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In a past national election, a uniformed hate group stood outside a polling place with a two-foot-long police nightstick in hand, screaming racial epithets and threats in a successful effort to prevent citizens from voting and poll watchers from doing their jobs. The Department of Justice investigated, the career counsel approved the institution of a civil complaint, and one was brought.

When Eric Holder became U.S. attorney general, he promised to administer the law in an objective, nonpolitical manner. So it's disappointing that the Justice Department had spent the last several months misinterpreting key voting rights laws for nakedly political reasons. Exhibit A: Justice's inexplicable dismissal of a civil lawsuit for voter intimidation against the New Black Panther Party. The Black Panthers weren't content to endorse Barack Obama. They sent their members to the polls last November to "patrol election sites." Fox News aired a video of two Black Panthers in military-style uniforms in a Philadelphia precinct. One of them was...

Courtesy of National Geographic Channel King Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson, pictured last year for the National Geographic Channel's show "Inside," were accused of voter intimidation by the Justice Department. Justice Department political appointees overruled career lawyers and ended a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense of wielding a nightstick and intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place last Election Day, according to documents and interviews. The incident - which gained national attention when it was captured on videotape and distributed on YouTube - had prompted the government to sue the men,...

A central provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, designed to protect minorities in states with a history of discrimination, is at substantial risk of being struck down as unconstitutional, judging from the questioning on Wednesday at the Supreme Court. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, whose vote is likely to be crucial, was a vigorous participant in the argument, asking 17 questions that were almost consistently hostile to the approach Congress had taken to renewing the act in 2006. “Congress has made a finding that the sovereignty of Georgia is less than the sovereign dignity of Ohio,” Justice Kennedy said....

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court's conservative justices led a sustained attack Wednesday on a key element of the Voting Rights Act, questioning whether one-time bastions of segregation still should be held to account for past discrimination. The justices who were skeptical of that part of the voting rights law included Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose views are likely to prevail on the closely divided court. He tends to side with his more conservative colleagues on matters of race. -snip- The law requires all or parts of 16 states, mainly in the South, with a history of discrimination in voting to...

President Barack Obama has the wind in his sails. After a decisive victory, he has launched the greatest expansion of federal government in American history. Republicans, still licking their wounds from November's election, have yet to form an effective political opposition. For now, that leaves the Constitution's structural limits on governmental power as the only potent brake on government further reshaping our society. Accordingly, Republicans should be the first to insist that these requirements be strictly observed. Unfortunately, a number of congressional Republicans already are abandoning constitutional fidelity by supporting the D.C. Voting Rights Act. The fact that the Act's...

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a part of the Voting Rights Act aimed at helping minorities elect their preferred candidates only applies in electoral districts where minorities make up more than half the population. The decision could make it harder for some minority candidates to win election and for southern Democrats, in particular, to draw friendly electoral boundaries after the 2010 Census. The 5-4 decision, with the court's conservatives in the majority, came in the case of a North Carolina plan that sought to preserve the influence of African-American voters even though they made up just 39...

The Supreme Court, studiously avoiding almost all mention that it was examining a thoroughly partisan political battle, spent a spirited hour on Wednesday looking for ways either to scuttle a major test case over voters’ rights or to find a way — as if the Justices were writing a law themselves — to soften the impact of a tough state requirement for a photo ID before a voter may cast a ballot at the polls. Only two Justices — Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens — even hinted at the real-world fact that the photo ID law in Indiana...

A week ago I was at McDonald's ordering lunch. It was very busy and there was a large crowd present. I ordered the food and waited around for a few minutes. While I was doing so, a manager and another crewmemeber were getting ready to put the flags up on the pole. The manager showed him how to fold the flags up and they folded up old glory into a nice triangle with loving and patriotic care. While they were folding the McDonald's flag, a funny looking woman in her thirties with two tots in a carriage walked up to...

TALLAHASSEE - Herbert Pompey had gone through rehab, stayed sober, held a job, married and started a landscaping business in the two years since he walked out of Taylor Correctional Institution. But what Pompey hadn't done -- and what he assumed a string of felony drug and DUI convictions would keep him from ever doing again -- was vote. So his pulse quickened when civil rights lawyer Reggie Mitchell called to tell him that his rights had been restored. "You're eligible to vote now, Mr. Pompey," Mitchell said, calmly relaying the news. "Can I bring you a voter-registration card?"

Berlin, Germany (AHN) - There is a proposal in the Bundestag to grant German children voting rights. A bipartisan group of 46 lawmakers made the proposal that would grant 14 million young Germans a chance to have their voices be heard in political matters.Under the proposal, parents would vote for their children. German federal law grants universal suffrage to all adults at least 18-years-old, but a number of states allow 16-year-old citizens to cast their ballot at local elections. The proposal would amend Article 38 of the country's constitution. A similar suggestion was made in 2005, but was rejected by...

Dozens of German politicians have tabled a new law to extend voting rights to babies, toddlers, children and teenagers.The bill, which has won the cross-party backing of some heavyweight German politicians, would wipe away decades of "exclusion" and "discrimination" against minors, according to its supporters. Currently the voting threshold in Germany is 18, with an exception in some states, where 16 year olds are allowed to cast a ballot. But that does not go far enough for the new law's backers, who want to ensure voting rights from cradle to grave. If the bill gets adopted, babies will have the...

The get-out-the-vote effort in Maine broke new ground Wednesday when more than 200 inmates in the Maine State Prison registered to cast ballots. Prison officials said it was the first prisoner education and registration drive held at the facility. Deputy Warden Leida Dardis said the event, which was organized by Maine chapters of the NAACP, allowed representatives from the state Democratic, Republican and Green Independent parties to meet with prisoners in morning and afternoon informational sessions. Maine and Vermont are the only states that give people convicted of felonies the right to vote while in prison. Some states bar felons...

Orange Countification: Part 1 Excerpt from One Night, Two Teams: Alabama vs. USC and the Game That Changed a NationBy Steven Travers Bill, I've just handed the South to the Republicans for fifty years. – President Lyndon Johnson talking with aide Bill Moyers right after the Voting Rights Act In 1964, the Democratic Party dominated U.S. politics. Lyndon Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater with 64 percent of the vote. He had enormous filibuster-proof majorities in the House and Senate. The imprimatur of John Kennedy’s legacy hung solidly on LBJ. A majority of America’s governors and state legislatures were Democrat. The Civil...

Democrats have challenged, all the way to the a state of Indiana requirement which requires all voters to show photo I.D. Apparently Democrats walk around and/or drive without any photo identification and asking a Democrat for photo I.D. would cause an undue hardship on voters in the upcoming 2008 Presidential elections.

A victory for disfranchised Mississippi voters--and they happen to be white. Last week a federal district judge found direct evidence that the political machine in Noxubee County, Miss., had discriminated against voters with the intent to infringe their rights and that "these abuses have been racially motivated."

A federal appeals court on Friday rejected an attempt to halt enforcement of Arizona's first-in-the-nation requirement that all residents prove they are U.S. citizens when they first register to vote. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a trial judge's refusal last year to block the requirement while a legal challenge awaits trial in federal court in Phoenix. "Now we know we get to enforce the law while the lawsuit is pending," state Solicitor General Mary O'Grady said. .... "We are confident with a full record that the court will rule in our favor," said Carlos Becerra of the...

Kahn has another voting proposal Should Minnesota's Constitution be amended to allow people who are permanent residents -- but not U.S. citizens -- to vote in local elections? Should Minnesota's Constitution be amended to allow people who are permanent residents -- but not U.S. citizens -- to vote in local elections? That's the question Rep. Phyllis Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis, and some fellow DFLers want to submit to Minnesotans in the 2008 election. Kahn said the amendment would allow local units of government to decide whether they would authorize permanent residents to vote in local elections, including for mayor and school board....

A federal court trial is expected to end this week in a Justice Department lawsuit seeking an end to "relentless voting-related discrimination" by black political leaders in a rural Mississippi county -- the first suit brought under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that accuses blacks of suppressing the rights of whites. The lawsuit targets Ike Brown, longtime political boss of Noxubee County, Miss., who serves as chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee and superintendent of Democratic primary elections, and Carl Mickens, circuit clerk for Noxubee County and superintendent of non-primary elections.

It should come as no surprise that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican. In that era, almost all black Americans were Republicans. Why? From its founding in 1854 as the anti-slavery party until today, the Republican Party has championed freedom and civil rights for blacks. And as one pundit so succinctly stated, the Democrat Party is as it always has been, the party of the four S's: slavery, secession, segregation and now socialism. It was the Democrats who fought to keep blacks in slavery and passed the discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. The Democrats started the...