ABOUT
WASHINGTON – The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, The Leadership Conference Education Fund, The Andrew Goodman Foundation, and fifty other national, state, and local elections filed a “friend of the court” brief today urging the U.S. Supreme Court to protect Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which protects the voting rights of minority voters.
“The last decade has witnessed many jurisdictions placing new hurdles in front of the ballot box: hampering voter registration, limiting early and absentee voting, closing poll locations, purging voters from the rolls, and imposing strict voter-identification requirements…” “ It is reasonable to expect that such restrictions are likely to increase in quantity and severity in the future, amidst a litany of unsubstantiated but oft-repeated claims of voter fraud.”
“These restrictions on voting disproportionately affect minority voters, and substantially so. Minority voters, after all, disproportionately lack the resources to satisfy increasingly demanding voting requirements, due to the vestiges of current and past discrimination. That disproportionate burden is well-documented at every stage of voting—from registering to vote, staying registered to vote, getting to the polls, and casting a ballot.”