Blog
By Adam Skaggs – 08/26/08
Having already rejected a proposed rule that would
needlessly disenfranchise eligible voters this November—joining forty-five
states and the District of Columbia in the process—Wisconsin unfortunately
appears to be reconsidering the policy.
Back in July, the state's Government Accountability Board ("GAB") considered
an emergency rule that would have prevented voters from casting regular ballots
if the state didn't find a "complete match" of the voter's information in the
motor vehicle or Social Security database and the voter did not show up at the
polls with acceptable proof of residence.
The GAB rightly rejected the proposal in July, after concluding it
had insufficient data about how well "matching" voter data worked, and how many
voters would be affected.
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Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter Lists and Databases, Voter Registration
By Wendy R. Weiser – 08/25/08
*Cross-posted from The Hill
Yesterday the League of Women Voters of Florida, the Florida AFL-CIO, and other non-partisan voter registration groups announced their intent to continue signing up eligible Florida voters for the fall election despite the state’s law restricting voter registration drives. For groups that registered over half a million citizens in Florida in the last presidential race, this is big news.
Just earlier this year, the League and others had declared a moratorium on registering voters as soon as Florida’s new voter registration law went into effect because the law’s strict deadlines, backed by excessive fines, made the risk of conducting drives too prohibitive. States like New Mexico and Texas similarly impose onerous restrictions on voter registration drives, and there too, the laws have shut down or dramatically curtailed voter registration activity.
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Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter Registration
By Jafreen Uddin – 08/15/08
Recent disclosure reports are now providing a great amount of detail into contributions made by registered lobbyists, and the result is...lobbyists are loyal?
As a result of the 2007 Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, the disclosure reports that have been released give insight to the specifics of lobbyist contributions. Lobbyists are now required to file semi-annual disclosure reports, detailing contributions made individually and contributions made as leaders of an organization. A public database created by the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives contains all the details of the disclosure forms; the reports indicate that lobbyists donated over $140 million to campaigns in the first half of 2008.
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Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Disclosure
By Lawrence Norden – 08/13/08
Cross-posted from reformNY
Bo Lipari notes that New York's new voting machines keep failing during certification testing, and that this is a good thing. Here's why he thinks so. We agree that rigorous testing is a good thing—and that it's better to find out about problems now then on Election Day.
Let's just hope the vendors get their acts together in time for New York to use its new voting machines by 2009, as it is required to do by law.
Tags: Democracy, NY Reform, Voting Rights & Elections, Voting Technology
By Jafreen Uddin – 08/11/08
Given the recent slew of politicians being caught and investigated for accepting inappropriate donations and favors from special-interests, it is no surprise that the presidential candidates' fundraising strategies are getting a closer look. Large donations—and the motives behind them—are a murky issue, though hardly a partisan one; for every
billionaire hedge-fund manager who raises more than $100,000 for Sen. Obama, there is an
oil-trading company owner who bundles over $50,000 worth of contributions for Sen. McCain.
With bundled donations, special-interests can sidestep the contribution limits in campaign finance laws by allowing one individual to collect money from a variety of sources, thereby "bundling" the small donations into one large sum and delivering it to a candidate. It is no surprise that the collector in this scenario (or what the New York Times in an important editorial today aptly called the "hunter gatherer") can use this method of fundraising to their advantage, bringing in the usual suspects of special access and favors to the world of campaign finance. By controlling the contributions of many different donors, the bundler has more power (and a larger sum of money) than if he or she donated alone.
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Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Contribution Limits, Disclosure, Public Financing
By Wendy R. Weiser & Laura Seago – 08/07/08
On July 31st, Senator Dick Durbin and Representatives
Jan Schakowsky and Steven LaTourette and introduced the Student Voter Act
in both chambers of Congress, moving America one step closer to a system that
welcomes eligible young voters into our democratic process.
Young people in general, and students in particular, have
traditionally registered and voted at far lower rates than other citizens. The good news, as CIRCLE and Rock the Vote
report, is that youth voter turnout has steadily increased over the last four election cycles and was more than 100% higher in the 2008 primaries than in previous primary
elections. The bad news, as an upcoming
report by the Brennan
Center notes, is that
there are still significant barriers to student voting, including misleading information about requirements for voter
registration and residency laws that do not accurately reflect the mobility of
young adults in modern society.
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Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter Registration
By Emily Berman – 08/01/08
For an Administration that has spilled gallons of ink in efforts to justify its extreme pro-Executive views, the Bush White House sure has fared poorly in court.
In the last five years, the Supreme Court alone has rejected as contrary to law the Executive's position on the scope of jurisdiction of the federal courts (it does, in fact, reach to Guantanamo Bay); the rights possessed by citizen and non-citizen detainees (they are both, in fact, entitled to habeas corpus); and the President's authority to unilaterally try and punish so-called "enemy combatants" (military commissions must, in fact, be sanctioned by an act of Congress). And if the Executive had not so aggressively used the state secrets privilege to keep courts from ruling on its warrantless surveillance program, "enhanced interrogation" tactics, and extraordinary rendition, who knows how many more defeats it would have suffered at the hands of Lady Justice.
The Administration must heed the lesson that courts have been trying to impart: The time has come for cooler heads to prevail, for conciliation to take precedence over litigation, and for the Executive to work with the Congress to remedy the harms done—to our country and to our constitutional structure. Thursday's decision from a federal court in the District of Columbia may provide just such an opportunity.
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Tags: Justice, Liberty & National Security, Checks & Balances
By Adam Skaggs – 08/01/08
You'd think it would be a matter of
common sense that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), which is supposed to "
help veterans get the services they have earned," would do everything it could to help veterans vote. Especially since the VA's Patients' Rights rule specifically protects the right of every veteran in the VA's care to
register and vote.
But the VA apparently doesn't agree: on May 5th, the VA issued a
directive that banned voter registration drives from all VA facilities. The VA's explanation was that federal law prohibits partisan political activities by federal employees, but the ban goes far beyond anything that federal law requires. The ban prevents state and local election officials from conducting registration drives in VA facilities, and it also stops non-partisan, non-profit groups like the
League of Women Voters from helping vets sign up to vote.
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Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter Registration
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