WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats were on a roll. The House voted along party lines to make the nation’s capital the 51st state, and two hours later, the Senate overwhelmingly approved bipartisan legislation to address violence against Asian Americans.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats are spotlighting Georgia as they build their case for a broad overhaul of U.S. election law, arguing the new voting rules in the state are emblematic of Republican measures across the country that threaten access to the polls.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A House committee approved a bill Tuesday that would add South Carolina to a list of states calling for a convention to propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
The 14-8 vote in the House Judiciary Committee came after arguments from Black lawmakers who fear the open-ended process never used since the Constitution's ratification in 1788 could remove amendments that ended slavery and secured African American voting rights and citizenship.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Democrats, voting rights advocates and the county officials responsible for running elections in Florida appeared powerless to halt moves by Republican lawmakers Tuesday to tighten the ways in which citizens can cast ballots.
As Florida gears up for another round of elections in 2022 — headlined by nationally watched races for governor and U.S. Senate — the changes could be far from inconsequential in a state famous for razor-thin contests.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — On April 20, 1960, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., stood at a podium at Fisk University and said he had come to Nashville “not to bring inspiration, but to gain inspiration from the great movement that has taken place in this community.”
Hundreds of students from Fisk and other historically Black colleges had been sitting down for weeks at whites-only downtown lunch counters. Many were jailed, and their attorney’s home was bombed on April 19, prompting King’s visit.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Three groups will sponsor an initiative to try to simplify the way Mississippi restores voting rights to people convicted of some felonies, a person involved with the effort said Monday.
Danyelle Holmes, a national organizer with the Mississippi Poor People's Campaign, said paperwork to begin a ballot initiative will be filed soon with the secretary of state's office.
ATLANTA (AP) — President Joe Biden called Georgia's new voting law an “atrocity.” A leading Black bishop called for a national boycott of companies headquartered in the state. But when Stacey Abrams, the state’s well-known voting rights advocate, is asked about the law that has set much of her party on fire, she is critical but measured.
In Georgia, faith leaders are asking corporate executives to condemn laws restricting voting access — or face a boycott. In Arizona and Texas, clergy have assembled outside the state capitols to decry what they view as voter-suppression measures targeting Black and Hispanic people.
Similar initiatives have been undertaken in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio and elsewhere as many faith leaders perceive a threat to voting rights that warrants their intervention in a volatile political issue.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Arizona Legislature was debating one of several Republican proposals to overhaul voting when GOP Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita said she'd had enough.
“I don’t like to be characterized as supporting discriminatory laws!” she told Democrats, who say the legislation will hurt Latino and Native American voters.
But Democratic Sen. Martin Quezada, a Latino from Phoenix, didn't back down. “This will hurt my community. This will hurt my neighborhood.”
Nearly seven of every 10 voters cast their ballots before Election Day in 2020. Republicans are moving to make it harder for that to happen again, potentially affecting the voting preferences of millions of Americans.
The GOP's campaign to place new restrictions on mail-in and early voting in certain states will force voters to contend with new rules on what have quickly become popular and proven methods of casting ballots.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The nation’s next big voting battle underway in Texas would outlaw 24-hour polling places, drive-thru voting and make it a crime for elections officials to mail unsolicited absentee ballot applications.
Put another way: Everything Houston — the state’s biggest Democratic stronghold — did to expand ballot access last year, when the threat of the coronavirus made voting in-person more hazardous.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi's top elections official says he thinks people are doing a “hatchet job” on him over comments he made in a television interview about “woke” and “uninformed” voters on college campuses.
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan's top election official on Thursday blasted Republican-backed voting bills that are pending in the Legislature, calling them an “un-American" affront to voters and saying some would be more restrictive than a controversial new law in Georgia.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A bill in South Carolina that would greatly expand voting through no-excuse absentee ballots and eliminating witnesses for votes cast by mail got a hearing in the Republican-dominated Legislature on Thursday.
The subcommittee hearing was less than an hour long, forced to end because the House was going into session.
Big business has ratcheted up its objections to proposals that would make it harder to vote, with several hundred companies and executives signing a new statement opposing “any discriminatory legislation."
The letter, published Wednesday in The New York Times and The Washington Post, was signed by companies including Amazon, Google, Starbucks and Bank of America, and individuals such as Warren Buffett and Michael Bloomberg, plus law firms and nonprofit groups.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Charley Crabtree was looking to help voters in nursing homes get absentee ballots delivered on time last year, so he picked up about 75 from at least 10 locations in his hometown of Lawrence. Republicans who control the Kansas Legislature want to make what he did a crime punishable by up to six months in jail.
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Republican congressional nominee and New Mexico state Sen. Mark Moores is staking out a campaign platform based on support for the oil and natural gas industry, robust police funding and taxation issues, ahead of a rapid-fire special election.
Fox Corp. is standing behind Tucker Carlson after the Anti-Defamation League last week called for the company to fire the opinion host for his on-air defense of the white-supremacist “great replacement” theory.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi legislators imposed no new limits on the election process during their recently ended session, but this state already had some of the strictest voting laws in the U.S.
Widespread early voting? Not in Mississippi. This state has a limited number of reasons for people to cast absentee ballots.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Once obscure, the Senate filibuster is coming under fresh scrutiny not only because of the enormous power it gives a single senator to halt President Joe Biden’s agenda, but as a tool historically used for racism.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Once obscure, the Senate filibuster is coming under fresh scrutiny not only because of the enormous power it gives a single senator to halt President Joe Biden’s agenda, but as a tool historically used for racism.
ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia is at the forefront of the partisan fight over voting rights and election law.
The Associated Press sat down this week with Stacey Abrams, the Democratic candidate for governor in 2018 and a leading voice on ballot access, to talk about a sweeping new state law that tightens some Georgia voting rules after Democrats carried the state in the 2020 elections.
SEATTLE (AP) — Gov. Jay Inslee on Wednesday signed a bill automatically restoring voting rights to people who have been released from prison after committing felonies, even if they are still on parole — a measure sponsored by a lawmaker who was herself formerly incarcerated.
“While other states are restricting the right to vote, I’m glad that in Washington, we are expanding access to democracy,” Inslee said.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham joined South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster on Tuesday in criticizing the sweeping voting and ethics legislation that passed the U.S. House last month along mostly partisan lines.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Monday that he wouldn’t throw the ceremonial first pitch as planned at the Texas Rangers’ home opener — the latest jab in a fight that’s pushing corporate America into the political battle over voting rights.
A coalition of faith leaders and activists on Monday demanded the elimination of the Senate filibuster, wading into a crucial debate in Washington with a 50-50 Senate and President Joe Biden eyeing ambitious legislation on expanding voting rights, stemming gun violence and other proposals that face opposition from Republicans.
WASHINGTON (AP) — When executives from Coca-Cola and Delta Air Lines spoke out against Georgia's new voting law as unduly restrictive last week, it seemed to signal a new activism springing from corporate America.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Bogdan Bodanovic scored 26 points, Kevin Huerter added 24 and five other Atlanta players scored in double figures as the short-handed Hawks beat the injury-slowed New Orleans Pelicans 126-103 on Friday night.
The Hawks led 55-54 at halftime and scored 37 points in the third quarter – their highest total in that period this season – to take a 94-79 lead entering the fourth quarter.
NEW YORK (AP) — Atlanta lost Major League Baseball’s summer All-Star Game on Friday over the league’s objections to sweeping changes to Georgia voting laws that critics — including the CEOs of Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola — have condemned as being too restrictive.
The decision to pull the July 13 game from Atlanta’s Truist Park amounts to the first economic backlash against Georgia for the voting law that Republican Gov. Brian Kemp quickly signed into law March 25.
President Joe Biden told ESPN on Wednesday it was a mistake for the Texas Rangers to allow full capacity at their ballpark for their first game.
Speaking on the eve of opening day, Biden also said he supports discussions between Major League Baseball and the players' union on moving the All-Star Game from Atlanta over concern about legislation adopted in Georgia restricting voting rights.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republican lawmakers in Kansas are joining GOP colleagues nationwide in trying to tighten voting laws, advancing a measure Wednesday that would make it harder for churches, civic groups, neighbors and candidates to collect and return absentee ballots for voters.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Facing a deadline to act on bills from this year's legislative session, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam announced Wednesday that he had signed several high-profile measures, including a school reopening bill, and advanced a sweeping voting rights measure.
ATLANTA (AP) — Critics of Georgia's new Republican-backed election law issued fresh calls Monday to boycott some of the state’s largest businesses for not speaking out more forcefully against the law, a day after advocacy organizations filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging it.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Court challenges to Republican-led election restrictions in Georgia and elsewhere face an uncertain road in a legal system that has grown more conservative in recent years.
National legislation favored by Democrats could counteract some state restrictions, but that too is no sure thing in a closely divided Congress.