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The State of Reform
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Geoff West
Geoff West is a staff writer at The Fulcrum, where he covers voting and voting rights, civic education, civil discourse and disinformation. Email:geoffwest@thefulcrum.us
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Leadership Now has helped drive funding from business leaders to organizations like the Center for Responsive Politics, the Voter Participation Center and BridgeUSA.
Group helps channel millions for democracy reform efforts
Mar 13 2020
Business leaders have committed nearly $6 million in funding for political reform groups since last year, through the help of an organization that engages the business community on the structural threats to democracy.
The funding was committed by members of the Leadership Now Project, an organization comprised largely of business leaders that helps channel strategic investment in the political reform space.
Last year, Leadership Now began analyzing the policies and practices of nearly 200 political reform groups to provide the business community and potential donors with a sense of which organizations offered a particularly high return on investment for democracy.
<p>Twenty groups emerged including the <a data-linked-post="2638675492" href="https://thefulcrum.us/directory/center-for-responsive-politics" target="_blank">Center for Responsive Politics</a>, which received $400,000 in funding from Leadership Now members to assist its tracking of money in politics, the group <a href="https://www.leadershipnowproject.org/opensecrets-announcement" target="_blank">announced</a> in November. </p><p>The 19 other groups, which collectively stand to benefit from $5.4 million in funding, were identified as worthy investments based on various criteria, such as whether a group's goals were politically feasible and its footing was financially healthy.</p><p>The funding was specifically targeted toward groups working on high-priority reform efforts, such as improving voter turnout and civil discourse, fighting gerrymandering, promoting ranked-choice voting and enhancing government transparency.</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>Beneficiaries included the <a href="https://leadershipnowproject.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3541720e9f940b0f4113d27ad&id=758748dcca&e=8b856e7f98" target="_blank">Center for Political Accountability</a>, which focuses on campaign finance transparency; voter outreach organizations such as <a href="https://leadershipnowproject.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3541720e9f940b0f4113d27ad&id=bbff763ef1&e=8b856e7f98" target="_blank">Democracy Works</a> and <a href="https://leadershipnowproject.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3541720e9f940b0f4113d27ad&id=c51a593eec&e=8b856e7f98" target="_blank">Voter Participation Center</a>; and civil discourse groups like <a href="https://leadershipnowproject.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3541720e9f940b0f4113d27ad&id=f7d86e5053&e=8b856e7f98" target="_blank">More in Common</a> and <a href="https://bridgeusa.org/" target="_blank">Bridge USA</a>.</p><p>The commitment from business leaders to help sustain the political reform community has been encouraging as Leadership Now looks forward to channeling more funding and interest into assisting structural reform groups, Minahil Amin, the organization's director of investment, said.</p><p>"We already want more resources for these organizations because the space is so fragmented and there's such a huge need, but as a starting point, we're pretty happy with the energy we've gathered so far," Amin said. </p><p>Leadership Now, which not only helps channel funding but educates concerned business leaders about a broad range of political issues, encourages its members to think beyond just candidates and campaigns. </p><p>Members vow to commit at least half of their political spending on efforts to address structural issues rather than simply toward the horse race, for instance. </p><p>The idea is to create a reminder "that system changes are just as important as elections," Amin said.</p>
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Survey shows inmates aren't all Democratic voters in waiting
Mar 11 2020
A poll of more than 8,000 inmates suggests that allowing those currently or formerly incarcerated to vote will not necessarily benefit the Democrats, as many operatives in both parties believe.
Slate and the nonprofit Marshall Project, a news site covering criminal justice, unveiled the survey Wednesday, and it is sure to be cited by civil rights groups pressing to expand the voting rights of convicted felons — whose main challenges have included persuading Republicans their aim is boosting civic engagement, not gaining a partisan edge.
<p>Some of the poll's most surprising results were about prisoners' views of the 2020 presidential candidates. Nearly half of white inmates said that if they could, they would vote to re-elect President Trump. Only 7 percent supported former Vice President Joe Biden, although most of the responses were submitted in January and February, long before he became the solid favorite for the Democratic nomination.</p><p>Trump was also the favored candidate among non-white prisoners, with 19 percent support compared to 13 percent for Biden. (Nearly 30 percent, the largest percentage, said they would not vote at all.)</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 efforts to restore voting rights to released felons has gained traction in recent years, including wins in <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/florida-felons-vote-in-primaries" target="_self">Florida</a>, <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/northam-reinstates-felon-voting-rights" target="_self">Virginia</a>, <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/andy-beshear-felons-voting" target="_self">Kentucky</a> and <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/voting/new-jersey-felon-voting" target="_self">New Jersey</a>, there's far less public support for expanding those rights to the more than 2 million people currently behind bars. </p><p>Only Maine and Vermont allow incarcerated felons to vote, and a <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/5/3/18528319/poll-felons-right-to-vote" target="_blank">poll released last year</a> found that seven out of 10 registered voters opposed giving those imprisoned access to the ballot box. </p><p>The survey, which was "intended to be a snapshot" rather than a comprehensive study due to limitations in the methodology, also revealed policy differences among Republican and Democratic inmates compared to the typical preferences of Republican and Democratic voters.</p><p>For instance, three-fourths of Republican inmates said they supported an increase to the minimum wage and legalization of marijuana, which only roughly half of Republican voters endorse.</p><p>Democratic inmates, meanwhile, supported tighter border security at a higher rate than Democratic voters while only a slight majority supported a ban on assault weapons, a policy backed by nearly 90 percent of non-imprisoned Democrats.</p><p>While the survey results appear to counter the narrative that inmates are naturally left-leaning, the authors cautioned that white inmates and those jailed in red states responded at a disproportionately higher rate, which limits the ability to draw broad conclusions. </p>
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Here's why the Census Bureau has a 'Trust and Safety Team'
Mar 06 2020
Rumors spread last fall about Census impersonators carrying fraudulent IDs who were knocking on doors and robbing people in their homes.
Fear circulated on Twitter. Neighborhood watch groups posted warnings on Facebook. Local TV stations aired stories on how to protect yourself when a stranger shows up to your house.
The only problem? It was baloney. But the government is combating such scams with an aggressiveness underscoring how seriously it takes the nation's only moment of mandatory civic responsibility.
<p>The so-called Home Affairs Hoax is one of the more sinister efforts so far at disrupting the 2020 Census, prompting the bureau to put an <a href="https://www.2020census.gov/en/news-events/rumors/home-affairs-hoax.html" target="_blank">entire page on its website</a> devoted to dispelling the rumors.</p><p>But preventing such coordinated disinformation campaigns — which threaten a head count that will shape the balance of power in Congress and billions in federal spending for a decade — has prompted the Census Bureau to do more. Before the enumeration began in earnest this month, the agency created something seemingly unique in the federal government: a team dedicated exclusively to combating the spread of malevolent disinformation and misguided misinformation.</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>Known as the "Trust and Safety Team," roughly two dozen federal employees and contractors are monitoring traditional and social media 24 hours a day, seven days a week for signs of inaccurate information that could steer people away from completing a questionnaire as the law requires. They respond as necessary to correct the narrative.</p><p>The false stories about home invasions spread at a particularly bad time for the Census, while workers were in communities across the country for pre-count field canvassing that required knocking on doors to verify addresses, said Zack Schwartz, the Trust and Safety operations director. </p><p>"It was very scary for us," he said. "We were starting to see some of the comments online saying, 'Oh, when the fake robbers come to my home, my dogs will be ready.' Or 'I'm glad the Second Amendment exists.'"</p><p>He added: "Those things really put our staff at risk, and it's a huge priority, as you can imagine, to make sure our field staff is safe and secure."</p><p>As the hoax gained attention, the team countered. First it alerted the social media platforms there had been no police reports anywhere connecting a Census Bureau employee to a robbery — or of robberies by someone pretending to be census worker. </p><p>The team then used third-party fact-checkers and the bureau's website to respond with authoritative content that addressed the rumor, Schwartz said. </p><p>After being notified of the hoax, the social media platforms combed through their networks and either removed the false posts entirely or added a disclaimer to warn people the post had been discredited. And soon enough, Schwartz said, "We started seeing the rumors slow significantly."</p><p>The successful response was tied to the bureau's partnerships with social media giants including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, which updated their terms of service policies to bar census-related misinformation on their platforms, Schwartz said.</p><p>On Thursday, Facebook cited its terms of service policy when it <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/03/05/facebook-removes-trump-ads/" target="_blank">removed hundreds of ads for President Trump's re-election</a> that directed users to a campaign survey labeled "2020 census."</p><p>"There are policies in place to prevent confusion around the official U.S. census, and this is an example of those being enforced," a company spokesman said. </p><p>Partnerships with the tech companies have been essential in the bureau's misinformation fight, Schwartz said, adding the team reviews more than a dozen rumors a day, analyzing their spread and the appropriate response. The most common myths are posted on the bureau's dedicated <a href="https://2020census.gov/en/news-events/rumors.html" target="_blank">rumors page</a>. </p><p>As the nationwide census begins this month, the Census Bureau is soliciting help in tracking and reporting falsehoods, which can be shared with the agency through its social media channels or by emailing <a href="mailto:rumors@census.gov" target="_blank">rumors@census.gov</a>.</p><p>"Everyone should be an observer," Schwartz said. "We've had great success with information coming into the bureau, the platforms and other places to let us know about the mis- and dis-information out there."</p>
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