Colorado is one step closer to a major overhaul of its election laws after a House committee advanced a bill to make voting significantly easier and more accessible in the Centennial State.

The Voter Access and Modernized Elections Act passed through the House State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee easily on Monday by a 7-4 vote. If enacted, the legislation would take three important steps: implement Election Day Registration (whereby citizens can both register and vote on Election Day), automatically send mail ballots to every voter, and create a real-time statewide voter database to prevent fraud.

The Denver Post has more:

The bill cleared its first legislative hurdle Monday evening when it passed the House’s State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee by a 7-4 party line vote, after more than seven and a half hours of testimony from dozens of public officials and otherwise private individuals on each side. it now moves to the House appropriations committee. [...]

Those promoting the changes said the bill is uniquely Colorado, and the state could take the lead nationally on making elections more convenient to voters. They are confident other states will follow — because voters like mail voting (74 percent in Colorado last November), while preserving in-person voting at a few early voting centers, and, eventually, saving millions of dollars for counties. [...]

Other clerks, though, said switching to mail will mean buying less equipment to operate and maintain for a ever-shrinking number of people who still vote in person. That could save millions of dollars in some county over a longer period of time. Denver expects to save a total of about $730,000 in next year’s general election alone, director of elections Amber McReyholds said.

These reforms could provide a sharp boost to turnout in Colorado. Two states, Washington and Oregon, currently employ universal vote-by-mail. (Colorado’s proposal differs slightly in that it preserves in-person voting centers for those who prefer that to mailing in their ballot.) Their turnout rates exceed the national average by more than five percentage points.

In addition, Election Day Registration provides a significant boon to a state’s participation rate. Academic studies have found that EDR boosts turnout by 7 to 14 percentage points. As a result, it’s a reform that’s grown in popularity of late, with 11 states currently allowing EDR, most recently California and Connecticut.

The Colorado bill enjoys some bipartisan support. One of its main proponents is former Republican Secretary of State Donetta Davidson, and a number of Republican county clerks back the move. Current Secretary of State Scott Gessler (R) opposes the legislation. It now moves on to the House Appropriations Committee, where passage is expected. Democrats currently control both legislative chambers, as well as the governorship.

After spending two years on defense over voting rights, progressives are beginning to go on offense. A number of other states are considering sweeping reforms in addition to Colorado. Oregon has proposed automatically registering its residents to vote, making the process far cheaper and easier for voters, Hawaii is weighing an EDR bill, the New Jersey legislature passed early voting, and Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) has been forced to backtrack and support extending early voting.

Some high-schoolers may soon be able to vote in local elections, under a proposal being considered by one Maryland community.

Takoma Park, a suburb of Washington D.C., is currently weighing a proposal to lower its voting age for local elections to 16. Voters under the age of 18 would still be barred from voting in state and federal races.

The Huffington Post has more:

City Council member Tim Male, who proposed the initiative along with Seth Grimes, told Takoma Park Patch, “I really care about making elections easier… You meet young people who are really engaged but cannot vote.”

If passed, the lowered voting age could result in unforeseen benefits for Takoma Park. As the National Youth Rights Association points out, “Lowering the voting age to 16 will give the vote to people who have roots in a community, have an appreciation for local issues, and will be more concerned about voting than those just two years older.”

A public hearing on the amendment will be held April 8.

Takoma Park has a history of testing out innovative voting ideas. In 1991, community voters passed a referendum to allow non-citizens who were legal resident aliens to vote in local elections. That program has continued for the past 20 years, joined in the meantime by five other municipalities in Maryland.

A Republican legislator in North Carolina is pushing a bill to penalize parents if they have a child in college who chooses to vote where they study.

State Rep. Bill Cook (R) introduced SB 667 this week, which would raise taxes on families with college students if the child registers to vote at school rather than at home.

WRAL has more:

Senate Bill 667, known as “Equalize Voter Rights,” would remove the tax exemption for dependents who register to vote at any address other than their parents’ home.

“If the voter is a dependent of the voter’s parent or legal guardian, is 18 years of age or older and the voter has registered at an address other than that of the parent or legal guardian, the parent or legal guardian will not be allowed to claim the voter as a dependent for state income tax purposes,” the bill says.

In the 1979 case Symm v. United States, the Supreme Court affirmed a decision holding that a state cannot place unique burdens on college student voters that do not apply to others. While this bill attempts to sidestep Symm by not explicitly prohibiting college students from registering, the financial penalty their parents would face still amounts to an attempt to punish these voters for voting at their school address rather than their home, and should not be upheld if it is passed.

Cook is not the only Republican lawmaker trying to disenfranchise college students. During the last election cycle, the Republican House Speaker in New Hampshire discouraged students from voting because they’ll just vote “liberal,” and in Maine the Republican Secretary of State sent threatening letters to student voters encouraging them to re-register in another state. This year, a GOP legislator in Indiana introduced a bill in February to bar students who pay out-of-state tuition from voting in the Hoosier State.

Far-right legislation is becoming a mainstay in North Carolina. Republicans, who currently control both legislative chambers and the governor’s office, are currently considering enacting voter ID in the Tar Heel State. In addition, eleven lawmakers recently sponsored a resolution to ignore the constitutional prohibition on government establishment of religion.

In the late 19th Century, Southern states began to enact literacy tests to prevent African-Americans from casting a ballot. At the time, black voters were up to seven and a half times as likely to be unable to read as white voters, so requiring voters to prove their reading skills was an effective way of making the electorate more white. Many states also enacted laws effectively exempting whites from the test, such as by allowing a white voting official to subjectively determine that certain people should be allowed to vote even if they could not pass the literacy test. Indeed, the phrase “grandfather clause” refers to Jim Crow era laws that exempted white voters from voting restrictions so long as their grandfathers enjoyed the right to vote prior to the South’s defeat in the Civil War.

Literacy tests were eventually rendered illegal under the Voting Rights Act, but North Carolina’s state constitution still calls for one. Now, a bipartisan group of lawmakers wants to fix that:

Earlier this month, two African-American Democrats, Reps. Kelly Alexander of Charlotte and Mickey Michaux of Durham, joined with two white Republicans, Reps. Charles Jeter of Huntersville and Harry Warren of Salisbury, to introduce House Bill 311, which would put before voters an amendment to eliminate Article VI, Section 4 of the state constitution that says, “Every person presenting himself for registration shall be able to read and write any section of the Constitution in the English language.”

An earlier effort to repeal the provision failed in 1970 — the only one of six proposed constitutional changes that North Carolina voters did not approve that year. The clause remains unenforceable under Section 201 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits state and local governments from requiring voters to read and write.

Although this repeal effort is largely symbolic so long as the Voting Right Act prevents North Carolina’s literacy test requirement from being enforced, repealing it is nonetheless important because there is no guarantee that the Roberts Court won’t someday strip away the federal government’s power to protect against literacy tests and similar devices intended to disenfranchise voters, just as they appear poised to cut back another part of the landmark voting law this term.

New Jersey is one of a dwindling number of states that doesn’t allow its residents to cast in-person votes prior to Election Day. That could change for the Garden State with a stroke of Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) pen.

Late last week, the State Assembly passed S 2364 by a 46-31 vote, following the Senate’s 24-16 approval. The bill would open polling places for 15 days before Election Day, giving residents flexibility to cast a ballot at their convenience. However, Christie has yet to take a position on the matter, and some prognosticators suspect he’ll veto the bill.

New Jersey currently allows citizens to mail in a ballot early, but there’s still a strong need for in-person early voting, as the New Jersey Star-Ledger explains:

The vote was mostly along party lines, which could indicate the governor is unlikely to sign the legislation.

Under the bill, polling places would be open all week, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Mondays through Saturdays, and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sundays. The cost of the program is estimated at $22 million, although sponsors said it could be done more cheaply without buying costly new equipment.

Democrats say voting complications caused by Hurricane Sandy demonstrate the need for the program.

Early voting is an important and popular voting reform that arose primarily after the 2000 presidential election debacle. Now, all but 16 states offer some form of early voting. Americans take advantage of the option, too; around one-third of all voters now cast their ballots before Election Day, including nearly 80 percent in some states like Colorado.

A new study by professors at the University of Chicago and Washington University in St. Louis shows that the strict voter ID laws being pushed by Republican state legislators around the country most impact young people, especially young minorities. And given that the people pushing those measures admitted they were intended to help GOP candidates win, the analysis would suggest that the efforts are having their intended effect.

Politico reported Tuesday that the study, co-authored by Cathy J. Cohen of the University of Chicago and Jon C. Rogowski of Washington University in St. Louis, found that even in states without photo ID laws, “65.5 percent of black youth were asked to show ID at the polls, compared with 55.3 percent of Latino youth and 42.8 percent of white youth.”

Worse, the study finds, many minority young voters — including 17.3 percent of young African Americans — did not even try to vote because they lacked the required identification.
The authors noted that their findings show the problem with these suppression laws — and show the continued need for the Voting Rights Act:

“The effort to protect the vote doesn’t make sense and it’s largely discriminatory, impacting we know, young people in particular, young people of color, the poor and the elderly,” Cohen said. … Rogowski said the study will help underscore the importance of keeping Section 5 fully in place. “It’s important that we still have the ability to keep a watchful eye on these kinds of states,” Rogowski said.

Last June, Pennsylvania House Republican Leader Mike Turzai boasted that the voter ID law he helped pass would “allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.” In December, Republican strategist Scott Tranter acknowledged that “a lot of us are campaign professionals and we want to do everything we can to help our sides. Sometimes we think that’s voter ID, sometimes we think that’s longer lines, whatever it may be.”

As the Supreme Court considers the constitutionality of a key provision in the Voting Rights Act, many on both sides of the aisle are speaking out in defense of the law. But just seven years after joining in the Senate’s 98-0 vote to reauthorize the law, two Senate Republicans are refusing to say whether they think the law they voted for passes constitutional muster.

On Tuesday, Talking Points Memo’s Sahil Kapur asked Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Jim Inhofe (R-OK) whether they think the Supreme Court should uphold the Voting Rights Act — which both voted to reauthorize in July 2006. Graham reportedly responded, “Uhh.. [long pause] I haven’t even thought about it.” Inhofe, according to Kapur, responded: “Oh, I don’t know. I’ll let someone else answer that.”

There are many reasons why 48 years after its original passage, the Voting Rights Act is still needed. But the case was perhaps best made by Graham himself in a 2006 press release:

South Carolina has come a long way in the past few decades and we have a lot to be proud of. But just like every other part of the country, we still have a ways to go. I hope twenty-five years from now it can be said that there will be no need for a Voting Rights Act because things have continued to change for the better. If we continue making progress like we have in the past twenty-five years, we can make it happen.

All Senators take an oath that they will “support and defend the Constitution.” The 15th Amendment to that Constitution expressly gives Congress the power to ensure that citizens’ “right to vote shall not be denied or abridged” based on race or color. By voting for the 2006 legislation, Graham and Inhofe already put themselves on record as believing this was constitutional.

Last November, Minnesota voters replaced Republican majorities in the state Senate and House of Representatives with new majorities from the Democratic Farm Labor Party (DFL), Minnesota’s Democratic Party. But as the popularly elected Democratic majority prepares important legislation to make it easier for Minnesotans to vote, Gov. Mark Dayton (DFL) has decided to give the Republican minority the power to block the effort if it is not to their liking.

The MinnPost notes that Dayton has said he will not sign any election reform bill that does not garner bipartisan support in the legislature. House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt (R) boasted Friday that the governor’s move “gives us a little bit of power, too — almost like a veto. If we don’t put any Republican votes up, he’s pledged to veto that stuff.” Daudt hits the nail on the head: a veto is precisely what Dayton is giving the Minnesota Republicans.

Minnesota Republicans have stood unanimously against the majority’s proposals to expand early voting and no-excuse absentee voting. They say their top election concern is the largely mythical issue of election integrity — though their opposition to expanding voting rights could also stem from the fact that “unlikely voters” tend to be less likely to support GOP candidates.

While in the majority in the last legislative session, Minnesota Republicans put a strict voter ID constitutional amendment before the voters — allegedly to address election integrity concerns. While early polls showed strong support, by Election Day voters solidly rejected the proposal.

In his time in the U.S. Senate and as Governor, Dayton has generally been a solid progressive. But rather than recognize that Minnesotans rejected the voter suppression tactics of the GOP — and embraced the pro-voting rights DFL — Dayton’s curious move is giving the minority the power to suppress the voting rights of Minnesotans.

Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), who shed his own blood fighting for the passage if the Voting Rights Act in 1965, said he almost cried when he heard Justice Antonin Scalia’s comment Tuesday that the landmark civil rights law is a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.” Scalia made the comment during oral argument on the constitutionality of a key section of the law, suggesting that the law would always be passed by lawmakers too afraid to vote against it unless the court halted it. The Nation’s Ari Berman tweets:

Civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis told me he almost cried when Scalia called Voting Rights Act a ‘perpetuation of racial entitlement’

— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) February 28, 2013

And Lewis explained his disbelief to Al Sharpton on MSNBC:

It was unreal, unbelievable, almost shocking for a member of the court to use that language. I can see politicians and even members of Congress. But it was just appalling to me. It is an affront to all of what the civil rights movement stood for, what people died for, what people bled for, and those of us who marched across that bridge 48 years ago, we didn’t march for some racial entitlement. We wanted to open up the political process, and let all of the people come in, and it didn’t matter whether they were black or white, Latino, Asian-American or Native American.

The right to vote is precious, almost sacred. It is the most powerful nonviolent instrument that we have in a democratic society. And if the courts come to that point where they declare this section, section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, unconstitutional, it would be a dagger in the heart of the democratic process.

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Lewis was one among many court-watchers and commentators who were shocked and appalled by Scalia’s comment. And not just because he trivialized the civil rights movement. His suggestion that the court must intervene to overturn legislation with too much support is also anathema to his own rigid textualist approach to reading the Constitution. As Ian Millhiser recently pointed out, even if Scalia’s perverse racial entitlements theory had some merit, it is nowhere to be found in the text of the Constitution.