Last week's release of the report of the election reform commission headed by Jimmy Carter and James Baker has drawn fierce fire from civil rights and electoral reform organizations for recommending that voters be required to present photo identification at the polls.

Slate Analysis

In Cambridge, voters tend to follow along lines of voting for the progressive Cambridge Civic Association (CCA) slate endorsements or else voting along independent lines. The official CCA candidates in 2001 were Davis, Murphy, Pitkin, Simmons, King, and Pitkin. Decker was not a CCA candidate, but her voters were for the most part. The independent candidates were Galluccio, Maher, Reeves, Sullivan, and Toomey. Note that Reeves is generally seen as a liberal, though he no longer has the endorsement of the CCA.

In 1992, citizens of the City of Chicago Heights filed suit against the city for violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The plaintiffs claimed that the city's at-large, winner-take-all system of elections illegally diluted minority voting power. The trial court found that the elections system was illegal, and allowed the city to adopt a new election plan by referendum. The plaintiffs appealed this decision to the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, who held that the city's plan did not remedy the Section 2 violation.