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Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is one of 10 Republican Senators targeted in a series of ads from a conservative group supporting efforts to ease voting in November.
Conservative group's new TV ads press 10 key GOP senators to pay for vote-by-mail
May 13 2020
The most prominent conservative group pushing to overhaul election procedures during the coronavirus pandemic has expanded and refocused its campaign.
The targets of a new, $750,000 advertising blitz are 10 GOP senators. The group controls the fate of a proposed infusion of cash to pay for diversified voting options this year, mainly by accommodating an expected surge of absentee balloting.
Republicans for the Rule of Law has purchased three weeks of airtime on Fox News affiliates in their states and on Facebook, starting Wednesday, urging them by name to support funding in the next economic stimulus package.
<p>At this point the GOP-led Senate has signaled it's not in any rush to respond quickly to the sprawling, $3 trillion measure House Democrats appear on course to pass within the week. It includes all $3.6 billion in election aid that good-government groups say is necessary to assure a safe and comprehensive presidential election — and that state election officials, from both parties, say must be provided relatively quickly if it's to get productively spent on time.</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 group is an arm of an organization created by many of President Trump's most powerful critics on the right, dubbed Defending Democracy Together, which ran another wave of TV spots last week that targeted a more general audience.</p><p>The ad focused on Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is airing nationally on Fox, MSNBC, CNN and several stations owned by the conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcasting in addition to statewide in Kentucky, where McConnell faces a well-financed challenge to his bid for a seventh term this fall.</p><p>The new 60-second ads are identical, except for the call to action for the 10 senators, who are evenly divided in two camps.</p><p>Five are members of the committee that will write the Senate's counter-proposal to whatever the House passes, and will then be central to the negotiations over compromise spending levels: McConnell, Richard Shelby of Alabama, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Roy Blunt of Missouri and James Lankford of Oklahoma. </p><p>Blunt and Lankford were also central to getting an initial $400 million in election aid approved as part of the <a data-linked-post="2645576120" href="https://thefulcrum.us/coronavirus-economic-stimulus" target="_blank">recovery package enacted in March</a>. Blunt, who's also No. 4 in the GOP leadership, is a former chief elections official in Missouri, which has one of the strictest restrictions in the country on who may vote absentee — and where the state's conservative government has shown no interest in altering them.</p><p>The other senators are all in highly competitive races for re-election this fall, and polling in their states has shown lopsided and bipartisan support for expanded voting by mail: Martha McSally of Arizona, Cory Gardner of Colorado, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Susan Collins of Maine and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.</p><p>That public sentiment would seem to give GOP senators a solid rationale for backing the money. But they are being urged to resist it — at least in public — by the president, who on Twitter and at several coronavirus press briefings has alleged without evidence that widespread voting from home leads to widespread cheating and incubates organized fraud.</p><p>With or without the money, however, states are expecting a record use of absentee ballots this fall — because, even if stay-at-home orders are lifted, millions will conclude that avoiding local polling places is an easy call in a season when another wave of the Covid-19 outbreak is expected.</p><p>Just this week, for example, officials in Iowa announced that 356,000 people had requested and been sent absentee ballots for the June 2 congressional and legislative primaries. That is seven times the number that voted by mail in those primaries two years ago, and nine times the number from 2016 — even though the state was largely reopened for business two weeks ago.</p><p><br></p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube">
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<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Senator Ernst: Keep Our Elections Safe</small>
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Four of the GOP senators in states that were surveyed posed with their class at the Capitol soon after the 2012 election: Cory Gardner (blue tie), Joni Ernst (red jacket,) Thom Tillis (second from right) and Steve Daines (right).
Voters in Senate battlegrounds back early voting, adding pressure on GOP
May 08 2020
Bipartisan majorities want more options for voting this year, and will be angry at members of Congress who oppose expanded absentee and early balloting in all six states where Republican senators are struggling hardest for re-election.
That was the top take-away of a survey released Thursday, the latest piece of an expanding campaign by good-government groups to pressure Congress to finance preparations for a vote-by-mail surge this fall because of the coronavirus.
House Democrats next week are expected to pass another pandemic response package, focused on aid to cities and states, with $4 billion in grants for making the election smoother and safer: more ballots, postage, counting equipment and even sanitizing supplies for polling places. The fate of the aid rests with the Senate, where resistance from majority Republicans has hardened in part because of President Trump's opposition.
<p>That is why an upstart progressive group, <a data-linked-post="2646419139" href="https://thefulcrum.us/democracy-for-all-2021" target="_blank">Democracy for All 2021 Action</a>, surveyed 805 voters two weeks ago in states that are home to eight Republican senators, including the six who at the moment appear most at risk of losing this fall: Martha McSally of Arizona, Cory Gardner of Colorado, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Susan Collins of Maine, Steve Daines of Montana and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.</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 sample sizes were too small to make the results from each state totally reliable, but they were nonetheless consistent:</p><p>Voters strongly agreed that in light of the pandemic, more voting options should be available so that people can cast their ballots without risking their health. And they would have an unfavorable view of their senators for opposing legislation that would make it easy to avoid exposure to Covid-19 by voting by mail or early and in person.</p><p>This feeling was strongest among voters leaning toward a Democratic Senate challenger (84 percent) and the undecideds who will decide any race that stays close (53 percent). But two-fifths of those for now favoring a GOP incumbent said they too would be annoyed.</p><p>"Voters across party lines in these Senate battleground states are sending a clear message that they want their senators to support legislation to ensure safe voting options," said Geoff Garin, president of Hart Research, the Democratic firm that conducted the poll.</p><p>It was released by Democrat Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who has made easing access to the voting booth during the pandemic a signature cause since her presidential bid ended, and Michael Steele, a former national Republican Party chairman who now runs the U.S. Vote Foundation, which promotes easing access to the ballot box.</p><p>"Making democracy work for everyone is not a Democratic problem or a Republican problem — it's an American problem," he said.</p><p>Of the states polled, Colorado is the only one with an all vote-by-mail system in place. Arizona, Maine and North Carolina do not require an excuse to vote absentee — suggesting a surge in mail ballots is highly likely this fall. Neither does Montana, which has decided to send mail ballots to all registered voters.</p><p>A similar surge is expected in Iowa; every registered voter will receive an application to vote absentee in the June 2 primary. (What happens this fall is not yet decided.)</p><p>Because the process will be new to many Iowans, the <a href="https://www.millennialaction.org/iowa" target="_blank">Iowa Future Caucus</a>, a bipartisan coalition of young members of the General Assembly, launched a campaign this week to promote it — another effort that, intentionally or not, will put pressure on Ernst to support such efforts as she seeks a second term against Democratic real estate executive Theresa Greenfield, who has surged in recent polls.</p><p>In the <a href="https://twitter.com/MActionProject/status/1256326705028857856" target="_blank">two</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/MActionProject/status/1258489715470278660" target="_blank">videos</a>, two Democrats and two Republicans, take turns explaining how the mail-in process works and encouraging voters to cast their ballots this way.</p><p>Because of the threats posed by the public health crisis, the legislators saw the issue as ripe for bipartisan collaboration, said Lani Bohm of the <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/millennial-action-project" target="_self">Millennial Action Project</a>, a bipartisan group that promotes the careers of younger centrist politicians and fostered the campaign.</p><p>The young Iowans "feel confident in the legitimacy of this new election process," she said, and are "unified support for vote-by-mail during Covid-19, regardless of party."</p>
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Campaign is joined on Colorado's future in electoral vote compact
Apr 15 2020
Civic engagement and progressive groups this week launched their campaign in Colorado to defeat one of the hottest ballot measures in the world of democracy reform this year.
The proposal would make the state quit a deal it made just a year ago: It pledged to award all its electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, as soon as states with 270 votes in the Electoral College (a majority) do likewise.
Fifteen other states and Washington, D.C., with a combined 187 votes, have joined the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. All of them are more deeply blue than Colorado, which has tilted increasingly that way — and is the first place where a grassroots campaign to exit the compact has gained significant traction.
<p>For those alarmed at how two of the past three presidents, George W. Bush and Donald Trump, got elected while finishing second in the popular vote, the compact has gained steam as the leading alternative to outright abandoning the Electoral College. That's a near impossibility because it would require amending the Constitution and smaller states would never agree.</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 campaign kicked off on Tuesday with a tele-town hall featuring organizers and state officials. The groups will be hosting a <a href="https://app.livestorm.co/yes-on-national-popular-vote" target="_blank">series of virtual discussions</a> over the next several weeks, hoping to build momentum for defeating a repeal referendum that has already earned a spot on the ballot in November.</p>
<p>The Democratic General Assembly passed and Democratic Gov. Jared Polis signed the measure joining the compact in March 2019. The effort to revere that decision by popular votes started soon thereafter.</p>
<p>It was led by two Republicans, Commissioner Rose Pugliese of Mesa County, centered on Grand Junction, and Mayor Don Wilson of Monument, a suburb of Colorado Springs.</p>
<p>They gathered more than 125,000 signatures to get their challenge on the ballot. Their main argument is that the pact will give the big cities unfair control over the presidency at the expense of suburbs and rural areas.</p><p>Their position put them at odds with their party's leader, Trump, who has said he supports doing away with the Electoral College.</p><p>Three committees have been formed in support of staying in the pact: Coloradans for a National Popular Vote, Yes on National Popular Vote and Conservatives for Yes on National Popular Vote. The Colorado chapters of the <a href="http://thefulcrum.us/league-of-women-voters" target="_self">League of Women Voters</a>, the <a href="http://thefulcrum.us/naacp" target="_self">NAACP</a> and <a href="http://thefulcrum.us/common-cause" target="_self">Common Cause</a>, along with more than a dozen other civic engagement organizations, are also backing the initiative.</p>
<p>A "yes" vote is for staying in the compact, which is still years away from being joined by enough purple and deep red states to take effect.</p>
<p> A "no" vote is to get out, and if that side wins the state will stick with the current system of awarding its electoral votes to the candidate who wins the most votes in Colorado.</p>
<p>Colorado has nine electoral votes now, but is projected to gain a 10th starting in 2024, because of population gains reflected in the census that will also award the state an additional House seat.</p>
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