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CLC provided testimony in support of SB 372, a bill that would require the state provide information and support to justice involved voters, including voters in jails.
Campaign Legal Center, Demos and the MacArthur Justice Center filed a brief saying that the district court correctly concluded that late-jailed voters are legally entitled to equal access to the ballot. The brief calls on the appeals court to affirm the lower court’s decision and apply that decision to all voters facing similar circumstances.
A manual for helping people with felony convictions restore their voting rights in Tennessee. This manual first details how you can determine what a person’s path to rights restoration will look like: if they ever lost their right to vote and whether and how they can apply to have it restored. It also includes template versions of the paperwork a person may need to complete and contact information for some groups who can help further.
On February 3, 2020, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson filed a brief in support of the lower court’s decision denying the plaintiffs-appellants’ motion for preliminary injunction.
On February 3, 2020, VNP filed a brief in support of the lower court’s decision denying the plaintiffs-appellants’ motion for preliminary injunction.
On January 15, 2020, CLC sent a letter to the Yakima County Commission notifying it that the current system for electing candidates to the County Commission violates the Washington Voting Rights Act by denying Latino voters an opportunity to elect candidates of their choice to the Commission.
On January 22, 2020 the Governor and the Secretary of State filed their reply brief in support of their appeal of the district court’s preliminary injunction.
Libertarian think tanks Cato Institute and R Street Institute, together with the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center, filed a friend of the court brief in support of voting rights. The groups argue that SB-7066’s requirement conditioning rights restoration on payment of LFOs is bad policy and violates the Fourteenth Amendment. The brief also argues that felony disenfranchisement is anti-democratic.
A letter from Restore Your Vote commending Secretary Pate for his pledge to address Iowa's error-ridden list of ineligible voters and recommending ways to make sure that process is successful and that impacted Iowans are aware of their verified status.
After the District Court granted Plaintiffs’ Motion for a Preliminary Injunction on October 18, 2019, the Governor and the Secretary of State filed for an appeal on November 18, 2019. On December 13, 2019, they filed their opening brief on appeal, seeking to overturn the District Court’s ruling that the State cannot constitutionally disenfranchise individuals solely because they cannot afford to pay their legal financial obligations.
This fall, the Restore Your Vote campaign has assisted nearly 250 Iowans with the voting rights restoration process and seen first-hand how the system could be made easier and more inclusive for Iowans with past felony convictions. This letter to Governor Reynolds outlines our administrative recommendations.
In the fall of 2019, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs included language to protect the right to vote for eligible, incarcerated Arizona voters in the draft of Arizona’s Election Procedures Manual that she submitted to the Governor and Attorney General for approval. This language, though, was rejected by the Attorney General. On December 12, 2019, CLC sent this letter to Arizona’s Attorney General, Governor, and Secretary of State to address the concerns raised by the Attorney General, reaffirm the state’s obligation to enfranchise these eligible voters, and urge them to adopt the new language proposed by Secretary Hobbs.
On September 23, 2019, CLC and Demos submitted a letter to Judge Lina Hidalgo and the Harris County Commissioners Court urging them to move forward with their plan to turn Harris County Jail into a polling location and provide voting machines to the eligible voters incarcerated there. Harris County Jail is one of the largest in the nation, incarcerating an average of 9,000 people daily. Most of Harris County Jail's population is held in pretrial detention or serving misdemeanor sentences, which means they retain their eligibility to vote under Texas law. However, Harris County provides no means by which many of these voters can cast their ballots. Our letter discusses Harris County's obligation to provide ballot access to these eligible voters and urges them to move forward with this initiative.
This manual is designed to provide advocates with the tools they need to take action to combat jail-based disenfranchisement and ensure eligible incarcerated voters can exercise their constitutional right to vote.
A supplemental handbook for community leaders and activists in Davidson County to help people with felony convictions restore their right to vote. To be used in tandem with the “Restore Your Vote Tennessee Rights Restoration Manual.”
A supplemental handbook for community leaders and activists in Shelby County to help people with felony convictions restore their right to vote. To be used in tandem with the “Restore Your Vote Tennessee Rights Restoration Manual.”
A checklist of tasks that can guide efforts to implement successfully a voting rights restoration law.
This summer, our Restore Your Vote organizers in Knoxville, Nashville, and Memphis helped shepherd hundreds of Tennesseans with past convictions through the state’s voting rights restoration process. We submitted this testimony for a hearing on “discriminatory barriers to voting” to share some of the lessons we learned from working with Tennessee’s disenfranchisement scheme up close. In light of our extensive work on this issue in Tennessee and elsewhere, we urge Congress to include explicitly both felony disenfranchisement and re-enfranchisement procedures within the coverage of a new Voting Rights Act bill.