Op-ed by UK Election Law Expert Published in The Atlantic

November 9, 2015

By: Whitney Harder

In the wake of Election Day last Tuesday and joining the national conversation on voting rights, University of Kentucky College of Law Professor Joshua Douglas authored an opinion piece, "Will State Courts Fill a Void on Voting Rights?" published in The Atlantic on Nov. 5.

To read the op-ed, visit http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/will-state-courts-fill-a-void-on-voter-rights/413932/.   

"In recent years, as the U.S. Supreme Court has limited its protections of the right to vote, some state courts have stepped in to fill the void," Douglas wrote in the piece. He went on to describe how state judges are looking toward state constitutions to go "beyond federal law to protect voting rights."

While he says that leaving the issues to state judges could mean varying state-by-state voting protections, "broader voting-rights protection through state constitutions for only part of the country is better than insufficient protection under the U.S. Constitution for all of it."

Douglas is the Robert G. Lawson & William H. Fortune Associate Professor of Law at UK. He teaches and researches election law, civil procedure, constitutional law and judicial decision making. His most recent scholarship focuses on the constitutional right to vote, with an emphasis on state constitutions, as well as the various laws, rules, and judicial decisions impacting election administration.