Voting rights advocates sue over Tennessee crackdown on voter registration

[Demovictory9]

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/442001-voting-rights-advocates-sue-over-tennessee-crackdown-on-voter

Voting rights groups filed a lawsuit on Thursday, hours after Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed into law a measure that would impose criminal charges and fines on voter registration groups over incomplete forms and missed deadlines.

Lee said the bill creates "elections with integrity," according to The Washington Post, but the coalition of voting rights groups argued that the measure's regulations violate the First Amendment.

Voter rights groups contend that the law is intended to prevent people, particularly African Americans and other minorities, from registering to vote in a state that has one of the lowest voter registration rates in the nation.


The lawsuit, filed by the Tennessee State Conference of the NAACP, Democracy Nashville-Democratic Communities, The Equity Alliance and The Andrew Goodman Foundation, argues that the law "violate[s] the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and [would] have a chilling effect on the exercise of fundamental First Amendment rights."

Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which is representing the groups in the lawsuit, said the law is an attempt to prevent people from voting.

“Tennessee’s law is one of the most restrictive voter suppression measures that we have seen this year. This is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to discourage and deter people from helping others to register to vote,” she said in a statement.

[gratuitous]

1. This is NOT a thinly veiled attempt

It's an all-out assault on citizens' constitutional rights.