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Colorado College recently decided to give students the day off on Nov. 3.
Colleges should have already canceled Election Day classes
Sep 30 2020
Marshall is an attorney in Washington and Okun is a corporate strategic advisor in Singapore for McLarty Associates. Both were senior officials in the Clinton administration. Okun's son is mentioned in this piece.
<p>Twenty million college students have the capability to decide presidential elections — if they vote.</p><p>Not having classes on Election Day would increase their likelihood of doing so, by giving students the time to vote in person and wait in line as long as they need.</p><p>As <a href="https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/the-pandemics-potential-to-create-a-lost-generation-of-voters/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">we wrote</a> this summer in Sabato's Crystal Ball, the election blog of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, obstacles traditionally exist for students even after they register — with local election officials targeting their ballots for challenges or not providing polling places on or near campuses.</p><p>This year, the coronavirus pandemic and heightened attention to election security have added unique challenges. </p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_day" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Many countries</a> across the world hold elections either on a weekend or a public holiday. While the United States will not switch to either any time soon, colleges and universities still have time to arrange for their students and employees to be free to fully engage in the democratic process.</p><p>They should give students the day off from academics Nov. 3 so they do not have to choose between furthering their education and carrying out their civic responsibility. </p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>A few already do, including Northwestern Law School since 2016 and Loyola Law School starting in 2018. But most do not. And <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/colleges-election-day-classes/2020/09/24/16780602-fdb6-11ea-9ceb-061d646d9c67_story.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">neither</a> American University nor the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have canceled classes despite student requests to do so. What's wrong with them?</p><p>Last week, however, Colorado College decided to cancel classes after second-year student Bennett Okun <a href="https://thecatalystnews.com/2020/09/03/colleges-should-cancel-classes-so-students-can-work-at-the-polls/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">promoted the idea</a> in the campus newspaper. </p><p>Acting provost and faculty dean Claire Garcia, in a message also signed by Okun, said the day off is "so that our students may have the time to focus on their role in the process, whether it be volunteering to work at the polls in a year when fewer people are available to volunteer because of the threat of Covid-19 or simply having the time to wait in lines that may be hours long to vote."</p><p>The issues that eligible voters younger than 24 are most passionate about are not the same as those of older voters. <a href="https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/poll-young-people-believe-they-can-lead-change-unprecedented-election-cycle" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">A study</a> by Tufts University found the issues currently most important to the newest cohort of would-be voters are race relations, environmental sustainability and health care.</p><p>And yet climate change did not even make the cut as one of the six topics moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News promised to focus on Tuesday in the first debate between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.</p><p>With the environment, Black Lives Matter, economic opportunity, the Supreme Court, gun control and a woman's right to choose all part of this year's presidential campaign, college students have never been more motivated to vote.</p><p>Many cast their first-ever vote for president while in college. Studies suggest that once someone casts a first vote, they are more likely to remain engaged and continue to vote in subsequent elections. We cannot allow them to miss this election and thereby be more likely be disengaged citizens. </p><p>Yes, college administrators have much on which to focus now. We get it. But how hard should the decision be to cancel class with the presidency at stake?</p><p>In the congressional midterm election two years ago, 7.5 million college students went to the polls, <a href="https://idhe.tufts.edu/2018-nslve-data-portal" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Tufts researchers found</a>, a 40 percent turnout that was double from four years earlier. </p><p>Everything should be done to pave the way for a much higher turnout this fall.</p><p>Students could also use the time off to fill the void created by older generations who often serve as poll workers, but are loath to do so in 2020 to preserve their health during the pandemic.</p><p>"The vote is precious. It is the most powerful non-violent tool we have in a democratic society, and we must use it," the late civil rights icon and Georgia Congressman John Lewis <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/john-lewis-social-change-voting-rights_n_57f2bd99e4b0703f7590753e" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">often said</a>. "And so you must go out all across America and tell young people, and people not so young, tell all of us: Vote. The vote is powerful."</p><p>We owe it to this generation to do everything possible to have the opportunity to exercise that power.</p><p>And next year, Congress can right the wrong simply by moving Presidents Day to the first Tuesday in November — thereby making Election Day a national holiday and giving everyone the opportunity to vote at no cost to their income or studies. </p><p>Part of the rationale against a new national holiday appears to be the economic cost, which would be substantial. This solution addresses that by shifting an existing holiday from a date without particular significance beyond the prominence of presidents born in February.</p><p>Doubtless George Washington (Feb. 22) and Abraham Lincoln (Feb. 12) would appreciate having their birthdays honored with far more people participating in democracy rather than being associated with mattress sales. </p><p>College and university presidents should cancel classes now. They should not even have to be asked.</p>
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Congress needs to fix plenty of things, but not the Supreme Court
Sep 29 2020
Rush is a professor of politics and law and director of the center for international education at Washington and Lee University.
<p>The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has unleashed calls for institutional overhauls to expand the size of the Supreme Court or limit the time justices can serve — as well as outright threats to pack the bench, depending on who controls the Senate and the White House after November's election. </p>
<p>But the Supreme Court is not the problem.</p>
<p>The fresh cries to "fix the court" are ironic at best and hypocritical at worst. They echo the calls to "impeach Earl Warren" that rang out in the 1950s, after that chief justice wrote the unanimous Brown v. Board of Education decision that declared segregated schools unconstitutional. </p>
<p>Then, as now, the problem was not the nation's high court. It was the septic politics — then of segregation, now of raw partisan division — that infected the country.</p>
<p>Back in the 1960s and 1970s, reactions to septic politics were similar to today's calls to fix the Supreme Court. Instead of ostracizing its members who had perpetuated segregation, Congress reorganized the seniority system and created a multitude of new committees and subcommittees. Instead of taking a stand against segregationist senators and House members — other than rejecting their ideology to enact landmark voting rights and civil rights legislation — Congress replaced a few of the committee fiefdoms they'd controlled with a multitude of new ones. And that made Capitol Hill a much more difficult place to lead or control. So politics remained septic.</p>
<p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>Similarly, to "fix" the electoral system, Congress enacted campaign spending laws that essentially privatized the election process and set in motion the forces that now make elections extraordinarily expensive, uncompetitive and gerrymandered to perpetuate control by the two major parties. </p>
<p>Instead of bridging political divisions, Congress enacted institutional reforms that simply proliferated the number of divisions and deepened them. The two major parties are as polarized as ever, more internally divided than ever -- and still comfortably ensconced in power thanks to campaign finance laws that discriminate against third parties and independent candidates.</p>
<p>As Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institution has written, the nation continues to pay the price for these so-called reforms. They created the political system that enabled Donald Trump to beat the Republicans and then beat the Democrats. It remains possible he could do it again this November. "Fixing" the Supreme Court by limiting tenure or adding seats will do nothing to overcome the political divisions or fix the political machinery that elevated and has sustained the incumbent president.</p>
<p>More likely, any such rushed alterations would have the sort of undesirable and unforeseen consequences that inevitably arise from hastily conceived policies that are driven more by partisan fervor than by wisdom.</p>
<p>So let's leave the Supreme Court alone. Despite the debasement of the confirmation process that began with President Ronald Reagan's failed nomination of Robert Bork 33 years ago, the court still operates collegially and effectively. Despite the complaints about how Republican appointees now dominate the bench, abortion remains a right, the Affordable Care Act has not been struck down, gay marriage is constitutionally protected and employers may not discriminate against people based on gender or sexuality. Perennially, the court receives the highest approval ratings among the branches of the federal government. </p>
<p>Instead of overhauling the Supreme Court, perhaps lawmakers and other aspiring fixers might first give Congress itself some homework. Before turning on the court, perhaps Congress could first demonstrate a capacity to put partisanship aside and pursue an agenda that is unquestionably bipartisan and clearly in the national interest. A better coronavirus testing plan? Perhaps a dollar-a-gallon additional federal tax on gasoline to cut greenhouse emissions and support sustainability research? Maybe a fix for the public schools? </p>
<p>The Supreme Court is not broken. So don't fix it. Instead, Congress should demonstrate that it can choose to fix the politics and policies that need fixing.</p>
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Voter Choice for Massachusetts
Shauna Hamilton (left), with Joel Paul and Jim Henderson on July 1 before delivering their final boxes of signed petitions to the secretary of state in Boston.
The Fahey Q&A with Shauna Hamilton, who's working for more voter choice in Massachusetts
Sep 28 2020
After organizing the Voters Not Politicians 2018 ballot initiative that put citizens in charge of drawing Michigan's legislative maps, Fahey became founding executive director of The People, which is forming statewide networks to promote government accountability. She interviews colleagues in the world of democracy reform each month for our Opinion section.
<p>A few years ago, Shauna Hamilton was working in hospitality management when she met a volunteer canvasser, which led to a change of career path. Now she's the deputy campaign manager for <a href="https://www.yeson2rcv.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Yes on 2</a>, the group behind a Massachusetts referendum on the November ballot that would switch to ranked-choice elections for most offices in the state. Her campaign was preparing for a second round of signature-gathering on ballot petitions when Covid-19 hit. Forced to abandon in-person canvassing, it won permission from the state's top court to go online — a national first — and ultimately got 129,000 valid signatures, a state record for a ballot measure.</p><p>Our recent conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.</p><p><strong>Fahey: </strong>What is ranked-choice voting?</p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p><strong>Hamilton: </strong>You have the option to rank candidates in order of preference. You can rank as many or as few as you'd like, or still choose to vote for only one candidate. A candidate can win outright by receiving more than 50 percent of first-choice votes. If not, the one with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated, and those votes are reallocated to each voter's second choice, so no vote is wasted. This process repeats until one candidate has a majority. </p><p><strong>Fahey: </strong>Why do ranked-choice elections matter now?</p><p><strong>Hamilton: </strong>The current system has led to a lack of choice for voters, a lack of competition in elections and crippling political division. Ranked elections give voters more power, stripping power away from special interests and big-money donors. They expand voter choice and encourage more candidates to run without the fear of vote-splitting, and would make Massachusetts' government more representative of the state's diversity across ages, races and genders. In a climate with so much division, ranked-choice voting is needed to build consensus across the political spectrum.</p><p><strong>Fahey: </strong>Which elections would this reform impact?</p><p><strong>Hamilton: </strong>Primaries and general elections for many positions starting in 2022 — including county offices like district attorney and sheriff, statewide posts like governor and congressional and Senate seats. Ranked-choice voting would not be used in the presidential election, presidential primaries, or for city or town elections.</p><p><strong>Fahey: </strong>What are the voters telling you?</p><p><strong>Hamilton: </strong>Polling shows when people know what ranked-choice voting is, they like it and want to vote for it. We've known this, anecdotally, for a long time. There's a dead heat between folks who support ranked-choice voting and those who don't; <a href="https://www.wbur.org/news/2020/08/12/wbur-poll-ranked-choice-voting-ballot-question" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a poll in August</a> found 36 percent plan to vote "yes" and 36 percent "no" with the remaining 28 percent undecided. Of voters who understand ranked-choice voting "very well," 52 percent supported it and 37 percent didn't. That's a really big margin. These numbers tell us that educating voters should be our first priority.</p><p><strong>Fahey:</strong> How did you become involved with the campaign?</p><p><strong>Hamilton: </strong>I joined as a volunteer in January 2018. A canvasser approached with a clipboard and asked if I wanted to get involved with the ranked-choice voting movement. At the time, I was making a career shift and had been trying to get involved with something nonpartisan that could alleviate the division in our politics. I made the trip to the first meeting because all the volunteers I'd spoken to were so passionate — that's the power of volunteers connecting with folks!</p><p><strong>Fahey: </strong>What's the history of Yes on 2?</p><p><strong>Hamilton: </strong>After Maine in 2016 became the first state to pass statewide ranked-choice voting, a group in Massachusetts — including lawyers, professors, data analysts and activists — formed to say, "We're going to be next." Initially the questions were about how to connect with people and build a list of supporters and volunteers. At first it was purely an educational organization, volunteer-led for about a year and a half. As we brought on more volunteers and eventually hired a few staff, we expanded into a legislative effort as well as a push for a statewide vote. We filed two bills in 2019, one for ranked-choice statewide elections and the other to provide a ranked-choice option to municipalities. Through our volunteers' phone banking, we secured 86 co-sponsors for those bills.</p><p><strong>Fahey: </strong>How has the coronavirus pandemic impacted your campaign?</p><p><strong>Hamilton: </strong>We began circulating petitions last fall to get our reform on the ballot. The state Constitution required us to submit two rounds of signatures: a minimum of 80,239 in the first round, then at least 13,374 more. We completed our first round in December — and thought the second round would be a piece of cake. We didn't know we'd soon be operating in a very different world. Covid-19 meant that we couldn't stand outside a grocery store or on a street corner. Fortunately, the Supreme Judicial Court allowed us to gather signatures electronically. Then, our volunteers and organizational partners blew it out of the water.</p><p>We're not knocking on doors due to Covid-19, so connecting with voters through phone banking is more important than ever. People are voting earlier this year, in person and by mail, so we need to get ahead and inform them about our campaign. Social media, television ads and radio also broaden our reach significantly. <a href="https://youtu.be/fxhm9ob23uc" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Our first TV ad</a> went out two weeks ago.</p><p><strong>Fahey: </strong>If you were speaking to a high school student or new immigrant, how would you describe what being an American means to you?</p><p><strong>Hamilton: </strong>To me, it means having the opportunity to participate in our political process, and that's something I had previously taken for granted. Working on this campaign, I've seen that when you speak out to your legislators, the good ones listen. Having the ability to disagree with what our leaders are doing, and to be able to freely voice that, is very special to me.</p>
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President Trump and first lady Melania Trump pay their respects to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Thursday. The looming fight over her replacement threatens further damage to our democracy, writes Troiano.
Court fight warning: Break the doom loop or it will soon break us
Sep 25 2020
Troiano is executive director of Unite America, which promotes an array of electoral reforms and helps finance other advocacy organizations, and political candidates, with a commitment to cross-partisanship. (It is a donor to The Fulcrum.)
<p>The battle over the replacement for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg represents the next step, albeit a significant one, in a trend of political escalation that threatens the very foundation and functioning of our democracy.</p><p>Our political system is caught in a "doom loop" of partisanship and polarization, as both major parties trade long-term institutional stability for short-term political gain in what they rationalize as a fight for the soul of our country.</p>
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<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="75972298fd135799161a5644b2779411"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aRnK1lT-JkM?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">How America's two-party doom loop is driving division</small>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRnK1lT-JkM&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">www.youtube.com</a>
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<p>If it continues, the doom loop will break our country in half — unless we act to break it first.<br></p><p>Both political parties have played a role in the ongoing tit for tat over judicial confirmations. In 2013, when Democrats controlled the Senate, they invoked the "nuclear option" and eliminated filibusters against lower federal court nominees so they could be confirmed with slim party-line majorities. And the Republicans now in charge are set to up the ante by violating a precedent they set themselves four years ago with regard to considering Supreme Court nominations in presidential election years.</p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>Should Republicans succeed in confirming a new justice this fall, Democrats will feel even more emboldened –– if they win control of the Senate and White House –– to pursue ideas some are already floating, from "packing the court" with additional, and likeminded, justices to packing the Senate itself by admitting the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as reliably Democratic states. </p><p>Then, all bets would be off. </p><p>A Republican Party that retains a geographical and political advantage in both the Senate and the Electoral College could surely respond in kind in 2022 and 2024. Nothing, for example, forces the Senate to confirm any president's Supreme Court nominations. Nothing even forces Congress to fund the Supreme Court.</p><p>Ultimately, we can only have a democracy if some things matter more than winning power in it. The norm of political forbearance, as Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt explained in "How Democracies Die" (Crown, 2018), requires self-restraint on the exercise of political power even if one has the legal right to do so. "Democracies cannot work without it," <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/27/opinion/sunday/democracy-polarization.html" target="_blank">they write</a>. Nor can they long survive. </p><p>The doom loop will continue to spiral out of control, if not for the intervention of courageous leaders and different incentives.</p><p>The most immediate way to at least slow down the doom loop is for a group of at least eight senators –– four Democrats and four Republicans –– to join as a bloc that can effectively deny either party an outright majority on any norm-busting maneuvers moving forward. </p><p>Right now, that could mean: no one confirmed for the Supreme Court before the election, and no court packing after the election. In a new session starting next year, that could mean: new Senate rules that restore deliberation and compromise, including reforming rather than abolishing the filibuster. </p><p>The most effective way to actually break the doom loop, however, would be enacting nonpartisan reforms to our electoral system that can fundamentally change governing incentives by increasing political competition, participation and accountability.</p><p>Political scientist Lee Drutman, who coined the doom loop phrase, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/1/23/21075960/polarization-parties-ranked-choice-voting-proportional-representation" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">explains</a>: "We are now in an era in which we have two truly distinct national parties, organized around two competing visions of national identity. It works against, not with our political institutions." </p><p>Over the last several decades, the two dominant parties have sorted themselves along clearly contrasting dividing lines –– demographically, geographically and ideologically. This stark set of binary splits has reinforced zero-sum politics, in which any kind of compromise is betrayal and the other side is not just wrong but evil. </p><p>Politicians have every incentive to raise the stakes even higher in order to get attention, raise campaign money and then win the votes to build their own political power, because most of them are largely insulated within their own parties and only face competition from their respective extremes.</p><p>The only way to change how our leaders behave is to change how they are elected.</p><p>For example, the most obvious and popular electoral reform, though far from the most powerful, is to end partisan gerrymandering –– thereby creating more competitive districts in which more voters will matter and voters can hold their leaders more accountable. Many states have already implemented independent redistricting commissions, and Congress could act to mandate their use nationally.</p><p>There are a range of other reforms –– from eliminating partisan primaries to implementing <a href="http://thefulcrum.us/ranked-choice-voting" target="_self">ranked-choice voting</a> –– that could have an even more powerful impact on the incentives of our leaders. While there is no silver bullet reform, any hope of de-escalating continuing political retribution will require politicians to reconsider how to achieve what is obviously most important to them: how they get elected.</p><p>The time for political reform is not after the next big fight; there will always be another to come. The time for reform is now. What hangs in the balance is not a single Supreme Court seat, but the legitimacy of our entire experiment of democratic self-governance.</p>
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