ALBANY—Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today announced new legislation to restore accountability and ensure access to the ballot box by eliminating baseless and intimidating challenges to voter eligibility at the polls on Election Day. Under current law, voters who are challenged at the polls are required to recite an oath affirming their right to vote. The challenger, on the other hand, has no such obligation.
People who challenge ballots at polling places would have to outline their reasons for a challenge in an affidavit, under a bill from state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
Under state law, any registered voter can challenge the validity of another person's voting status at the ballot box if there's an issue with their signature or they are suspected to be living out of state. When a challenge is raised, the challenged voter then has to recite an oath declaring they are legally able to cast a ballot before they are allowed to vote. [...]
NEW YORK—Today, Demos released the following statement applauding Attorney General Eric Holder’s support for restoring the voting rights of people with past felony convictions. Holder spoke at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., saying “It is time to fundamentally reconsider laws that permanently disenfranchise people who are no longer under federal or state supervision.”
Demos’ Vice President of Legal Strategies, Brenda Wright, said this of the news:
Georgia Republicans are pushing a bill that would dramatically shorten early voting for city elections. The effort is the latest to take advantage of the Supreme Court’s ruling last year on the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which made it easier for certain areas to change election rules in ways that hurt racial minorities.
WASHINGTON, DC – Yesterday, in a letter to President Obama, leaders for nonprofit voting rights organizations Demos and Project Vote alerted the White House that the application process for benefits under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) currently violates the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA).
In the letter, the groups urge the Obama Administration to take immediate steps to bring federally facilitated health benefits exchanges (FFEs) into compliance with federal law.
When millions of Americans stood in lines for hours to vote yet again in the 2012 elections, President Obama recognized that “we need to fix that.” Today, the Presidential Commission on Election Administration released a report with their recommendations on ways to improve election administration. The Commission’s recommendations are welcome but much more work remains to be done to ensure every eligible voter can exercise their right to vote.
New Legislation Is Important Step Forward; Bill Can Be Strengthened
Representatives James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), John Conyers (D-MI), Steve Chabot (R-OH), Bobby Scott (D-VA), Spenser Bachus (R-AL), John Lewis (D-GA), Sean Duffy (R-WI) and others have introduced the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014, offering common sense fixes designed to modernize the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Demos President Miles Rapoport issued the following statement in response:
Carter adopted an emerging technique in the 1970s, hiding references to whites behind talk of ethnic subpopulations, and he also presented blacks as trying to preserve their own segregated neighborhoods. Notwithstanding these dissimulations, few could fail to understand that Carter was defending white efforts to oppose racial integration, and many liberals criticized Carter for doing so.
Montgomery, AL – The Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, represented by attorneys from Project Vote, Demos, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the law firms Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP and Copeland Franco, signed settlement agreements with the Alabama Secretary of State, the Alabama Department of Human Resources (DHR), and the Alabama Medicaid Agency addressing deficiencies in the state agencies’ provision of voter registration services and setting out procedures intended to guarantee compliance with Section 7 of the National Voter Registratio
Voting rights advocates are girding for a series of crucial battles that will play out over the next twelve months in Congress, in the courts, and in state legislatures. Victories could go a long way to reversing the setbacks of the last year. Defeats could help cement a new era in which voting is more difficult, especially for racial minorities, students, and the poor.
Middle-class Blacks are using credit to help cover their basic living expenses, according to a report from the NAACP and public policy research organization Demos. In the recession’s aftermath, 79 percent of middle-class African-American households carry credit card debt.
According to human resources surveys, nearly half of all employers now conduct credit checks as part of their hiring process. Yet there is little basis for this practice.
African Americans have been pummeled by the recent financial crisis, including facing the most adverse consequences of credit card debt and higher interest rates, according to a recently released study by the NAACP and Demos, a U.S.-based research and policy center.
Remember having ‘the talk’ with your parents? That clumsy conversation forced upon you as a pre-teen when you desperately tried to avoid eye contact while muttering “I already know this, Dad” and wavered back and forth between feeling embarrassed and grateful?
People who end up with damaged credit — often through no fault of their own — can be shut out of jobs by employers who hold their credit histories against them.
Credit checks aren’t just for loan officers anymore. Now, your prospective employer is checking your credit history too.
The practice is increasingly common as employers look for more ways to determine whether or not they’re about to hire the right employee.
But Massachusettes Sentaor Elizabeth Warren says it’s a practice that must end because credit history is biased and does not give an accurate picture of a person’s ability to do their job properly.
NEW YORK — Demos applauds the work of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) who today introduced The Equal Employment for All Act, legislation that would prohibit the widespread use of personal credit history in employment. The use of employment credit checks is an unjust practice that poses a serious barrier to economic security for many Americans and leads to discriminatory hiring practices against people of color and the long-term unemployed.