Posts Tagged: minnesota

In California, Election Day really is Election Month

U.S. Senate election, 2012

by SUMMER PARKERPERRY posted 01.02.2014

In little more than a decade, mail-in or “absentee” voting for statewide elections quadrupled, from 4.4 percent in 1978 to 18.4 percent in 1990, reflecting in part legal changes making it easier to vote absentee. Since the 1990s, mail-in ballots have increased exponentially. In the 2008 primary, 58 percent of the voters cast mail-in ballots, the first time in a California statewide election that mail-in ballots represented more than half the vote. In primaries since then, mail-in voting has risen steadily to a remarkable 65 percent in 2012. In the November 2012 general election, mail-in ballots accounted for about 51 percent. (Above: 2012 U.S. Senate election map/Kurykh, Wikimedia))

Less than a month after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, the Senate Judiciary Committee discussed restoring the protections.

“I was particularly disappointed with the statement in the oral arguments that Congress passed the Voting Rights Act only because it had a nice name,” Minnesota Sen. Al Franken