Election Update: Voting Law Victories

New laws making it harder to cast a ballot in 2012 will affect far fewer than the 5 million citizens we predicted last year, a new Brennan Center report finds. Overall, laws in 14 states were reversed, blunted, repealed, or weakened. “For the overwhelming majority of those whose rights were most at risk, the ability to vote will not be at issue on November 6th,” the report reads. The study also details the fights still to come after November — in state courts, in statehouses, and in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Voting Law Changes: Election Update
Publications

By Wendy Weiser and Diana Kasdan
– 10/28/12

The dramatic national effort to restrict Americans’ voting rights was met this year with an equally dramatic pushback by courts, citizens, the Department of Justice, and farsighted public officials. What does a survey of the landscape one week before Election Day 2012 now show? Strikingly, nearly all the worst new laws to cut back on voting have been blocked, blunted, repealed, or postponed. Laws in 14 states were reversed or weakened. As a result, new restrictions will affect far fewer than the 5 million citizens we predicted last year. For the overwhelming majority of those whose rights were most at risk, the ability to vote will not be at issue on November 6th.

   Brennan Center for Justice at