Since 1989, New York City has had a unique system for financing municipal elections. A city candidate can receive $6 in public matching funds for every $1 raised, up to $175 per donor. The Brennan Center is now leading efforts to adopt this system statewide. A new analysis by the Brennan Center and the Campaign Finance Institute offers powerful evidence that the city's small donor matching fund program increases both the number and diversity of campaign donors. The study, Donor Diversity through Public Matching Funds, found that almost everyone in the city lived within a city block of someone who contributed to a City Council candidate in 2009. The same was not true for State Assembly candidates, who do not have a small donor matching program, and actually have the lowest donor participation rate in the country. The study was written by Elisabeth Genn and Sundeep Iyer of the Brennan Center, and Michael J. Malbin and Brendan Glavin from the Campaign Finance Institute.
When the government and big banks finalized a $25 billion settlement over home foreclosure abuses, $2.5 billion was alloted to states for foreclosure-prevention efforts. But 15 states have diverted some or all of this money for other purposes. Arizona, for example, has swept $50 million from its share of the settlement into the state’s general fund. Legislators insist that the state needs to balance the budget. Yet, as the Brennan Center’s Mark Ladov and Meghna Philipwrote in TheArizona Republic, the state “posted the highest foreclosure rate in the nation in March, with an astonishing one out of every 300 housing units receiving a foreclosure notice.” Moreover, foreclosure prevention is cost-effective, saving governments and taxpayers as much as $80,000 for each home saved. “Instead of misappropriating settlement funds, Arizona should … invest in foreclosure prevention,” Ladov and Philip wrote.
Before the 2010 election, the Brennan Center sued New York state and city election officials, claiming that the State’s new voting machines did not provide understandable "overvote" warnings to voters who accidentally marked more than one candidate. Voting machines deem a contest “overvoted” if they find that too many candidates for a particular contest were chosen. In such cases, no vote is recorded unless the voter corrects his or her ballot. In the suit, the Brennan Center contended that voters saw a confusing message when machines detected "overvotes," and voters did not have sufficient opportunity to correct their ballots. Despite the Brennan Center’s objection, the confusing message was used in the 2010 election. In some districts, as many as 40 percent of the votes cast did not count because of “overvotes.” Tests later found the machines misread ballots and cast “phantom votes” when they overheated. “That could mean that if the person hasn’t voted in a contest, they could have a vote attributed to them that they never intended to cast,” the Brennan Center’s Lawrence Norden told WNYC. In settling the lawsuit, New York agreed to reprogram the machines to explain clearly to voters when a machine cannot read a vote, and to provide voters the opportunity to correct their ballot.
This year’s election is beset by challenges to the integrity of our democracy. Millions of eligible Americans may find it harder to vote because of new restrictions, while at the same time super PACs spend tens of millions of dollars influencing candidates. The Election 2012 page is your guide to plausible, concrete proposals to cure them. Democracy is too important for mere reportage. What is needed are practical solutions. The Election 2012 page has them. Visit our Election 2012 page to see how we are advancing a new generation of reforms to modernize voter registration and change campaign finance laws. Also, sign up for our voting newsletter.
May 16 – Myrna Pérez gives a presentation at David Rogers Health Policy Colloquium in New York City on "How Hospitals Can Help Protect the Vote."
May 17 – Mimi Marziani speaks at a League of Women Voters panel discussion called, "Pushing Back on Money Politics, 2012" in Concord, Mass.
May 23 – Adam Skaggs explains how campaign financing schemes permitted by Citizens United can distort elections at a Justice at Stake event in Chicago, Ill.
June 9– Keesha Gaskins participates in a panel entitled "The War on Voting" at Netroots Nation in Providence, RI.
June 12 – Tim Weiner, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author of Enemies: A History of the FBI, visits the Brennan Center to discuss the FBI's history and evolution into America's primary counterterrorism agency.
Brennan Center President Michael Waldman appeared on MSNBC's Hardball to talk to Chris Matthews about suppressive voter laws.
A New York Daily News editorial called for the New York Board of Elections to be more vigilant in its oversight of voting machines, and reminded officials that the Brennan Center had warned machine malfunctions could lead to lost votes.
In a story on judicial election reform in Oregon, KLCC Public Radio used Brennan Center numbers to show how unprecedented amounts of special interest money are pouring into the elections for judges nationwide.
USA Todaycited Brennan Center data in a story about organizations that are starting registration drives early because suppressive voting laws are lowering registration rates. The paper also used Brennan Center data in an article about the Obama campaign’s decision to train volunteers about these laws.
Mark Ladov and Meghna Philip explained in an op-ed for The Arizona Republic why halting foreclosure is a good investment.
The Palm Beach Post’s story about voting machine unreliability quoted Lawrence Norden’s 2010 report that showed that many voting machines experience the same malfunctions year after year.
To read more Brennan Center In The News, click here.
Ronald Reagan famously said that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." These days, the mantra is more likely to be "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you think." When it comes to matters involving national security, the government seems intent on shielding Americans' impressionable minds. The recent indictment, conviction and sentencing of a Massachusetts pharmacist named Tarek Mehanna is another blow to the public's ability to hear, study and discuss controversial ideas.
Mehanna, an American citizen born in Pennsylvania and raised in Massachusetts, was vocally opposed to the American presence in the Middle East and advocated for the violent expulsion of U.S. forces from Iraq. He attempted to convert belief to action, traveling to Yemen in search of a terrorist training camp and lying to American terrorism investigators. He was charged and convicted last December for a number of offenses, including Conspiracy to Provide Material Support to Terrorists and Conspiracy to Kill in a Foreign Country. He was sentenced in mid-April to 17 ½ years in prison.
One might say: good riddance. But the government put Mehanna away not just for his efforts to wage war against Americans in a foreign country. The "material support" charge also alleged that Mehanna broke the law by accessing and sharing information. Specifically by translating a book (a 2003 Saudi text, 39 Ways to Serve and Participate in Jihad, that was "intended to incite people to engage in violent jihad"); distributing a video showing the brutal treatment of dead U.S. military personnel in retaliation for a rape in Iraq; and giving a friend a film about jihadi fighters.
Since the Vietnam War, the Supreme Court has assured the speaker on his soapbox and the scholar in her office that speech is not criminal unless it "incites" listeners to "imminent lawless action." In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the Court unanimously overturned the conviction of an Ohio Klan leader who was filmed warning a crowd that "if our President, our Congress, our Supreme Court, continues to suppress the white, Caucasian race, it's possible that there might have to be some revengeance taken." The opinion, holding that "mere advocacy" may not be punished, reversed decades of precedent permitting states to imprison speakers for criticizing American military efforts and capitalism. The same year, in Stanley v. Georgia, the Court affirmed the long-standing Constitutional right "to receive information and ideas." In the admittedly murky realm of free speech protection, Brandenburg has until recently remained a First Amendment cornerstone.
In 2008, the Supreme Court took a major swipe at Brandenburg. In a case called Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the court addressed the material support provision of the USA PATRIOT Act, which criminalizes the delivery of "property" or "services," including "expert advice or assistance," to any group designated as a "foreign terrorist organization." The court held that this statute could be used to prosecute pure speech -- in that case, the provision of counseling by human rights groups to terrorist organizations on the use of non-violent means to resolve political grievances. Notwithstanding Brandenburg, the court held that the speaker need not specifically intend to further a group's terrorist acts; he need only know that the group participates in terrorism to run afoul of the Act.
As Justice Roberts recognized, however, the speech must be coordinated with the group; "independent advocacy," even if it benefits a terrorist organization, may not be prohibited under the First Amendment. Indeed, the government itself flatly declared in its brief to the Court that the material support statute "does not prohibit independent advocacy or expression of any kind."
Notwithstanding this promise, Mehanna's 2010 indictment clearly targets his independent advocacy. While he fancied himself the "media arm" of Al Qaeda, there is no indication in the indictment that any of his activities were undertaken at the behest of, in conjunction with, or under the direction of Al Qaeda. The consequences of the government's censorship extend, however, far beyond the fate of an aspiring terrorist. Criminalizing the translation of a book or the distribution of a video chills both scholars and the public at large, sending the message that they study certain sources at their own peril.
The indictment says, for instance, that Mehanna and his co-conspirators favorably compared 39 Ways to Mein Kampf. But just as anyone undertaking an in-depth study of the Nazi period would surely need to start with Mein Kampf, a scholar studying the development of jihadist violence in modern history would surely do well to read, and translate, 39 Ways, or to watch the videos from which jihadis are drawing inspiration. To be sure, the motives behind such use of these resources might differ from Mehanna's motives. According to Humanitarian Law Project, however, benign intent is irrelevant. Mehanna's conviction suggests that, to paraphrase George Santayana, those who study history may be doomed to spend five to ten years in federal prison.
When combined with the ability to shield its own information from disclosure, the ability to limit information from private sources allows the government to effectively control public debate and opinion on controversial issues and to check the public's right to receive information -- indeed, to "create its own reality," as Karl Rove famously said. Take the government's use of a CIA drone to kill U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki, a Muslim cleric accused of inspiring others to deadly violence. In a welcome development, the government recently officially acknowledged the drone program. Nevertheless, the government continues to reveal only its own carefully vetted facts about the drone program and its targets; little information on the scope of civilian casualties, for example, is available. And if members of the public want to judge for themselves whether al-Awlaki's sermons were so inflammatory as to justify his killing, they will be hard pressed to do so. Visiting any of the websites that might feature videos of Al-Awlaki's speeches would likely invite FBI scrutiny. Translating or disseminating them to others, we now know, could invite a 17 ½-year prison sentence.
Justice Felix Frankfurter observed over sixty years ago that "it is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people." Tarek Mehanna may not be a very nice person. But the narrowing of his liberties has consequences for us all. When it is a crime to translate our enemies' propaganda, the government will have the last word on who is dangerous, what ideas are dangerous, and, indeed, what the content of those ideas are. Anyone who believes in the freedom of thought -let alone freedom of speech- should be alarmed by such a state of affairs.
Every Friday, the Brennan Center will be compiling the latest news concerning the corrosive nature of money in New York State politics—and the ongoing need for public financing and robust campaign finance reform. We’ll also be linking to dispatches from around the country highlighting the national scope of this crisis. This week’s links were contributed by Matthew Ladd. For more stories on an ongoing basis, follow the Twitter hashtag #moNeYpolitics and #fairelex.
2. A new report issued by the Center for Working Families examines how money in politics led taxpayers to foot the bill for the new Yankee Stadium. In 2006 Yankees ownership paid over $300,000 to a lobbying firm run by former Bronx Assemblyman Roberto Ramirez—the largest lobbying fee reported that year—as well as other influential lawmakers including former state senator Joseph Bruno, in an apparent effort to secure funding for the stadium. The report highlights the financing of Yankee Stadium as a case study in the high-stakes influence-peddling permitted by New York’s current campaign finance regime.
3. The Democrat and Chroniclestrongly urged Gov. Cuomo to stand behind his promise to prioritize campaign finance reform, recalling a 2010 campaign publication in which Cuomo called on state legislators to “fundamentally alter our system to give voices to all New Yorkers” by creating a small-donor matching program for publicly funded campaigns. Bills that would create such a program have been introduced in the Assembly, but Cuomo’s support is widely seen as instrumental in moving campaign finance reform through the Senate.
National Campaign Finance News
1. A new poll jointly released on Thursday by Democracy Corps, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, and the Public Campaign Action Fund finds that swing voters are likely to support candidates who make campaign finance reform a priority in their legislative agendas. Key findings from the poll suggest that ordinary voters see money in politics as a key economic issue, and that reform alternatives—including small-donor matching programs—have garnered wide support among the voting public. Over a third of the voters polled said that they considered candidates’ willingness to make campaign finance reform a legislative priority as a litmus test for their support. According to David Donnelly, Executive Director of PCAF, “Money and politics is increasingly becoming a ballot box issue. An overwhelming majority of Americans believe there should be common sense restrictions on the amount of money people can contribute to politics and voters—especially independents—will strongly support those who take the issue head-on.” The polling memo can be downloaded here, and individual slides from the poll can be downloaded as well.
2. The results of Thursday’s poll generated articles this week from The Hill, National Journal, and Mother Jones, among other media outlets, some of which noted the poll’s findings that campaign finance reform is supported by a broad swath of the American electorate. Nearly 75% of respondents, for instance, expressed support for limiting the amount of money in politics—a number that included 60% of voters who identify with the Tea Party movement. As Greenberg Quinlan Rosner CEO Stan Greenberg noted, “There aren’t many things we’ve tested that are viewed as negatively as super PACs.” Moreover, less than a quarter of those polled found that limits on campaign contributions interfere with free speech rights.
3. On Sunday, the New York Times editorial board called for the resuscitation of the flagging presidential public financing program. The editorial notes that this will be the first presidential election since the program’s inception in 1976 that neither major-party candidate draws on public funds. Public funding of elections is crucial to the legitimacy of the electoral process: “The era of “super PACs” and secret donors has made public financing more urgent. A system that greatly magnified small donations with high matches would give ordinary citizens a shot at competing with corporations, unions and wealthy donors. It would allow candidates to campaign more instead of constantly begging among the rich. And it would give a challenger a chance to be competitive without the help of a super PAC.
4. The Washington Times reports this week that presidential fundraising efforts this summer cannot afford to overlook the importance of the small donor. Mitt Romney in particular will have to do much more to court small voters, according to Prof. Michael Malbin, Executive Director of the Campaign Finance Institute. Malbin’s analysis of the Romney campaign filings indicates that 64% of the presumptive Republican candidate’s total funds came from donors giving the maximum legal amount of $2500.
5. The Sunlight Foundation reports that former Sen. Richard Lugar’s defeat earlier this week was influenced by outside PAC spending in favor of his challenger, conservative state treasurer Richard Mourdock—including over $2 million from the anti-tax Club for Growth. Although Lugar outspent Mourdock by a 3-to-1 margin, the state treasurer was backed by a “flood of outside money” from PACs and super PACs, as well as from 501(c)(4) “social welfare” groups not subject to FEC disclosure requirements.
6. In a clear indication of the revolving-door nature of Super PACs, ABC News reports that now that Rick Santorum is no longer a candidate for public office, the “Red, White, and Blue Fund” super PAC that spent on his behalf during the race has become a “hybrid PAC” with which Santorum can freely coordinate. The hybrid PAC can also fund some of the costs of Santorum’s ongoing political activity—expenditures that are technically legal, since Santorum currently holds no office and is no longer running a campaign.
7. This week the disclosure website Open Secrets, a collaboration between the Center for Responsive Politics and Center for Public Integrity, published new information on presidential campaign bundlers for the both the Democratic and Republican campaigns.
What We're Reading: a daily round-up of quick hits, clips, and opinion pieces touching on key issues of democracy, justice, liberty and national security.
In the Arizona Republic, the Brennan Center’s Meghna Philip and Mark Ladov urge Arizona lawmakers to use their state’s portion of the giant foreclosure settlement as intended: for foreclosure prevention.
House Republicans introduced a few amendments to a spending bill last night aimed at preventing the Department of Justice from enforcing the Voting Rights Act. Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights hero who suffered severe injuries fighting for the right to vote, stood up against one measure on the floor and defeated it. Unfortunately, another amendment passed.
AP: “Federal authorities said Wednesday that they plan to sue Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio and his office over allegations of civil rights violations, including the racial profiling of Latinos.”
Reuters reports on the NYPD’s discriminatory stop-and-frisk practices: “The New York Police Department performed more frisk searches of young black men in 2011 than the total number of young black men living in New York City.”
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy asks in Guernica magazine, “Watergate led to a grassroots effort to clean up Washington. In the wake of Citizens United, and with the upcoming 40th anniversary of the Watergate scandal, is it time to act again?”
The New York State Board of Elections, New York City Boards of Elections, and voting machine manufacturer ES&S each released reports yesterday detailing the results of an investigation into the abnormally high numbers of lost votes attributed to “overvoting” in the South Bronx in 2010. The upshot is that a machine defect led to “phantom votes” on at least one machine used in the 2010 election, resulting in some candidates receiving more votes than they should have, and the choices of many more voters being voided when the machines detected both actual and phantom votes in the same contest. Now that the reports on how this happened are out, election officials must make sure that what happened in the Bronx in 2010 does not happen again in the future.
Voting machines record overvotes when they detect more than one candidate selected for a contest. In such cases, no vote is recorded for any candidate in the overvoted contest, regardless of the voter’s actual intent. The Brennan Center first uncovered a high number of overvotes in the South Bronx while reviewing documents produced for discovery in a litigation it brought against the State and City. It published its findings in Design Deficiencies and Lost Votes; the report notes that in some election districts up to 40% of the votes cast did not count.
The investigations conducted by the City, State and ES&S conclude that the unusually high overvote rates were not due to voter error, but rather a malfunction in the voting machine once it became heated after a couple hours of use. The malfunction resulted in a distortion of the ballot images as read by the machines, causing blank ovals to appear darker than they should have. The machines registered these darker images as votes. These “phantom votes,” either led to some candidates getting extra votes (if no candidate had been chosen by a voter) or overvotes (if the voter had filled out a different oval for another candidate in the same contest).
While the machines in New York provide voters with a warning when ballots cannot be read because of overvoting, the warning used complex election jargon that gave voters misleading cues about their options. Voters in these predominantly Hispanic South Bronx districts apparently chose to override this message without understanding the result was that their votes were not counted. Fortunately, as part of a settlement agreement reached with the State, New York’s voting machines will be reprogrammed before the presidential election in November with an overvote warning message that uses plain language that more clearly explains to voters if the machine is having problems reading their ballot.
We applaud the State and City Boards for conducting a thorough investigation of this matter. The State Board of Elections has forwarded their report to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission so that it can be distributed to other jurisdictions across the country using the ES&S DS-200.
However, more steps need to be taken to prevent lost votes in the future by detecting these problems when they arise. Election officials in New York should publish election results by precinct and report the number of overvotes in each contest. Rockland County already does this. The only reason the Brennan Center was able to discover this anomaly was by reviewing documents obtained in the course of litigation. Had we not done so, the problems in the South Bronx would have likely gone undetected and the machines would continue to be used election after election. It should also be noted that we did not receive complete data from New York City or from other jurisdictions in the state that use the DS-200. As a result, there is no way of knowing where else these kinds of problems may have happened.
What We're Reading: a daily round-up of quick hits, clips, and opinion pieces touching on key issues of democracy, justice, liberty and national security.
Sad news today: civil rights champion and former Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach has passed away.
USA Today describes the challenges the Obama campaign faces with the slew of restrictive voting measures in place in states across the country, citing research by the Brennan Center on their discriminatory impact.
Noah Feldman asks of the KSM 9/11 military commission, “After nearly a decade of Supreme Court decisions affording rights to Guantanamo detainees and rejecting proposed military commissions to try them, it would be reasonable to ask: How did we get here? Why are we on the brink of a trial of the century that seems unlikely to satisfy the most basic demands of criminal justice?”
The House of Representatives wisely voted down two amendments to a major spending bill to gut the Legal Services Corporation, an essential funding source for providers of legal assistance to poor Americans (The Hill).
Some good news: “A bill in Ohio to repeal a contentious new election law in the presidential battleground state is headed to the governor's desk” - AP
Welcome to the Brennan Center's voting newsletter, the most comprehensive summary of all the latest developments affecting voting. Sign up for all Brennan Center newsletters here.
Representing 10 residents who do not meet the requirements to get photo ID, the Pennsylvania ACLU and other groups have filed a complaint in state court seeking to block the state’s new ID measure. Plaintiffs contend the new rule violates the state’s Constitution “by depriving citizens of their most fundamental constitutional right — the right to vote.”
“Wartime welder, civil-rights marcher, world traveler, voter — Viviette Applewhite of Philadelphia's Germantown section can boast of having been all those things,” wrote The Philadelphia Inquirer, in a profile of one of the voters. “On Tuesday, she added another title: plaintiff.”
Applewhite, who is 92 and uses a wheelchair, does not have a driver’s license. She lost the rest of her ID when her purse was stolen years ago. So far, state officials have been unable to find her birth certificate, Applewhite said.
The Connecticut Senate approved a bill to allow voters to register and cast a ballot on Election Day, a big victory for voting rights advocates. Gov. Dan Malloy said he will sign the measure, which has helped many states improve voter turnout. The bill, passed by the House last week, will also allow online registration starting in 2014 and give current voters a better opportunity to correct errors in their registration status. The Brennan Center pushed this bill for months, writing an op-ed for The Connecticut Mirror. “These new reforms are a big step forward for Connecticut's voting system,” argued Myrna Pérez and Nic Riley.
Although the wave of new suppressive voting laws is starting to meet resistance from the both the courts and the public, the best way to end the struggle is to modernize voter registration. Today’s system dates from the 19th century and is cumbersome, expensive and error-prone. Advocating for a 21st century registration system in The New York Times, Brennan Center president Michael Waldman wrote, “Voter registration modernization could unite the combatants in the ‘voting wars.’” He added: “Yes, we should repel the push to make voting harder for millions of Americans. But if lawmakers really want to protect the integrity of our elections, modernizing our registration system is the answer.” Read the Brennan Center’s modernization proposal.
State Updates
Arizona – The state is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court the Ninth Circuit’s recent ruling striking down Arizona’s proof of citizenship requirement for voter registration.
Colorado – The state Senate gave initial approval “to a bill that would require mail ballots be sent to about 135,000 inactive voters for the 2012 election.”
Connecticut – The state Senate gave final approval to an election-day registration bill. Read more here. The Connecticut Post applauded the measure, saying the state is on “the right path on voter rights.” Read the Brennan Center's op-ed supporting the measure.
Florida – The Secretary of State’s office says it is prepared to use two sets of election laws for the Aug. 14th primary. Recent changes will be in effect in all but five counties, which must get approval from the federal government before implementing the new law.
Meanwhile, Gov. Rick Scott “appeared genuinely surprised” about the implications of restrictive voting laws he signed in a meeting with The Florida Times-Union editorial board. For instance, the new law eliminates voting the Sunday before an election. The bill passed along partisan lines, with Democrats objecting that the measure would make it harder for African Americans and Hispanics to cast ballots. “I didn’t know that was an issue,” Scott said. “No one brought that issue up to me.”
The Orlando Sentinel wrote how new voter registration laws are making it harder to enlist new voters. Elections officials are also part of the fallout. “One of the biggest challenges was that most of the law went into effect upon enactment, unlike previous years when there was a delay between enactment and the effective date,” the president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections told electionline Weekly.
Indiana – Two men, including a town mayor, were charged with election law violations dealing with absentee ballots. Both say they are innocent.
Kansas – The state House passed a bill "that would institute new proof of citizenship requirements for voter registration within the next six weeks rather than next year, matching the desires of Secretary of State Kris Kobach."
Michigan – The student paper at Michigan State University reported that new voter registration restrictions “could make it significantly harder for campus organizations to register voters.”
Minnesota – In November, Minnesota voters will have a referendum on an amendment to the state Constitution to tighten voting laws. Mike Dean, executive director of Common Cause Minnesota, explained his view of “what is actually lurking” in the amendment. Among other things, he argues the measure will effectively end Election Day registration because those voters will cast provisional ballots, many of which are never counted. Read about the arduous experience of getting an appropriate photo ID for a 92-year-old voter.
Mississippi – The House passed a bill to implement the state’s voter ID law, which passed by referendum last year. It awaits the signature of Gov. Phil Bryant.
Missouri – A House committee approved a bill requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. Opponents say it “has the potential to disenfranchise naturalized citizens,” who may not have the required documents.
New Hampshire – Charles Balban, president of the New Hampshire Alliance for Retired Americans wrote an op-ed opposing a proposed voter ID law, saying it “doesn't include information about the real cost of such a radical change to our centuries-old voting traditions.” A House committee is considering the bill.
North Carolina – Pat McCrory, a candidate for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, is asking voters to bring photo IDs with them to the polls during the May 8th primary. The effort is designed to show support for a voter ID bill vetoed by Gov. Bev Perdue last year. Legislators who support the bill are trying to override the veto.
Ohio – Republicans and Democrats are close to a deal that would repeal a controversial election law and restore early voting for the three days before the election. The Cleveland Plain Dealer urged lawmakers to repeal the law to “avoid a divisive referendum question this fall” and help voters avoid confusion at the polls. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (Illinois) held a congressional field hearing on the law.
Pennsylvania – As detailed above, the ACLU is challenging the state’s new voter ID law, representing 10 citizens who lack the documentation required to obtain a photo ID. Read more about the plaintiffs here and here, and see videos of their stories here. The Brennan Center’s Keesha Gaskins spoke to The Philadelphia Inquirer about the voter ID law, which reported that there have been no convictions for voter impersonation or voter fraud for the past five years. The Inquirer also wrote editorials praising voters who protested the law during the recent primary, and detailing how the law will penalize seniors. Read more here, here, and here.
South Carolina – Activists held a rally to protest the state’s voter ID law, now under review by a federal court. Read more on the lawsuit here and here.
Texas – The federal district court considering Texas’ voter ID law said “the law will probably not be in place by the November general election unless the state turns over requested documents by Wednesday.” Read more here. The Justice Department has asked for a delay in the trial over the law, saying the state attorney general is stalling requests for information. Read more here and here.
Virginia – Gov. Bob McDonnell is still deciding if he will sign a voter ID bill into law. The Washington Post and the Virginian-Pilot have called on the governor to veto the measure. McDonnell has three options: he can sign the bill, veto it, or let the measure become law without his signature.
Wisconsin – It’s official— there will be no voter ID for the June 5 recall election of Gov. Scott Walker. An appeals court judge said there was “no realistic possibility” the case could be decided in time.
Policy Matters Ohio has published a report estimating that a proposed voter ID requirement would cost the state $5 to $7 million annually. “Ohioans value the right to vote and they value their neighbors’ participation. If there is a problem with voting in Ohio, it is that existing barriers keep too many from exercising this basic right. Creating new, unnecessary costs and suppressing votes has no place in the Buckeye State,” the report said. Read the full report.
Media Round-Up
In an op-ed for The New York Times, Brennan Center President Michael Waldman detailed how suppressive voting laws have met resistance at the polls and in the courts, and called for bipartisan reforms to our ramshackle registration system.
Washington Post columnist Katrina vanden Heuvel made a similar push for universal voter registration. “Universal registration would truly be, as Brennan Center president Michael Waldman has said, ‘potentially the most significant improvement since the Voting Rights Act of 1965,’” she wrote.
Another Post columnist, Eugene Robinson, wrote about voter ID laws. He detailed an investigation of charges that “dead people” had voted in South Carolina. The result? “[T]he commission found no evidence of fraud. Or zombies.” He also cited the Center’s research on voting law changes.
La Opinión, the largest Spanish-language newspaper in the U.S., editorialized: “Voter ID Laws Suppress Minority Votes.” Read the Spanish version here.
At CNN.com, Roland Martin said that voter suppression is real and must be stopped.
The Brennan Center’s Myrna Pérez and Lee Rowland explained the importance of the Democracy Restoration Act, a bill that would restore voting rights to millions of people with past criminal convictions. Read more on the effort at TPM.
The Obama campaign is preparing to help voters navigate new restrictions — such as voter ID and registration rules — in key swing states such as Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Now that voter ID laws have passed in many states, Demos’ Tova Wang encouraged advocates to help educate voters on how to get ID.
What We're Reading: a daily round-up of quick hits, clips, and opinion pieces touching on key issues of democracy, justice, liberty and national security.
Connecticut lawmakers passed a measure to allow for Election Day voter registration and, starting in 2014, online voter registration.
The Brooklyn Ink interviews the Brennan Center’s Mark Ladov on the extant foreclosure crisis for a feature article on Brooklyn residents experiencing the long and grueling process in New York state, often with inadequate legal assistance.
A Muslim woman who experienced religious harassment at work and was fired after she complained will receive a $5 million award from her former employer, AT&T (Reuters).
The Supreme Court ruled in 1963 that criminal defendants have the right to an attorney, even if they cannot afford one. Two prominent Tennessee Public Defenders write in the Memphis Commercial Appeal that persistent inadequate funding for two major metropolitan areas undermines this right to access to justice.
The New York Times editorial board calls public financing for presidential campaigns an “idea worth saving,” and highlights a proposal to raise the funding level to make it more appealing to major candidates.
Senate Democrats held a field hearing in Cleveland, Ohio today about the state’s new voting law that limits early voting, eliminates a requirement for poll workers to direct voters to their correct voting location, and makes it harder to vote absentee.
Since 1989, New York City has had a unique system for financing municipal elections. A city candidate can receive $6 in public matching funds for every $1 raised, up to $175 per donor. The Brennan Center is now leading efforts to adopt this system statewide. A new analysis by the Brennan Center and the Campaign Finance Institute offers powerful evidence that the city's small donor matching fund program increases both the number and diversity of campaign donors. The study, Donor Diversity through Public Matching Funds, found that almost everyone in the city lived within a city block of someone who contributed to a City Council candidate in 2009. The same was not true for State Assembly candidates, who do not have a small donor matching program, and actually have the lowest donor participation rate in the country. The study was written by Elisabeth Genn and Sundeep Iyer of the Brennan Center, and Michael J. Malbin and Brendan Glavin from the Campaign Finance Institute.
Brennan Center Wins Vote Count Fight
This year’s election is beset by challenges to the integrity of our democracy. Millions of eligible Americans may find it harder to vote because of new restrictions, while at the same time super PACs spend tens of millions of dollars influencing candidates. The Election 2012 page is your guide to plausible, concrete proposals to cure them. Democracy is too important for mere reportage. What is needed are practical solutions. The Election 2012 page has them. Visit our Election 2012 page to see how we are advancing a new generation of reforms to modernize voter registration and change campaign finance laws. Also, sign up for our voting newsletter.
Permalink