As Hillary Rodham Clinton weighs a second presidential run, there are certain steps she needs to take along the way to a decision. She took a couple of them in San Francisco Monday afternoon in a speech about voting rights. 
 
 Clinton can afford to keep a low public profile more than the other potential 2016ers. But she simply can't be a non-factor on the big issues of the day. If she were to do that, she'd face criticism that she was absent from the political debate for a couple of years, assuming she makes an announcement after the 2014 midterms. 
 
 She dove right into one big issue on Monday, weighing in with a lengthy take on a matter that has fired up the Democratic base. 
 
 When the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in June, Democrats all the way up to President Obama expressed swift and sharp disappointment. Meanwhile, the state-by-state battle over voter ID laws has also been a galvanizing force for party activists and leaders. The debate has thrust issues of race into the forefront of the political conversation. 
 
 “Anyone that says that racial discrimination is no longer a problem in American elections must not be paying attention,” Clinton told the annual gathering of the American Bar Association. She also criticized the court's ruling and singled out the states that have, in her view, the most voting repressive laws. 
 
 In all, it was a pretty impassioned address. It was also a necessary one for the potential White House contender. 
 
 Clinton doesn't need to cobble together a coalition in early nominating states or build the trust of key donors and power brokers like some other potential candidates do. Many Democrats are already lining up -- privately and publicly -- to support her, and she'd be the instant Democratic front-runner the moment she says the words. 
 
 But Clinton does need to get in the game, so to speak, on some key issues. Voting rights is one, not only for the reasons mentioned above. It's also a topic over which Clinton could begin to make her case as the heir apparent to Obama and try to persuade parts of his coalition -- minorities and liberals in particular -- to back her. 
 
 Gay marriage, for which she announced her support in March, is another. And there are more. 
 
 All of which brings us to the second thing Clinton did: She signaled that she will be weighing on other big issues in the coming months. 
 
 "Next month at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, I will talk about the balance and transparency necessary in our national security policies, as we move beyond a decade of wars to face new threats," Clinton said. "And later in the fall, I will address the implications of these issues for America's global leadership and our moral standing around the world." 
 
 The question of whether Clinton will run for president remains up in the air. Until she says yes or no, her every move will be scrutinized. And she'll be expected to weigh in, to some extent, on the issues the Democratic base are most concerned with right now. And that's just what she did on Monday. 
 
 Fixbits: 
 
 It's Election Day in New Jersey! Polls close at 8 p.m. ET. 
 
 Obama will tout his economic message on a bus tour of New York and Pennsylvania next week. 
 
 North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) signed an extensive voter ID law. 
 
 South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) is officially running for reelection. 
 
 Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Democrats will have a candidate for the West Virginia Senate race to announce shortly. 
 
 Ron Paul said it's "safe to say" he is not a fan of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R). 
 
 The NRCC is hitting Rep. John Barrow (D-Ga.) with a $10,000 ad buy. 
 
 Anthony Weiner said the coverage of his campaign has been "fairly brutal." 
 
 Must-reads: 
 
 "Gansler said rival Brown relying on race in Maryland governor’s contest" -- John Wagner, Washington Post 
 
 "Eric Holder’s ‘mandatory minimums’ gamble" -- Josh Gerstein, Politico ||||| In a speech at the American Bar Association, Â Hillary Clinton says that there is a new effort to obstruct voting "often undercover of addressing a phantom epidemic of election fraud" and takes issue with the Supreme Court's recent Voting Rights Act ruling. 
 
 Hillary Clinton offered some of her sharpest political rhetoric since stepping down as secretary of state on Monday when she roundly criticized stricter voter ID laws and a recent Supreme Court decision striking down a central component of the Voting Rights Act. 
 
 Clinton, who is viewed as a frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, decried a series of state laws enacted — often by Republicans — to tighten restrictions on who may vote in elections. 
 
 Clinton criticized a "sweeping effort to construct new obstacles to voting, often under cover of addressing a phantom epidemic of 'election fraud.'" 
 
 And she said that those laws have driven a disparity in access to the ballot, which Clinton claimed threatened to undermine the thrust of the Voting Rights Act, the historic, 1960s-era civil rights legislation. 
 
 "Now, not every obstacle is related to race, but anyone who says that racial discrimination is no longer a problem in American elections must not be paying attention," she said. 
 
 Clinton later urged her former colleagues on Capitol Hill to fix "the hole opened up by the Supreme Court's ruling," warning otherwise that "historical progress toward a 'more perfect union' will go backward, not forward." 
 
 Her remarks at times resembled a formal policy address delivered by candidates for office — a tantalizing glimpse of the presidential campaign many Democrats hope Clinton will mount come the next election. 
 
 To improve access to voting, Clinton also encouraged the Justice Department to more rigorously enforce voting laws left on the books, and urged Congress to pass legislation to replace portions of the Voting Rights Act struck down by the Supreme Court this June. She also urged fellow lawyers, gathered for the American Bar Association's annual meeting in San Francisco, to step up their own efforts on behalf of voting rights. 
 
 She also endorsed legislation to make voting easier in a variety of ways, for instance by working to reduce waiting times at polling places, and address disparities in access to voting. 
 
 The speech was one of the most overtly political steps taken by Clinton in the six months since she left the Obama administration to return to private life. 
 
 Moreover, Clinton said today's speech was a first in a series of remarks she'd deliver this year; the former New York senator said she would address transparency of national security programs next month, and speak to global issues this autumn. 
 
 The speeches help lay the groundwork for and outline the rationale for a potential Clinton presidential candidacy in 2016. She spoke to the barriers many communities have faced throughout U.S. history — an oblique reference to the possibility that her own candidacy might shatter the glass ceiling for women seeking the presidency. 
 
 "Despite our founding principles and the many ways our Constitution protects individual liberties, we do — let's admit it — have a long history of shutting people out. African Americans, women, gays and lesbians, people with disabilities," she said. ||||| Federal appellate judges on Friday struck down a 2013 law limiting voting options and requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls, declaring in an unsparing opinion that the restrictions “target African Americans with almost surgical precision.” 
 
 The three-judge panel of the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the law was adopted with “discriminatory intent” despite lawmakers’ claims that the ID provision and other changes were designed to prevent voter fraud. 
 
 The ruling — which could have implications for voting laws in other states and possibly for the outcome of close races in the swing state of North Carolina — sent the case back to U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder, who in April issued a 485-page decision dismissing all claims in the legal challenge. 
 
 “In holding that the legislature did not enact the challenged provisions with discriminatory intent, the court seems to have missed the forest in carefully surveying the many trees,” the ruling states. “This failure of perspective led the court to ignore critical facts bearing on legislative intent, including the inextricable link between race and politics in North Carolina.” 
 
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 The ruling prohibits North Carolina from requiring photo identification from voters in future elections, including the November 2016 general election. It restores a week of early voting and preregistration for 16- and 17-year-olds, and ensures that same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting will remain in effect. 
 
 State Board of Elections officials immediately began to pull back advertising campaigns that had been designed to air on TV, radio and other media in the coming months to educate North Carolina voters about what they would need to cast ballots in the coming election. 
 
 Challengers of the elections law overhaul shepherded through the Republican-led General Assembly in 2013 and signed into law by Gov. Pat McCrory quickly lauded the ruling. Republican leaders criticized the ruling, noting that IDs are required to board airplanes, enter federal courthouses, cash checks and more. They announced their plans to appeal. 
 
 U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who leads the U.S. Justice Department that was a party in the lawsuit challenging the law, praised the appellate panel for striking down a law “that the court described in its ruling as ‘one of the largest restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history.’ ” Lynch described the law as one that placed “barriers between citizens and the ballot box.” 
 
 “And it sent a message that contradicted some of the most basic principles of our democracy,” Lynch said in her statement. “The ability of Americans to have a voice in the direction of their country – to have a fair and free opportunity to help write the story of this nation – is fundamental to who we are and who we aspire to be. Going forward, the Department of Justice will continue our work to protect that sacred right for all.” 
 
 Read the court opinion 
 
 Lynch and many others echoed phrases from several lines in the 83-page ruling that bats back contentions by advocates of the law who claimed IDs were needed at the polls to prevent voter fraud. 
 
 “Although the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies for the problems assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist,” the 4th Circuit judges wrote. 
 
 “This ruling is a stinging rebuke of the state’s attempt to undermine African-American voter participation, which had surged over the last decade,” said Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. “It is a major victory for North Carolina voters and for voting rights.” 
 
 N.C. Senate leader Phil Berger, a Republican from Rockingham County, and state House Speaker Tim Moore, a Republican from Cleveland County, issued a joint statement questioning the motives of the three-judge panel — Judge Diana Motz, a Bill Clinton appointee, Judge James A. Wynn Jr., a Barack Obama appointee, and Judge Henry F. Floyd, an Obama appointee to the 4th circuit bench but a George W. Bush appointee to the U.S. District bench. 
 
 “Since today’s decision by three partisan Democrats ignores legal precedent, ignores the fact that other federal courts have used North Carolina’s law as a model, and ignores the fact that a majority of other states have similar protections in place, we can only wonder if the intent is to reopen the door for voter fraud, potentially allowing fellow Democrat politicians like Hillary Clinton and Roy Cooper to steal the election. We will obviously be appealing this politically-motivated decision to the Supreme Court,” Berger and Moore said. 
 
 “The voter ID law ensures any North Carolina citizen who wants to vote will have that opportunity,” Berger and Moore contended. They pointed to provisions in state law that allow someone without ID to obtain a Division of Motor Vehicles card at no cost as well as offering people who have been unable to obtain one of the six acceptable forms of ID to cast a provisional ballot. 
 
 McCrory, in his statement, accused “three Democratic judges” of “undermining the integrity of our elections while also maligning our state.” 
 
 Other voter ID rulings 
 
 North Carolina’s law is the third with an ID provision courts have rejected in the past two weeks. 
 
 A federal district judge found Wisconsin’s ID law too restrictive. The full 5th U.S. Circuit appeals court found that Texas’s voter ID law violated the Voting Rights Act by making it more difficult for minorities to vote and opened the door for putting the state under federal supervision again. 
 
 “We applaud the appeals court for recognizing the discriminatory intent behind the monster voter suppression law,” Bob Hall, director of Democracy NC, a voting rights organization, said in a statement about the N.C. case. “The ruling makes clear that the North Carolina General Assembly cherry-picked the law to suppress African American and young voters because of the 2008 election. Today’s ruling begins to right that wrong.” 
 
 In North Carolina, the state could ask the full bench of the 4th Circuit to review the ruling. But attorneys and others speculate that even if the full court agreed to review the case, the 2013 election-law changes would not be restored before the November elections. 
 
 “Because of this ruling, North Carolinians will now be able to register and vote free of the obstacles created by the Legislature in 2013,” said Southern Coalition for Social Justice senior attorney Allison Riggs. 
 
 Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party, questioned whether the law had been defended well. Though N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper’s office represented lawmakers in the case, Republican leaders also hired private attorneys. 
 
 “This is an effort to overthrow the will of the people on voter ID and ballot security, and it is led by the Democrats and, we believe, by Roy Cooper, who did a really lackluster job of defending voter ID while at the same time publicly criticizing it,” Woodhouse said Friday afternoon. 
 
 But Cooper’s campaign noted that Cooper, the Democrat running for governor, had advised McCrory in 2013 to veto the bill. 
 
 North Carolinians were not the only ones commenting on the decision Friday. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate for president, tweeted her support for the ruling. 
 
 Big victory for democracy as the 4th Circuit just struck down a NC voter discrimination law. Let’s keep fighting to make voting easier. -H — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) July 29, 2016 
 
 The Rev. William J. Barber II, fresh off of addressing the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, admonished lawmakers for changing North Carolina’s election laws that had made the state a “model for the nation in encouraging people to vote.” 
 
 Barber is president of the state NAACP that participated in the legal challenge, and the architect of the Moral Monday movement that has protested the voter ID law and other legislation from the Republican-controlled legislature and governor’s office. 
 
 “Today the 4th Circuit’s decision gives North Carolinians back an electoral system that allows the people of North Carolina to vote freely this fall,” Barber said in a statement. 
 
 In 2015, on the eve of the federal trial over the 2013 law, the legislature softened the ID requirement by adding a provison that allowed voters without acceptable ID to cast a provisional ballot if they could show a “reasonable impediment” to obtaining an ID. 
 
 Though Motz differed from Wynn and Floyd on whether the time was right to weigh the “reasonable impediment” option, Wynn wrote for the majority: “Nothing in this record shows that the reasonable impediment exception ensures that the photo ID law no longer imposes any lingering burden on African American voters.” 
 
 That could be significant for Texas and Wisconsin, where such a softening of the ID requirement was suggested, too, lawyers said. 
 
 “This is a very big win for voting rights plaintiffs and the DOJ,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California-Irvine who writes about law and politics on his electionlawblog.org.
– The first speech by Hillary the 2016 candidate? The former secretary of state yesterday lit into voter ID laws springing up across the nation as well as the Supreme Court's decision in June to defang the Voting Rights Act, reports NBC News. The big quote in her speech to the American Bar Association: "Now, not every obstacle is related to race, but anyone who says that racial discrimination is no longer a problem in American elections must not be paying attention," she said, calling on Congress to step forward. It sure sounded like a candidate's speech, writes Sean Sullivan in the Washington Post, who says Clinton must "get in the game" on key issues if she does indeed plan to run. On this issue in particular, Clinton can "make her case as the heir apparent to Obama and try to persuade parts of his coalition—minorities and liberals in particular—to back her." (She spoke on the same day that North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed into place a law requiring voters to have a photo ID, reports the News & Observer.) Over at CBS, Anthony Weiner offers up a maybe-hint that Clinton will run when asked last night if he knows what wife Huma Abedin's role would be in a campaign. "I do," he said. But, "I'm not telling you." In the coming months, Clinton plans speeches on national security and America's standing in the world. Much of her public presence in this "next phase of life" will come through the family foundation she is co-running with Bill and Chelsea Clinton, notes Politico. It's the first time since the 1992 campaign that she and Bill are essentially working together.