Today, the Supreme Court returns for business and John Roberts begins his fourth term as Chief Justice.

According to the latest edition of ACLU Legal Director Steven R. Shapiro’s annual overview, there is no doubt that Roberts presides over a conservative court. Indeed, there is little doubt that the Roberts court is even more conservative than the Rehnquist court that preceded it. Read on to find out what cases we can expect to see before the Court and what’s at stake for our civil liberties.

Also very useful:

• Jonathan Hafetz, incoming staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, gives a rundown of the case of al-Marri v. Puccuiarelli. Al-Marri is the only designated “enemy combatant” detained in the mainland United States. At issue is whether the president can order the military to seize and indefinitely detain citizens and legal residents in the U.S.
• Chris Hansen, senior staff attorney with the ACLU First Amendment Working Group, explains ACLU v. Mukasey, the ACLU’s successful challenge to the Child Online Protection Act. After two prior trips to the Supreme Court, the law was once again declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in July 2008.
• Laughlin McDonald, Director of the ACLU Voting Rights Project, enlightens us on Northwest Austin Municipal Utilities District v. Mukasey, a challenge to the constitutionality of the recently extended pre-clearance requirements of the Voting Rights Act.

The New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor have also offered their predictions for the term.

(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)

This election season, untold numbers of eligible voters are at serious risk of being denied access to the polls. Are unfair and unnecessary voter ID laws to blame? Is it because their houses are under foreclosure and their registrations are being challenged? Yes. But there’s more: the poor administration of felony and misdemeanor disfranchisement laws across the country.

Approximately 5.3 million Americans with criminal records are barred, by law, from casting votes. The immoral and undemocratic nature of these disfranchisement laws aside—Brent Staples has a nice treatment of this issue on his blog—their implementation has led to widespread confusion about who is eligible to vote and when. A new report by the ACLU and the Brennan Center for Justice documents the chronic lack of knowledge about these laws among the very people charged with administering them: state elections officials. To add insult to injury, another new report by the ACLU finds that the vast majority of voter registration forms fail to adequately explain state disfranchisement provisions.

The consequence is the mass dissemination of inaccurate information, leading to the de facto disfranchisement of qualified voters. The number of people potentially affected by this problem jumps sharply, as a result, from 5.3 million to 47 million—the number of Americans with criminal records. (Yes, one in six Americans has some sort of criminal record—makes you think differently about what it means to be a "criminal," doesn’t it?) Even people without criminal records have the potential to be affected by confusing information, as the voter registration report shows.

This mass confusion is as predictable as it is disturbing. Disfranchisement laws vary widely across the country and are often quite complex, specifying different treatment for people convicted of felonies versus misdemeanors, those with first felony convictions versus multiple felony convictions, individuals with in-state versus out-of-state convictions, people on probation versus parole, etc. Even I have a hard time keeping track of all the different provisions.

So what’s the solution? Well, there is a desperate and immediate need for education. Education of elections and criminal justice officials, who should be trained to understand fully their respective state laws and answer questions from voters. Education of people with criminal records, who should receive information about their eligibility to vote when under, and being discharged from, supervision. And education of the public, who should be able to easily access clear and comprehensive information about eligibility through a variety of media platforms.

Or we could just eliminate these laws.

It’s really interesting how a fundamental right — the right to vote — is fraught with challenges like photo identification requirements, felon disfranchisement, voting while a student, voting with a disability, vote caging and purged voting lists. Although the Constitution only directly speaks to voting with the 15th, 19th, 24th, and 26th Amendments, the ability to cast votes in a free and fair election is a cornerstone of democracy. How can the United States judge, criticize, and attempt to help other countries institute democratic election systems if it continues to enforce provisions that infringe upon a voter’s ability to cast a ballot and have that ballot counted?

Over the past few years we have witnessed voters turned away from polls due to the inability to produce state-issued identification, intimidation, or administrative mistakes. Such challenges have had even more adverse effects on poor and minority citizens. Is this a true democracy if voting is more of a privilege for the few, rather than a right for all?

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When presidential elections can be determined by only a few votes, we need to make sure that every vote counts. But an untold number of Americans are convinced their stay in prison will keep them from the voting booth for the rest of their lives.

That simply isn’t the case.

In New York and many other states, formally incarcerated citizens have the right to vote. But too many people with criminal records and far too many election workers don’t know it.

Today, the New York Civil Liberties Union launched a campaign to educate people with criminal records that they have a right to vote. Watch our video below and visit our new web site www.nyclu.org/vote — for great info, public service announcements, ads and more.

But more importantly, spread the word and make sure people who have the right to vote do just that this November.

It was about time! Yesterday, the Department of Veterans Affairs reversed course and lifted its inexplicable ban on nonpartisan voter registration drives in its facilities around the country. As a result of the decision, over 100,000 veterans will now be able to register to vote in the VA’s nursing homes, homeless shelters and rehabilitation centers.

Last May, the department issued a directive (PDF) banning the dissemination of voting information and other voter registration efforts in federally financed VA facilities. Why? Because the VA claimed that voting drives are disruptive to veterans and that allowing employees to help patients register to vote is tantamount to engaging in “partisan political activities.” Both charges were baseless. It takes just a few minutes to complete a voter registration card and registering to vote is obviously not a partisan activity.

Veterans deserve better than a federal government that denies them the fundamental right to vote, a right they have fought so hard to protect.

Credit is due to the voting rights organizations and elected officials who aggressively challenged the department’s misguided directive. However, it is troubling that there’s so little time to take advantage of this rule change before the election. Hopefully the registration effort will begin immediately so that all veterans will be given the opportunity to vote this November.

As Schoolhouse Rock put it so succinctly:

Oh, we were suffering until suffrage,
Not a woman here could vote, no matter what age,
Then the 19th Amendment struck down that restrictive rule. (Oh yeah!)

It was 88 years ago today that the 19th Amendment of the Constitution was certified, guaranteeing women the right to vote in this country. And this day brings cause to celebrate a huge step towards universal suffrage — or, put more simply, expanding the right to vote to every man and woman in America.

It’s stunning to think of how far we’ve come. In 1919, a woman couldn’t enter a voting booth. In 2008, a woman serves as Secretary of State. A woman serves as Speaker of the House. And America very nearly saw its first woman on the presidential ballot.

In recent years, women have consistently cast a majority of votes in presidential elections. In this exhilarating election year, women are once again poised to represent a greater piece of the electoral pie than men.

But sometimes the appearance of progress fails to tell the whole story.

There are still far too many barriers that stand in the way of truly universal suffrage. According to a census data analysis by Project Vote (PDF), restrictions on the right to vote, like state photo identification laws, are likely to harm women voters (as well as minorities, people with disabilities, and senior citizens) disproportionately.

They found:

• Women are more than twice as likely as men not to have a drivers’ license.
• One of every five senior women does not have a license.
• Of all Americans without a license, over 70 percent are women.

So let’s celebrate today, but never take our eyes off the prize, because we’re not there yet. The obstacles to full voting equality aren’t what they were, but they’re not what they should be: nonexistent. Until that day, we’ll have to keep fighting to end disenfranchising laws and practices that stand in the way of voting equality.

Electoral fusion allows smaller parties to pool their votes. For the minor parties, endorsing a major candidate ensures its survival and allows it to influence a candidate’s platform. For candidates, it allows them to sometimes get crucial votes that provide the margin of victory in a close election. Also called Open Ballot Voting, fusion voting allows multiple parties to “cross endorse” a candidate for office.

Fusion voting is working so well in New York and other states that it is beginning to enjoy a revival. Connecticut reinstituted it. Massachusetts is studying reinstating it.

But contrary to this national trend, South Carolina came by its fusion voting accidentally, and has been trying to expel it from its body politic ever since, including a legislative attempt to kill it last year.

The latest attempt is its poison-pill “sore loser” code that the legislature is trying to enforce against Eugene Platt, the Green Party candidate for a South Carolina House seat. Because Platt failed to win the endorsement of the Democratic Party, the South Carolina Election Commission decided that Platt was ineligible to appear on the ballot under the Green Party banner.

The ACLU has filed a lawsuit today to put Platt on the ballot in November on the Green Party line.

Bryan Sells, a senior staff counsel with the ACLU Voting Rights Project, has never seen the “sore loser” code enforced the way South Carolina is seeking to do.

“The Green Party just had its nominee vetoed by Democrats,” he said. “They’ve had the rug pulled out from under them. If I lived in that district and I support Eugene Platt, I’d be mad as hell.”

Platt won the nomination of a recognized party but is being bounced. Not only is the effort anti-democratic, it changes party power, party dynamics in really pernicious ways. Fusion increases democratic choices that voters have. But fusion voting, combined with this so-called “sore loser” code, reduces those choices.

Late yesterday we won a voting rights case that the ACLU and the Native American Rights Fund brought against the Alaskan state and local election officials for not providing language assistance to voters who speak Yup’ik, the primary language of Bethel residents.

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, the city of Bethel has a population of 5,471, 61.8 percent of whom are Alaska Native or American Indian. So to say this decision affects a lot of people would be an understatement.

The decision requires the state to provide trained poll workers who are bilingual in English and Yup’ik; sample ballots in written Yup’ik; a written Yup’ik glossary of election terms; consultation with local tribes to ensure the accuracy of Yup’ik translations; a Yup’ik language coordinator; and pre-election and post-election reports to the court tracking the state’s efforts.

Prior to the lawsuit, Alaska was in violation of the language assistance provisions of the Voting Rights Act by not adequately translating voting materials or election information into Yup’ik. One egregious example of how poor translations to Yup’ik were: A translation of a 2002 statewide natural gas ballot question used the Yup’ik word for flatulence.

That really says it all (or something).

(Originally posted on Pam’s House Blend).

Isn’t the right to vote freely for a candidate of your choosing just that: the right to vote freely for a candidate of your choosing?

Not according to one Virginia legislator, who seemed to forget the whole principle of small "d" democracy when he characterized efforts to educate people with felony convictions about their right to vote as a big "D" Democratic conspiracy. "I don’ t know a lot of young Republicans who end up being felons," C. Todd Gilbert told The Washington Post. "Clearly the groups that are soliciting these felons to get their rights restored are predisposed to be in support of Obama, and I am sure this registration effort is designed to help their candidate."

(By way of background, a patchwork of state felony disfranchisement laws, inconsistent from state to state, prevent a whopping 5.3 million Americans with past felony—and, in seven states, misdemeanor—convictions from voting. More are disfranchised by general confusion about and elections officials’ misapplication of these laws.)

Even if we indulge the Gilberts of the world momentarily, all we have to do is scratch the surface to see that plenty of Republicans have helped reform their states’ disfranchisement policies in favor of greater enfranchisement. (Not to mention the fact that people of all political persuasions go to prison; just check out this New York Times interview with people incarcerated in Maine and Vermont.)

Louisiana’s Republican Governor Bobby Jindal just signed a bill that requires the Department of Public Safety and Corrections to notify people leaving its custody about voting rights restoration and to provide them with a voter registration form. Jindal is in good company. It was Florida’s Republican Governor Charlie Crist who revised his state’s antiquated law last year to ease voter restoration for some people with nonviolent felony convictions. And George W. Bush, when he was Governor of Texas, signed a bill eliminating the state’s two-year waiting period before voting rights could be restored.

These distinguished gentlemen are joined in their support of increased access to the polls for this population by Jack Kemp (former Congressman and Republican Vice-Presidential candidate) and Chuck Colson (Nixon’s former Chief Counsel), and no one questions their Republican cred. In fact, a diverse array of organizations has spoken in favor of greater enfranchisement, including the American Probation and Parole Association, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the American Correctional Association.

Felony disfranchisement’s nasty roots in voter suppression should remind us that promoting access to the polls for all eligible voters is fundamental to the health of our democracy. Following the Civil War, Southern states faced the enfranchisement of large African-American populations as a result of the 15th Amendment; in response, they scrambled to maintain white rule by, among other things, enacting or reforming felony disfranchisement laws in order to curtail African-Americans’ access to the polls.

Mississippi, for example, revised its constitution to impose disfranchisement as a penalty only for the crimes of which African-Americans were most frequently convicted. When Virginia’s disfranchisement laws were debated at the state’s 1901-1902 Constitutional Convention, one delegate argued that felon disfranchisement would "eliminate the darkey as a political factor in this state in less than five years, so that in no single county…will there be the least concern felt for the complete supremacy of the white race in the affairs of the government."

Over 100 years later, felony disfranchisement laws remain in effect and continue to restrict the political power of communities of color and individuals of all stripes. This is not a partisan issue, it’s a democracy issue. The Washington Post, Boston Globe and Roanoke Times agree. See, C. Todd Gilbert? The right to vote is something we can all get behind.

Big news out of Alabama this week. The ACLU and ACLU of Alabama filed a new lawsuit against election officials over the state’s expansive and unconstitutional voter disenfranchisement practices. Approximately 250,000 Alabamians have lost the right to vote because of a felony conviction — that’s one in 14 people in the state.

Alabama disfranchises people with felony convictions involving “moral turpitude.” According to the state constitution, only the legislature can determine what crimes fit into this antiquated-sounding category. But that didn’t stop Attorney General Troy King from creating his own broader list of disqualifying felonies in 2005. The AG’s list included several nonviolent offenses, including forgery. That’s right, forgery.

To make matters worse, election administrators across Alabama are currently disqualifying citizens from voting for felony convictions that neither the legislature nor the attorney general has ever listed as disfranchising offenses.

Check out today’s excellent New York Times story on the case that features ACLU Voting Rights Project Director Laughlin McDonald and one of our clients, Annette McWashington Pruitt, who was disfranchised because of a 2003 conviction for receiving stolen property, an offense not on the legislature’s list of moral turpitude felonies. She said in our press release:

“I have voted many times before. My father taught me this is what every American should do. But when I tried to register a few weeks ago I was told I couldn’t. My youngest son just turned 18 and is going into the Navy. I have another son in Iraq right now. Voting is really my duty because it represents the freedom my sons are protecting overseas.”

This shameful policy has no place in a functioning democracy. We are confident that the court will see the moral rectitude in giving Alabamians their fundamental rights back before the November elections.