Federal courts around the country reject State laws that suppress the vote

There has been an evident effort to restrict voting rights in recent years. This development has been led largely by the American Legislative Exchange Council (“ALEC”). As discussed previously here, ALEC consists of corporate executives and right-wing State legislators who gather in closed-door sessions at luxurious hotels to draft “model” laws. The participating State legislators then return to their respective States and push for enactment of the draft legislation. One such “model” law imposes significant voter identification requirements virtually never seen before.

Supporters of restrictions on the right to vote rationalize the proposed changes as essential to preventing voter fraud. The so-called voter identification laws would only address voter fraud through voter impersonation, however, which is a problem that has never existed anywhere in the country. In other words, these State laws are a solution in search of a problem. More troubling, the voter identification requirements reportedly have a disparate impact on people of color, seniors, students, and veterans. Therefore, these limitations on voting rights not only undermine democracy, they also represent apparent civil rights violations according to a recent Government Accountability Office report and other analyses.

Fortunately, Federal Courts of Appeals and District Courts across the nation have rejected the ALEC-engineered strategy of suppressing voter turnout. Courts in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Texas, and North Dakota have all ruled that recently enacted voter identification laws cannot stand because they amount to discrimination. In addition, voters in Minnesota rejected the recent effort to amend the State constitution so as to make it more difficult for people exercise their constitutional right to elect their political representatives. These are positive outcomes in an increasingly polarized political and, thus, legal environment during a highly charged election season.