www.stand4freedom.org<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Department of Justice is reviewing new laws enacted by a handful of state legislatures that restrict how and when voters may cast a ballot. The DOJ will be looking for violations of the Voting Rights Act, established in 1965 to prohibit discriminatory voting practices such as literacy tests. New laws have been enacted in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-program"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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The Department of Justice is reviewing new laws enacted by a handful of state legislatures that restrict how and when voters may cast a ballot. The DOJ will be looking for violations of the Voting Rights Act, established in 1965 to prohibit discriminatory voting practices such as literacy tests. New laws have been enacted in Wisconsin, Rhode Island and Kansas, among other states. On November 8th Maine voters restored same-day voter registration just 5 months after the Republican controlled state legislature ended the practice by passing a law in June that closed registration 48 hours before an election. The most significant change being adopted by states is a requirement that voters show a state issued photo ID. The wave of restrictive voter laws will be in effect in time for the 2012 Presidential election, raising opposition from Democrats and civil rights groups who say the largely Republican backed measures are aimed at keeping people of color and marginalized communities from turning out in the large numbers seen in 2008. Ben Jealous, President of the NAACP, characterized the current trend as, ” [t]he greatest coordinated legislative attack on voting rights since the dawn of Jim Crow.” A broad coalition has formed to draw attention to this altered electoral landscape and it will rally on December 10th, also International Human Rights Day. Coalescing under the name Stand For Freedom, the coalition is comprised of the NAACP, the National Urban League, labor unions, civil rights and legal defense organizations. Coalition member Mike Mulgrew of the United Federation of Teachers said, “[t]hey are seeking to block us from voting in order to make it easier to come after our other rights… [f]rom the right to a quality education to the right to a fair wage.” However MSNBC reports that there is no conclusive evidence that restrictive laws cause low voter turn-out, and the percentage of voters has actually increased in Indiana and Georgia from 2006 to 2010 despite the introduction of strict photo ID requirements. On the other hand, Stand for Freedom coalition member George Gersham of SEIU local 1199 said there is no reason to enact restrictive laws in the first place because, “[t]he so-called problem of voter fraud is a myth, the percentage is miniscule.”<\/p>\n