a

January 2022

Republican State Senator Kel Seliger has signed his name to a sworn statement that he believes his party unlawfully discriminated against voters of color when it recently redrew the lines for Senate District 10. Seliger, who once encountered a similar accusation when he himself led the Texas Senate’s redistricting committee in the previous decade, will not be seeking re-election himself in 2022. The multiple-day hearing before a panel of federal judges is just one of many legal challenges being brought against the state and

In the company of a local Missouri election official, US Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) celebrated the Democrats’ most recent failure to pass sweeping election reforms through Congress. Blunt insisted that the new legislation was far less reasonable than the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and that it would amount to “a federal take over of elections…” The Senator stopped short, however, of agreeing with some prominent fellow Missouri Republicans that the 2020 election was illegitimate: "I didn't think the election was rigged. And I

In the wake of yet another defeat for voting rights legislation at the hands of Republicans in the United States Senate, US Representative Jim Clyburn (D-SC-6), the House Majority Whip, is publicly encouraging President Biden to draft executive actions, if necessary, in order to demonstrate political progress to voters before the 2022 midterms. Clyburn, generally regarded to be the most powerful African-American lawmaker in the House, cited President Lincoln’s unilateral issue of the Emancipation Proclamation and President Truman’s desegregation of the US Armed Forces

The U.S. Senators from Maine were sharply divided on the Senate floor as the Democrats failed to advance legislation to protect voting rights against an onslaught of restrictive voting bills passed at the state level. Senator Angus King (I-ME) argued that failure to pass stronger voting rights protections could lead to a catastrophic loss of public faith in the authenticity of elections. He also expressed concerns about allowing partisan activists to participate in election oversight processes, undermining the authority of nonpartisan election officials. Senator

U.S. Representative Jamaal Bowman (D-NY-16) was among those arrested near the Capitol building for protesting the defeat of voting rights legislation in the Senate.  Representative Bowman noted that he was in the company of 20 other people who were arrested, among them young hunger strikers. Bowman called his colleagues in the Senate who contributed to the bill’s defeat - including fellow Democrats Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) - “a direct threat to our democracy.”    Visit The Hill to learn more.Image Credit: Mpls55408 (CC