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The Respect Rundown is an update blog for the Foundation’s diversity newsletter, Respect, published FREE three times a year. Posts for the Rundown will update a story that was recently published in Respect but has had some development since publication. Posts will be added periodically. Check back often to get the Rundown!
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The Battle Over Voter Rights—and Wrongs
by Michael Barbella With the 2018 mid-term election, former felons in Florida regained their long-lost right to vote when 64 percent of Florida voters backed the passage of State Constitutional Amendment 4, which overturned a Civil War-era ban on ex-convicts voting....
Women and the Draft, A Decades-Old Debate
by Toni Sutton-Deangelico History was made on December 3, 2015 when Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter announced that all combat roles in the military would be open to women. This new inclusion allowed all women who were fit for combat to be assigned to those roles...
![Still Fighting Voter Suppression in 2018 [UPDATED]](https://njsbf.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/voter-suppression-400x250.jpg)
Still Fighting Voter Suppression in 2018 [UPDATED]
There is no mention of an “affirmative right to vote” in the U.S. Constitution; however, countless lives have been lost in the pursuit of obtaining the franchise. While many believe the country is stronger when everyone exercises the franchise, there are some that...
U.S. Supreme Court Decides Texas Racial Gerrymandering Case
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote: “Voting is the foundation stone for political action. Our vote would place in Congress true representatives of the people who would legislate for the Medicare, housing, schools and jobs required by all men of any color.”...
![Debt Paid, Voting Restored [UPDATED]](https://njsbf.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/felon-voting-400x250.jpg)
Debt Paid, Voting Restored [UPDATED]
Across the country, more than six million people have been disenfranchised because of a felony conviction, according to The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C. non-profit that addresses disparities in the criminal justice system. That disenfranchisement typically...
Voter Suppression Still Cause for Concern
In the fall 2017 edition of Respect, we tackled the issue of voter suppression and reported on the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. Since then, that commission, which only met twice and was plagued with controversy and eight lawsuits, has been...
Courts Will Decide Issues of Transgender Discrimination
The current White House Administration has issued policies that target the transgender community. Most recently, Attorney General Jeff Sessions released a memo advising of the White House’s position that federal statutes prohibiting discrimination based on sex do not...
Voter ID Laws—Blocking Access to the Ballot
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 34 states have laws requiring voters to show some form of ID at the polls. Some state laws specifically require photo identification, others states do not. (New Jersey requires no document to vote.) In the...
Drawing Racial Lines
Gerrymandering—the manipulation of boundaries in congressional districts to favor one political party over another—has been around since the early 1800s. The courts have been somewhat hesitant to declare partisan gerrymandering unconstitutional. Racial gerrymandering,...