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If Gov. Cuomo signs the measure, New York will be the 20th state to enact automatic voter registration.
New York joins growing movement for automatic voter registration
Jul 24 2020
New York lawmakers passed a bill this week to establish automatic voter registration, making it the second most populous state to do so.
The state Senate passed the measure Wednesday and the Assembly followed suit a day later, sending the legislation to Gov. Andrew Cuomo's desk. If AVR gets the Democratic governor's approval, it will go into effect at the start of 2023.
<p>Easing the voter registration process has been a growing movement across the country. Over the last five years, 19 other states (including California, the most populous state) and D.C. have enacted AVR, and all but three of these states have the process set up for this year's election.<br></p>
<p>The Democratic lawmakers who pushed the bill through this session say AVR will help register 2 million New Yorkers who are eligible to vote but are not currently on the rolls.</p>
<p>But because this registration process won't go into effect for another three years, New Yorkers not on the voter rolls will need to register online or by mail by Oct. 9 to vote in the November election.</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>Once AVR goes into effect, New Yorkers will be automatically registered, unless they wish to opt out, when they visit the DMV or another state agency.</p>
<p>"At a time when some states are trying to make it harder for people to vote, it's great to see New York moving closer to a reform that has dramatically increased registration every place it has been implemented," said Sean Morales-Doyle of the <a href="http://thefulcrum.us/brennan-center-for-justice" target="_self">Brennan Center for Justice</a>, a prominent progressive, good-government group that advocates for voting easements and other democracy reforms.</p>
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The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has 31 proposals to improve democracy, including increasing membership in the House.
Panel started by Founders unveils big plan to save democracy they started
Jun 11 2020
Expand the size of Congress. Place term limits on Supreme Court justices. Make voting mandatory.
These are just some of the more provocative recommendations for revitalizing our democracy from the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The 31 proposals, unveiled Thursday, come after two years of research into the system's dysfunction and deliberation about how to make it work better.
But the unveiling, as the 84-page report itself notes, also comes at a particularly stressful moment for an American democracy in which extreme partisanship has already crippled the government's ability to address important national problems.
<p>That gridlock is now magnified by a president who's repeatedly challenged decades of governing norms standing for re-election in five months; by a pandemic that has killed more than 100,000 Americans and propelled the country into deep recession this spring; and by weeks of nationwide protests demanding rapid systemic change to salve decades of anger and anguish at police brutality and systemic racism.</p><p>The recommendations "touch all sectors of American life and offer a bold path that will require all of us to commit to reinventing aspects of our constitutional democracy," David Oxtoby, president of the 240-year-old academy, said in releasing the report. "A disruptive media and information environment, outdated political institutions, economic and social inequality and hyperpartisan political leadership have laid bare the urgency of this imperative."</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>The report outlines a bleak picture of the current state of democracy — it's condition hobbled by such ailments as low voter turnout, a loss of trust in Congress and other governing institutions, and the one-third of millennials who say they don't consider democracy as essential.</p><p>"Trust in institutions has collapsed," the report concludes, "while an online culture of gleeful, nihilistic cynicism thrives."</p><p>Still, the commission found reasons to be optimistic that "reinvention of our constitutional democracy remains entirely within reach — and urgently needed."</p><p>The recommendations include a raft of policy proposals from the mainstream democracy reform agenda — and many of them were embraced by the Democratic House last year with passage of the comprehensive package dubbed HR 1, which the Republican Senate will never touch.<br></p><p>But several of them are relatively outside the box. And, notably, the academy does not join the chorus forming this year behind making voting-by-mail the nationwide norm — although it does say absentee balloting should be encouraged nationwide this fall, along with money to count votes reliably and fast, because of the coronavirus crisis.</p><p>These are some of the most prominent proposals, which the report puts in six categories:</p><h3>Boosting equality by:</h3><ul class="ee-ul"><li>Substantially enlarging the House of Representatives from its current 435 seats so that each member has fewer constituents than today's average of 750,000, although the exact number is not specified. </li><li>Using <a data-linked-post="2636700700" href="https://thefulcrum.us/ranked-choice-voting" target="_blank">ranked-choice voting</a> for presidential, congressional and state elections. This process allows voters to rate candidates for each position in order of preference, with automatic runoffs weeding out the least-popular until a single person backed by a majority emerges.</li><li>Turning the drawing of legislative district boundaries over to citizen redistricting commissions in all 50 states, as a way to end <a data-linked-post="2636688309" href="https://thefulcrum.us/gerrymandering" target="_blank">gerrymandering</a> by political parties driven to preserve their power.</li><li>Amending the Constitution to effectively overturn the <a data-linked-post="2636209592" href="https://thefulcrum.us/citizens-united" target="_blank">Citizens United v. FEC</a> decision by the Supreme Court a decade ago, thereby permitting stricter state and federal laws to control campaign contributions and spending.</li><li>Restricting justices to 18 years on the Supreme Court, with appointments staggered so one seat comes open in each two-year term of Congress.</li></ul><h3>Empowering voters by:</h3><ul class="ee-ul"><li>Giving them more choices about where to vote through vote centers and early in-person voting.</li><li>Conducting federal elections on Veterans Day so that voting occurs when many have the day off.</li><li>Allowing every person to register as late as Election Day and be automatically registered when they do business with their state driver's license agency.</li><li>Permitting 16-year-olds to preregister and giving them options to practice voting for two years.</li><li>Requiring people to vote in federal elections unless they provide a valid reason, similar to what's required in more than a dozen other countries including such functional democracies as Australia and Belgium. Those who don't vote would face a small fine.</li><li>Creating orientation for voters participating in their first federal elections.</li></ul><h3>Enhancing governmental responsiveness by:</h3><ul class="ee-ul"><li>Experimenting with citizens' assemblies to allow members of the public to convene in blocs big enough that their policy proposals hold sway in Congress.</li></ul><h3>Expanding civic engagement by:</h3><ul class="ee-ul"><li>Establishing a National Trust for Civic Infrastructure to subsidize local groups that promote community engagement and better citizenship. It would be funded from private sources at first, but the panel said Congress should consider chipping in.</li></ul><h3>Improving communication by:</h3><ul class="ee-ul"><li>Subsidizing innovative efforts to replenish the news delivery system displaced in recent years by social media. One idea is taxing digital advertising and using the revenue to support experimental media platforms and expand local and regional investigative journalism.</li></ul><h3>Bolstering commitment to democracy by:</h3><ul class="ee-ul"><li>Establishing an expectation that every American would devote a year to some form of public service and expanding funding for service programs and fellowships.</li><li>Investing more in civic education at all grade levels.</li></ul><p>"We have no time to waste," the report concludes. "For love of freedom and equality, for love of country, for love of one another, and out of hope for a better future, we need to reclaim our bond."</p><p>The report was produced by a Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship, which convened 49 public listening sessions across the country and commissioned its own research after it was established two years ago by the AAAS. The academy — created by several of the Founders in 1790 to highlight the finest minds in science, scholarship, business, public affairs and the arts — is focused now on conducting policy studies in response to societal challenges.</p>
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Ohio voters will face single ballot question on expanded voting
Apr 15 2020
In a victory for election reformers, the Ohio Supreme Court has decided a package of proposed election changes in how the state votes should be put to voters as a single measure.
The court on Tuesday agreed with the organization promoting the referendum and blocked Secretary of State Frank LaRose and other Republican state officials from dividing the proposed constitutional amendment into four ballot questions.
<p>The ruling, which appears technical, is nonetheless significant for those who favor the reforms. That's because they believe their package has a better chance if put to one up-or-down vote. Plus, Ohio is a presidential battleground that's tilted red in recent years and anything that could boost turnout is likely to favor Democrats.</p><p>The Secure and Fair Elections Amendment would bring about automatic and same-day voter registration, a guarantee of a month of in-person early voting and routine post-election audits to verify that election results are accurate.</p><p>Advocates for the package, a collection of mostly progresisve group called Ohioans for Secure and Fair Elections, still must gather more than 400,000 signatures of registered voters by July 1 to get the amendment on the Nov. 3 ballot. </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>Had the high court ruled the other way, that signature threshold would have been quadrupled — and essentially impossible to meet without a miraculous disappearance of the coronavirus.</p><p>The Ohio Ballot Board, which includes the secretary of state and four appointed members, had voted in March to break up the proposed amendment into separate questions. The subsequent lawsuit notes that LaRose had already stated his opposition to the package and that dividing the question would hurt its chances of going before the votes.</p><p>The Supreme Court did reject the request by proponents of the amendments for additional time to gather signatures.</p><p>Approval would make Ohio the 17th state that automatically registers eligible residents when they do business with the motor vehicle bureau. Most are Democratic strongholds and just two, Colorado and Michigan, are on the list of remotely possible swing states this fall. </p><p>Adopting the package would permit voters to register and cast ballots at polling locations during early voting and on Election Day, similar to the laws on the books in 21 states. The deadline is now 30 days beforehand, one of the longest lead times in the country.</p><p>Ohio has famously been carried by the winner of every presidential election since 1964, and no Republicans has ever won the White House without it. President Trump is counting on its 18 electoral votes, but his edge in recent statewide polling has slipped now that former Vice President Joe Biden has secured the Democratic nomination.</p>
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Democracy Madness regional final: Voting Rights Act vs. ranked-choice voting
Apr 15 2020
The championship round in the Democracy Madness bracket's Voting region has arrived. And the top-seeded contenders have emerged at the front of the pack. But which one will be victorious?
Ranked-choice voting blew voting at home out of the water, even with all the talk about changing how ballots are cast in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. RCV has consistently destroyed its opponents throughout the tournament, winning by at least 30 points in every round.
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Writing a new Voting Rights Act, which came in as the No. 1 seed, had its first real challenge of the tournament, going head-to-head with nationwide automatic voter registration. Beating AVR by just 11 points, the New VRA looks to have another difficult battle taking on RCV, which has cruised into the finals.
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It's time to cast your ballot and decide. Which will be the 2020 Democracy Madness voting "region" champ? Balloting is open through Thursday and the winner will be revealed Friday. Click "Vote Now!" and make your choice.
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