voting rights

Last week’s Supreme Court ruling on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act stunned many people in Black and brown communities.

A coalition of more than 100 civil rights and advocacy organizations is accusing the Biden administration of falling short on its “visionary” commitment to step up voter registration and saying that the failure to shore up voting rights is disproportionately hurting non-white voters.

Arizona lawmakers have become national leaders in trying to suppress non-white people’s voting power. But a proposition on the November ballot could put a stop to some of their new rules before they take effect.

The 2020 Census found that in state after state, population growth in Black, Latinx, Asian American, and Native American populations is outpacing white growth. But new voting rules working their way through state governments, including gerrymandered district maps, make it difficult for communities of color to elect people who will represent their needs and interests.

District 6 City Councilor Kendra Lara delivered her maiden speech last week, calling for immigrants to have the right to vote in local elections.

Members of the Election Modernization Coalition gathered Monday to call on the state Legislature to include Election Day registration in voting legislation currently moving through the Senate and House of Representatives.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has been among those attempting to advance the voting rights legislation and do away with the filibuster, shared her thoughts on the mission of the Poor People’s Campaign march and her role in the current fight in the senate

Members of the Democracy Behind Bars Coalition, a group of elected officials and activists, met Monday to show support for new legislation aimed at protecting the voting rights of incarcerated residents in Massachusetts.

Fifty-six years ago, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law one of the most important pieces of legislation in American history: the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This law took a number of important steps to empower citizens that had long faced de facto and de jure barriers to the ballot box. It repealed blatantly racist policies, like literacy tests, and provided the federal government the tools it needed to stamp out segregationist electoral policies wherever they were introduced.

Boston — and Massachusetts generally — must show that it unilaterally opposes these blatantly racist actions. District 5 City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo has embraced this effort, introducing two proposals to dramatically reform Boston’s municipal elections. These include same-day voter registration and expanded early voting options.

Prominent Black business CEOs have rescued American democracy. They united in unequivocal opposition to efforts of numerous states to establish voting rights restrictions. They asserted that “voting is the lifeblood of our democracy … and is the most basic and fundamental right of all Americans.”

All eyes have been on Georgia’s blatant effort to shove the state permanently back in the red-state column with its unabashed Jim Crow-style vote-suppression ploy. But this is just the warmup for the GOP’s main act, to once and for all erase from the books the 1965 Voting Rights Act.