Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Michelle Obama joins the polarizing cause of universal vote-at-home

Michelle Obama
Theo Wargo/Getty Images

Michelle Obama has joined the increasingly politicized debate over making voting easier during the coronavirus outbreak.

On Monday she endorsed the sort of national mandates for voting at home, online registration and expanded in-person early voting that fellow Democrats have returned to pushing in Congress despite the emphatic opposition of President Trump and congressional Republicans.

The rare foray by the former first lady into a policy dispute threatens to overshadow and complicate the more immediate efforts by civil rights groups and democracy reform advocates: enlisting officials in red as well as blue states to ease the rules on their own, and to help press Congress to deliver hundreds of millions in federal aid to respond to the surge of absentee voting and other stresses on the electoral system because of the Covid-19 pandemic.


With citizens told to stay at home and nonessential businesses shuttered across the country, in-person campaigning has stopped and primaries in almost a third of the states have been postponed or revamped to minimize people at the polls. The singular dramatic example was Wisconsin, where thousands were compelled to put on masks and wait in long lines to vote last week because a partisan impasse meant the election went ahead on schedule.

"Americans should never have to choose between making their voices heard and keeping themselves and their families safe," Obama said in a statement released by When We All Vote, a nonpartisan group promoting voter registration that she co-chairs.

The organization has never before taken sides in a legislative debate, but it endorsed a Democratic measure that would set national standards for this year's election. That bill would require states to offer absentee voting to all voters, who could return their ballots by mail or in drop boxes; permit them to request ballots electronically until five days before the election; assure they could register online; and expand in-person early voting for the disabled, homeless, non-English speakers or others for whom mail ballots don't work.

Democrats abandoned efforts to include such language in the $2 trillion economic recovery package enacted last month, settling instead for $400 million in open-ended grants to the states for making voting easier. They are pressing for at least $1.6 billion in additional aid in the next coronavirus response bill and, at least in the House, are reviving the mandate legislation as well.

Republicans have sounded skeptical about such additional funds and have been totally opposed to requiring vote-at-home in November, which they say would be practically impossible to implement so quickly and would incubate extensive fraud — a contention Trump has returned to, without producing credible evidence, several times in the past week.

"Expanding access to vote-by-mail, online voter registration and early voting are critical steps for this moment — and they're long overdue," Obama said. "There is nothing partisan about striving to live up to the promise of our country; making the democracy we all cherish more accessible; and protecting our neighbors, friends and loved ones as they participate in this cornerstone of American life."

The statement was issued as Gov. Ralph Northam signed a series of measures turning Virginia into something of a model for what advocates for easier voting aspire to nationwide. The new laws allow early voting for 45 days before an election without an excuse, make Election Day a state holiday, expand in-person voting hours and implement a system for automatically registering eligible people when they do business with the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Northam and leaders in the General Assembly are all Democrats, and the party took control of Richmond this year for the first time since 1993.

While her husband was in the White House and since, Obama has voiced political views extremely rarely and has said repeatedly she has no interest in becoming a policymaker herself — especially in such polarized times. In encouraging turnout in the 2018 midterm, for example, she pronounced herself "sick of all the chaos and the nastiness of our politics" but asserted the importance of voting was undiminished.

Obama founded When We All Vote that year with a cadre of A-list celebrities as her co-chairs: actor Tom Hanks, "Hamilton" creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, rapper and actor Janelle Monáe, NBA player Chris Paul and country stars Faith Hill and Tim McGraw.

With in-person registration efforts impossible, the group has recently gone online — signing up 61,000 last month during a "couch party" livestreamed on Instagram and featuring Obama and the DJ D-Nice. Another such event is planned for next week.

Obama also took to Twitter a week ago to denounce the situation in Wisconsin, and longtime Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, who now heads the When We All Vote board, called the lines to vote "deeply, profoundly concerning."

The results of the contests are supposed to be released late Monday afternoon, after a delay ordered by a federal judge to allow time for the arrival and counting of the record surge of absentee ballots. With the Democratic presidential contest having ended in the intervening days, the main interest is the outcome of a hotly contested partisan battle for a state Supreme Court seat.

How many ballots were postmarked by Tuesday and arrived on time is not yet known, but 1.3 million were requested — about 10 times the average for the springtime elections in the state over the past decade. The state says on average 92 percent of the requested ballots get returned and about 1 percent of those are ruled invalid.

Read More

Carolyn Lukensmeyer Turns 80: A Life of Commitment to “Of, By, and for the People”

Carolyn Lukensmeyer.

The National Institute for Civil Discourse and New Voice Strategies

Carolyn Lukensmeyer Turns 80: A Life of Commitment to “Of, By, and for the People”

I’ve known Dr. Carolyn Lukensmeyer for over a decade, first meeting her about a decade ago. Dr. Lukensmeyer is a nationally renowned expert in deliberative democracy, a former executive director emerita of the National Institute for Civil Discourse, and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences’ Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship.

On the weekend of her 80th birthday, former colleagues, clients, and friends offered a look at Dr. Lukensmeyer’s extraordinary commitment to “of, by, and for the peoples,” from her earlier days in Iowa and Ohio to the present day.

Keep ReadingShow less
Public Health: Ban First, Study Later? The Growing Assault on Fluoridated Water

Someone getting tap water.

Getty Images, urbazon

Public Health: Ban First, Study Later? The Growing Assault on Fluoridated Water

On May 15, Florida became the second state in the nation to ban fluoride from public drinking water. The bill, signed by Governor Ron DeSantis, is set to go into effect on July 1. Utah’s Governor Spencer Cox enacted a similar ban that went into effect this May. Five other states—Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and South Carolina—have introduced bills that aim to ban fluoride in public drinking water.

Fluoride is a mineral that, in small quantities, has proven to be effective against tooth decay, caused by bacteria that form in the mouth when we eat or drink. The American Academy of Pediatrics states on its website that studies have shown water fluoridation, an intentional treatment process of public drinking water, reduces tooth decay by about 25% in children and adults alike.

Keep ReadingShow less
POLL: Americans Wary About The President Taking Unconventional Actions
APM Research Lab

POLL: Americans Wary About The President Taking Unconventional Actions

Americans show a strong preference for their elected executives — governors as well as the president — to achieve their political goals through conventional, sometimes slow, procedures, according to the McCourtney Institute for Democracy’s latest Mood of the Nation Poll.

Results showed marked partisan differences. For example, 26% of all survey respondents rated a presidential action of firing all recently hired federal employees as “very appropriate,” including only four percent of Democrats and just over half of Republicans.

Keep ReadingShow less
The U.S. Is Rushing To Make AI Deals With Gulf Countries, But Who Will Help Keep Children Safe?

A child's hand holding an adult's hand.

Getty Images, LaylaBird

The U.S. Is Rushing To Make AI Deals With Gulf Countries, But Who Will Help Keep Children Safe?

As the United States deepens its investments in artificial intelligence (AI) partnerships abroad, it is moving fast — signing deals, building labs, and exporting tools. Recently, President Donald Trump announced sweeping AI collaborations with Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. These agreements, worth billions, are being hailed as historic moments for digital diplomacy and technological leadership.

But amid the headlines and handshakes, I keep asking the same question: where is child protection in all of this?

Keep ReadingShow less