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'UnRepresented' — Film Screening & Panel Discussion
Oct 15 2020
Organizers: Fix Democracy First, League of Women Voters of WA, and Meaningful Movies Project
Join us for a very special film screening and panel discussion of "UnRepresented" featuring: Daniel Falconer, "UnRepresented" film director; Sheila Krumholz, executive director of Center for Responsive Politics; Ellen Weintraub, commissioner on the Federal Elections Commission; Carl Parrish, community and social activist.
"UnRepresented" investigates the mechanisms that give political insiders enormous, unchecked power. If you are tired of the status quo, then join us for a virtual screening of this important new film and take part in a panel discussion following the movie to hear about grassroots movements taking shape to break this cycle. We will also discuss legislative efforts happening in Washington state.
Location: Webinar
Ralph Barrera/Austin American-Statesman
FEC Chairman Trey Trainor has published an attack on mail-in voting — a topic outside his agency's jurisdiction.
FEC chairman's new target outside his job duties: mail voting
Oct 06 2020
Apparently Trey Trainor has ample time on his hands, even though he's become the nation's top money-in-politics overseer as the new chairman of the Federal Election Commission.
How else to explain Trainor's latest foray into providing commentary on something having nothing at all to do with his duties as head of the agency that regulates the campaign finance rules governing presidential and congressional contests. (Truth be told, the FEC is without enough members to form the quorum required to conduct meaningful business — which does not touch election administration.)
<p>Last month it was Trainor <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/campaign-finance/trey-trainor-religion" target="_self">calling out</a> the nation's Roman Catholic bishops for their unwillingness to violate federal law governing tax-exempt organizations and endorse candidates in an election he likened to a "spiritual war" — starting with his political mentor, President Trump for reelection.</p><p>In that case, Trainor was responding to an interviewer's questions. But now he's written a piece for the National Review, one of the nation's premier conservative journals, echoing Trump in railing against the evils of absentee ballots as the gateway to voting fraud — claims for which there's a complete absence of evidence.</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>In the column, published Monday, Trainor sought to somehow <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/vote-by-mail-the-unintended-consequences/" target="_blank">connect his views to his new job</a> with this opening sentence: "As chairman of the U.S. Federal Election Commission, I've read with growing concern the recent number of stories concerning 'vote-by-mail.'"</p><p>Confirmed in May after a career as an election lawyer in Texas, which ranks among the most restrictive states for voting remotely, Trainor warns mail-in ballots could be the focus of litigation challenging the outcome of the presidential race because they will foment "fraudulent elections on a massive scale." The simple prescription for a clean contest, he argues, is "Americans simply showing up at the polls and voting in person."</p><p>Apparently, he missed that memo about the coronavirus pandemic — or else subscribes to the view of the infected president, who before his discharge Monday night from the hospital tweeted "Don't be afraid of Covid." </p><p>His first stumble was when he attempted to make a distinction between absentee ballots (good, he says) and mail-in ballots (very bad, he says). There is not any. Trump and other allies have sought to draw a distinction between mail-in ballots that are requested and those that are being proactively delivered to all registered voters in 10 states this fall.</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>His first example of the evils of the mail-in ballot was the delayed results this summer of two congressional primaries in New York. The problem there had nothing to do with fraud; officials were overwhelmed by 400,000 ballots statewide, more than 10 times the usual number, and a decent share arrived too late to be counted or were completed improperly and got discarded.</p><p>He disparaged the "all or mostly 'vote-by-mail' " elections as resulting in a "lengthy and chaotic mess," when almost totally smooth sailing has been seen in the states that conducted all their elections by mail before this year: Colorado, Oregon, Utah and Washington.</p><p>He brought up the case of a former Philadelphia congressman who was charged with bribing an election judge — a case that had nothing to do with mailed votes.</p><p>He cited this summer's case of a West Virginia postal carrier, saying he pleaded guilty to voter fraud after changing the political affiliation on multiple mail-in ballots. In fact, he altered eight applications from people hoping to vote absentee in the primaries.</p><p>Another example was the infamous voter registration form sent to a cat. Funny, yes, but not connected to voting by mail.</p><p>His examples that may actually involve absentee ballots — nine discarded envelopes in Pennsylvania and several hundred being investigated in New Jersey — only make the point that this form of election fraud is extremely rare.</p><p>There's one thing Trainor gor totally correct: "As chairman of the Federal Election Commission, I take this seriously, even though it falls outside the jurisdiction of the agency to enforce."</p>
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Anti-abortion protestors gather outside the Supreme Court on Monday while the justices kicked off a new term by hearing arguments over the phone.
Supreme Court opens term with case about two-party power, judicial independence
Oct 05 2020
Do political independents have a constitutional right to get a shot at public office, or can some government posts be reserved only for Republicans and Democrats in the name of ensuring bipartisanship?
That was the question the Supreme Court deliberated Monday, the first oral arguments of a new term where its own ideological tilt hangs in the balance — and where a matter even more fundamental to a functional and fair democracy, the outcome of the presidential election, looms as a potential defining moment for the balance of power.
The first case, however, is profoundly important for those who see the red and blue duopoly as a main driver of both government dysfunction and distrust in government. They're hoping the court strikes down part of Delaware's Constitution that says justices on the state's top court, and judges on several other benches, must be either Democrats or Republicans.
<p>Although the case is about a single state, ruling against such a balancing requirement could upend the appointment systems a dozen states use, instead of elections, to fill their courts — and rules designed to assure partisan balance on many federal regulatory agencies, such as the <a href="http://thefulcrum.us/fec" target="_self">Federal Election Commission</a>, and myriad state boards and commissions, including redistricting and ethics panels.</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>While the nature of the justices' questioning does not always signal their views, the hour of arguments suggested a majority of them are ready to uphold the Delaware system. That would require them to reverse the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, which last year struck it down as violating the constitutional rights of independents and minor-party members who aspire to judgeships.</p><p>There are centuries of precedent for political affiliation being deeply embedded in the judicial appointment process, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said, and Delaware appears to simply make explicit what is generally implicit. "Why is that different in kind?" he asked</p><p>Delaware's unique provision, adopted at the end of the 19th century, says judges affiliated with any one political party can make up no more than a "bare majority" on the state's highest courts, and the other seats must go to people from the "other major political party."</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>The challenge was mounted by James Adams, who was a registered Democrat while a family-law attorney for the state for a dozen years. He changed his party affiliation to independent after leaving government and decided he wanted to be a judge — but determined it was futile to apply in light of his new nonpartisan identity. He sued on the grounds that his First Amendment rights are being violated, and argued that the rule sends a terrible message about the intersection of partisanship and judging.</p><p>"Such a system assumes, without foundation, that Republicans and Democrats are monolithic in their judicial views and that their political views will control their decision-making," he wrote in his appeal. "Worse, it reinforces the fears of the public that judges will decide cases based on political affiliation."</p><p>The more important virtue, the state's attorney told the justices, is that the requirement has ensured one of the nation's most reliably bipartisan and balanced judiciaries even when the policymaking branches are dominated by one party. (Democrats have held the governorship and controlled the state Senate, which must confirm his judicial nominees, for almost three decades.)</p><p>The case was originally scheduled for oral argument in March, but was in the collection of cases put off for six months or longer because of the coronavirus. (The arguments were held by telephone, continuing a break with tradition brought on by the pandemic.)</p><p>The backdrop for the deliberations, of course, is the partisan balance of the high court itself. Five conservatives on the bench were nominated by Republican presidents and the three more liberal justices were named by Democrats. So the confirmation of appeals Judge Amy Coney Barrett — President Trump's pick to succeed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the progressive icon who died last month — looks to cement a decisive conservative majority on the court for decades.</p><p>Adopting 18-year term limits, growing the size of the court and using randomly selected rotating panels of justices for many cases are all proposals that have gained a wave of new attention in the days since Ginsburg died. Trump signaled at last week's debate that he's already planning to press the court, with or without all nine seats filled, to weigh in on the validity of the coming surge of mailed ballots, which he baselessly claims will lead to fraud that robs him of a second term </p><p>All of the reform proposals are aimed at reducing the partisan battling over high court appointments, the very topic the drafters of Delaware's Constitution said they had in mind in the 1890s when they wrote the provisions that were debated Monday.</p>
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Institute for Free Speech
David Keating is the president of the Institute for Free Speech.
Meet the reformer: David Keating, leader for the right on money in politics
Sep 25 2020
Closing in on nine years as president of the Institute for Free Speech, David Keating long ago cemented his status as one of the foremost conservative forces in the money-in-politics debate. The nonprofit's aim is to safeguard First Amendment rights, particularly unfettered political speech, and views deregulation of campaign finance as central to that goal. Keating took charge after a similar group he started, SpeechNow.org, won a federal lawsuit to end donation and spending limits on independent political groups — thus creating super PACs. He had top posts at two prominent fiscal conservative organizations, the Club for Growth and the National Taxpayers Union, earlier in a D.C. advocacy career dating to the 1980s. His answers have been edited for length and clarity.
What's democracy's biggest challenge, in 10 words or less?
Stopping government from discouraging dissent.
<p><strong>Describe your very first civic engagement.</strong></p><p>In high school, I learned about machine politics. My friends who wanted to become summer lifeguards had to be Republicans. I thought that was ridiculous, so I decided to register as an independent. Still am.</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>What was your biggest professional triumph?</strong></p><p>Being appointed in 1996 to the National Commission on Restructuring the IRS, a bipartisan group of tax experts. We surprised many when we reached a broad consensus. Unlike most such reports that gather dust, ours was turned into a bill that became law. It included my recommendations to strengthen taxpayers' rights when interacting with the IRS and to protect innocent people from being forced to pay taxes owed by any tax-cheating former spouses.</p><p>Many of my most rewarding experiences have come in volunteer work. Ten years ago my SpeechNow won the case allowing independent groups to fundraise freely. This year I became a director of Masks4All and saw 85 percent of the nation adopt mask requirements to fight Covid-19.</p><p><strong>And your most disappointing setback?</strong></p><p>Failure to advance through Congress a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget. Two times in the 1990s we came up just one vote short in the Senate. Still, our campaign helped spur the first annual budget surplus in nearly four decades, starting in 1998 and lasting until the Sept. 11 attacks.</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p><strong>How does your identity influence the way you go about your work?</strong></p><p>I identify as an independent person. I'm a registered independent in part because I don't trust either party on key issues. Too many people focus too much on "what's best for my team," either red or blue, which affects their ability to think clearly.</p><p>To promote and defend independent thought, much of my professional work has been protecting the freedoms to speak, publish, join groups and petition government for redress of grievances. Without these freedoms, we can't obtain the information we need to understand the world or act effectively to make it a better place.</p><p><strong>What's the best advice you've ever been given?</strong></p><p>Be a lifelong learner.</p><p><strong>Create a new flavor for Ben & Jerry's.</strong></p><p>Freedom of Peach.</p><p><strong>What is your favorite TV show or movie about politics?</strong></p><p> "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," the 1975 Oscar winner for best picture, about rebellion in a mental institution.</p><p><strong>What's the last thing you do on your phone at night?</strong></p><p>Turn on the bedside clock app.</p><p><strong>What is your deepest, darkest secret? </strong></p><p>I think Dave Chappelle and Anthony Jeselnik are hilarious. But don't tell my wife.</p>
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