The Greene County Democrat

Tag: voting

  • Newswire: In the Wake of Black Exhaustion, the South is Still Fighting for Black Political Power

    Newswire: In the Wake of Black Exhaustion, the South is Still Fighting for Black Political Power

    by Waikinya J.S. Clanton, The Root

    I am tired. I want to say that plainly — not as an admission of defeat, but as an act of radical honesty that Black organizers in the Deep South rarely allow themselves in public.

    I am tired, and I am tired of being tired. (Shout out to Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer.) Tired of fighting for the same thing: respect for my humanity.

    When Nina Simone wrote “Mississippi Goddamn,” she did not do so as a song of surrender. She wrote it as a bellow born from exhaustion and love — the kind that only comes when you don’t have clean water but still find yourself at the door of the courthouse demanding justice. That’s where we are right now. That’s where we have always been.

    And then the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Louisiana v. Callais.

    In a 6-3 ruling, six people decided the fate of millions — striking down Louisiana’s congressional map and stripping the state of its second majority-Black district. Justice Kagan, in dissent, said plainly what the rest of us were already thinking: this ruling renders Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act “all but a dead letter.”

    Let me translate that for the people in Canton, Mississippi, where I’m from. Section 2 was our last legal line of protection against Jim Crow laws designed to silence our voices, specifically the provision that said you cannot draw maps designed to drown out Black votes. After the Court gutted preclearance in Shelby County v. Holderin 2013, Section 2 was one of the last remaining legal tools. Now the Court has dulled that blade to near uselessness.

    This is not abstract. This is not a legal footnote. This is about who sits at the table when they decide what your children’s schools look like, what your water pipes are made of, and whether your neighborhood gets a hospital or a highway. In Mississippi — where Black people make up nearly 38 percent of the population — fair maps aren’t a nicety. They are the difference between representation and erasure.

    When this decision came down, my plane had just touched the tarmac in Boston, and my phone erupted. Partners. Community members. Elected officials. Faith leaders. All are asking the same thing: What do we do now?

    What we do is what Black Mississippians have always done. We fight.

    That’s why THOUSANDS came together this week to Rally for Our Rights. These are our rights; we demand representation, and we will be heard.

    History will NOT repeat itself. We won’t let it.

    Now, I hear you. Black exhaustion is real. It is the compound weight of watching systems that were designed to harm us, functioning exactly as they were designed to. It is registering voters and knocking on doors, only to have six justices in Washington move the goalpost one more time. I carry that exhaustion, too.

    But I am a sixth-generation Mississippian. I carry the legacy of fighting for freedom. My great-great-great-grandfather, John “Booth” Boose, was a soldier in the 52nd Colored Infantry of the Union Army. The same battalion that first fought and won against the Confederacy.

    He didn’t just survive for freedom — he fought for it. That is the legacy I now hold and has become my obligation.

    The battle for Black political power in the South is not a regional story. It is the American story. The maps drawn here shape who controls Congress, who controls policy, and who controls the narrative about what this country is willing to be.

    To all those from across the state who converged in Jackson this week, this is only the beginning. There will be many more moments when we will need you to show up and show out again. In the meantime, check your voter registration and VOTE. Lines can only erase our power if we allow them to.

    If you are outside of Mississippi, understand what is at stake. Tell your elected officials that gutting Section 2 cannot stand without a Congressional response. Do not let the South be sacrificed for the comfort of inaction.

    We are exhausted — but we are not giving up, and neither should you.

    We are not done yet. In fact, we’re just getting started.

    Waikinya J.S. Clanton is the Mississippi State Director of the Southern Poverty Law Center

    Featured image credentials: No Kings Protest advocate

  • Newswire: Court Rejects Alabama House Map, Calling It Unfair to Black Voters

    Newswire: Court Rejects Alabama House Map, Calling It Unfair to Black Voters

    by Emily Cochrane and Abbie VanSickle, The New York Times

    A panel of federal judges on Tuesday rejected Alabama’s effort to use a new voting map for the November midterm elections, saying that the districts discriminated against Black people and could not be used so shortly before a vote.

    Alabama’s attorney general, Steve Marshall, said he would immediately appeal to the Supreme Court, which last month ruled that a Louisiana congressional map drawn to create two majority-Black House districts was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, has already set special primaries in August in four House districts that would be affected by her state’s new congressional map.

    The ruling further confuses the electoral landscape across the South, as Republican-led legislatures have raced to implement new district lines after the Supreme Court narrowed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It also demonstrates how the ruling from the nation’s highest court has further muddled how lower courts interpret the landmark civil rights law.

    If the case makes it to the Supreme Court, it will be the first major test of the high court’s new standard for challenging congressional maps. The lower court judges made clear that they had reviewed the arguments through the lens of the Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act ruling last month but maintained that the state’s map failed under the new standard by intentionally discriminating against Black voters.

    “We cannot see our way clear to requiring Alabamians to cast their votes in the 2026 elections under a districting plan tainted by intentional race-based discrimination,” the panel of three judges wrote in a lengthy ruling. It also warned against causing voters additional confusion by trying to use a new map before the November elections. 

    The court, the panel wrote, was “painfully aware of the gravity of our ruling.” But, it added, “we do not find the issue particularly complex or close.”

    The decision out of the Birmingham-based federal court was issued by Judge Stanley Marcus, who was nominated to the bench by former President Bill Clinton; and by Judges Anna M. Manasco and Terry F. Moorer, both named to their posts by President Trump. (Judge Marcus typically sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta.)

    Mr. Marshall, the attorney general, said he was “disappointed, but not at all surprised” by the ruling.

    “Know this,” he added, “in my mind, it is not a matter of whether we win this case, only when.”

    In the 79-page ruling, the judges said they faced a difficult choice. They could either greenlight a map they had already concluded was intentionally discriminatory, or they could block that map for the current election. 

    The judges wrote that they did “not lightly intrude in state affairs,” but that their previous review had left them “in no doubt” that Alabama’s map “intentionally discriminated based on race in violation of the Constitution.”

    The panel explained that it had reviewed the case under the Supreme Court’s updated standard, which appears to allow partisan gerrymandering but sets a high standard to challenge maps for race discrimination.

    The judges wrote that the “enormous record” around the drawing of the districts “contains no evidence of a partisan motive.” Their ruling, they wrote, marked a rejection “in the strongest possible terms” of Alabama’s “attempt to finish its intentional decision to dilute minority votes with a veneer of legislative regularity.”

    The decision also wrestles with two issues that have arisen in other states scrambling to redraw their maps in the middle of the primary season: the burden on election officials and the potential for significant voter confusion.

    In tackling these two arguments, the court cited what is known as the Purcell principle, a doctrine that federal courts should generally avoid changing rules too close to an election to avoid voter confusion. When Alabama changed its maps recently, the court argued, voter confusion spiked.

    Citing testimony from the Alabama director of elections, Jeff Elrod, the court said “it will take a chaotic, decentralized, and herculean effort for officials in his office and fourteen counties to reassign voters” to new districts. 

    While the decision was carefully tailored to apply only to specific questions about the redistricting procedures in Alabama, the whiplash in the state could ripple outward. State senators in South Carolina on Tuesday plan to continue to debate a new congressional map that could eliminate the last majority-Black district in the state, even as early voting begins. 

    Alabama has been tangled in litigation over its congressional map for years and had been barred from redistricting until after the 2030 census. Black voters have argued that the state has unfairly undercut their power at the ballot box. More than one in four residents of Alabama are Black.

    But in June 2023, the court stunned many legal watchers by siding with the argument that Alabama had violated the Voting Rights Act and needed to draw a second district with a majority of Black voters or come “close to it.”

    Shortly after, lawmakers returned to Montgomery, the state capital, and drew a new map. But wary of pitting incumbent Republicans against one another, the legislature approved a map that increased the percentage of Black voters in one district to about 40 percent, from about 30 percent.

    This panel of federal judges struck down that map and ordered an independent special master to draw district lines. The master’s map was used in 2024, paving the way for the election of Representative Shomari Figures, a Black Democrat. And it was this map that the federal court said should remain in place for the November elections. 

    “This is a significant step in the right direction, but there is still a long way to go before this fight is settled,” said Mr. Figures in a statement on Tuesday morning.

    Representative Barry Moore, a Senate candidate who currently represents one of the districts that could change under the new map, decried “another example of unelected bureaucrats trying to override the will of Alabama voters and punish our state for standing its ground.” 

    After last month’s Supreme Court decision rejecting Louisiana’s congressional map, Republicans in Southern states saw an opportunity to redraw districts that had core blocs of Black voters who repeatedly elected Democrats, adding to an ongoing gerrymandering battle launched by President Trump and his allies in Texas.

    In Alabama, state officials instead pushed to use the 2023 map, a move the Supreme Court cleared the path for earlier this month. However, it still left the decision up to the federal panel of judges, the same one that rejected the congressional map.

    Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting.

    Featured image credentials: Wes Frazer for The New York Times

  • Newswire: They Can’t Win On Policy, So They’re Rigging The Rules

    Newswire: They Can’t Win On Policy, So They’re Rigging The Rules

    by Ashley Marshall, Co-Founder and Brittany Cheatham, Director of Communications with Forward Justice

    As America approaches its 250th birthday, we can look around us and see all the ways our democracy and society have been enriched by becoming more inclusive. Yet, recent regressions in law and policy are attempting to cement us to a reality where only wealthy, white men have a voice, a vote, or access to political power. Attacks are not happening in isolation; they are coordinated attempts to silence the people and destroy the bedrock of our democracy to keep its promises from being truly realized.

     

    Last week, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Lousiaina v. Callais, a 6-3 ruling along ideological lines that struck down Louisiana’s congressional map that added a second majority-Black district, and in doing so, gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Then, on May 6, the Supreme Court shot down a request to delay the order. We cannot be more clear: this was not a ruling about one state’s map. It marks a fundamental shift in the constitutional understanding of equality, voting rights, and officials’ power to wage “lawfare” against their constituents. We see this ongoing erosion of voting rights by all branches of government, and instead of upholding the constitution and ensuring checks and balances, this court continues to eviscerate precedent and progress, demonstrating their allegiance to party over people. 

     

    For over four decades, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act operated on a clear principle: when electoral systems produce racially discriminatory results, they violate federal law, even when proof of discriminatory intent is absent. Congress amended the VRA in 1982 to make this clear because they knew that lawmakers who want to suppress Black votes rarely announce it. 

     

    Thirteen years ago, in Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court stripped the federal government of the ability to block discriminatory voting changes before they could take effect, and promised that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act would remain a safeguard. That safeguard is now effectively gone. Since the Shelby decision, for over a decade, the North Carolina General Assembly has waged a death by a thousand cuts campaign against voting rights in the state- always under the cover of administrative process, election integrity, or partisan fairness. A federal court found that North Carolina’s redistricting plan was one of the largest racial gerrymanders ever encountered, and their voter suppression legislation was found to target Black Americans “with almost surgical precision,” in our lawsuit, NAACP v. McCroy.  

     

    In NC NAACP v. Hirsch, our photo voter ID lawsuit in North Carolina, voters were told that the Voter ID Exception Form would be a safeguard for those without IDs. Now that a court has issued a ruling in the case, officials are working to eliminate that exception form. We continue to see this same ploy: Remove protections under the guise of “race-neutrality,” point to insufficient remedies as solutions, and then strip away those remedies. What remains in the wake of this scheme are entire communities- taxpayers, parents, essential workers- who are shut out of their democracy and silenced, although they continue to be the core of their communities. 

     

    Ignoring the impact of race is a continuation of decades of racist disenfranchisement and centuries of white supremacy and policy violence, aimed at the very people whose forced labor built — and continues to build — this country. We cannot be “race neutral” in a country that was founded on racist ideology and expect true progress, equity, and repair. There must first be acknowledgment, but what we continue to experience is erasure, disregard, and persistent devastating harm.

     

    Without federal oversight and protections, instead of changing their deeply unpopular policies, officials are methodically changing their electorate. They are attempting to handpick their voters so they can remain in power while silencing those who disagree with them, and our courts continue to uphold this assault at every level. Instead of dogs, water hoses, poll taxes, and batons, the tools of suppression today are gerrymandering, voter ID requirements, and legislation like the SAVE Act. The targets have always been the same: Black and brown voters, poor people, women, students- the very people whose organizing has driven the most transformative change this country has ever known.

     

    We know the South drives policy and change throughout this nation, and we have been here before. Some of the most transformative policies in this country have come from the organizing done right here in the South. An Analysis by Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter found that the Callais ruling could eventually lead to a redistricting wave that could help Republicans flip as many as 19 majority-minority seats currently held by Democrats. This ruling has cleared a path for this dangerous practice to spread across the South and beyond, but we will continue the legacy of Southern organizing that has always moved this nation forward.

     

    We launched the POV NC tour to connect with, educate, and empower voters across this state in the face of exactly this kind of assault. We heard from people in counties across North Carolina who all want the same thing: to be heard, and to have officials who enact policies that are just, equitable, and for the people. These are not unreasonable expectations; they are the foundational promise of democracy. We are still fighting unfair maps right here in North Carolina. We are still fighting photo voter ID. We filed an appeal the same day this ruling came down, and we are not stopping. 

     

    Fear of the people and fear of being accountable to the people are driving this wave of “lawfare” and policy violence. Many elected officials know they cannot win based solely on their policies and results, so they are changing the rules. They are more focused on power and gamesmanship than the needs of the people, and they know we can see through the facade. Their fear is its own acknowledgment of our power and progress.

     

    Our democracy is on life support because of relentless attacks from the very people who are supposed to uphold and steward it. But we know that it has always been the power and work of the people to heal, rebuild, and reimagine when those in power fail us. This fight is not over. Full, equitable access to our democracy is our right. We will continue building power and resources in our communities. We will continue to mobilize and demand accountability. We will rise from the ashes of the democracy they are trying so desperately to burn down, and we will build anew- and that new democracy will be rooted in humanity, equity, and most of all, love.

  • Supreme Court lets Alabama speed adoption of congressional map eliminating a majority-Black district

    Supreme Court lets Alabama speed adoption of congressional map eliminating a majority-Black district

    by Lawrence Hurley, NBC News

    WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday removed an obstacle to Alabama’s using a new congressional map in this year’s election that would eliminate one of the state’s two majority-Black districts.

    The court, over the objection of its liberal members, sent litigation over the Republican-drawn map back to the lower court, which could speed up the state’s effort to use its map.

    The state has been battling civil rights plaintiffs over its congressional map for years, with a focus on whether a second majority-Black district was required to comply with the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

    The latest flurry of court filings came in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling on April 29 in a case from Louisiana that undermined a key provision of the law, making it much easier for states to draw districts that dilute minority voting rights.

    The court fast-tracked the Alabama case a week after a similar decision in the Louisiana dispute. Both decisions are a boon to Republicans, who are locked in a redistricting war with Democrats triggered by President Donald Trump, with control of the House at stake.

    In a dissenting opinion, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the court action was “inappropriate and will cause only confusion as Alabamians begin to vote in the elections scheduled for next week.”

    The Alabama litigation includes a claim that the state’s favored map intentionally discriminates against Black voters, a finding that may not be affected by the Louisiana ruling, Sotomayor added.

    Alabama’s appeal of the lower court ruling that invalidated its map was on hold at the Supreme Court while it decided the Louisiana case. As soon as the ruling was issued, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall asked the justices to act quickly on its appeal so the state can move forward with using its preferred map.

    The Legislature has already passed legislation, signed into law by Republican Gov. Kay Ivey, that would push back the state’s primary elections, which were originally due to take place May 19.

    The Alabama litigation dates to the map the state drew immediately after the 2020 census, which included one majority-Black district. The state, which has a population that is more than a quarter Black, has seven congressional districts.

    Civil rights plaintiffs successfully challenged that map, winning a surprising ruling at the Supreme Court in June 2023.

    The state then sought to try again, drawing a new map — the one the state currently wants to use — that still included one majority-Black district, but the Supreme Court rejected that effort, too, in September 2023. 

    That led to a court-drawn map with two majority-Black districts’ being used in the 2024 election. Democrats won both races.

  • Newswire: Trump says mail-in voting is ‘corrupt.’ The president voted by mail just days ago.

    Newswire: Trump says mail-in voting is ‘corrupt.’ The president voted by mail just days ago.

    President Donald Trump has repeatedly denounced the practice
    of mail-in voting, calling it “corrupt” and a form of “cheating” in
    elections. As recently as Monday, the president characterized
    mail-in voting as “mail-in cheating.”
    However, a Washington Post report reveals that despite
    Trump’s pronouncements against mail-in voting, the president
    recently voted by mail in Tuesday’s special election in Palm
    Beach, Florida.
    The report cites voter records on the Palm Beach County
    Supervisor of Elections website that show Trump voted by mail
    in Palm Beach County, where he resides at his Mar-a-Lago
    estate and beach club outside of the White House. The
    Washington Post report also revealed that Trump has been
    registered to vote in Florida since 2019 and that he mailed his
    ballot at least one other time in 2020.
    The revelation that Trump voted by mail is a clear contradiction
    of his public statements and his big push for Congress to pass
    the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship
    to vote and restrict voting by mail. During a roundtable in
    Memphis on Monday, Trump also falsely claimed that the United
    States is the only country that allows mail-in voting. At least 34
    countries allow voters to mail in their ballots.
    “It’s not surprising that he’s utilizing something he’s waging war
    on. It’s the hypocrisy, but that is what he’s always done,”
    political commentator Reecie Colbert told theGrio.
    Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright said President Trump’s
    efforts to end mail-in voting are intended to sow doubt about its
    practice ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, in which his party
    is expected to suffer major losses.
    “It’s clear to me that the president is afraid of people voting, and
    he’s certainly afraid of people exercising their ability to cast a
    vote in disagreement with him, and we’ve seen unlimited
    flirtation and attempts to try to not only rearrange the
    conversation around voting and people participating, but also
    we’ve seen measures trying to go forth to prevent people from
    voting in elections to come,” Seawright told theGrio.
    On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments for a
    consequential case on the future of mail-in voting, which could
    have repercussions for access to the ballot for Black and Brown
    voters in states where advocates say Republican leaders are
    trying to suppress their vote.
    “I think with Black people, we have to understand the
    assignment. And the known in the equation is that they’re going
    to cheat. The known in the equation is that they’re going to
    suppress our votes. And so what we have to do is we have to
    be the unknown in the equation, which is what we do has to
    exceed what they’re trying to do,” said Colbert.
    The host of Sirius XM’s “The Reecie Colbert Show” told theGrio
    that Republicans are making the “calculation” that their voters
    are higher propensity voters and therefore the “roadblocks”
    placed to deter Black and Brown voters will still result in
    Republicans “going to vote anyway.” She explained, “I don’t
    think that that’s necessarily a smart calculation, but that’s what
    they’re banking on.”
    Colbert added, “We know the table has been set. It’s incumbent
    upon us to make sure that our votes are not disenfranchised.
    And that’s not fair…but those are the cards that were dealt. So
    we have to make sure that we vote out of cheating distance of
    them.”
    Seawright, who advises many national Democratic campaigns,
    said President Trump and Republicans will turn to “unlimited
    measures and attempts to try to silence and suffocate the
    voices” of voters, whether Black or not.
    “At one point in time, some of us thought that it was just African-
    American voices that they wanted to silence and suffocate, and in some cases exterminate. Now, it’s pretty much anyone who may stand in disagreement with the extreme agenda that has come out of this modern-day Republican Party,” said Seawright.
    Colbert pointed out one other irony to the revelation that Trump
    voted by mail in a state that still restricts access to voting for
    convicted felons.
    “Florida has waged war on felons voting, and yet the felon, 34-
    time convicted felon president, still is voting in Florida elections,”
    she said.