Voting Rights Institute Asks Department of Justice to Investigate Daphne, Ala. for Possible Voting Rights Violations
The Voting Rights Institute today called on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Daphne, Alabama’s City Council’s March 21 decision to reduce the number of polling places in the city from five to two. The city’s decision forces residents of one of the only districts with a sizable black population to travel more than two and a half miles away from their current polling place, while preserving the polling locations for most of the city’s heavily white districts.
“This is exactly the type of voting change that would have had to have been precleared by the Department of Justice before the Supreme Court’s disastrous ruling in Shelby County v. Holder,” said Harry Baumgarten, Legal Fellow with the Voting Rights Institute. “In gutting a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court has opened the door for these potentially discriminatory measures to be passed and implemented throughout the country.”
The Voting Rights Institute, a project of the American Constitution Society, Campaign Legal Center and Georgetown University Law Center, sent the letter to the Department of Justice after receiving a complaint from African-American leader and voter in Daphne, Willie Williams. In addition to reducing the number of polling locations, the city also recently passed a new mid-decade redistricting plan whose impact on the black voting age population in each district is at best unclear because the city has not been forthcoming about the racial impact of its new plan.
“We want fair and honest elections, and what the Daphne City Council has done in reducing polling locations is not fair and it’s not honest,” said Willie Williams, Daphne resident. “Voters need convenient polling places and need to be able to vote, and not be confused where to go to vote in their local elections.”
The Voting Rights Institute protects one of the most precious rights held by Americans — the right to vote. Established in response to the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which invalidated a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the Voting Rights Institute is training the next generation of attorneys, experts and activists to preserve our democracy and protect the ability of all Americans to vote.