Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy died late last night at the age of 77. I’ve pulled from today’s New York Times obituary the many instances over his career that Senator Kennedy fought for voting rights and pasted them below. For the complete article, click here.

• Mr. Kennedy left his mark on legislation concerning civil rights, health care, education, voting rights and labor. He was chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions at his death. But he was more than a legislator. He was a living legend whose presence ensured a crowd and whose hovering figure haunted many a president.

• He returned to the Senate in 1965, joining his brother Robert, who had won a seat from New York. Edward promptly entered a major fight, his first. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Voting Rights Act was up for consideration, and Mr. Kennedy tried to strengthen it with an amendment that would have outlawed poll taxes. He lost by only four votes, serving lasting notice on his colleagues that he was a rapidly maturing legislator who could prepare a good case and argue it effectively.

• Freed at last of the expectation that he should and would seek the White House, Mr. Kennedy devoted himself fully to his day job in the Senate. He led the fight for the 18-year-old vote, the abolition of the draft, deregulation of the airline and trucking industries, and the post-Watergate campaign finance legislation. He was deeply involved in renewals of the Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing law of 1968.

• His most notable focus was civil rights, “still the unfinished business of America,” he often said. In 1982, he led a successful fight to defeat the Reagan administration’s effort to weaken the Voting Rights Act.

In recent years, Senator Kennedy stayed active on the issue of voting rights, working for the re-authorization of the Voting Rights Act and issuing a strong opinion about voter ID.

The New York Times obituary ends with a quote by our very own board member, Norman J. Ornstein:

“He was a quintessential Kennedy, in the sense that he had all the warts as well as all the charisma and a lot of the strengths,” said Norman J. Ornstein, a political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute. “If his father, Joe, had surveyed, from an early age up to the time of his death, all of his children, his sons in particular, and asked to rank them on talents, effectiveness, likelihood to have an impact on the world, Ted would have been a very poor fourth. Joe, John, Bobby … Ted.

“He was the survivor,” Mr. Ornstein continued. “He was not a shining star that burned brightly and faded away. He had a long, steady glow. When you survey the impact of the Kennedys on American life and politics and policy, he will end up by far being the most significant.”

Photo of Senator Kennedy by Stephen Crowley for The New York Times.

Posted in Civil Rights, Election Reform, Massachusetts | 1 Comment »

Sarah Burris wrote the following blog after attending the election reform panel at Netroots Nation 2009. Burris blogs at Future Majority and served as a reporter for Rock the Vote’s project Rock the Trail during the 2008 elections. She was a recipient of the Democracy for America scholarship to Netroots Nation in Austin, Texas in 2008.

One of the panels I attended at Netroots Nation was Repairing our Democracy: Voter Registration Modernization and other Solutions with speakers Secretary Debra Bowen California’s Secretary of State, Dean Logan the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk for Los Angeles County (the nation’s largest county), Jonah Goldman a national expert on voting and elections, and Justin Levitt counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice. The panel was also moderated by Eric Marshall, campaign manager for the National Campaign for Fair Elections in the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law’s Voting Rights Project.

Highly knowledgeable experts on the panel seemed to develop the consensus that the system is broken. (more…)

Posted in #Netroots, Election 2008, Election Reform, nn09 | Comments Off

Greetings to all of the election reformers in Pittsburgh at Netroots Nation 2009. I’m sorry we can’t be there with you like we were last year when I was on the grassroots video panel and we brought you vlogs Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi and even Bob Barr. But it sounds like, from monitoring the #nn09 hashtag on Twitter, that there’s lots of great stuff going on, including talk about election reform. Even California Secretary of State (and election reformer and veteran of the Why Tuesday? vlog) Debra Bowen spoke to NN09 (pictured above) We can’t wait to hear all about it. Be sure to send us updates in case were missing anything. But we’re watching from afar!

Photo of CA SoS Bowen via sterno74 on Flickr.

Posted in #Netroots, #NN08, nn09 | Comments Off