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Progressives' final indictment of gerrymanders cites voting curbs
Jul 08 2020
Manipulating district lines is just one way politicians stay in power. Another is by making it harder for the electorate to vote them out. A new report by a liberal think tank concludes that partisan gerrymandered legislatures have led to more voting restrictions — "a power grab on top of a power grab."
The Center for American Progress study, released Wednesday, found that Republicans in four states used map-guaranteed statehouse majorities to enact voting restriction (such as photo ID laws) and block easements to the ballot box (like longer early voting periods) — efforts that have proven particularly burdensome for communities of color, which usually vote Democratic.
The report is the fourth and final in a series designed to show why the cause of redistricting reform — turning district map drawing over to independent commissions — should be more of a priority for the left. The first, in December, blamed partisan gerrymandering for an absence of new gun controls this decade. The others cited the system for limiting Medicaid expansions and curtailing government spending on child care and education.
<p>"If majorities of voters cannot elect majorities of legislators, that is a failure of democracy," said Alex Tausanovitch, co-author of the new report. "If those ill-gotten majorities then use their power to disenfranchise voters, that is a democratic downward spiral."</p>
<p>The report focuses on election law in four big purple states where Republicans drew the maps in 2011 and have controlled the state capitals ever since — even now, dispite the fact that in all of them Democratic candidates won the aggregate statewide legislative vote in the 2018 midterms: North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. </p>
<p>In Raleigh, for instance, Democratic lawmakers advocated for a bill last year that would have provided free IDs to North Carolinians, implemented automatic and same-day voter registration, and expanded online registration and early voting. But since Republicans held the majority in the Legislature, the bill did not pass.</p>
<p>CAP's report states that if North Carolina had legislative districts that fairly reflected the state's partisan makeup, Democrats would have controlled the Legislature and "been able to implement positive reforms expanding voting access."</p>
<p>Wisconsin's confused and coronavirus-tainted primary in April is another example that CAP points to. Had the statehouse in Madison been under Democratic control, the study concluded, the state would have enacted laws either postponing the election or making it much easier to vote by mail because of the Covid-19 pandemic — all efforts that were blocked by the GOP.</p>
<p>Putting nonpartisan commissions of regular citizens in charge of mapmaking is widely regarded as the best solution to combating gerrymandering. "Taking the power to draw districts away from incumbent politicians is the first step toward any serious reform," CAP's report concludes.</p>
<p>In 2018, Michigan voters approved a ballot measure to create a nonpartisan redistricting commission, which will be established in time for this decade's redistricting following the results of the census. Last year, North Carolina's districts were redrawn after a panel of judges ruled the previous maps violated the state Constitution's "free elections" clause. A similar situation played out in Pennsylvania two years ago when the state's highest court rejected the legislative maps. And in Wisconsin, the push for redistricting reform remains ongoing.</p>
<p>Next year, following the census, 14 states will use independent commissions to draw state legislative districts, and eight will do so for congressional districts. <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/redistricting/virginia-redistricting-amendment" target="_self">Virginians</a> will vote in November on whether to join this group of states, whereas <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/redistricting/gerrymandering-missouri" target="_self">Missourians</a> will vote on whether to undo a reform initiative they approved two years ago.</p>
<p>Campaigns for redistricting reform are ongoing in <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/redistricting/redistricting-in-oregon" target="_self">Oregon</a> and <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/redistricting/nevada-redistricting" target="_self">Nevada</a>, and anti-gerrymandering advocates in <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/big-picture/2020-ballot-measures-2646358253" target="_self">Arkansas and North Dakota</a> are awaiting official approval for their ballot petitions.</p>
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A legal fight over the fate of thousands of names on Wisconsin's rolls is now likely to linger beyond November. Here, Milwaukeeans waiting to vote in the Covid-troubled April primary.
One Midwest win for each side in the voter purge wars
Jul 02 2020
The partisan fight over how to maintain voter registration lists has delivered one victory for each side this week — both in Midwestern states central to the November election.
The top court in Wisconsin decided against fast-tracking a decision about removing from the rolls more than 100,000 people with potentially out of date registrations — a delay that benefits the cause of voting rights advocates. But in neighboring Michigan, a conservative group claimed victory and dropped its lawsuit against Detroit after the city took a group of dead people and duplicate names off the rolls.
The cases capture a debate that pitches those (mostly Democrats) who believe aggressive attempts to remove, or "purge," names from voter rolls are an attempt at voter suppression against those (mostly Republicans) who believe poorly maintained voter lists clogged with the names of the mortally or physically departed provide an opportunity for fraud.
<p>The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a request to expedite a case that initially involved the proposed removal of more than 230,000 names from the rolls.<br/></p><p>Instead, the court said it would hear oral arguments in late September. The schedule makes it highly unlikely the court will rule before Election Day, when the state's 10 electoral votes could play a central role in the presidential contest.</p><p>Since the legal dispute began, about 100,000 of the voters facing potential removal have updated their information — still leaving in dispute 4 percent of the people on the rolls statewide.</p><p>Election rules in Wisconsin prohibit any change to the voter rolls within 30 days of an election, making it nearly impossible to remove any names before Nov. 3 even if the court rules that way.</p><p>In addition, a newly elected and progressive Supreme Court justice takes the bench in August, narrowing conservative control of the court.</p><p>The original suit was filed in November by a conservative think tank and law firm, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, claiming the elections commission was ignoring state law requiring the removal of people who don't answer a mailing sent to those who appear to have moved.</p><p>A trial court judge ordered the rosters culled but an appeals court unanimously overturned the judge in February.</p><p>In the Detroit case, the conservative. Indianapolis-based Public Interest Legal Foundation, which had sued city election officials in federal court in December, dropped its lawsuit on Tuesday after noting that officials had taken action to remove some of the out-of-date registrations.</p><p>The foundation claimed in its suit to have identified more than 2,500 dead people who remained registered to vote.</p><p>More than half had been dead more than a decade, nearly 900 have been dead more than 15 years and one was found with a birth date listed as 1823.</p><p>In addition, foundation researchers discovered what appeared to be duplicate and triplicate registrations for individuals, using different addresses.</p><p>The group repeatedly brought its findings to the attention of Detroit election officials but says the city did not take any steps to clean up the voting rolls.</p><p>Detroit election officials said the recent updates to voter rolls were largely the result of regular maintenance but conceded they had looked into a few specific claims in the lawsuit.</p><p>It turns out the listing for the voter with a birth date of 1823 caused by a typo.</p>
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The ruling could limit prospects for several lawsuits filed surrounding the April primary, when last-minute court decisions compelled thousands to stand in long lines during a surge of Covid-19 cases.
Tight voting curbs in bellwether Wisconsin upheld by federal appeals court
Jun 30 2020
Many of the most severe restrictions on voting in Wisconsin may remain on the books, a federal appeals court has decided, concluding a nine-year partisan battle in time to shape the presidential election in one of the most hotly contested battleground states.
The unanimous decision Monday also likely reduces the chances of success for a wave of fresh lawsuits, filed surrounding the state's nationally notorious April primary. Plaintiffs hope to ease the path to the November polls in light of the coronavirus pandemic.
The sweeping and multifaceted ruling from the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upholds laws restricting early in-person voting, requiring Wisconsinites to live in their neighborhood for a month before voting, and prohibiting the use of email or faxes to deliver absentee ballots.
<p>The three-judge panel concluded none of those rules pose an undue burden, especially because voters still benefit from more liberal absentee ballot regulations and registration rules, and longer poll openings on Election Day, than in most states.</p><p>"Wisconsin has lots of rules that make voting easier," Judge Frank Easterbrook wrote. "These facts matter when assessing challenges to a handful of rules that make voting harder."</p><p>The decision itself made access to the voting booth easier in two ways. It said expired school IDs must be acceptable proof of identity for college students and upheld rules permitting people to vote without an ID after signing an affidavit saying they tried to get one. The court also struck down a requirement that universities provide citizenship information about dorm residents who are registered to vote, saying that violates federal student privacy law.</p><p>The election laws were significantly tightened by Republicans after they secured control of both the Legislature and the governor's mansion in 2011. They set new photo ID requirements for voting, banned the faxing or emailing absentee ballots except to Wisconsinites overseas, shrunk the calendar for in-person early voting to 12 days from 30, ended early voting on weekends, limited early voting to one location in every municipality and lengthened the residency requirement before voting to 28 days instead of 10.</p><p>The decision was the outgrowth of lawsuits pursued soon after by Democrats and voting rights groups. They had scored decisive victories in the trial courts, with one judge tossing out many of the laws four years ago as unconstitutionally crafted to curb the ability of racial minorities to vote.</p><p>The appeals panel, all of them put on the bench by GOP presidents, disagreed — concluding that gaining partisan advantage in elections was the permissible motive.</p><p>"This record does not support a conclusion that the legislators who voted for the contested statutes cared about race; they cared about voters' political preferences," the opinion concluded. "If one party can make changes that it believes help its candidates, the other can restore the original rules or revise the new ones."</p><p>Republicans hailed the decision, asserting the laws would help safeguard against election fraud. President Trump claims, without evidence, that is a main impediment to his re-election, but nothing beyond sporadic and isolated rule-breaking has been identified in Wisconsin.</p><p>Democrats railed against the ruling. It is an "egregious assault on voting rights," state party Chairman Ben Wikler said. "Trump knows his path to victory involves suppressing the vote as much as possible, and as we saw on April 7 when Republicans forced thousands of people to vote in-person during a pandemic, there is no low they aren't willing to stoop to to grab power."</p><p>The Supreme Court has signaled strongly it is not eager to referee disputes over states' voting rules within four months of a national election. That means the rationales of Monday's decision will shape the outcome of suits challenging Wisconsin's rules as improper during Covid-19 — filed in a flurry both before and after the primary, when last-minute court decisions compelled thousands to don masks and stand in long lines during a surge of cases.</p><p>Trump is trailing former Vice President Joe Biden in some recent statewide polling. He carried Wisconsin last time by just 23,000 votes (eight tenths of a point), the first Republican to secure its 10 electoral votes since Ronald Reagan 32 years earlier. </p><p>Statewide turnout in 2016, when some of the laws were on hold because of the court challenges, was 69 percent of eligible voters, fifth-highest in the country.</p><p>And when the delay during the appeal continued in 2018, Democrats in charge of the two biggest cities, Madison and Milwaukee, expanded early voting hours and locations and their candidates ended up winning every statewide office.</p><p>The case had been in an unexplained limbo since the 7th Circuit heard oral arguments three years ago. It was the oldest unresolved case on the docket of the Chicago-based court before Monday.</p>
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Coy St. Clair/Getty Images
Wisconsin's new election maps will almost certainly be disputed in court after the Democratic governor vetoes the GOP-led Legislature's proposal.
Partisan fight over Wisconsin's next maps gets a head start
Jun 04 2020
Wisconsin's next election maps will almost certainly be drawn by judges, and deciding which ones could have a profound impact on the dynamics of redistricting and the state's political balance of power for a decade.
Conservatives launched a bid Wednesday to steer the task to the state Supreme Court, which has a reliably right-leaning majority, and away from the less predictable federal courts that have refereed the process in the past.
The coming dispute will be watched closely by critics of partisan gerrymandering. They are keen to prevent a repeat of a successful Republican line-drawing effort a decade ago that has preserved outsized GOP power in the decidedly purple state.
<p>Once the delayed-by-coronavirus census counts are done next year, Republicans assured to remain in control of the Legislature will get the first crack at drawing legislative and congressional boundaries — and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers will almost as surely veto them. State law says a court then dictates the final maps.</p>
<p>Realizing this, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6935764-Memorandum-in-Support-of-Rules-Petition.html" target="_blank">asked the state's highest court</a> on Wednesday to assert its appropriate jurisdiction over the process. The think tank and law firm, which is also <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/wisconsin-voter-registration-2646147452" target="_self">spearheading the effort</a> to get hundreds of thousands of names scratched from voter rolls before Election Day, is working in collaboration with Scott Jensen, a formerly powerful GOP speaker of the state House.</p>
<p>The seven-member Supreme Court will have four elected Republican members next year, which gives conservatives confidence the maps would favor the party as much as possible.</p>
<p>The current maps, which will be used one more time in November, have benefitted the GOP without fail — especially two years ago, when Republicans won 63 of the 99 state House seats with just 45 percent of the overall legislative vote, and five of the eight U.S. House seats with just 46 percent of the overall congressional vote. </p>
<p>The think tank is basing its argument on how the state's top court responded to redistricting litigation in 2001. When a divided government couldn't agree on maps the plans were sent to the Supreme Court, but it deferred to a federal court because it didn't have a protocol for how to handle the issue. The justices said procedures for future redistricting litigation should be created, but they never did so.</p>
<p>"It is time to redeem that promise," the group said in a filing asking the court to get the job done in time.</p>
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