America's New War Over Voting Rights: The 2012 Election and Beyond

Complete coverage of the ruses, hearings, and legal battles that have plunged the U.S. into a civil rights crisis

The 2012 Election

No One in America Should Have to Wait 7 Hours to Vote What's happening at polling stations in Ohio and Florida isn't some freak of nature or breakdown in equipment. It's all part of a partisan design.

Why Mitt Romney Lost: A Simple, Overriding Theory If November 6 proved anything, it's that no serious political party in America can win an election by suppressing votes.

On Election Day, a Tale of 2 Americas On a day we celebrate the romance of democracy, too many are struggling to exercise the fundamental right to vote.

Think the Florida Recount Was Bad? Just Wait Until November 6 While the nation fixates on stamping out non-existent voter fraud with photo-ID requirements, the perils of electronic voting go unchallenged.

Federal Judge on Ohio's Ballot Order: 'Democracy Dies in the Dark' There are hundreds of thousands of ballots left to count in Ohio -- and a federal judge is angry about how the secretary of state there plans to count them.

Ohio's Provisional Ballot Order: The Biggest Legal Story of the Weekend A late voting directive from Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted begets an "emergency motion" about how to count provisional ballots.

Say Hello to the Ohio Official Who Might Pick the Next President Didn't like having nine justices decide the 2000 election? Meet Jon Husted.

The War on Voting

In South Carolina, Shockingly Candid Talk About Voter Discrimination The state's chief election official -- a bureaucrat, not a politician -- patiently and professionally proves how the new law could be used not only to keep residents from voting, but to systematically discard their votes.

Why South Carolina's 'Most Sacred' Right Is in Jeopardy Why is Governor Nikki Haley defending her state's racist voter-identification law? And why is the Republican Party cheering her efforts?

Federal Court: In South Carolina We Trust A three-judge panel delays implementation of South Carolina's voter-ID law -- and shows a great deal of faith in local elections officials on voting-rights issues.

Remember When Judges Decided Elections After the Vote? A Pennsylvania decision on voter ID begs the question Republican lawmakers have been asking for years: Why wait until after the election to skew the results?

Pennsylvania State Court Cops Out on Voter ID Law A timid ruling sends the matter back to the trial court for more review -- guaranteeing more voting chaos between now and Election Day.

In Pennsylvania, Finally, a Sensible Voting Rights Ruling A Republican judge changes his mind, because he has to.

Why Pennsylvania's Vote Suppressors Can Never Win The fight is about dignity as much as it is about the right to vote, as evidenced by the story of one family burdened by the state's new voter ID law.

The Politics of Voter Suppression

Did Republicans Just Save the Voting Rights Act? Ironically, the furor over voter ID will make it hard for Supreme Court conservatives to justify striking down one of the Act's key provisions.

Bill Clinton Is Right to Talk About Voter Fraud and Race A National Review writer attacks the former president for his convention-night speech -- showing why Republicans need to reevaluate how they think about the right to vote.

Voting Rights: This Is What a Strong Party Platform Would Look Like In tone and tenor, the Democratic and Republican voting-rights planks could not be more different. But there's clearly room for a third way.

The National Scandal They Didn't Talk About in Tampa While Republicans and the media were partying at the convention, the GOP's voter suppression efforts got thrashed in court.

George Will Gets (Almost) Everything Wrong About Voting Rights The conservative columnist describes a world that's completely unrecognizable to anyone who followed the story of the 2012 election.

False Equivalence in the New York Times' Voting Rights Story "Journalists need to make every effort to get beyond the spin and help readers know what to believe, to help them make their way through complicated and contentious subjects." By that earnest standard, the Times' piece on voting rights failed.

The New War on Civil Rights

Rep. John Lewis: 'Make Some Noise' on New Voting Restrictions The civil rights icon issues a call -- "All of us should be up on our feet" -- to protest partisan voting restrictions this election season.

America's New War Over Civil Rights Does the pernicious war on voting access require any less of a moral response than the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s?

New Voting Laws: Bending the Arc of History Away From Justice The current generation of laws could disenfranchise millions.

The Party of Lincoln and the Right to Vote As the fight over a constitutional right shifts to a dubious South Carolina measure, the GOP doubles down on restrictive voting laws.

Money, Power, Ruses, and the Right to Vote A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing highlights the hypocrisy of restrictive voter laws in the age of Citizens United.

How Voter ID Laws Are Being Used to Disenfranchise Minorities and the Poor Conservatives say this kind of legislation is meant to curb voter fraud. But while evidence of fraud is scant, proof of the regulations' failings is not.

About the Author

Andrew Cohen is a contributing editor at The Atlantic. He is a legal analyst for 60 Minutes and CBS Radio News, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, and commentary editor at The Marshall Project.

Twitter

More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they’re on the brink of a mental-health crisis.

One day last summer, around noon, I called Athena, a 13-year-old who lives in Houston, Texas. She answered her phone—she’s had an iPhone since she was 11—sounding as if she’d just woken up. We chatted about her favorite songs and TV shows, and I asked her what she likes to do with her friends. “We go to the mall,” she said. “Do your parents drop you off?,” I asked, recalling my own middle-school days, in the 1980s, when I’d enjoy a few parent-free hours shopping with my friends. “No—I go with my family,” she replied. “We’ll go with my mom and brothers and walk a little behind them. I just have to tell my mom where we’re going. I have to check in every hour or every 30 minutes.”

Those mall trips are infrequent—about once a month. More often, Athena and her friends spend time together on their phones, unchaperoned. Unlike the teens of my generation, who might have spent an evening tying up the family landline with gossip, they talk on Snapchat, the smartphone app that allows users to send pictures and videos that quickly disappear. They make sure to keep up their Snapstreaks, which show how many days in a row they have Snapchatted with each other. Sometimes they save screenshots of particularly ridiculous pictures of friends. “It’s good blackmail,” Athena said. (Because she’s a minor, I’m not using her real name.) She told me she’d spent most of the summer hanging out alone in her room with her phone. That’s just the way her generation is, she said. “We didn’t have a choice to know any life without iPads or iPhones. I think we like our phones more than we like actual people.”