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Democracy
By Lianna Reagan – 02/09/12
This week, Chile’s President Sebastián Piñera signed a bill into law that automatically registers its citizens to vote, which is expected to add 4.5 million people to Chile’s registration rolls. In doing so, the country joins many other democratic nations, including Australia, Canada, and France, that already have some form of automatic registration in place.
Unfortunately, the United States, where 35 percent of citizens — about 73.5 million — who are eligible to vote are not registered, does not have this policy in place. With such low registration rates, it is hard to imagine that in the last few years multiple laws have been approved across the country to restrict the ability of people to vote. In many states, there are even new burdens being placed specifically on the ability of community groups to register voters. One of the most onerous laws that passed was in Florida, and those restrictions are so severe that the League of Women Voters and Rock the Vote had to suspend their voter registration drives.
Voting is not only a right, but a fundamental part of building an engaged citizenry and the foundation for civic participation. The Brennan Center advocates for a number of ways to modernize our country’s voter registration process that would be helpful to states to facilitate widespread registration. These provisions of voter registration modernization include automated registration (or automatically registering eligible citizens based on lists from other governmental agencies), online registration and access (being able to register to vote; or check, and edit one’s registration online), and permanent state registration (a voter’s registration record is moved as needed among jurisdictions within the state, but the voter is kept on the voter rolls as long as she resides in the state). All of these measures would effectively and efficiently improve voter registration, and enable more Americans to vote.
In addition to making our democracy more inclusive, voter registration modernization could make voting rolls more clean and accurate. The key is in sharing and comparing information between government agencies while moving away from the antiquated paper-based system on which most states rely. In too many states, a form has to get mailed to the county election office where it is hard-entered into the state voter registration database. This paper based systems is not only labor intensive, but also error prone, and can lead to numerous problems in the electoral process. These systems are also incredibly costly at a time when money is particularly tight in the states. Moving to a paperless system can save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. In Maricopa County, Arizona, they saved $450,000 by switching to online registration and partial automation, and in Delaware, they saved $200,000 just on personnel costs. Voter registration modernization has also gained bipartisan support around the country, as it is an area in which both parties can come together in the common goal of efficiency and cost reduction.
By following in the footsteps of many of the world’s developed democracies, Chile took an essential step toward modernizing its voter registration system. As a first-rate democracy the United States should do no less.
Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter Registration Drives, Voter Registration Modernization
By Adam Skaggs – 02/07/12
The mock outrage at President Obama’s campaign for blessing contributions to the Super PAC supporting him, Priorities USA, is a distraction from the real questions about today’s campaign finance environment — how to stop the abuses, and who will provide the leadership needed to achieve meaningful change.
The president’s apparent about-face — from condemning “the corrosive influence of money in politics” in the State of the Union to his campaign’s announcement that it will “do what [it] can, consistent with the law, to support Priorities USA” — provided plenty of fodder for critics. But it’s not surprising. In 2008, Obama reversed course, too — he first planned to participate in the presidential public financing program, but later eschewed it when it became clear he could raise more money outside the system.
The reality in 2012 is that no candidate with a serious chance of winning can afford, in the words of Obama for America campaign manager Jim Messina, to “unilaterally disarm.” The campaign fundraising arms race this election cycle, like it or not, involves Super PACs. They’ve already dumped $40 million of slash-and-burn attack ads into the Republican presidential primaries. Karl Rove’s Super PAC alone, working with a related non-profit group, raised $51 million last year.
However disappointing it was to campaign reform advocates, the only surprise about the Obama campaign’s decision to play by the same rules is that it waited this long to make the announcement. Any campaign that doesn’t take advantage of the rules that permit super spending by Super PACs doesn’t stand a chance.
The Supreme Court’s disastrous decision in Citizens United v. FEC helped enable the Super PAC takeover of elections (as did other court decisions), but the Supreme Court isn’t entirely to blame. Under the Court’s decisions, the only groups that can raise and spend unlimited sums are groups that are completely independent of the campaigns. The candidate-specific Super PACs are anything but.
Why do these groups, which look like shadow arms of the campaigns to any common-sense viewer, operate under rules designed for groups that are wholly independent of campaigns? In large part, the answer has to do with the Federal Election Commission.
In 2010, the FEC issued an advisory opinion that green-lighted Super PACs: as long as a group tells the FEC it’s not affiliated with any campaign and won’t make direct contributions to candidates, it can raise and spend without limit. Later, in spite of laws providing that groups like Super PACs can’t coordinate with candidates and still claim to be independent, the FEC said that Super PACs could legally do a whole lot that looks like coordination. Only at the FEC can a group run ads that are “fully coordinated” with a candidate and still say it is “wholly independent” of his campaign.
The FEC was created under the Federal Election Campaign Act, enacted 40 years ago today, and the last four decades have shown that the agency isn’t up to the task of enforcing the nation’s campaign finance laws. The Alice-in-Wonderland approach it has taken to the Super PACs dominating this year’s election is just its latest failure.
Congress should replace the FEC with an agency that will actually carry out its mission. (While it’s at it, Congress could fix the Super PAC problem by passing laws that give real meaning to words like “independence” and “coordination.”) The abuses that will inevitably emerge from this year’s orgy of Super PAC spending should be sufficient to galvanize support from both sides of the aisle to pass meaningful campaign reform.
But even if partisan gridlock in Congress continues to stymie legislative reform, the president can take a significant step toward addressing the current state of dysfunction at the FEC. Five of the six commissioners who “lead” the agency are serving with expired terms, and the president has the power to appoint competent replacements committed to enforcing the nation’s campaign laws.
A coalition of reform groups under the leadership of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has been calling on President Obama to do just that — since 2009. So far, the president has ignored the calls to appoint new leaders to the FEC.
There is no excuse for further delay. If President Obama is genuinely concerned about the “corrosive” impact of big money in our elections, he should demonstrate it with action, not rhetoric.
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Other Reforms
By ReformNY – 02/03/12
Crossposted at ReformNY.
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 Dan Rockoff.
For more stories on an ongoing basis, follow the Twitter hashtag #moNeYpolitics
NY Campaign Finance:
1. Today, over 100 organizations that support Fair Elections for New York wrote Governor Cuomo detailing the need for publicly financed campaigns, lower contribution limits, and better enforcement. The civil rights, business, faith, grassroots community, good government, environmental, and labor organizations who signed the letter, thanked the Governor for his strong support and expressed their enthusiasm to work with him and members of the Legislature to pass publicly financed elections and other campaign finance reforms during this legislative session.
2. Despite the annual $150,000 contribution limit by individuals to candidates in New York, luxury-apartment mogul Leonard Litwin gave almost $700,000 to candidates in 2011. A study by the New York Public Interest Research Group revealed that Litwin was the biggest individual donor in the state. Litwin was able to dodge the state’s campaign finance laws by utilizing the limited liability company (LLC) loophole, which allows companies to contribute multiple times through affiliated LLC’s, even when the LLC is completely controlled by a corporation or individual who has already reached the maximum contribution limit.
3. Governor Cuomo spoke with reporters about the need for public financing and campaign finance reform after participating in a fundraising event for the Democratic Governors Association. “One of the things we have to work on is getting money out of politics,” Cuomo said. In response to a reporter’s question about the meeting, Cuomo replied, “Your issue of, ‘You are in a room where people contribute money’ — that is the current state of politics and that is (the case for) every elected official in every fundraising forum.”
4. Manuel Ortega, law chairman of the Staten Island Democratic Party, filed a complaint with the FEC against Republican Representative Michael Grimm. The complaint alleges excessive and illegal cash contributions. A key fundraiser of Grimm’s is now being investigated for embezzling millions of dollars from a rabbi’s congregation. According to the New York Times story that Ortega used as the basis for his FEC complaint, unnamed followers allege that Grimm sought donations over the legal limit, and that he sought those donations in cash and from undocumented aliens.
5. The Democrat and Chronicle calls for Governor Cuomo to follow through on his election promises for public financing and campaign finance reform. The newspaper notes that “the governor continues to say the right things” and urges him to “prod the Legislature to deliver.”
Other News Nationwide:
1. In his State of the Union address, President Obama spoke about the “corrosive influence of money in politics.” He called for “a bill that bans insider trading by Members of Congress,” places limits on incumbents’ ability to own stocks in industries they impact, and restricts the ability of bundlers to lobby Congress.
2. The New York Times editorializes that under the federal lobbying law, “Newt Gingrich can legitimately claim that he is not a lobbyist.” The paper stated that Gingrich had “made a great deal of money in Washington peddling his influence, while carefully staying about half-an-inch short of the legal definition of lobbyist.” The paper calls for a better law limiting lobbyist activity and promoting disclosure. Part of the problem is that many Members of Congress use the revolving door—more than 400 former members have become lobbyists or consultants in the last decade.
3. In Massachusetts, Senator Scott Brown and likely Democratic opponent Elizabeth Warren agreed on a plan to stop outside groups from running negative ads. The agreement “requires each side to donate to a charity of the other’s choosing” when benefiting from a third-party ad, and also requires each side to write to outside groups and television station managers requesting a cease-fire. Brown, who is up for re-election to a full term, said that third-party ads “spend millions of dollars from anonymous donors portraying their opposition unfairly and misleading voters.” The question now is whether the agreement is enforceable.
4, In Montana, the State Supreme Court upheld by a 5-2 vote a law banning corporations from making political expenditures. A New York Times editorial praised the Montana Supreme Court, stating that “in Citizens United, the conservative majority turned itself into a copper kings’ court.” The majority rejected Justice Kennedy’s “misguided reasoning” that money does not “give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” The court’s dissenters, however, argued that the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision dictates the opposite result, and warned that the Supreme Court would not allow Montana to ignore precedent.
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Public Financing, NY Reform
By Jonathan Backer – 01/30/12
Throughout the 2012 election, candidates have piously condemned Super PACs for lowering the level of political discourse. These same candidates have simultaneously derived enormous gain when these purportedly independent groups used unlimited contributions to tar and feather their opponents. Recently, in South Carolina, Gingrich criticized Romney’s Super PAC for airing inaccurate ads, but the former Massachusetts governor washed his hands of the ads, saying, “I’m not allowed to communicate with a super PAC in any way, shape or form. My goodness, if we coordinate in any way whatsoever, we go to the big house.”
Two politicians, however, have now mustered more than rhetoric to rein in the Super PACs. Last week, U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren and Senator Scott Brown called for Super PACs and other outside groups to stop running ads in their election. To provide a disincentive for Super PACs to ignore their request, Brown and Warren each vowed to donate 50 percent of the cost of all such ads to charity. Most groups have reluctantly agreed to abide by the request.
Both candidates demonstrated genuine concern for the role of Super PACs in the political system. Brown criticized Super PACs for “trying to buy elections and do[ing] things inappropriately.” Warren praised the agreement as an attempt to move “beyond talk to real action to stop advertising from third-party groups.” Both candidates should be commended for taking concrete steps to change the tone and restore accountability to their electoral contest.
The goodwill of candidates, however, should not be the only barrier to unrestrained and secretive corporate spending in politics. Government needs to restore common-sense rules so that the public can hold outside groups accountable in the post-Citizens United era. Reportedly, Reps. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Robert Brady (D-PA) will soon introduce legislation that would require outside groups to disclose the underlying sources of their funding. Such legislation would be an important first step to ensuring that outside groups are held accountable in future elections.
James Madison defended the role of a robust federal government in our political system by saying, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” If all candidates were as attuned to the perils of unlimited and opaque political spending by corporations as Brown and Warren are, perhaps we would not need campaign finance regulation. But there are too many candidates who are willing to rhetorically distance themselves from outside groups while doing nothing to rein in their worst practices. It’s time for government to play a proactive role in protecting our democracy again.
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Other Reforms
By John Travis – 01/25/12
Crossposted at ReformNY.
In a joint op-ed in today’s Times-Union, former New York State Congressmen Sherwood Boehlert and Scott Murphy voiced their support for Governor Cuomo’s plan to enact a system of public financing of elections, an issue he gave prominence in his State of the State address.
Speaking from their experiences as former members of Congress representing both major political parties, Boehlert and Murphy acknowledge the “corrosive role that private money plays in political campaigns and the legislative process,” both in Washington and Albany. The increased cost of running for office in New York means that candidates have to spend more and more time courting special interests to raise money for their campaigns. This has only contributed to Albany’s culture of dependence on big money.
The solution for our state: adopt a system of voluntary public financing of elections with matching funds like we have in New York City. If small donor contributions are matched on a 4-to-1 ratio, politicians would be able to spend less time raising money from lobbyists and special interests, and more time focusing on serving the interests of their constituents.
A recent Siena poll indicates that public financing of elections has broad support among both Republicans and Democrats in New York. Boehlert and Murphy have now added to the growing — and bipartisan — chorus of calls for meaningful campaign finance reform in Albany.
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Public Financing, NY Reform
By Nic Riley & Molly Alarcon – 01/20/12
This Monday, as the Republican presidential field convened for a debate before the South Carolina primary, the candidates sparred over a variety of familiar debate topics, each one touting his past political achievements, electability, and virtuous campaign tactics. But, amid these familiar talking points, the candidates also broached a topic that had yet to surface in previous debates: namely, the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
On the day named in Dr. King’s honor, the GOP candidates struggled to reconcile some of their controversial stances on voting rights policy with Dr. King’s celebrated struggle to expand the franchise. Former Sen. Rick Santorum invoked Dr. King’s memory by challenging the veracity of an attack ad run by a pro-Romney Super PAC, which falsely painted Santorum as supporting voting rights for incarcerated prisoners. Santorum used the opportunity to clarify that while he did support legislation, named in honor of Dr. King, to restore voting rights to people who completed their sentences, he never advocated letting current prisoners vote. Former Gov. Mitt Romney responded by taking a harder line, arguing that a person who has committed a violent crime should never be allowed to vote, regardless of how long ago the crime was committed and irrespective of whether criminal justice officials in the state have deemed the individual fit to re-enter society. This position — permanent disenfranchisement — is so extreme that only a handful of states have actually adopted the policy.
Santorum also highlighted another problem with Romney’s position: “This is Martin Luther King Day. This is a huge deal in the African-American community, because we have very high rates of incarceration — disproportionately high rates, particularly with drug crimes — in the African-American community.”
Santorum is right to highlight the link between the mass incarceration of African Americans and the racial disparities in voting that criminal disenfranchisement laws cause. But disenfranchising people with criminal convictions is more than just a “huge deal” for the African-American community — it is an issue of fairness for all our communities. More than 4 million Americans who currently live, work, and pay taxes in our communities are disenfranchised by state laws that bar individuals with criminal convictions from voting even after they’ve been released from prison. Dr. King’s struggle for equal access to the ballot box cannot be reconciled with state policies like these that disenfranchise free citizens — something Coretta Scott King noted shortly before her death.
Dr. King’s legacy surfaced again in Monday’s debate when Texas Gov. Rick Perry, responded harshly to a question about the enduring legacy of the Voting Rights Act. Moderator Juan Williams asked Mr. Perry, “Are you suggesting on this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day that the federal government has no business scrutinizing the voting laws of states where minorities were once denied the right to vote?”
Rather than acknowledging the evidence of continuing racial discrimination in voting — evidence that led to the bipartisan, nearly unanimous reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act in 2006 — Perry instead replied that Texas was “under assault by the federal government” and that “South Carolina is at war with this federal government,” referring to the Justice Department’s recent objections to voting changes in those states under the Voting Rights Act. Perry’s response to Williams’ question represents a very different view of the VRA than that of two of our recent presidents from Texas and of Dr. King himself. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the original VRA in Dr. King’s presence and, in 2006, President George W. Bush reauthorized the law, which was re-named in honor of Dr. King’s wife. It’s ironic that Texas’s latest presidential candidate would describe this seminal piece of civil rights legislation in such militaristic terms on the same day that the nation remembers a man who famously helped bring the law into being through nonviolent activism.
Shortly after the Civil War, with the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, our country made a pledge that no state would be allowed to discriminate on the basis of race when it comes to voting. A century later, our national government reaffirmed that pledge by enacting the Voting Rights Act. There should be little doubt that Dr. King would expect the federal government, as he did during his time, to ensure that states cannot backslide on the promises this country has made to prohibit racial discrimination in voting, or to provide equal opportunity for all its citizens, including those who have paid their debts to society.
Tags: Democracy, Voting After Criminal Conviction, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter ID
By John Travis – 01/20/12
Crossposted at ReformNY.
New York’s notoriously weak campaign finance laws were highlighted this week as disclosure reports revealed that former Assemblyman Carl Kruger used nearly $1.4 million from his campaign funds to pay for his legal defense against federal corruption charges. While other states require that candidates set up a legal defense fund, New York allow candidates to use cash from campaign funds pay attorney’s fees.
Susan Lerner from Common Cause/NY notes that “when contributors give to a candidate, they want to support the candidate in his election campaign — not pay for his defense against fraud charges.”
Our former colleague, Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, has pointed out that lawmakers have taken advantage New York's laws by using campaign funds to pay for cars, cell phones, country clubs, sporting events tickets, legal bills, meals and even pet food.
Senator Liz Krueger introduced a bill last year that would address the misuse of campaign funds for personal purposes. Among other restrictions, S3053 would forbid the use campaign funds to “pay attorney’s fees or any costs of defending against any civil or criminal investigation or prosecution for alleged violations of state or federal law.”
Of course, this incident highlights only one of the many problems with our state’s campaign finance laws and we hope that it will be among those addressed when the promised campaign finance bill is introduced.
Tags: Democracy, NY Reform
By Keesha Gaskins – 01/12/12
The Supreme Court is considering the role of federal courts in creating interim plans while a state redistricting plan awaits a preclearance decision under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The dispute arises out of Texas’ current redistricting process. The Court heard oral arguments Monday on an expedited hearing schedule, so a decision is anticipated shortly.
Every 10 years, following a census, the federal government reviews population distribution across the country and, based upon a division of total population between total congressional seats, re‑allocates the appropriate number of congressional seats to each state. Any state may gain, lose or keep the same number of congressional seats in this process, depending on population growth or loss. Then, every state must redraw district lines for congressional and state legislative seats to satisfy the constitutional principle of “one-person, one-vote” in response to new population information. In 37 of 50 states, including Texas, the responsibility of drawing these lines falls to the legislature. Following the 2010 Census, Texas was allocated four additional congressional seats due to an increase of more than 4 million new residents, the overwhelming majority of which were Latino.
Due to a history of discriminatory voting practices, Texas has been under the jurisdiction of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act since 1975. The Voting Rights Act obligates Texas to submit any election change, like its new redistricting plans, to the federal government for preapproval, or “preclearance,” through either the Department of Justice or the D.C. Circuit Court before any part of the redistricting plan may be enacted. In order for Texas to conduct elections in 2012, it needs to have redistricting plans in place no later than March so candidates have time to file for the primary election.
In July 2011, Texas finalized new redistricting plans for its state house, state senate, and Congress and submitted those plans to the D.C. Circuit Court for preclearance. The Department of Justice opposed preclearance, alleging the Texas legislative plan unfairly discriminated against minority voters. While the preclearance process was pending in D.C., plaintiffs filed different claims in federal court in San Antonio, TX, claiming the legislative redistricting plans violated federal law and the constitution. Because the San Antonio court could not know whether the legislative plans would go into effect until after the D.C. Court made a decision about preclearance, it stayed all action until the completion of the preclearance action.
In November 2011, the D.C. Court found that the Texas plans were not entitled to preclearance as a matter of law and ordered a trial on the merits. The San Antonio Court, noting that the D.C. Court could not finish its work in time for Texas to conduct its 2012 elections, ordered the parties to submit proposed plans so it could create interim plans to use for the 2012 elections. Then, the San Antonio court produced plans that were very different than the plans produced by Texas’ Republican-controlled legislature. In response, Texas filed a motion with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the Court to intervene and stop the interim plans developed by the San Antonio Court from going into effect.
On December 9, 2011, five justices of the Supreme Court ordered the stay and an expedited hearing on the issue of whether the San Antonio Court interim plan should go into effect, which they heard Monday.
In considering this matter, the Court will weigh whether Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act retains its full force and effect by not allowing implementation of any non-precleared plan in whole or in part, or whether the San Antonio Court should have given greater deference to the Texas legislative plans – which have not been found to violate any state or federal law – in crafting interim redistricting plans.
Courts are frequently called upon to craft redistricting plans. But courts typically step in only after a state legislature or commission fails to complete the plan in time or after there is a legal finding that the state plan violated state or federal law and a court must draw a remedial plan. Here, the court in San Antonio acted to create an interim redistricting plan that differed significantly from a completed legislative plan that had not been found to be illegal. But because Texas’ legislative plans are under the jurisdiction of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, no part of the plan may be enacted until Texas achieves preclearance from the federal government.
There is legitimate concern that if the Supreme Court orders the lower court to show deference to the state legislative plan in crafting an interim solution, it will significantly undercut the ability of Section 5 to protect jurisdictions from redistricting plans that discriminate against minority voters. Moreover, such a decision could incentivize Section 5 jurisdictions to drag out the preclearance process with the intention that the non-precleared plans will serve as a benchmark for any interim plan until preclearance is granted or denied.
It remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court will uphold the full force of Section 5 and refuse to permit any deference to an unprecleared plan, or whether it will require courts placed in the position of drafting interim redistricting plans to show some degree of deference to legislative redistricting plans during the preclearance process. Arguably, if the Supreme Court was going to allow the interim plans to stand, five justices would have allowed the interim plans to go into effect rather than stay the order of the San Antonio court.
At oral argument the Justices expressed clear opinions about the sufficiency of the interim plan. Certainly the “progressive” justices suggested that the San Antonio panel did an appropriate job in crafting an interim solution. However, there was an unwillingness of the more “conservative” members of the court to find the Texas legislative plan void. Because the San Antonio Court crafted an interim plan, not a remedial one, and because there was no judicial finding of infirmity, the right-leaning side of the court certainly suggested that a legislatively enacted plan is entitled to deference. While the outcome is not certain, the entire Court appeared to accept that the constitutionality of Section 5 is not at issue in this case.
We expect that the Supreme Court will rule on this case quickly to ensure that Texas has new district lines in place for this year’s elections. The litigation in the D.C. Court and in San Antonio will continue, and legal determinations will be made as to whether the Texas district lines are legal under the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution. We can only wait to see what this will mean for the future of Section 5.
Tags: Democracy, Redistricting
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