before they are implemented--a task for which case-by-case litigation under Section 2 is ill-suited, but for which Section 5 was designed.
From A list of resources for organizations to work on redistricting issues.
A list of resources for organizations to work on redistricting issues.
From /wp-content/uploads/Redistricting.pdf…
