Demographics

February 12, 2020 - In November, the Latino electorate is projected to make U.S. history as the largest racial or ethnic minority in a presidential election. In the South, the children of many Latino migrants will be making history of their own by casting their family's first U.S. vote.  

January 31, 2020 - Since the draft's end, the South has provided a disproportionate number of new military recruits relative to its young adult population. The trend can be partly explained by the military's large presence in Southern states. 

November 21, 2019 - The plaintiffs in a racial gerrymandering lawsuit want a North Carolina court to block judicial elections in districts that were drawn last year by the state legislature. In the racially diverse city of Charlotte, three of the eight districts are more than 70 percent white.

November 6, 2019 - In Texas, which has long debated changes to its system of partisan judicial elections, Republican leaders began pushing an appointment system just a few months after last year's Democratic sweep in Houston's judicial elections. One proposed bill would put an end to elected judges in urban counties.

September 11, 2019 - Lawmakers are again redrawing legislative election districts after a court ruled last week that the state constitution prohibits "extreme partisan gerrymandering." Republicans claim they want a fair process, but some are asking whether the first draft map favors the GOP.

August 27, 2019 - The latest gerrymandering lawsuit in North Carolina claims that when legislators changed judicial elections districts in Charlotte last year, they packed black voters into a few districts and violated a constitutional mandate for a "unified" state court system.

August 23, 2019 - With the critical once-a-decade population count just months away, only three states in the South have allocated any state funding to encourage participation.

July 15, 2019 - Across the South, voting rights advocates argue that judicial elections violate the Voting Rights Act by depriving communities of color of representation on state courts. Federal courts are hearing lawsuits in Arkansas and Alabama, where the state supreme courts are all white.

June 28, 2019 - Fearing a population undercount that could result in lost congressional seats and federal funding, many states have taken aggressive steps to encourage full participation in the 2020 census. But some Southern states are dragging their feet.