VOTING RIGHTS ACT

Currently, more than 80% of Texas voters can vote anywhere in their home county, a model that originated in Lubbock County. If lawmakers approve new legislation, that would change.

The League of United Latin American Citizens sued the city Monday, asking a federal court to halt its practice of electing five of its 16 council members through at-large elections.

Claims of misconduct during early voting were raised in a federal lawsuit filed Monday by the Beaumont chapter of the NAACP, accusing election workers of scrutinizing Black voters’ identities and shadowing them while at voting stations

The Texas Tribune spoke to Texans across the political spectrum and asked them to make their case for why voting matters this year. The deadline to register to vote was Oct. 11. Early voting runs from Oct. 24 to Nov. 4.

The Supreme Court opens its new term on Monday and will hear arguments for the first time after a summer break and with new Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson among its nine members.

Wisconsin voters with disabilities are celebrating a win after a federal judge, citing the Voting Rights Act, ruled that they may get assistance returning their ballots.

A federal appeals court has put on hold a district judge’s order for Louisiana to redraw U.S. House districts by June 20 to include a second majority Black district.

Powell, a Democrat, had won Senate District 10 by winning over a coalition of diverse voters in Tarrant County. The GOP redrew the district to branch out to counties to the south and west that made it more rural and more white.

Nearly 23,000 Texans voted in this month’s party primaries and saw their mail ballots rejected by election officials, evidently an aftershock from new state laws that were supposed to make voting easier and more secure.

Most Texas voters skip the primary elections, leaving many of the decisions about who serves in office to a relatively small group of Texas — voters who have more clout as a result.

With the November elections creeping up and Republicans imposing new restrictions on ballot access, President Biden has no easy options for safeguarding voting rights despite rising pressure from frustrated activists.

The Supreme Court’s decision to halt efforts to create a second mostly Black congressional district in Alabama for the 2022 election has sparked fresh warnings that the court is eroding the Voting Rights Act and reviving the need for Congress to intervene.

A three-judge federal panel is hearing arguments in a lawsuit claiming that Texas Republicans violated the Voting Rights Act when they redrew state Senate District 10 in Tarrant County to lessen Black and Hispanic voting power.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says the criticism he received over a comment made about African American voters is outrageous and offensive.

Some of the same voting debates underway when Martin Luther King Jr. was alive are still being debated right now in Texas and in Washington, D.C.

Here’s something Democrats and Republicans have in common: When lawmakers are deadlocked, leaders turn to the rulebooks, searching for angles and rule changes that would turn things their way.

Challenges to new Texas laws on voting, political districts and abortion are all pending in court, as is the state’s challenge to federal vaccine mandates. But until the courts rule, those laws remain in place — and they provide political fodder for the incumbents who support them.

The new year comes with a new election — and with familiar challenges to the way Texans vote and have their votes counted.

The Justice Department has sued Texas over its new redistricting maps, saying the plans discriminate against minority voters, particularly Latinos, who have fueled the state’s population boom.

The elderly, voters with disabilities and voters with limited English proficiency risk disenfranchisement under sweeping legislation Texas Republicans pushed through earlier this year, the justice department argues in its legal challenge to Senate Bill 1.

In their latest push to lift state-level voting restrictions, Senate Democrats failed to secure the 60 votes required to break a filibuster on the Freedom to Vote Act.

The U.S. Senate is expected to vote this week on the Freedom to Vote Act, which would supersede some of Texas’ new elections law.

The redistricting plans for the House, Senate and State Board of Education were approved Friday.

Candidates for the 2022 elections are still popping up, but many of that election’s major issues are already being debated.

The federal bill seeks to reinstate sections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that were written to protect people of color. Texas House Democrats see it as a way to prevent implementing provisions of a Texas voting restrictions bill moving through the state Legislature.

House Democrats are offering a new proposal to update the landmark Voting Rights Act.

Three Texas House Democrats testified before a congressional committee on their efforts to thwart voting restrictions — and were met with heat from their Republican counterparts.

The fundraiser comes just a day after Manchin met with Texas House Democrats on Capitol Hill who are desperate for his support of the congressional efforts which could preempt the statewide GOP’s push to pass bills that would restrict voting access for Texans.

Before the late Willie Velasquez took up the fight for voting rights, “Latinos would go out to vote and vote in large numbers, but their candidates would continually lose,” Velasquez’s longtime friend, Rolando Rios, told KSAT.

Whose voices will be heard in Texas halls of power? That question beats at the heart of the Democratic quorum break that has brought the Legislature to a halt and focused national attention on GOP efforts to make voting in Texas harder.

As the Legislature's special session dawns, political developments have raised the stakes for how far Republicans might go in enacting new voting restrictions, and how they might impact voters of color.

Flexing its new strength, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has cut back on a landmark federal voting rights law.

While a majority of the Democratic-controlled Senate backed the bill, enough Republicans banded together to use the filibuster to block the bill from receiving an up-or-down vote.

The legislation, approved by the Senate Sunday morning after an all-night debate, touches all facets of voting in Texas.

As the end of the regular session approaches, Texas lawmakers — and some of their bills — are running out of time. But there's a special session coming later this year, and maybe — just maybe — another chance for dead legislation.

Eight years after carving the heart out of a landmark voting rights law, the Supreme Court is looking at putting new limits on efforts to combat racial discrimination in voting. (AP Photo/Matt York, File)WASHINGTON – Eight years after carving the heart out of a landmark voting rights law, the Supreme Court is looking at putting new limits on efforts to combat racial discrimination in voting. “It cannot rely simply on the past.”AdDemocrats in Congress will try again to revive the advance approval provision of the voting rights law. AdNearly 75 businesses, including PayPal, Levi Strauss and Impossible Foods, joined in a brief urging the court to “fully preserve the Voting Rights Act." The Justice Department will not be part of Tuesday’s arguments, a rarity in a voting rights case.

SAN ANTONIO – Cindy Onyekwelu won’t take her right to vote for granted. “I couldn’t just sit there at home and not vote because I want to participate in making history," she said. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris addressed the nation Saturday. Onyekwelu said she was moved by Harris' speech, which gave her hope that anything is possible. The 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, was passed 100 years ago.

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court said Friday it will review a 2016 Arizona law that bars anyone but a family member or caregiver from returning another person’s early ballot. In the Arizona case, a federal appeals court ruled in January that Arizona's law banning so-called “ballot harvesting” violates the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution, but the court put its ruling on hold while the Supreme Court was asked to take the case. The court said both have a discriminatory impact on minority voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act. The high court in recent years has weakened the Voting Rights Act, throwing out the most powerful part of the landmark law in 2013. The Supreme Court has already filled its argument calendar through December, so none of the cases will be argued before January 2021.

Nothing more and nothing less.But the meltdown was also a manifestation of a landmark Supreme Court case that gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. Conservatives are trying to use an Arizona case over absentee voting to further weaken the Voting Rights Act. Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has called for restoring the Voting Rights Act, but he has not released detailed proposals. A White House spokesman declined to comment when asked whether Trump might ever pursue a Voting Rights Act update. The previous requirements were a key voting rights tool because it turned a usual legal principle on its head.

In a state with a long history of discrimination, lawmakers on Tuesday will kick off the 2021 round of political mapmaking — the first in nearly half a century without federal oversight.