<h3>I spent a few years writing about the federal lawsuit of ACLU vs. Yakima, which would become a landmark voting rights lawsuit in Washington state. I remember at the time regular folks, politicians and government officials (all of them white and older) that there was no longer any such thing as voter suppression in the United States of America. That had all been settled in the 1960s, they argued, and the idea that such racist practices existed still today was speculative at best and, besides, impossible to prove. The city lost the lawsuit and was ordered to pay nearly $2 million to the ACLU in addition to a similar number the city wasted litigating the case. The ruling led a few other Central Washington cities with growing (and ignored) Latino populations to preemptively change their council election systems to legally provide for more representation. A couple years later Evergreen State lawmakers approved a state voting rights act to increase representation. Unfortunately, positive developments in Washington state haven’t been seen around much of the country. For nearly a decade, much of the country has gone backwards on voting rights.</h3><h2>please mark in brain list </h2>
