voting rights

• 
• SOURCE: The Conversation
  7/7/2020
  

  It Takes a Long Time to Vote

  by Jonathan Coopersmith

  No federal law governs wait times. Nearly two-thirds of voters in 2012 and three-quarters in 2018 waited less than 10 minutes. But long wait times are a chronic problem primarily for Latino and Black voters in “precincts with high minority populations, high population, and low incomes.”

• 
• SOURCE: Slate
  6/22/2020
  

  A 1960s Lawsuit Against the KKK Can Help Protect Elections in 2020

  The precedent means that election authorities have a positive obligation to alleviate conditions that could make voters afraid to cast a ballot. In the 1960s, that meant the Klan. Under COVID, it could mean crowded polls, long lines, or the lack of means to vote by mail. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New York Times
  4/28/2020
  

  How the Spanish Flu Almost Upended Women's Suffrage

  Canceled rallies. A looming election. A stretched health care system with a predominantly female face. Women’s frustrations then resonate loud and clear today.

• 
• SOURCE: Salt Lake Tribune
  4/26/2020
  

  Utah Women’s Suffrage Became ‘Hotly Debated Issue’ in Bid for Statehood

  It was "really a fight" for women in Utah to regain their voting rights in 1895, says history professor Kathryn MacKay.

• 
• SOURCE: Vox
  4/17/2020
  

  How the Coronavirus Might Upend the November Election

  Author David Daley on coronavirus and the threat to voting rights.

• 
• SOURCE: The New York Times
  4/11/2020
  

  Trump Reveals the Truth About Voter Suppression

  by David W. Blight

  The president is the latest in a long line of conservative politicians to see minority voters as a threat.

• 
• SOURCE: The New York Times
  4/10/2020
  

  ‘We Were Always Men’

  by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

  One hundred and fifty years ago, Frederick Douglass understood the link between voting rights and manhood for African-Americans.

• 
• SOURCE: Heather Cox Richardson
  4/5/2020
  

  Letters From An American, April 4, 2020

  by Heather Cox Richardson

  Manipulating the vote has a long and shameful history in America, but modern media and computer modeling has enabled today’s Republican Party to carve out its voters with surgical precision.

• 
• SOURCE: TIME
  4/7/2020
  

  Republicans Could Use the Coronavirus to Suppress Votes Across the Country. This Week We Got a Preview

  by Carol Anderson

  This week Wisconsin provided a glimpse of the dystopian democracy, in which American voters find their rights even more constrained.

• 
• SOURCE: Vox
  4/6/2020
  

  The Supreme Court’s Disturbing Order to Effectively Disenfranchise Thousands of Wisconsin Voters

  The Supreme Court’s Republican majority, in a case that is literally titled Republican National Committee v. Democratic National Committee, handed down a decision that will effectively disenfranchise tens of thousands of Wisconsin voters. It did so at the urging of the GOP.

• 
• SOURCE: TPM
  4/1/2020
  

  For More Than A Century, Americans Fine-Tuned The Rules Of Democracy. Why Have We Stopped?

  by Gregory P. Downs

  The United States has survived not by keeping the same system but by transforming its rules at crucial moments.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Magazine
  3/30/2020
  

  Odds of a Contested November Election Are on the Rise

  Now that state-run electoral systems are in chaos in the midst of a pandemic, with no assurances the conditions for normal voting behavior will return by November, the odds of a contested general election (not just by Trump, but by elements of both parties) have gone up.

• 
• SOURCE: American Civil War Museum
  3/30/2020
  

  15th Turns 150!

  The presence of new citizens in the form of formerly enslaved people forced Congress to consider what citizenship and voting actually meant. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Conversation
  3/16/2020
  

  Closing Polling Places is the 21st Century’s Version of a Poll Tax

  by Joshua F.J. Inwood and Derek H. Alderman

  Delays and long lines at polling places represent the latest version of decades-long policies that have sought to reduce the political power of African Americans in the U.S.

• 
• SOURCE: NY Times
  2/24/20
  

  On the Trail of America’s First Women to Vote

  From 1776 to 1807, women in New Jersey had equal voting rights. Newly surfaced documents illuminate how that happened — and the origins of the messy, imperfect democracy we have today.

• 
• SOURCE: NowThis
  2/7/20
  

  Historian Carol Anderson On Voter Suppression

  “This kind of silent, quiet bureaucratic violence, where policies are wiping out the voting rights of millions of Americans, that's the piece that is absolutely stunning for my students,” she explained.

• 
• SOURCE: USA Today
  2/8/20
  

  These 19 black women fought for voting rights

  by Nsenga K. Burton

  Featuring historians Jennifer D. Williams, Michelle Duster

• 
• 2/9/20
  

  The Unique Struggles of Women and Native Americans to Vote

  by Thom Hartmann

  And how efforts to surpress certain voters continue. 

• 
• SOURCE: National Archives News
  11/14/19
  

  NARA Holds Panel on How ‘Suffragents’ Helped Women Get the Vote

  by James Worsham

  Worsham summarizes the thoughts portrayed by panel on women suffragists and men who supported them with scholars like Johanna Newman, Brooke Kroeger, and Susan Ware.

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  11/13/19
  

  The five ways Republicans will crack down on voting rights in 2020

  by Carol Anderson

  Given what’s at stake next year, the effort to prevent people voting will be fierce. We’ve been here before – and we can stop it.