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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
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decided against fast-tracking a decision about removing from the rolls more than 100,000 people with potentially out of date registrations — a delay that benefits the cause of voting rights advocates.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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Registration lists are under attack. We have a moral obligation to protect them.
Adruini is president of the Susquehanna Valley Ethical Society, a branch of the American Ethical Union, a humanist organization that emphasizes "deed before creed," the view that people can be moral and ethical independent of a belief in God.
<p>There is a routine every election cycle. As the date of the vote nears, I go online and check my voter registration status. For the past 45 years — when I've voted in Mifflinburg, a town of 3,500 in rural central Pennsylvania — I have taken this precaution not because I think I did anything wrong, but because I follow the news.</p><p>Last year, counties in California began purging <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/06/20/calif_begins_removing_5_million_inactive_voters_on_its_rolls__140602.html" target="_blank">5 million voters</a> from their rolls following a lawsuit from the conservative group Judicial Watch. It was one of numerous such efforts in recent years and, as we get close to four months from a critical presidential election in November, the group has turned its sights to my home state, suing to remove <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/05/28/pennsylvania-voter-rolls-purge-judicial-watch/" target="_blank">800,000 voters</a>. </p><p>Judicial Watch claims the three bellwether suburban Philadelphia counties in question — Delaware, Chester and Bucks — removed only 17 inactive voters in 2017 and 2018. Bucks County official <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/politics/clout/president-donald-trump-judicial-watch-voter-rolls-election-fraud-20200508.html" target="_blank">say that's not true</a> and that they removed 14,050 in 2018 alone. With all three having more registered Democrats than Republicans, this looks like a move more concerned with voter suppression than fraud.</p><p>The right to vote is a fundamental human right. As the president of a non-theistic congregation of ethics, I take that to heart. Attempts to limit or add barriers to the free exercise of that right can erode citizen confidence that their elected officials can represent and act upon the will of the people. When voices are silenced, our democracy perishes. </p><p>I am grateful that Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar seems ready to fight, but we as citizens must do whatever we can to protect the right to vote anywhere it is under attack.</p><p>To be sure, ensuring the safety and security of our elections is of paramount importance — and individuals who are erroneously registered should be removed. But too often, purges are used as a partisan weapon. Groups like Judicial Watch claim that when voters are removed, it's because they are either dead or no longer living in the state. Yet, in just the past three years, <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/many-eligible-georgia-voters-were-canceled-nation-largest-purge/jRlixHpVs0I9wVQYdDjxvM/" target="_blank">870,000 people</a> in Georgia have registered to vote again after being purged. If these voters were dead or lived somewhere else, how did they manage to get back on the rolls? </p><p>Delaware, Chester and Bucks are all majority-white counties. But, historically, people of color are the most frequent target of voter suppression. And that doesn't just include voter purges. There's a reason why states with high populations of Black people have tried to implement voter ID laws:<a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/d/download_file_39242.pdf" target="_blank"> 25 percent of Black Americans</a> do not have a government-issued proof of identification. We shouldn't be stripping Black people of one of their basic rights, especially during a time of racial reckoning.</p><p>Fighting back against suppression starts with knowledge. In most cases, voters who are purged are not notified until it's too late. Campaigns like <a href="http://centerforcommonground.org/main/index.php/campaigns/reclaim-our-vote" target="_blank">Reclaim Our Vote</a> work to notify eligible voters in states with a history of suppression that they may have been removed. My congregation, and others under the umbrella of the <a href="https://aeu.org/" target="_blank">American Ethical Union</a>, are working with ROV to send postcards to people in six states where voters may have been purged. Last year, more than one in five postcards sent to residents of North Carolina's 3rd congressional district by ROV resulted in voter registrations.</p><p>I would encourage anyone concerned about this issue <a href="https://actionnetwork.org/forms/reclaim-our-vote-signup" target="_blank">to volunteer</a> through that group's website.</p><p>Yet perhaps the most important thing you can do is speak out against the misinformation that keeps our citizens complacent. Know someone concerned about voter fraud? Let them know that even one of the nation's preeminent conservative think tanks, t<a href="https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud/search?combine=&state=All&year=&case_type=All&fraud_type=24497&_ga=2.12574644.1414507925.1587563897-525623535.1584719379&page=0" target="_blank">he Heritage Foundation</a>, found that no election results were overturned in the states that currently vote primarily by mail. </p><p>Do they think the voter purges occurring across the country are legitimate? Let them know that many voters who are removed go on to register again, discrediting the argument they were inaccurately listed as eligible.</p><p>Knowledge is power and the more people know the truth, the more voices we have to combat voter suppression.</p><div></div><p>Regardless of the outcome of the suit in Pennsylvania, I will continue to check my registration status before elections. Your rights may not be under attack but countless others are. I urge all Pennsylvanians and Americans to speak out for their rights.</p>
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SPLC puts $30 million toward registering voters of color
The Southern Poverty Law Center is ponying up $30 million to help community organizations further their voter registration efforts.
The "Vote Your Voice" campaign, announced Tuesday, focuses on increasing registration and mobilization of voters of color in five states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi.
Voting registration efforts across the country have taken a hit because of the coronavirus. Physical distancing and state lockdowns have made it difficult for organizers to do many of the usual voter registration pushes that take place during a presidential election year.
<p>The SPLC, in partnership with the Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta, is providing resources to grassroots organizations that help break down barriers for voters of color, in hopes of combating some of the mounting pressures that the pandemic is causing for community organizers.</p><p>"The COVID-19 pandemic has and will continue to have a disproportionate impact on democratic participation for communities of color who have been harmed most deeply by the health and economic crisis and who will encounter greater barriers to voter participation given the new risks of voting in person on Election Day," <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/news/2020/06/16/splc-invest-30-million-nonpartisan-voter-outreach" target="_blank">wrote SPLC President and Chief Executive Office Margaret Huang</a>.</p><p>The pandemic is an additional layer of complication for voters, compounding what Huang says is a "resurgence of state-sponsored voter suppression that is targeting communities of color." </p><p>In the five states where the initiative focuses, <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/voting/poll-closings-since-preclearance-voided" target="_self">more than 500 polling sites have been closed</a> since the Supreme Court's 2013 <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/shelby-county-v-holder" target="_self">Shelby v. Holder</a> decision voided the preclearance requirement by which certain states and counties had to get federal approval before changing election procedures. Activists also cite voter roll purges, strict voter ID laws and scaling back early voting as some of the issues that make it harder for people of color to participate in the franchise.</p><p><br/></p><div class="rm-embed embed-media"><div class="flourish-embed flourish-map" data-src="visualisation/662942" data-url="https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/662942/embed"><script src="https://public.flourish.studio/resources/embed.js"></script></div></div><p><br/></p><p>"We must all work to end systemic barriers that deny our citizens their right to vote, especially in Black communities across the South," said Lita Pardi, vice president of community at Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta. </p><p>"This initiative is especially important right now, as millions of people across the country feel the urgency to make our voices heard this fall after the continued silence from our leaders on the many Black people being killed by police," said Huang. "Voting won't solve this problem the day after the election but in order to begin dismantling white supremacy, we need to ensure that every voter of color is able to cast their ballot without interference or hardship."</p><p>While the grants will start as a ramp-up to the general election, the investments in these organizations will continue through 2022.</p><p>"We're also aiming to help groups build capacity in between federal election cycles — too much of this work is transactional where groups are only supported ahead of presidential and congressional elections," Huang wrote. "We plan to help sustain these organizations during local election cycles by providing multi-year grants."</p><p>Grants are also available to organizations working with other voters who face major barriers to participation like returning citizens, young people and those who have been purged from voter rolls.</p><p>The first round of grants will be distributed in July through an invitation-only application. An open call for a second round will take place later this summer.</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
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>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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