Voting Rights Quiz 2

Welcome to your Quiz 2

In 1965:

In March 1965, activists organized protest marches from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery to spotlight the issue of black voting rights.

The first march was brutally attacked by police and others on a day that came to be known as “Bloody Sunday.”

After a second march was cut short, a throng of thousands finally made the journey, arriving in Montgomery on March 24 and drawing nationwide attention to the issue.

All of the above.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965:

outlawed discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War and provides for federal enforcement of voting rights.

had an immediate impact in registering new black voters.

Was repeatedly upheld by U.S. Supreme Court decisions, which noted the VRA was an effective tool to combat the legacy of lawless conduct by state and city officials bent on denying voting rights to blacks.

All of the above.

In 2013, in a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder, struck down provisions of the Voting Rights Act which had required nine states with a history of suppressing voting rights to obtain advance federal approval in order to change their election laws (Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia). Which of these statements is true?

The Court divided along ideological lines as to the central question of whether racial minorities continued to face barriers to voting in states with a history of discrimination.

In her written dissent, Justice Ginsburg said that “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet,” and that Congress was the right branch of government to decide whether the law was still needed and where.

Congress had reauthorized the law in 2006 by large majorities (the vote was 390 to 33 in the House and unanimous in the Senate).

President George W. Bush, a Republican, signed the bill into law, saying it was “an example of our continued commitment to a united America where every person is valued and treated with dignity and respect.”

All of the above.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s June 2013 Shelby ruling:

On August 11, 2013, North Carolina’s governor signed a voter identification law seen by many as an attempt to suppress the votes of people of color. [After a lawsuit filed by civil rights groups and the U.S. Department of Justice, the North Carolina law was struck down by a federal judge who said it targeted African Americans with “almost surgical precision”.]

On the same day of the Shelby decision, Texas officials acted to institute a strict voter identification law that previously had been blocked under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act because of its impact in suppressing the vote of low-income people and racial minorities.

Officials in Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Virginia shortly joined the ranks of those intent on turning back the clock to an earlier time when election laws and practices in many places were marked by blatant discrimination and racism.

All of the above.

In response to post-Shelby assaults on voting rights:

voting rights organizations across the country stepped up their work to protect and advance the right to vote and move us closer to the vision of a nation of, by, and for the people.

This work includes litigation testto challenge unconstitutional barriers to voting, on-the-ground advocacy to advance pro-voter policies at the local and state levels, and nonpartisan efforts to register, educate and mobilize historically underrepresented populations so they can participate more actively in elections and civic life.

The State Infrastructure Fund began convening a cohort of nonprofit public interest litigation groups with the aim of streamlining and coordinating the field’s response to a fresh wave of policies to suppress the vote. The collaborative of 12 organizations has played an essential role in pushing back against strict voter identification laws, racial gerrymandering, and other tactics aimed at reducing the voting rights of underrepresented populations.

All of the above.

A 2018 USAToday analysis found that election officials had:

closed thousands of polling places, with a disproportionate impact on communities of color, an example of how states and localities have continued to try to suppress the votes of targeted populations.

In 2018, for example, the Georgia Senate passed bills cutting voting hours in Atlanta (where African Americans are 54 percent of the population) and restricting early voting on weekends.

The Georgia measure was seen by many as a not-so-subtle attempt to target nonpartisan “Souls to the Polls” events organized by black churches to get their parishioners to vote on Sunday after church.

Both Georgia measures were subsequently defeated in the state Assembly, but the Georgia legislature is in 2021 again considering similar measures.

All of the above.

Following the 2020 presidential election, the Republican party, embracing former President’s Trump’s baseless claims of a stolen election, intends, in the 43 “Red” states:

to raise new barriers to voting by Black voters and to further pursue gerrymandering in order to diminish the power of the Black vote.

through the so-called “Committee on Election Integrity” of the Republican National to support such efforts on a state-by-state basis.

(a) and (b).

“This is completely unprecedented in the history of American elections that a political party would be working at this granular level to put a network together…. It looks like now the Trump forces are going directly after the legal system itself and that should concern everyone.”

— Nick Penniman, founder and chief executive of the nonpartisan election watchdog group Issue One