Portside

Underutilized provisions of the National Voter Registration Act could help enfranchise millions of Americans.

Millions of minority voters remain 'vulnerable to voter suppression schemes in towns, counties, and states across the country,' NAACP analysis shows

Republicans have created immense obstacles to registration - reduced the number of days for early voting, eliminated same-day registration - all with the clear and unadulterated aim of sinking, if not eliminating the Democratic electorate. What is striking is that, not very far behind their bogus arguments regarding alleged voter fraud, Republicans are close to admitting, or will outright admit, that their aim is to get potential Democratic voters to remain home.

The civil rights restored by this Order are: (1) the right to vote; (2) the right to hold public office; (3) the right to serve on a jury; and (4) the right to act as a notary public.

For the fourth year in a row, bills to expand voters' access to the ballot box have outpaced those restricting voting, in terms of both introduction and passage. Among the most popular reforms are laws expanding voter registration, including automatic registration and online registration.

Evelyn T. Butts and Joseph A. Jordan challenged Virginia's poll tax. The case made it to the US Supreme Court and in March 1966, Justices voted 6-3 to end the poll tax in all elections. Following the decision, African Americans were elected to state and local offices for the first time since Reconstruction.

Just in time for this year’s presidential primary, a new law in Maryland will allow former offenders on probation or parole the right to vote.

Maryland joins 13 other states and the District of Columbia where citizens are permitted to vote immediately after serving their sentences.

Monday night, Hillary Clinton butchered Reconstruction's history. It's a good opportunity to correct the record, and glean why Lincoln really was America's greatest president. Reconstruction in reality was a briefly successful attempt to build a true democracy in the South. Clinton implies that it was Southern anger at unjust Reconstruction policy that led them to institute Jim Crow, but Jim Crow was the goal from the very end of the war.

Reader Comments: New Threat to Voting Rights before Supreme Court; The Portrayal of African Americans on Stage and Screen - Tonya Pinkins the Real Mother Courage; Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland and Oregon Thugs; Left Gains Ground, Can It Hold; Trump and Fascism; Readers Respond to poem about Berlin Wall - The GDR, A Different Perspective; The Real Northern Student Movement; Shostakovich; Vivian Stromberg Presente.(Sorry for length, three weeks since Tidbits last appeared)