Notice of Enacted Changes: Any changes that will affect the voting process must be publicly and promptly disclosed and broadly publicized. What is it and how will it help: This provision is meant to require states and jurisdictions within states to notify the public of all changes to the voting process or method of elections. Any such changes must be publicly and promptly disclosed and broadly publicized. The types of changes that must be disclosed are enumerated, and the timeframes for providing that transparency are set. This measure is specifically meant to address one of the major damaging effects of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Shelby County v. Holder. As highlighted by the National Commission on Voting Rights report, one of the most important components of Section 5 was that it provided a comprehensive, up-to-date inventory of voting changes in the covered jurisdictions. Each week, DOJ published a notice, including on its website, with all applications for approval of a change in voting practice or method of election, detailing the location and the change made. As a result, DOJ, local citizens, and civil rights advocates knew what was happening, could assess any potentially harmful effects, particularly on racial minorities, and were ready to respond prior to the change going into effect. Now that tool is gone. The gold standard bill seeks to redress that gap by putting the onus on the states to provide the kind of information that was once required by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act until the Supreme Court eviscerated it. In our version, providing such transparency measures would not be limited to specification in federal law, but would be in each state’s statutory framework. This provision would allow all affected parties to track potentially discriminatory and disenfranchising measures that all jurisdictions – even down to the local level – might be making and try to block them before they disenfranchise voters. As it stands now, we rely on good citizens and advocacy organizations keeping as much of a close eye on the happenings of every election body in the country for this kind of information as possible. This work is clearly insufficient to combat voter discrimination. As long as Congress does not act to fix the Voting Rights Act, we need states to take these steps. Key Data •

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Since the Shelby decision, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund has developed an ongoing running list of all the negative measures taken without any review or public outreach at the state and local level.[1] The list is long. For example, immediately after the decision, North Carolina moved forward with its strict voter ID measure, ended much of the early and Sunday voting, and eliminated Same Day Registration. Texas immediately activated its restrictive ID law that a federal court

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had previously found to be intentionally discriminatory. States have conducted illegal purges of the voter lists. Numerous counties, cities, and towns have changed their methods of election to the detriment of communities of color (such as at large elections), closed and consolidated polling places that serve African American voters, changed the dates of elections and engaged in questionable redistricting schemes. These are just the incidents that voting rights lawyers and advocates have been able to ferret out through local allies and press reports. There is no systematic requirement anymore that these governments broadly advise the public of changes they are making that may well be discriminatory.

States that have it We are not aware of any state that has such a provision at this time.

For more information, contact us here: Democracy Initiative Education Fund 50 F Street NW, Washington, DC 20001 Email: [email protected] Phone: 202.567.6101 www.dieducationfund.org

[1]http://www.naacpldf.org/files/case_issue/States%20and%20Localities%27%20Responses%2 0to%20Shelby%20County%2C%20Alabama%20v.%20Holder%20as%20of%2011.5.2015.PDF.