Voting Rights

You would never mistake Jesse Lopez Jr. for a revolutionary. Soft-spoken, with a shy smile beneath his gray mustache, the retired school custodian and amateur mariachi singer hardly seems like an instigator. Yet if Latinos come to dominate California politics someday, Lopez will have helped make it happen.

The Supreme Court served notice Friday it may make a far-reaching change in civil rights law this year and knock down a pair of long-standing rules that give special protections to minorities in the workplace and in the voting booth. The justices, after meeting privately, announced they had voted to hear two cases that concern the lingering role of race in American life. The cases could put the court on a collision course with the incoming Obama administration.

The election of Barack Obama as president has been hailed as a crowning achievement of America's civil rights movement, the triumph of a black candidate in a nation with a history of slavery and segregation. But in a twist, Obama's success has emerged as a central argument from conservatives who say his victory proves that some of the nation's most protective civil rights laws can be erased from the books.

The Supreme Court limited the reach of the Voting Rights Act on Monday, ruling that there was no duty to draw voting districts that would elect black candidates in areas where blacks were less than a majority. In a 5-4 decision, the court said officials need not consider race when drawing districts for state legislatures, county boards, city councils and school districts, so long as blacks did not make up a voting majority in a particular area. Justice Anthony M.

Julia Moreno has been following the presidential campaign and studying the issues. She has even chosen her favorite candidate: "La Senora Clinton." Moreno, a legal immigrant from Guatemala who came to Los Angeles more than 30 years ago, applied for citizenship this summer so she would be able to vote -- starting with the 2008 presidential election. But U.S.

Just as the 2008 election is shifting into high gear, the Supreme Court will take up a voting rights case Wednesday that could affect the outcome in some close contests this year and well into the future. At issue is whether states may require voters to show a driver's license or a passport at their polling places. Voting rights advocates are calling it the most important election-law case since Bush vs. Gore in 2000, and the partisan divide is nearly as sharp.

Many years ago, when she was still a tiny girl in braids, and not the professional she is today, Eufrosina Cruz heard the story of how her father married off her sister to a stranger at age 12: She wondered if a man might come to claim her too. Being a girl isn't easy in Santa Maria Quiegolani, a poor rural village where Zapotec is the native language and most girls are lucky to complete grade school. Cruz left to eventually become a college-educated accountant.

Earlier this year, Ohio election officials sent notices marked "Do not forward" to the state's registered voters, alerting them to the March primary. To the surprise of voting rights activists, 573,444 notices were returned as undeliverable in five counties alone, including the urban areas of Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati. The heavy return rate alarmed liberal activists.

Before Kimberly Haven set out to register voters this month, she checked Baltimore city records to find a neighborhood with a surprising feature: a large number of felons. There, on a litter-strewn street corner, her team ran into Lonnell Burke, who was waiting to catch a bus to a local drug rehab center. With cocaine and armed burglary convictions, Burke assumed he was barred from the polls forever.

Turnout for Tuesday's election is expected to be vast, but one group will be grievously underrepresented in many states. As many as 5 million felons are barred from exercising the most important duty of citizenship even though they have served their sentences or been released on parole. A disproportionate number of them are African Americans. According to the Sentencing Project, 13% of African American males are unable to vote because of felon-disenfranchisement statutes.