The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights movement on August 6, 1965, and Congress later amended the Act five times to expand its protections. Designed to enforce the voting rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, the Act sought to secure the right to vote for racial minorities throughout the country, especially in the South. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the Act is considered to be the most effective piece of federal civil rights legislation ever enacted in the country. It is also "one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history."
Voting rights in the United States, specifically the enfranchisement and disenfranchisement of different groups, has been a moral and political issue throughout United States history.
Native Hawaiians, or simply Hawaiians, are the Indigenous Polynesian people of the Hawaiian Islands.
Mililani Trask is a leader of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement and a political speaker and attorney. One of Trask's contributions to the Hawaiian sovereignty movement was her founding of Na Koa Ikaika o Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi, a native Hawaiian non-governmental organization.
The Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) is a self-governing corporate body of the State of Hawaii created by the 1978 Hawaii State Constitutional Convention.
The Oklahoma Libertarian Party is the recognized state affiliate of the Libertarian Party in Oklahoma. It has been active in state politics since the 1970s, but due to what critics characterize as Oklahoma's restrictive ballot access requirements the party has been an officially recognized party during only portions of the last twenty-five years. In 2016, The Oklahoma Libertarian Party regained its ballot access. Through running strong candidates in targeted campaigns, the state party has maintained, and currently has secured, ballot access through 2024 at a minimum.
Rice v. Cayetano, 528 U.S. 495 (2000), was a case filed in 1996 by Big Island rancher Harold "Freddy" Rice against the state of Hawaii and argued before the United States Supreme Court. In 2000, the Court ruled that the state could not restrict eligibility to vote in elections for the Board of Trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to persons of Native Hawaiian descent.
H. William Burgess was an attorney who lived in Hawaii. He opposed the Hawaiian sovereignty movement and of government programs that benefit Native Hawaiians. Burgess brought two lawsuits seeking to have such programs declared unconstitutional.
In 1898, the United States Congress annexed Hawaiʻi based on a Joint Resolution of Annexation. Questions about the legitimacy of the U.S. acquiring Hawaii through a joint resolution, rather than a treaty, were actively debated in Congress in 1898, and is the subject of ongoing debate. Upon annexation, the Republic of Hawai‘i transferred approximately 1.8 million acres of Hawaiian Government and Crown Lands to the United States (U.S.), which are today held by the State of Hawaiʻi. In the 1993 Apology Resolution, the U.S. government officially apologized to the Native Hawaiian people, acknowledging that the Republic of Hawaiʻi transferred these lands "without the consent of or any compensation to the Native Hawaiian people of Hawaiʻi or their sovereign government" and that "the indigenous Hawaiian people never directly relinquished their claims. .. over their national lands to the United States." Although the lands are commonly referred to as "ceded lands" or "public lands," some refer to them as "seized lands" or "Hawaiian national lands" to highlight the illegal nature of the land transfer, acknowledge different interpretations of the legal effect of the Joint Resolution, and to recognize that Native Hawaiians maintain claims to these lands. Many Native Hawaiian individuals and organizations insist on the return of title, which would be consistent with international law and recognition of the rights of Indigenous peoples, whereas others seek back rent for the use of the land.
The Virginia State Board of Elections (SBE) was created in 1946 as a nonpolitical agency responsible for ensuring uniformity, fairness, accuracy and purity in all elections in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The SBE promotes the proper administration of election laws, campaign finance disclosure compliance, and voter registration processes in the state by promulgating rules, regulations, issuing instructions, and providing information to local electoral boards and general registrars. In addition, the SBE maintains a centralized database of statewide voter registration and election related data.
Lee v. Keith, 463 F.3d 763 was a case in which, on September 18, 2006, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit struck down Illinois' ballot access laws, opining:
In combination, the ballot access requirements for independent legislative candidates in Illinois--the early filing deadline, the 10% signature requirement, and the additional statutory restriction that disqualifies anyone who signs an independent candidate's nominating petition from voting in the primary--operate to unconstitutionally burden the freedom of political association guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Ballot access barriers this high--they are the most restrictive in the nation and have effectively eliminated independent legislative candidacies from the Illinois political scene for a quarter of a century--are not sustainable based on the state's asserted interest in deterring party splintering, factionalism, and frivolous candidacies.
James Bopp Jr. is an American conservative lawyer. He is most known for his work associated with election laws and campaign finance.
Nader v. Brewer, 531 F.3d 1028 is a 2008 decision by the Ninth Circuit ruling that certain Arizona voting regulations were unconstitutional under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Andrew David Hurwitz is a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
The Constitution of the United States provides several basic requirements for eligibility to be elected to the office of President. Individual states did not introduce significant relevant legislation until Barack Obama was elected in 2008. The controversy generated by various conspiracy theorists who asserted during the 2008 presidential election campaign that Obama was not a natural-born U.S. citizen, as mandated by the Constitution, and thus was ineligible to be President of the United States, prompted several state legislatures to consider legislation aimed at requiring future presidential candidates to show proof of presidential eligibility before being granted ballot access in their state.
Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30 (1986), was a United States Supreme Court case in which a unanimous Court found that "the legacy of official discrimination ... acted in concert with the multimember districting scheme to impair the ability of "cohesive groups of black voters to participate equally in the political process and to elect candidates of their choice." The ruling resulted in the invalidation of districts in the North Carolina General Assembly and led to more single-member districts in state legislatures.
Sean David Reyes is an American lawyer and politician who has been the Attorney General of Utah since 2013. Appointed to the office by Governor Gary Herbert following the resignation of John Swallow, Reyes was subsequently reelected. Reyes is a member of the Republican Party and has served as a county, state, and national delegate for the Republican Party and a member of the Utah Republican Party's State Central Committee.
José María Brías "Joey" Manahan is a Filipino American politician from the state of Hawaii. Joey Manahan is a former member of the Honolulu City Council and served as the Chair of the Budget Committee and Vice-Chair of the Transportation Committee.
Federal recognition of Native Hawaiians refers to proposals for the federal government of the United States to give legal recognition to Native Hawaiians, providing them with some form of indigenous sovereignty within a framework similar to that afforded to Native Americans and Alaska Natives.
Linda Dela Cruz was a Native Hawaiian singer known as "Hawaii's Canary" and acclaimed for the Hawaiian "ha'i" (falsetto) style of singing. She was honored as an inductee of the Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame twice, once in 2006 as an individual and again in 2015 as part of the Halekulani Girls. After retiring from her musical career, Dela Cruz worked as an activist for Hawaiian rights and served on the board of trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.
