voting rights — Online Journal — Columbia Undergraduate Law Review

Georgia’s Election Integrity Act of 2021: How Strict Voter ID Requirements Negatively Impact People of Color

On March 25, 2021, Georgia passed the Election Integrity Act of 2021, also known as Senate Bill 202, following the first Democratic victories in presidential and Senate elections in Georgia in a generation. The law enacted several restrictions that curtail access to absentee ballots for voters in booming urban and suburban counties. But the tightening of ID requirements will have the most harmful impact on the turnout of voters of color. President Joseph Biden went so far as to call this law “the 21st century Jim Crow,” referring to laws that effectively blocked Black men and women from voting in the American South. According to Kristen Clarke, the president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, “These are laws that attempt to make it more difficult for certain kinds of voters to participate, particularly African Americans and Latinos.” Georgia’s Election Integrity Act of 2021 constitutes a form of voter suppression, as it will negatively impact minority voters due to its strict new ID requirements for absentee ballots, due to minorities disproportionately lacking access to the required documents, and possible financial and transportation burdens in attaining forms of identification.

Rebecca ReyesAugust 22, 2021voting rights, election integrity act, voter ID, Georgia, minority voters

The Role of the Judiciary in American Elections

Although the 2018 Midterm Elections were held on November 6, not every race was called by the end of the night. Some elections had results that were too close to call, mechanical and technological issues with voting machines, or provisional ballots left uncounted. In the gubernatorial race in Georgia, the certification of election results was delayed by a federal judge after concerns about the state’s voter registration system and the counting of provisional ballots was brought to the court’s attention.

Jodi LessnerJanuary 7, 2019elections, first amendment, supreme court, voting rightsComment

Shelby County v. Holder: Implications of a Weakened Voting Rights Act

African Americans’ right to vote under the Fifteenth Amendment was reaffirmed with the establishment of the far-reaching Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, which banned onerous literacy tests and other restrictive measures that were a noticeable facet of the Jim Crow era.[1] In particular, Section 4 of the VRA prevents areas where “less than 50 percentum of the persons of voting age residing therein” were registered by or voted in the 1964 election from restricting or denying individuals the right to vote.[2] This was done in order to deter “the purpose ... of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color.”[3]