Florida does not have a good track record with voter purges. In 2000, Florida’s efforts to purge persons with criminal convictions from the rolls led to, by conservative estimates, close to 12,000 eligible voters being removed because the state’s process was so imprecise that an eligible voter named John Michaels could be confused with an ineligible person named John Michaelson. In 2004, Florida’s purge had a blatant racial disparity. Now, in 2012, Florida’s Secretary of State recently announced new efforts to purge Florida’s voter rolls. The initiative purports to be targeting non-citizens and deceased persons for removal from the voter rolls, but because Florida’s past efforts purged eligible voters from the rolls, careful scrutiny is warranted to ensure eligible Americans will not be blocked from voting.
Clean voter rolls are very important. We all benefit when states undertake responsible list maintenance procedures. Because the fundamental right to vote is at stake when voter list cleansing efforts are undertaken, the process must be transparent, accurate, and under reasonable time frames, especially when the list maintenance effort is of the scale Florida is proposing.
Part of the problem with voter purges is that they happen inside someone’s office and outside the public eye. For example, Florida’s Secretary of State Ken Detzner issued a public release announcing the purge effort earlier this month, but the initiative started in early 2011. So far he has only revealed that election officials are working with the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles to cross-reference voters’ information contained in various databases. But the press report does not explain anything more to the public. How can we know the process is being undertaken carefully? How can a voter incorrectly removed be put back on the rolls?
Finally, the timing of purges is often a concern, as it is here because Florida will hold elections in just a few months. The risks of error and enormity of consequences make it critical that purges happen well before elections so that mistakes can be caught and corrected and voters reinstated with ample time to cast ballots that will count. There are reports that local election supervisors share the Brennan Center’s concern about the timing of these purges, which are heightened if it is true that supervisors received instructions to begin purging voters from the rolls with only a few months before the elections when state-level officials compiled initial lists more than a year before.
If there are bloated rolls in Florida or any other state, the solution is easy: modernize. Paper-based registration systems, in Florida and elsewhere, are inefficient, costly, and prone to inaccuracy. The Brennan Center has proposed model legislation for voter registration modernization that would increase the number of eligible voters and restrict ineligible voters with a much higher degree of accuracy. The proposed system electronically transfers registration information, enables secure online registration, ensures that a voter’s registration record travels with her when she moves within a state, and creates an opportunity at the polls to correct any glitches in the process. Numerous states have already adopted components of voter registration modernization, and Florida should follow suit.
What Florida should NOT do is undertake a hasty and ill-planned purge of its voter rolls.
According to a new study by the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, four nonprofit organizations have spent $3.4 million in the state on “a steady barrage of campaign-style ads criticizing the Obama administration” since the start of the year all without disclosing their donors. Because these organizations — Americans for Prosperity, American Future Fund, American Energy Alliance, and the 60 Plus Association — are nonprofit “501(c)(4)” organizations and were careful to run their advertisements just outside the 30 day federal reporting window, they will never have to reveal information about their underlying donors.
All of this is completely legal. That federal disclosure requirements are so easily evaded — by entities spending millions of dollars to influence elections — underscores the need to reform federal disclosure laws.
Under federal campaign finance disclosure law, organizations that run “electioneering communications” must disclose their donors to the Federal Election Commission, which in turn releases the list of donors to the public. Electioneering communications are broadcast advertisements (TV or radio) that refer to a specific candidate for federal office and air within 30 days of a primary election or 60 days of a general election. Before disclosure of electioneering communications was required, only ads that expressly said things like “vote for” or “vote against” candidates had to be reported. Groups easily evaded disclosure under that regime by running “sham issue ads,” advertisements that are often highly critical of a candidate but stop short of telling voters to vote against the candidate. Instead they say things like “call Senator Smith and tell her not to tamper with Social Security.” Voters understood these as appeals to vote for or against candidates, but because they avoided the “magic words” they didn’t have to be reported. By requiring electioneering communications to be disclosed, Congress ensured voters would know who paid for sham issue ads run just before an election.
The groups in Michigan avoided disclosure by running their ads outside the 30-day window before the state’s primary. They also avoided disclosure by being registered as 501(c)(4) organizations, or “social welfare” organizations under the tax code. Consequently, these organizations are prohibited from having political activity be their “primary” focus, but can still engage in significant political spending. Had these nonprofits instead registered as so-called “527 organizations” — the intended designation for political organizations under the tax code — their donors would have to be disclosed. By exploiting the dual weaknesses of the current electioneering communication definition and the tax code, the people behind these kitschy organizational names will never be known.
Activity like this is why members of Congress recently introduced the DISCLOSE Act of 2012 to address the weaknesses of federal disclosure requirements. Under the proposed legislation, the reporting window would be greatly expanded. Donors behind electioneering communications would have to be disclosed if the advertisement runs within 120 days of the first presidential primary, and continuing until the general election. Ads mentioning congressional candidates would require disclosure if they ran on or after January 1 of an election year. By expanding the disclosure period, the law would ensure voters have both greater knowledge going to the ballot box and the ability to better scrutinize the dealings between independent organizations and the candidates they support.
Because the Michigan groups didn’t report their spending, the magnitude of the campaigns would have gone unnoticed. But the Michigan Campaign Finance Network carefully combed through public files of Michigan broadcasters and cable companies, meticulously analyzing their contracts to air the groups’ political commercials. The effort should certainly be applauded, as it brought to light spending that would otherwise have remained secret. But such effort shouldn’t be necessary — the public has a right to know who is trying to influence the voters and elected officials and how much they are spending in the process. Our federal disclosure laws should reflect that by making this information easily accessible so that everybody can know who is behind the money. Expanding the electioneering communication reporting window, as the DISCLOSE Act would accomplish, is an important first step.
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 Robert Friedman.
For more stories on an ongoing basis, follow the Twitter hashtags #moNeYpolitics and #fairelex.
New York Campaign Finance and Ethics News
1. WYNC touts the findings from the new joint report by the Brennan Center and the Campaign Finance Institute, Donor Diversity Through Public Matching Funds. A significantly greater number of small donors contributed to campaigns in New York City, which matches donations of less than $175 at a six-to-one ratio, than contributed to state-level elections, where no matching exists. The results also evidence greater participation by minorities and low-income individuals under New York City’s public matching fund system. The report notes the ongoing campaign to institute a similar system for New York State elections, suggesting that small donor public financing could increase the diversity of the donor base for state elections.
2. Super PACs are already dominating this federal election cycle, and an article from Crain’s New York Business suggests they may play a major role in New York City elections as well. "There will be super PACs," said New York Republican State Committee Chairman Ed Cox. "It's impossible not to have them. They're a part of the process now." Such organizations could put unlimited dollars behind policy issues or mayoral candidates, according to some sources. Nonetheless, heightened disclosure requirements and a vigilant city Campaign Finance Board, according to the Board’s former general counsel, Laurence Laufer, may mean that these organizations work within greater restraints in New York City than at the federal level.
3. After more than a decade of accusations of misusing public funds, the law has finally caught up with the former New York State Senator Pedro Espada. A federal jury convicted Espada of four counts of theft, and he now faces up to forty years in prison. The charges stemmed from Espada’s unlawful use of over $400,000 belonging to a health clinic he helped found in 1978. Espada became known statewide in 2009 after taking part in a coup against party leadership shortly after the Democrats gained a narrow majority in the Senate. Two other Senators involved in that political turmoil – Hiram Monserrate and Carl Kruger – recently pleaded guilty to separate corruption charges.
National Campaign Finance and Ethics News
1. The Federal Elections Commission continues to press Congress to extend the ban on using campaign funds for personal use, according to The Hill. The ban currently covers candidates and candidate committees, but the FEC is urging Congress to extend it to reach campaign funds held by all political committees, including Leadership PACs and party committees. The Department of Justice has echoed the FEC’s concern, noting a “dramatic rise” of theft of funds intended for use in a campaign. To date, Congress has not taken action to respond to the FEC’s recommendation.
2. An op-ed published in The Columbus Dispatch examines the distaste for Citizens United expressed on both sides of the political aisle. Particularly troublesome to congressional representatives is the lack of transparency, and both Republicans and Democrats interviewed cited the need for increased disclosure. “There are national groups dropping in and out of communities without it being clear as to their interests,” said Rep. Mike Turner, a Dayton, Ohio Republican.
3. Proponents of increased disclosure of campaign contributions and curbing rampant spending in politics won a victory this week. Last month, in Van Hollen v. FEC, the District Court for the District of Columbia struck down FEC rules that undermined a federal law requiring organizations that make electioneering communications to disclose their major donors. The Huffington Post reports on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’ recent decision denying a stay of the District Court’s judgment. While the FEC chose not to appeal the initial ruling, two private groups intervened to seek a stay. The Court of Appeals rejected their request two to one.
4. Some suggest that secretive spenders will find loopholes to exploit even after the Van Hollen decision. In an article on Slate, Richard Hasen argues that mandated disclosure for “electioneering communications,” which stop short of urging listeners and watchers to vote for a particular candidate, could lead to an increase in “independent expenditures,” which do expressly encourage voting for or against a certain candidate. While this express advocacy could cause the groups to lose tax-exempt status, Hasen notes that the FEC’s thin history of enforcement may lead to groups taking that risk. Another possibility Hasen flags is that the Supreme Court could hear the case, leading to a potential stay of the new disclosure requirements.
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.
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.
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.
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.
New York Campaign Finance and Ethics News
1. In a radio interview this week, Gov. Cuomo renewed the call for statewide campaign finance reform, decrying the corrosive effect that super PACs and high contribution limits continue to have on electoral politics in Albany. “The power of money in the Capitol is unbelievable,” Gov. Cuomo said. Cuomo has pledged to implement a public financing system similar to New York City’s small donor matching program, as well as to improve enforcement of state campaign finance laws, close campaign finance loopholes and lower contribution limits.
2. The debate over public financing has begun in the state Senate, with the introduction of new legislation by Senator Eric Adams, which would establish a public financing program, create an independent enforcement counsel in the State Board of Elections, lower contribution limits and improve disclosure of independent political spending. At a press conference called by Senate Democrats, Senate Democratic Leader John Sampson told reporters that public campaign finance would dilute the influence of moneyed interests and enhance the power of small donors. Sen. Tom Duane added that Gov. Cuomo’s support is crucial for a bill’s passage, observing that the governor’s track record on marriage reform and pension benefits is clear evidence that “when he puts his mind to something, he can win.”
3. Reform groups including Citizen Action New York gathered in Albany on Monday to protest the outsized influence of the natural gas industry on the state legislature’s approach to hydrofracking, noting that the industry has contributed more than $1.3 million to state legislators in an effort to buy support for the controversial practice. Sierra Club representative Robert Ciesielski cited a study by Common Cause that the governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, had received over $1.6 million in political donations from the industry—a figure that, given the current state of New York’s campaign finance laws, lobbyists in Albany could well surpass.
4. On Wednesday, Fair Elections for New York held a screening in Albany of “Pricele$$,” a new documentary on the influence of money in politics that includes interviews with former Gov. Mario Cuomo and former U.S. Representative Dan Maffei (D—NY), who is currently running for the seat he lost in 2010. Filmmaker Steve Cowan posted full transcripts of his interviews with Cuomo and Maffei on the film’s website, which include Maffei’s observation he supports public campaign finance “because it means the only people we’ll have to worry about in our day are the taxpayers and constituents in our district, and that’s what we’re supposed to do.”
2. Nate Silver writes in the New York Times, however, that small contributions ($200 or less) still make up over half of the president’s total contributions during the current election cycle, in contrast to a mere 13% of Mitt Romney’s campaign contributions. Silver notes that in the current era of super PACs and big-ticket fundraisers, the dearth of small contributions does not indicate a weak campaign budget so much as it suggests a lack of support among grassroots Republican voters.
5. Redistricting in California’s 53 congressional districts has set off a wave of hyper-partisan fundraising by super PACs, as both parties see California races as crucial to winning a majority in the U.S. House this fall. Super PACs such as American Crossroads, partly managed by Karl Rove, and the GOP Congressional Leadership Fund, to which billionaire Sheldon Adelson has contributed $5 million, are expected to play a leading role. Bill Allison, editorial director of the nonpartisan watchdog organization Sunlight Foundation, predicted that “After the election, it is these donors who will have access and entree to Congress at a level that will be unbelievable compared to what we’ve seen before.”
The super PACs and nonprofit groups dominating the 2012 election filed their latest financial disclosures with the Federal Election Commission. The reports showed that these outside groups — some of which do not disclose any information about their donors — are poised to continue playing an outsize role in this year's elections. Karl Rove's Crossroads groups, for instance, raised about as much in the first quarter of 2012 ($49 million) as they did during all of 2011. This breakneck fundraising pace will only accelerate as November approaches.
But this fundraising is not just affecting the ads we see on TV. It may also be having a troubling influence on voter attitudes toward our electoral process. According to a national survey conducted on behalf of the Brennan Center for Justice, 41 percent of Americans already say their vote does not matter because big donors to super PACs have so much more influence than they do. Alarmingly, nearly one in four Americans say they are less likely to vote because of the influence big donors have over elected officials.
This is nothing less than a crisis of confidence in the power of average citizens to effect change through the electoral process.
Yet super PACs are only one reason voters might disengage this November. Across the country, more than a dozen states have passed laws making it harder for eligible citizens to vote. Voter ID laws are the most common — eight states have passed "no photo, no vote" laws since the last federal elections. Several others have adopted laws restricting registration drives, making it nearly impossible for groups like the League of Women Voters to register voters. All told, during the 2011-2012 legislative sessions alone, there have been 24 laws and executive actions restricting access to the polls. These new restrictions could make it harder for millions of Americans to vote in November.
Poorer communities and communities of color will bear the worst consequences of this year's new election law changes. The Brennan Center super PAC survey found that Americans with household incomes under $35,000 are much more likely than the general population to think their vote does not matter in the face of super PACs. That holds true for African-Americans and Latinos, too. Most voting law changes, like voter ID laws, also have their most pernicious effects on people of color. For instance, the Department of Justice recently noted that Hispanic registered voters in Texas are between 46 percent and 120 percent more likely than whites to not have a driver's license or non-driver's photo ID.
The combination of new campaign finance and voting law changes is almost certain to cause voter disengagement this fall, especially among those traditionally marginalized in our political process. Of course, this would not be the first time that America has had problems with voter turnout. In 2008, an election noted for its high turnout, there were still 75 million voting-eligible people who did not vote.
We need structural reform to the way we run our elections, and fast.
Congress can immediately make outside groups less potent by adopting meaningful rules to prevent coordination between candidates and the super PACs that function as shadow campaigns. But Congress can and should do more. Adopting a system of public funding for federal elections would make the voices of average voters matter as much as those of super PAC fat cats.
Modernizing our voter registration system is also long overdue. Registration-related problems have perennially been the biggest obstacle voters face each election season. In 2008, 80 percent of voting-eligible people who did not vote were not registered, and about three million more were prevented from voting because of problems with their registration. According to the Pew Center on the States, there are now 50 million voting-eligible Americans who are not registered.
To expand the voter rolls, Congress should require states to automatically register consenting eligible citizens to vote when they interact with any state agency — and to provide a failsafe procedure to register voters who are left out. In states like Washington, Kansas, and South Dakota, automation has substantially increased the number of registered voters. States should also be required to provide online voter registration, a more convenient, secure, and cost-effective alternative to paper-based registration forms.
Congress alone cannot completely counteract the harmful effects of the new rules governing our elections. But in an election cycle where these rules threaten to undermine voter participation, Congress must act now to soften the blow.
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