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By Thomas L. Shriner Jr. The plaintiffs in Wisconsin’s Voter ID case [on Oct. 2] filed an emergency application with Justice Kagan, the Circuit Justice assigned to the Seventh Circut, seeking an order vacating the Seventh Circuit’s September...

In part II of our legislative preview, we take a look at a few more issues likely to occupy state lawmakers' attention in 2014. The majority were hot issues in the states last year and even before, but they have only been stoked by recent Supreme...

By Korey Clark Last week, we took a mid-year look at several of the issues we predicted last December would see a lot of action in statehouses this year. Here are a few more of those issues, as well as a couple of others that have heated up as the...

POLITICS & LEADERSHIP FL GEARING UP FOR ANOTHER VOTER 'PURGE': Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) is planning to initiate another purge of non-U.S. citizens from the state's voter rolls, despite the uproar created by his last such effort....

Just months ahead of the midterm elections in November, court challenges to tough new voting laws in several states have thrown the electoral process into legal limbo. Nearly all of the laws — imposing strict photo ID requirements and restricting...

POLITICS AND LEADERSHIP: Last month, the U.S. Justice Department asked a panel of judges in San Antonio to order continued scrutiny of Texas' voting procedures, despite the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in June nullifying the requirement for the...

By Eric G. Pearson What do cases involving challenges to same-sex-marriage and voter ID laws have in common? The answer, according to a per curiam opinion issued last week by a panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit...

AZ SWITCHING TO TWO-TRACK VOTING SYSTEM: Arizona could have a dual-track voting system requiring the use of two different ballots in next year's elections, as a result of an opinion issued last week by the state's attorney general, Tom Horne....

VOTING RIGHTS BILL INTRODUCED IN CONGRESS: A bill introduced in Congress last month would require four southern states to once again obtain federal preapproval before making any changes to their voting laws by replacing parts of the Voting Rights Act...

WI SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS STATE'S VOTER ID LAW: Wisconsin's Supreme Court upheld the state's voter ID law in a pair of cases, but only after tweaking the law to bring it in line with the state Constitution in one of them. Under the terms of...

SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS MI BAN ON AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: Last month the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Michigan's 2006 ballot initiative ending affirmative action at public universities in the state [ version available to lexis.com subscribers ]. The decision...

This year's presidential election could very well end much like that of 2000, with its controversial U.S. Supreme Court ruling on "hanging chads." Over the past few weeks, nearly a dozen decisions have been handed down by state and federal...

Last week, SNCJ took a look at some of the most pressing issues facing states in 2013. Here are a few more, some of which are either ongoing considerations for state lawmakers or matters likely placed square on their radars by last month's elections...

Forty-seven years ago, Democratic President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, outlawing the discriminatory election practices employed in much of the South, including his home state of Texas. Now another Texan, Republican Attorney General...

In April 2012, the Minnesota Legislature approved a proposed amendment to Article VII, Section 1 of the Minnesota Constitution . The proposed amendment would add two subsections as follows: "(b) All voters voting in person must present valid...