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Voter Protection Corps

Voter Protection Corps was founded by experts in election law to address a stark, urgent reality: The assault on voters' rights will almost certainly increase, intensify and become more insidious in advance of the 2020 Presidential election. Voter Protection Corps is building a state-by-state playbook to combat both intentional voter suppression tactics and disenfranchisement caused by insufficient planning. Early, data-driven solutions identified and implemented by experienced voter protection professionals can reduce barriers to casting and counting the ballots of eligible voters across the country in 2020.

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www.voter-protection.org

News. Community. Debate. Levers for better democracy.

Voting

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The House on Friday passed legislation to restore a provision of the Voting Rights Act struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013. The bill would require advance approval of voting changes in states with a history of discrimination. Here President Lyndon Johnson shares one of the pens he used to sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965 with civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Passage of historic voting rights law takes a partisan turn

In a partisan vote on an issue that once was bipartisan, House Democrats pushed through legislation Friday that would restore a key portion of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The Voting Rights Advancement Act passed the House 228-187, with all Democrats voting for the bill and all but one Republican, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, voting against it.

The bill faces virtually no chance of being considered in the Republican-controlled Senate.

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Voting

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A new poll asking people to choose all of the candidates they could support finds Sen. Elizabeth Warren with the broadest backing of any of the Democratic presidential candidates.

Warren the big winner in 'approval voting' poll

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has the broadest support among Democratic presidential contenders — by a healthy margin — according to a poll testing a voting system that allows people to show support for more than one candidate.

Using what's called approval voting, the Massachusetts senator would have the support of 74 percent of Democratic primary voters, according to the poll, conducted Nov. 16-20 by the Center for Election Science.

Warren was followed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, with 64 percent, and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 61 percent. Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive frontrunner in the crowded Democratic field, finishes in fourth place at 53 percent. The poll has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.

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Voting

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Swing states build 2020 hacking protections: Will they hold?

With the presidency on the ballot in less than a year, fears of another attempt by Russia or other foreign powers to interfere in the election seem to grow with each passing day.

But in the battlegrounds where the outcome will be decided — the 13 states almost certain to be most hotly contested by both parties — election security has been tightening and the opportunities for a successful hacking of American democracy are being greatly reduced, a review of the procedures and equipment on course to be used in each state in November 2020 makes clear.

"There's been a huge amount of progress since 2016," says Elaine Kamarck, an election security expert at the Brookings Institution. James Clapper, a former director of national intelligence, says his assessment of the fight against election interference results in feeling "confident that a lot has been done to make it better."

In fact, many who work on the issue now cite the public's perception that our election systems are vulnerable as a problem at least as great as the actual threat.

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Big Picture

True

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"Replacing Donald Trump is a necessary condition for most forms of federal democracy legislation," argues Avi Green.

Start of the coming decade is make-or-break time for democracy reform

Green is executive director of the Scholars Strategy Network, a nonprofit that seeks to improve public policy and democracy by connecting scholars and their research to policymakers, citizens and the media.

Next year will be a make-or-break year for American democracy. If pro-democracy Americans take the House, Senate and White House, the United States could be primed to pass momentous reforms — with scope and impact that could rival the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of the 1960s. Reform in 2021 could undo much of the damage done over the last decade.

And what a decade it's been. The nation has witnessed rampant gerrymandering, the erosion of federal voting rights protections, deep dysfunction in Congress, ever-present corporate power in politics and foreign interference in our elections.

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