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Democracy
By Thaddeus Kromelis – 06/09/08
In case you missed it, there is an inspiring piece in today's Providence Journal chronicling Andres Idarraga's remarkable change of course. In short, over the span of ten years, Idarraga has gone from has gone from prison to graduating from Brown University to finally being admitted to Yale Law School—A.T. Wall, director of the Rhode Island Department of Corrections, actually drove him to New Haven for a meeting with the law school's dean.
Andres Idarraga served as one of the primary spokespeople for the Rhode Island Right to Vote campaign, and he is one of 15,000 Rhode Islanders with a conviction in their past who had their right to vote restored when voters approved a ballot referendum in November 2006. He has written for this blog before. His personal account of having his right to vote restored in Rhode Island can be found here.
Tags: Democracy, Voting After Criminal Conviction
By Mike Webb – 06/05/08
Once it was my job to monitor all three of the network
nightly news shows. Not as punishment, but as a way for the presidential
campaign that I worked for to keep track of what was and was not getting
covered. It was interesting to see which stories they covered, how they
covered them and where, in their programs, they placed them. But I was
often disappointed to see that networks tend to consider things like 120 second
consumer report segments more newsworthy than, say, a presidential candidate's
universal health care proposal.
Twenty million people get their "news" from network
broadcasts each day. I—and everyone
else—had to come to grips with the fact that these shows have lots of power
to sway public opinion. But in an ever expanding
media merger landscape where General Electric's outlets (get it—"outlets"!) don't spend a lot of time reporting on the enormous
amounts of money our government spends on the defense industry, people have to
be careful about the news nutrients they consume.
Read the rest of this story ...
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform
By Monique Chase – 06/04/08
"Brace
yourselves for the most ugly and expensive state Supreme Court election in
Wisconsin's history in 2009," warns Jay Heck, director of Common Cause
Wisconsin. In his Capital
Times op-ed, Heck takes shots at Wisconsin's legislature for failing to act
on a campaign finance reform bill, and accuses the group of quietly, "smothering
it with a pillow" during its special legislative session.
Heck's
brashness is understandable. Forget about the fact that Governor Jim Doyle
called the special session specifically
in the interests of campaign finance reform. Recent candidate special interest spending
in Wisconsin's last two judicial election cycles, makes clear that, now, more
than ever, comprehensive campaign finance reform is needed in the state.
Read the rest of this story ...
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Fair Courts, Judicial Advertising
By Michael Waldman – 05/23/08
I just sat through a nail-biting, emotionally exhausting
two hour TV movie. The opening ten minutes were especially
nerve-wracking. The film begins with elderly Floridians squinting at
their butterfly ballots, then stabbing at the ballots, scary music playing,
over and over, voting by accident for Pat Buchanan. Think of the shower
scene in "Psycho" with your grandmother instead of Janet Leigh. Even more
exciting: would the panting, lurching advance man catch up with Al Gore before
he walked onstage to concede?
Maybe not everybody would find this as thrilling. But
Recount,which airs on HBO this Sunday, is one of the
better political movies I've ever seen. It "gets" the motives and methods
of political players better than anything in years. More relevant to the
work of the Brennan
Center, it brings to life
the ways our elections can go wrong, and the rickety and often corrupt
machinery by which we still cast and count votes.
(Full disclosure: I am an old colleague and friend of Ron
Klain, the protagonist; I see GOP lawyer Ben Ginsberg at the beach many summers;
and I go duck hunting with James Baker every year. Well, that part isn't
true. But like anyone involved in politics, back then I had a rooting interest
in the outcome of the recount.)
The narrative crackles and does a good job portraying the
legal machinations that led to the Supreme Court's 5–4 intervention to stop the
counting, thus making George W. Bush President. It's all here, from the
"Brooks Brothers riot" in which Republican congressional staffers shut down the
counting in Miami,
to the frenzied efforts to read and understand the Supreme Court opinion that
announced its reasoning only applied to this case. The acting is
terrific, and the dialogue is sharp and as profane as real life politics (and
HBO).
Read the rest of this story ...
Tags: Democracy, Voting After Criminal Conviction, Voting Rights & Elections, Allegations of Voter Fraud, Voter Lists and Databases, Voter Purges and Challenges, Voting Technology
By Laura MacCleery – 05/20/08
Cross-posted from the Huffington Post.
Late Friday, a letter sent from Federal Election Commission (FEC) nominee Hans von Spakovsky to the White House officially withdrawing his name from consideration was made public. This is undoubtedly good news as the election season kicks into high gear, and will help to assure that the FEC will be restored to its previous, albeit minimal, functionality.
Von Spakovsky's nomination was opposed by civil rights and good government groups due to his frightening record of partisan witch-hunts and voter suppression while in the Voting Division at the Justice Department. Democrats had been insisting on an up-or-down vote for each of the nominees, including von Spakovsky, a former Bush campaign staffer and GOP operative.
Von Spakovsky was the antithesis of the kind of person needed at the Commission, which is charged with the fair and non-partisan administration of campaign finance law. The FEC has been unable to make decisions at the commission level for months, as the triangular nomination standoff between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the White House continued. While the White House had indicated that an up-or-down vote was acceptable, McConnell, who is no friend of the FEC, appeared to be holding firm in insisting on a vote on the full slate of candidates.
Read the rest of this story ...
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Voting Rights & Elections, EAC Oversight
By Justin Levitt – 05/19/08
The Supreme Court's recent
Crawford decision on Indiana's photo ID law was a statement on
evidence (albeit mixed in its
devotion to facts), and not a call to arms. And so far, few states have gotten riled up, preferring instead to spend their little remaining legislative time this session on real solutions to real problems, rather than disenfranchising
elderly nuns.
Political operatives in two states, though, decided that this was an opportune moment to try to tilt the electoral scales for 2008, and pressed legislation creating—not solving—problems for their own citizens.
We've written before on Missouri's firestorm over a proposed constitutional amendment on restrictive photo ID and citizenship rules. At the end of the legislative session, and with the potential to swing the 2008 election on the line (given the history of photo-finish statewide races in Missouri), the amendment died on the vine last Friday after lawmakers ajourned for the year without bringing it to a vote. And then there's the neighbor to the west, which was trying mightily to keep up with the Joneses.
Read the rest of this story ...
Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter ID, Voter Registration
By Thaddeus Kromelis – 05/16/08
It appears supporters of impartial courts are learning their ranks may be larger than expected.
On the heels of this week's ousting of Justice Maynard from West Virginia's high court, news appeared in the Charleston Gazette that the multi-million-dollar mining lawsuit which landed the jet-setting judge on the wrong side of Mountain State voters (deftly unpacked here by Maggie Barron) could be heading before the U.S. Supreme Court if one of the litigants gets its way.
Yesterday, it came to light that Theodore Olson, former Solicitor General and the man who successfully represented President Bush in Bush v. Gore, is representing Harman Mining Co. in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their appeal.
Read the rest of this story ...
Tags: Democracy, Fair Courts
By Bethany Foster & Andrew Stengel – 05/14/08
Cross-posted from Daily News editorial
Two weeks ago, state Sen. Frank Padavan received extra credit—quite inappropriately—from Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein when a cluster of public schools in Bellerose, Queens, was renamed for him. Padavan was apparently instrumental in converting a state-owned psychiatric facility into the three public schools, which now make up what is called the Frank Padavan Campus.
Rather than letting this little favor slide by—as so many of these embellishments do—it's time for the senator and those who bestowed the honor to learn a tough ethics lesson.
The state's Public Officers Law is clear on this: Elected officials cannot receive extra compensation or any gift of more than nominal value. Placing someone's name in a prominent place, whether it's an actual building or a tract of land, has monetary value. That's why many ballfields around the country are known by corporate names, like FedEx or Petco. Citibank will reportedly pay $20 million per year to call the new Mets stadium Citi Field....
Read entire editorial here.
Tags: Democracy, NY Reform
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