Offering asides, recommended links, blogworthy quotations, and more, In Brief is the Northwest Progressive Institute's microblog of world, national, and local politics.
Via The New York Times, a not unexpected but welcome development: “A federal judge ruled on Monday that the voter identification law the Texas Legislature passed in 2011 was enacted with the intent to discriminate against black and Hispanic voters, raising the possibility that the state’s election procedures could be put back under federal oversight.”
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It made me physically ill… It was like a gut punch. I never thought, after all the years of dedicating my life to helping advance
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“The Democratic Party and the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders will sue the state of Arizona over voter access to the polls after the state’s presidential primary last month left thousands of residents waiting as long as five hours to vote,” The Washington Post reports.
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Another right wing political power grab has ended in failure after the Supreme Court unanimously affirmed that states may draw legislative districts based on total population, not merely the population on the voter rolls. The opinion in the case, Evenwel v. Abbot, was authored by Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
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John Oliver tackles voting in the United States on “Last Week Tonight”
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Ten ways to make Seattle (and Washington) politics more inclusive in 2016 Laura Bernstein of The Seattle Globalist recaps the highlights of Young, Gifted and
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Following in Oregon’s footsteps, California Governor Jerry Brown and Golden State lawmakers have taken the concept of “motor voter” to the next level: In a
LaunchNYT has mostly ignored its own public editor’s call to stress lack of voter fraud in stories about voter ID schemes Media Matters holds The
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I call on Republicans at all levels of government, with all manner of ambition to stop fear-mongering about a phantom epidemic of election fraud and
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Today, 2016 Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton delivered a major speech on voting rights, calling for universal, automatic voter registration. Clinton spoke at Texas Southern
LaunchOregon Democrats plan to put their bigger legislative majorities to good use Last year, the Oregon Democratic Party did something remarkable. In an election year
LaunchThere’s this false perception that nobody cares — nobody cares about democracy, nobody cares about engaging in it. But I think that that’s not true.
LaunchUnanimous Arkansas Supreme Court rules voter ID unconstitutional Progressives in Arkansas scored a big victory yesterday when the Supreme Court of Arkansas unanimously struck down
LaunchElected officials shouldn’t get to choose who gets to choose elected officials. Look: People marched and fought and died for the right to vote. And
LaunchYou participate and vote, and you can have some control over what happens to your child and your country. — Representative John Lewis, urging black
LaunchRepublicans going all out to limit voting in swing states The New York Times documents the Republican Party’s effort to make it more difficult for
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