Members of the #ListenFirst Coalition share their thoughts on how we can find common ground and reduce toxic polarization.
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People urge support for Question 1 in Maine.
Kyle Bailey
The Fahey Q&A: Kyle Bailey discusses Maine’s Question 1
Oct 29, 2024
Since organizing the Voters Not Politicians2018 ballot initiative that put citizens in charge ofdrawing Michigan's legislative maps, Fahey has been the founding executive director of The PeoplePeople, which is forming statewide networks to promote government accountability. Sheregularly interviews colleagues in the world of democracy reform for The Fulcrum.
Kyle Bailey is a former Maine state representative who managed the landmark ballot measure campaigns to win and protect ranked choice voting. He serves as campaign manager for Citizens to End SuperPACs and the Yes On 1 campaign to pass Question 1, a statewide ballot initiative that would place a limit of $5,000 on contributions to political action committees.
Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Katie Fahey: How did you get involved with campaign finance reform?
Kyle Bailey: I have always considered myself a reformer. I cut my teeth in politics working to reform criminal and civil laws on hate crimes, nondiscrimination and same-sex marriage. That work eventually led me to election reform. We need structural changes like ranked choice voting. We also need to change the way campaigns are funded. These reforms go hand in hand to protect our democracy and give voice to the people. That is what Question 1 on Maine’s November ballot is all about.
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KF: What specific impact will Question 1 have on Maine elections if this citizen’s initiative is passed?
KB: If approved by voters, Question 1 will place a $5,000 limit on individual and corporate contributions to political action committees. Currently there is no limit, so this is a substantial change. Question 1 effectively ends super PACs in Maine and significantly diminishes the amount of big and dark money in Maine’s elections.
KF:: What do you currently need help with, and how can people get involved?
KB: We have an incredible team of organizers, volunteers and endorsers statewide working to win Question 1. We need help with grassroots donations to bolster our digital advertising and reach more voters online with our message about creating a system that works — where your vote always counts, your voice always matters and our democracy is not for sale. People can chip in at least $5 to help us reach more voters and win on Nov. 5.
KF: If this ballot initiative passes, when will the new laws come into effect and do you think it has national implications?
KB: In Maine, laws take effect 90 days after approval. Maine is the epicenter of our nation’s urgent fight to overturn the disastrous lower court decision in SpeechNow.org vs. FEC that is responsible for the creation of big and dark money super PACs in the U.S. We believe that Question 1 is the only constitutionally viable and immediate solution to lessen the flow of big money into elections. Additionally, it is the only 2024 statewide referendum in the U.S. to address campaign finance reform.
The Supreme Court has never been asked to decide the question of contribution limits to super PACs. Passage of Question 1 will trigger a legal challenge from big and dark money special interests. This challenge will pass through several lower courts, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston, before reaching the Supreme Court.
Some of America’s greatest legal minds — including Laurence Tribe, Lawrence Lessig and former Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal — believe that the Supreme Court will uphold Question 1 and find that super PACs are not required by the First Amendment.
KF: How does Question 1 strengthen the ideals of democracy?
KB: When billionaires funnel millions of dollars into super PACs for the purpose of buying elections and influence, our government is not “of, by, or for the People,” but one that disproportionately serves wealthy special interests at the expense of every man, woman and child. When we normalize and legalize political corruption and crony capitalism, we move away from the principles of America and become less of a democracy and more of a kleptocracy.
KF: Is there anything that makes you believe the people of Maine want these changes? What other organizations support Question 1?
KB: Over 80,000 Maine voters signed the petition to place Question 1 on the November ballot. Polling shows that at least 69 percent of voters intend to vote “yes” on Question 1. The campaign is endorsed by over 100 state and local elected officials and community leaders from across the political spectrum. We are thankful to have endorsements from several national organizations, but this is a homegrown campaign led by Maine people for Maine’s future.
KF:Does the Supreme Court decision Citizens United vs. FEC negate this change?
KB: Citizens United isn’t the decision responsible for giving us super PACs. FreeSpeechNow.org v. FEC is a separate holding by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that is responsible for the creation of super PACs. Check out this piece by Larry Lessig that explains this background in more detail.
KF: Thinking about your journey, do you have any words of advice for citizens who want to do something about an issue they see as a problem with our political system?
KB: Educate yourself. Talk to a lot of people from varying walks of life and with different political views, including people already working on reforms. Listen. Organize. Mobilize. Change is only possible when people take action. If people in positions of power laugh at you, and then push back against you, you know that you’re onto something that can make a difference.
KF: If you were speaking with a high school student or a new immigrant to the country, how would you describe what being an American means to you?
KB: America is a place on a map with a capital, a government and laws, yet it is also an idea that transcends politics and geography. To be an American is to believe in liberty and justice for all, and not just some; to believe in government of, by and for the people, and not the powerful; to acknowledge that every individual has value and should have an equal opportunity to reach his/her God-given potential regardless of who they are, where they come from, the color of their skin, how they worship or who they love; to embrace the hopeful and optimistic point of view that we can make tomorrow better than today, and that we have the responsibility to future generations to make it so.
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Mailed ballots are sorted by a machine at the Denver Elections Division.
Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post
GOP targets fine print of voting by mail in battleground state suits
Oct 28, 2024
Rosenfeld is the editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
In 2020’s presidential election, 17 million more Americans voted than in 2016’s election. That record-setting turnout was historic and even more remarkable because it came in the midst of a deadly pandemic. A key reason for the increase was most states simplified and expanded voting with mailed-out ballots — which 43 percent of voters used.
Some battleground states saw dramatic expansions. Michigan went from 26 percent of its electorate voting with mailed-out ballots in 2016 to 59 percent in 2020. Pennsylvania went from 4 percent to 40 percent. The following spring, academics found that mailing ballots to voters had lifted 2020’s voter turnout across the political spectrum and had benefited Republican candidates — especially in states that previously had limited the option.
But those trends did not stop Donald Trump from attacking mailed ballots during the 2020 campaign, after he lost the election and ever since, including as 2024’s Republican presidential nominee.
"It’s very simple. We want to get rid of mail-in voting,” Trump said at a late September rally in Pennsylvania after smearing the entire process. “The elections are so screwed up.”
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Despite Trump’s opposition, and the fact that a third of Americans who voted by mail in 2020’s presidential election returned to voting at polling location in 2022’s midterms, Republicans have been sending mixed messages about using mail ballots this fall. Campaign staff have urged voters to vote via whatever option is most convenient — including by mail. But national and state party lawyers have filed dozens of lawsuits to complicate or thwart it.
In the run-up to Election Day, only one other area of election administration — voter registration — has drawn as much partisan litigation. Republicans and allied groups have filed dozens of suits that target mail-based voting, although Democrats have also sued to preserve the option and to respond to Republican suits. But unlike GOP claims of flawed voter rolls and widespread illegal voting, which have been debunked by credible experts and dismissed by courts, the litigation targeting voting by mail is trying a different tactic.
After Trump’s loss in 2020, and MAGA candidates’ losses in 2022, Republicans reacted by filing suits to try to block this voting option in wholesale fashion — or return it to pre-2020 levels. With few exceptions, most of those efforts failed. By 2024, a new strategy surfaced: targeting technicalities surrounding key steps in the process by voters and officials.
This line of legal attack didn’t come out of nowhere. Federal data shows that thousands of mail ballots are rejected in every election, in every state, due to mistakes by voters. These errors are unintentional. Voters may misdate, mis-sign return envelopes, not enclose ballots in paper sleeves inside envelopes or fail to meet return deadlines. Additionally, states have varying flexibility around allowing voters to fix mistakes.
Thus, more than a dozen legal lines of attack emerged, based on examining several dozen partisan lawsuits filed in the battleground states. These include fights over the design of ballot return envelopes, what voters and (sometimes witnesses) must fill out on those envelopes, disputes over where the ballots can be returned – including drop boxes, polling places and government offices — disputes over when ballots can be returned (on or after Election Day), and what election workers can do to help voters – if they make mistakes, including whether those voters can vote with another ballot.
In short, Republicans sought to tighten rules and deadlines — claiming existing protocols were untrustworthy — while Democrats and their allies sought to make them more flexible.
“Their [the GOP] legal strategy is to throw everything imaginable against the wall and see what sticks,” said Barbara Smith Warner, executive director of the nonpartisan, nonprofit National Vote at Home Institute, which helps states and counties offer this voting option. “Everything you hear is to a) sow distrust in the system, b) to decrease turnout — to keep people from voting — and c) to provide a foundation for the losers to contest the results.”
With just days left before Election Day, pro-Trump factions have lost far more lawsuits than they have won. But they have succeeded in complicating the process for voters and officials in some swing states, and more court decisions are expected by Election Day. That said, election law experts said that most of the restrictive litigation lacks merit and voters who return mailed-out ballots before Election Day should not have problems.
“The most significant of mail ballot cases, right at the moment, have to do with the deadline for returning ballots, and, in particular, challenges to state deadlines,” said Justin Levitt, a Loyola Marymount University constitutional law professor who has worked at the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and advised both parties. “There is no serious challenge, at least as far as I’m aware, to any mail ballot that arrives by Election Day.”
Tomorrow, in part 2: States in the crosshairs — Arizona, Pennsylvania and more.
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The media has held Kamala Harris to a different standard than Donald Trump.
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
The media is normalizing the abnormal
Oct 28, 2024
Rikleen is executive director of Lawyers Defending American Democracy and the editor of “Her Honor – Stories of Challenge and Triumph from Women Judges.”
As we near the end of a tumultuous election season, too many traditional media outlets are inexplicably continuing their practice of covering candidates who meet standards of normalcy differently than the candidate who has long defied them.
By claiming to take the high road of neutrality in their reporting, these major outlets are committing grave harm. First, they are failing to address what is in plain sight. Second, through those continued omissions, the media has abdicated its primary responsibility of contributing to an informed electorate.
The New York Times, for example, has been wandering the campaign wasteland as though its historic influence can override its present abdication of fairness and objective logic. Its coverage of Joe Biden’s age as a major re-election issue went on for years, including the 2022 headline “At 79, Biden Is Testing the Boundaries of Age and the Presidency,” rich in irony in light of Donald Trump’s age. The relentless scrutiny of Biden’s age continued with sharp coverage of any lapse or stumble and reached a fever pitch following Biden’s poor debate performance in June. The so-called paper of record continued its focus on whether Biden was mentally fit to be president until he withdrew from the race.
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In the past months, a different dynamic has been taking place as Trump has demonstrated difficulties articulating coherent thoughts, canceled interviews, failed to directly answer questions in those interviews he has done, increased his threats against opponents, amplified violent rhetoric and sharply intensified his use of profanity. These are behaviors that should cause any legitimate journalist to raise significant questions about the state of his mental health, now mere weeks before the election. Instead, sanitizing has been the order of the day.
At a weekend rally in Pennsylvania, the former presidentopened his remarks by spending approximately 10 minutes discussing golf legend Arnold Palmer and his penis size, and proceeded to then excoriate the current administration with profanity. The New York Times referenced Trump’s descent into a new level of “vulgarity” with the sub-headline: “The G.O.P. nominee repeated crude insults, and his supporters relished each moment.”
The article did not raise questions about whether the former president’s lewd comments addressing another man’s penis size in front of a family audience might have been a sign of declining mental health or possible dementia. Rather, it mused about whether the behavior was either an “expression of his frustration” or his “reflexive desire to entertain his crowds,” and then noted that it set “a curious tone.” Now imagine what the media reaction would be if any other public figure opened a speech with similar comments.
The Hill is a publication thatdescribes itself as reporting on the “intersection of politics and business,” offering “objective and in-depth coverage” that is read by opinion leaders, including in government and the corporate sector. But it is difficult to square that descriptor with its own headlines.
The Hill’s article on Trump’s Arnold Palmer comments began with aheadline stating that his “ribald remarks” drew “scrutiny.”Dictionary examples of the word “ribald” are associated with humor and “racy innuendo.” In the context of a campaign rally, this headline is a textbook exemplar of sane-washing.In an interview with the Independent, the golfer’s daughter, in measured understatement, referred to the comments as “an unfortunate way to remember” her dad.
Other Hill headlines from the same day noted that Vice President Kamala Harris hasstepped up negative attacks and that she was making a “last-ditch appeal to disenchanted Republicans.” Both articles described campaign tactics in a vacuum that would be unimaginable in the coverage of past presidential campaigns. As with so many of The Hill’s headlines this election season, the campaign coverage normalizes one party’s irrational behavior while scrutinizing the other’s actions.
And after a week of revelations from retired Gen. John Kelly, who served as Trump's chief of staff, about the former president's fascist tendencies and praise of Hitler, The Hill headlines on Friday touted that Trump’s campaign exudes confidence as it enters the homestretch. It’s the same day the headline for a Harris story highlighted that she sees troubling signs in the latest New York Times/Sienna poll. The referenced poll showed the candidates deadlocked, and the articles did not quote any campaign sources, anonymously or otherwise, to indicate that she was troubled by it.
These examples are only the latest in coverage that has long normalized the former president’s behaviors and abandoned objective standards. But asking questions and insisting that statements threatening the norms and principles of democracy and the rule of law must be reported differently than positions on taxes and tariffs does not demonstrate bias or partisanship.
Journalists have an ethical obligation to accurately and impartially report the truth. Instead, by sanitizing a candidate’s abnormal words and actions, traditional media outlets have created their own biased coverage.
The public not only deserves better — it needs the media to meet this moment and engage in the fight for truth and the accurate reporting of actual facts. Doing so is not partisan engagement; it is the highest calling for journalists.
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Maria Jimenez founded Poder Común in 2020 as the bilingual branch of Common Power, an organization that partners with campaigns and helps canvas.
Bridging the Latino voter gap in Eastern Washington
Oct 28, 2024
Jimenez is a freelance journalist based in Washington state.
The Fulcrum presents We the People, a series elevating the voices and visibility of the persons most affected by the decisions of elected officials. In this installment, we explore the motivations of over 36 million eligible Latino voters as they prepare to make their voices heard in November.
Nationwide conversations on this year’s election have focused on the presidential race, but local elections are equally important, especially for Latino voters, according to Maria Jimenez, founder of Poder Común.
“We have a population of people who have truly been left out,” Jimenez said, adding that most people tend to focus on national elections and rarely focus on engaging with Latino voters in Eastern Washington.
Poder Común was founded by Jimenez in 2020 and is the bilingual branch ofCommon Power, an organization that partners with campaigns and helps canvas.
She expanded the organization because she saw a gap in Latino voter turnout in local elections.
Since 2023, Poder Común has focused on working in Eastern Washington to increase Latino voter engagement in local elections by partnering with campaigns like that of Maria Beltran, who is running for state Senate in Washington’s 14th district.
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Beltran is one of four Latina candidates running for a seat in the district, where Latinos make up a little over 50 percent of the voting population.
As a daughter of immigrants and farmworkers, Beltran said she remembers how her parents worked multiple laborious jobs to put food on the table and pay rent.
“Something that I felt growing up was that I felt like no one was listening to us,” Beltran said.” It felt like no one was looking out for us, and I felt like we were being left out.”
This inspired her to attend school, make a difference in her community and ultimately run for office. According to Jimenez, in a predominantly Latino district the rise of Latina candidates on the ballot may encourage voters to participate in the upcoming election.
“I would say that for local elections, I feel like people definitely get excited and are more likely to vote if there's somebody that looks like them and can understand them better,” Jimenez said.
Beltran’s campaign has focused on targeting “low-propensity voters,” meaning they’ve previously voted in major elections such as the 2020 election but haven’t engaged much in local races since.
“Nobody knew what a state senator was,” Beltran said. “A lot of it has come down to, historically, the people who have been representing us and who have been winning elections have never gone above and beyond to engage us in this electoral process.”
When talking to voters in these communities for Beltran’s campaign, Jimenez recalls people telling her they hadn’t voted because they believed their votes didn’t matter.
To help increase Latino voter engagement, Poder Común and the Beltran campaign have made information accessible in English and Spanish.
“We bring volunteers to engage voters in their language,” Jimenez said, adding that they also focus on educating voters on the importance of local elections and how it can help them.
According to Jimenez, the most common issue Latino voters bring up is the economy due to the rising cost of living.
“I think one of the most important things for people in those areas is actually not immigration, like a lot of people assume,” Jimenez said.
Other issues voters have brought up are rising crime and violence, lack of infrastructure, and access to affordable health care and education.
Washington’s 14th district received national attention after Latino voters filed a lawsuit in 2022 alleging the new district maps prevented them from voting for their preferred candidates.
After voters won the lawsuit, the new maps used in this year’s elections would give candidates like Beltran a shot at a seat in the state Senate that is currently occupied by Republican Curtis King, who has been in office since 2007.
“I think this redistricting will give Maria Beltran and anyone else at least a more fair opportunity and to at least have a chance,” Jimenez said.
Following the lawsuit, the 14th district is one of the most closely watched races for the Washington Legislature this year.
For Jimenez, the main motivator for continuing this work is her conversations with voters who look like her and remind her of her own family.
“After going [to Eastern Washington] and experiencing voters there, I cannot turn my head around anymore,” Jimenez said. “It's almost impossible. You can’t turn your head around when there's so much need there.”
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