Tim Robbins Had to Get a Court Order to Vote in NYC

Imagine what happens to people who don't have the time or resources to individually obtain a court order to vote rather than fill out an unreliable provisional ballot.

Looting the City Electorate: GOP Lawyers Try to Suppress Indiana's Urban Voters on Frivolous Technicality

The latest GOP crime report from Gary, Indiana via Common Cause:

Voters in Gary showed up with valid registration cards but were inexplicably left off the voting rolls.  At first they were turned away.  Then, when the county elections office decided to start letting people vote but to track them in a log to confirm their voting eligibility, two Republican attorneys who had been at multiple polling sites over the course of the day began challenging every one of these voters.

The challenges forced each voter to vote a provisional ballot, which means it won't be counted unless the voter returns within ten days to confirm his/her eligibility.  This despite the voters furnishing a valid registration form -- further evidence that the Indiana ID requirements are far too stringent and restrictive (see our recent reports for more), that voter challenges need to be restricted to prevent blanket challenges designed to suppress the vote, and also apparently that Indiana needs to dedicate more resources to handling a rush of new voters and making sure all registered voters onto the voting rolls properly.

GOTV Organizers in Virginia Report that Poll Problems are Not as Bad as Media Is Projecting

A grassroots blogger is reporting that, thanks to community organizing by 13 different groups across Virginia working in tandem with lawyers, mainstream media reports of polling problems and voter suppression are overblown.

Further Proof that the Poorer Your Precinct, the Less of a Chance Your Vote Will Be Counted

This is a voters' worst polling place nightmare.  The problem is, poorer voters are those mostly likely to live out the nightmare.  How many votes were lost while people were waiting in a sense of futility?

¡Español Sólo, Gringo!

Progressive Nashville is thick with irony today (and it's great given Nashville's own claim to embarrassment, Eric "English Only" Crafton): it seems that Puerto Rico is being forced by courts to print it's ballots in English as well as the dominant Spanish in order to protect the civil rights of English speaking Americans!

What protects English only speakers in San Juan also protects non-English speakers in Nashville: the language minority provisions of the Voting Rights Bill. Good to see that the courts are sticking it to the self-serving Eric Craftons of other lands, too.

Southern Republicans Block 2007 Renewal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act

Have southern Republicans become so cocky and complacent that they no longer need to prove to impartial judges that they are committed to protecting the voting rights of minorities in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia?