A continuing crisis is underway as the two parties carve two separate and incompatible legal kingdoms. Election Law Blog expert Richard Winger has been a long time critic of the lack of action taken to correct this growing problem. He recently shared a post by Paul Waldman, a contributor to the Washington Post’s Plum Line blog and a senior writer at The American Prospect, highlighting the same issue. Waldman said the following in his attempt to shine light on the issue:

America, as we all know, is a deeply divided nation, split along lines of class and race and culture and politics. And in this most polarized time, the two parties are pulling the places where they dominate further apart, creating a red and blue America that can be profoundly different depending on what side of a state line you stand on. In few areas is this more evident than in the way the parties treat the ballot.

Consider the following. Yesterday, the Illinois House passed a bill creating automatic voter registration (AVR) in the state, so that when you get a driver’s license or interact with state agencies in other ways, you’re automatically registered to vote. The Republican governor, Bruce Rauner, vetoed a previous version of the bill, but he may end up having no choice in this blue state but to support it, in which case Illinois would join eight other states (plus the District of Columbia) that have created AVR in recent years.

Fobes, in an older post on this issue, added the following:

Shelby County v. Holder eviscerated the congressional regime codified in Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act under which Congress required states and localities with a history of racial discrimination in voting to obtain federal permission before making a change in voting rules by proving that the change would not make minority voters worse off. In its wake, previously-covered jurisdictions have adopted a number of election changes which no doubt have made minority voters worse off. In Crawford v. Marion County Election Board the Court gave the green light for state voter identification laws, despite a lack of evidence that such laws are necessary to deter fraud or instill voter confidence. Republican states have increasingly tightened voting rules in Crawford’s wake.