The Supreme Court is passing up, for now, the Trump administration’s request to block Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross from having to give testimony in lawsuits challenging the addition of a question on citizenship to the 2020 U.S. census.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued an order Friday turning down an emergency stay application the Justice Department submitted Wednesday in a bid to head off depositions of Ross and Justice’s top civil rights official, acting assistant secretary John Gore.
Ginsburg’s language suggested the court would reconsider the issue once the government exhausted challenges it has brought at the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, attempting to halt the depositions ordered by a federal district court judge in Manhattan.
Casting a ballot seems as American as apple pie. But in Florida, one in ten people have had their voting rights taken away because of a criminal conviction. Professor Ciara Torres-Spelliscy dives into the history of Florida’s voting system, how ex-felons get their rights back, and what Florida voters can do to help.
Three months after they lost a U.S. Supreme Court challenge to Ohio’s process for removing inactive voters from its rolls, the lawsuit’s plaintiffs are back in federal court with a related claim: the notification forms Ohio used to initiate voter removal are illegal.
The plaintiffs say all voters the state deleted from the rolls from 1995 through 2016 through the disputed process upheld by the Supreme Court were actually removed unlawfully because the state’s notices for removal didn’t comply with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.
On Sept. 14, the Ohio A. Philip Randolph Institute, the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless and Larry Harmon asked U.S. District Judge George C. Smith to reinstate all eligible voters who were sent the deficient notices, or take other measures to protect their voting rights in next month’s election.
Via email:
Dear Supporter,
With little more than a month until the general election, the battle for election integrity is raging from coast to coast – and as the Wall Street Journal rightly reported, the Senate Fight Unfolds on Deep Red Terrain. True the Vote went out on a bit of a limb when we forecasted our target states, but polls are now showing that all ten of our targets have races with extremely narrow margins; so we are focused in the right places. Here’s what’s on our radar:
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Make no mistake, integrity is critical in all elections, in every state. We’ve chosen to highlight these races because they are soooo close, which makes it all the more important for well-trained volunteers to help uphold the rule of law at every step of the electoral process. With that in mind, here’s what True the Vote is doing, online and on the ground:
The federal government went to the Supreme Court today, requesting a halt to the depositions of two senior Trump administration officials – Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and John Gore, the acting head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division – in a challenge to Ross’ decision to bring back a question about citizenship on the 2020 census. The depositions are scheduled for early October, with a trial to follow in early November, but the government is asking the justices to put them on hold.
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh denounced the “millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups” during his testimony Thursday about sexual assault allegations, but he didn’t mention the millions spent by groups backing him.
The Judicial Crisis Network, the leading conservative nonprofit that is running advertisements in support of Kavanaugh’s confirmation, has spent about $12 million on the effort, according to sources familiar with the group — already more than the $10 million it spent in last year’s confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch.
The Judicial Crisis Network, as a 501(c) (4) tax-exempt social welfare organization, does not need to publicly disclose its donors. It does, however, report its federal lobbying, which last year included paying Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who was a lobbyist at Covington & Burling until he returned to the chamber, replacing the late Sen. John McCain in September.
Reopening a deeply divisive controversy that has troubled the Supreme Court for 32 years, four state legislators from North Carolina have urged the Justices to bar all constitutional challenges to partisan gerrymandering.
The decades-long search for a way to judge the constitutionality of election maps that give one party’s candidates a clear advantage at the polls has been “an exercise in futility,” the state lawmakers argued. The time has come to end that search altogether, according to the appeal in the case of Rucho v. Common Cause. The document has just become available publicly.
If the Court were to do as asked, legislators with control of their chambers would have no limit on how far they could go to create for their party an enduring domination of seats in state legislatures and even in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The only realistic remedy would be for the people of a state to take the task of drawing new districts away from the legislature, or — ultimately — for the nation to amend the Constitution.
This post by Geoffrey Wyatt and Neil Weare is online at the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review blog.
See also Pamela Colon’s post at Latino Rebels.
Miles Rapoport and Cecily Hines for TAP.
William Roberts has this article in Washington Lawyer.
Republican mapmakers who drew Michigan’s current political districts were pressured to appease lawmakers and made changes to help gain legislative approval, according to documents and depositions in a federal lawsuit.
The documents show mapmakers in 2011 gave top party officials the partisan vote history breakdowns of new districts, shared proposed maps with an interest group linked to the DeVos family, entertained suggestions from at least one GOP donor and faced backlash from incumbents vexed at how their districts were redrawn.
Along the way, the court finds that the plaintiff challenging the constitutionality of the CVRA is unlikely to succeed on the merits, It also finds it is too close to the election to make a change now in how the election is conducted (an application of the Purcell Principle)
Given this second point, I expect an attempt to get further relief from the Ninth Circuit or the (short-handed) Supreme Court is unlikely to be successful.
Jonathan Lai for the Philly Inquirer:
Thousands of registered Pennsylvania voters who live outside the United States are being blocked from accessing absentee ballots on the state’s website in a move intended to beef up election security.
Several other states, including New Mexico, Tennessee, Georgia, and Vermont, also appear to be blocking foreign access to their election sites.
“This should be a red flashing light issue in the state of Pennsylvania right now. They need to solve it — today,” said Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, president and CEO of the nonprofit U.S. Vote Foundation. “Because they are actually suppressing votes if this is how it is right now.”
Ballot measures have produced a wave of ambitious progressive reforms in recent years, from legalizing marijuana to expanding voting rights to granting paid family leave. This year, corporations have become equally ambitious in fighting them ― and experts say they’re hitting new levels of audacity in doing so.
Dialysis companies, for example, have raised $53 million to fight a California proposition that would cap their profits at 15 percent. In Florida, Disney has teamed up with the Seminole tribe to make competition in the casino sector illegal. Mining companies in Alaska are working to defeat an effort to protect salmon habitats. And Coca-Cola and Pepsi are trying to persuade Washington and Oregon voters to prohibit any tax on groceries — a category that just so happens to include sodas.
On September 12, 2018, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights published a report entitled “An Assessment of Minority Voting Rights Access in the United States.” This Statement was part of that report. It argues, among other things, that the Commission’s report is too one-sided and fails to recognized tradeoffs between encouraging the participation of voters and discouraging voting by individuals who are not entitled to vote.
Justin Levitt has posted this timely draft on SSRN (forthcoming Columbia Law Review). Here is the abstract:
On March 26, 2018, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross determined that the federal government would use the 2020 decennial Census to ask every person in the country about their citizenship status. The decision was enormously controversial. The decennial Census appears in the sixth sentence of the Constitution, as the very first responsibility of the new federal government; many believed that the decision to add a question on citizenship, in this climate, could put the enumeration itself in jeopardy.
This piece is the first to interrogate the legal and political rationale of that decision, and its consequences for the theoretical basis of American representative democracy and for the tangible distribution of clout and cash. In Part I, it explores the likely impact of the decision, demonstrating that Secretary Ross’s eleventh-hour intervention presents risks for the decennial enumeration that the Census Bureau itself had previously deemed intolerable, and which have only intensified in the current political climate. Part II turns to the proffered basis for this upheaval. It finds the decision essentially unjustified by the public rationale offered, and probes alternative rationales beyond the pretext that might better explain why the decision was made. Several of these alternatives concern the allocation of political power in the decennial apportionment and redistricting cycle to come; the piece closes by examining the decision’s likely roots in a long-simmering and hotly contested fight over the nature of representation, quite likely to reemerge in the years ahead.
Can’t wait to read this!
George Thomas WaPo oped:
As the FBI conducts its investigations into the sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh, just about everyone has been distracted from questions about his legal philosophy. But let’s not forget, as Justice Neil M. Gorsuch put it in somewhat different circumstances, to talk about the arcane matter of the Constitution. There are unanswered questions here, too.
Kavanaugh insists that one factor “matters above all in constitutional interpretation”: understanding the “precise wording of the constitutional text.” During his confirmation hearings, he frequently turned to his well-thumbed pocket Constitution to highlight this point.
Yet text does not always speak for itself. How we interpret constitutional text depends on our larger understanding of what kind of government the Constitution brought into being, as well as our understanding of more specific concepts such as “the executive power” or “equal protection of the laws.” Here text is helpful, but only suggestive.
WSJ:
President Trump personally directed an effort in February to stop Stormy Daniels from publicly describing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, people familiar with the events say….
Mr. Trump told Mr. Cohen to coordinate the legal response with Eric Trump, one of the president’s sons, and another outside lawyer who had represented Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization in other matters, the people said. Eric Trump, who is running the company with his brother in Mr. Trump’s absence, then tasked a Trump Organization staff attorney in California with signing off on the arbitration paperwork, these people said.
Direct involvement of the president and his son in the effort to silence Ms. Clifford hasn’t previously been reported. The accounts of that effort recently provided to The Wall Street Journal suggest that the president’s ties to his company continued into this year and contradict public statements made at the time by the Trump Organization, the White House and Mr. Cohen.
Release:
Public corporations embracing disclosure and accountability of their political spending are holding fast despite countervailing pressures from Washington.
That’s the chief finding to emerge from a non-partisan study released today by the Center for Political Accountability (CPA) and the Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Released in the run-up to the high-stakes 2018 midterm election, this year’s index is the first to examine these trends during an entire year of the Trump Administration and a Republican majority Congress.
It finds a pattern of large public companies holding steady in accepting and practicing disclosure and accountability with regard to their election-related spending. In several key categories, more companies are letting in sunlight or strengthening their related practices.
Data reflecting these trends are found in the 8th annual CPA-Zicklin Index of Corporate Political Disclosure and Accountability, issued by CPA in conjunction with the Carol and Lawrence Zicklin Center at The Wharton School.
The National Task Force on Rule of Law and Democracy – a group of former public servants and policy experts housed at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law – today laid out a vision for strengthening government ethics and the rule of law. Their first report includes specific proposals, such as requiring presidential candidates to disclose tax returns and creating a stronger enforcement mechanism for ethical breaches. The report was launched today at an event at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.
The Task Force, chaired by former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, outlines these proposals as part of an effort to turn what have traditionally been unwritten rules and norms of government behavior into commonsense, bipartisan laws.
California Gov. Jerry Brown drew plenty of headlines on Sunday when he signed the state’s net neutrality bill into a law, a move that was immediately met with a lawsuit from the Department of Justice.
On Friday, he signed another bill that drew less attention — a new law that bans automated accounts, more commonly known as bots, from pretending to be real people in pursuit of selling products or influencing elections. Automated accounts can still interact with Californians, according to the law, but they will need to disclose that they are bots.
The law comes as concerns about social media manipulation remain elevated. With just more than a month to go before the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, social media companies have pledged to crack down on foreign interference.A big part of that effort has been targeting bots that spread misinformation and divisive political rhetoric. Twitter said it took down 9.9 million “potentially spammy or automated accounts per week” in May and has placed warnings on suspicious accounts. Dorsey has even publicly floated the idea that Twitter may try to identify bots and label them as such.
Release via email:
A federal district court in New York agreed today that Common Cause New York, represented by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (Lawyers’ Committee), LatinoJustice PRLDEF, and the law firm of Dechert LLP, may proceed with its lawsuit challenging the treatment of millions of New York voters.
The legal challenge was brought in the aftermath of reports of widespread, pervasive problems experienced by New York voters during the 2016 elections, including voters who showed up at the polls only to find out that their names were not listed in the registers kept at the polling stations. Even though the State kept these voters on a central registry maintained at local boards’ of elections’ offices, many of these voters were not given the opportunity to vote, even by affidavit ballot.
“This case is yet another example of how New York’s outdated policies disenfranchise untold thousands of eligible voters in clear violation of federal voting rights laws,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee. “The court’s ruling recognizes that all voters have access to protection under the National Voter Registration Act if they are denied an equal opportunity to participate in the political process. But much work remains to be done to combat the effects of New York’s antiquated voting laws and procedures and ensure that every legitimate voter can exercise his or her fundamental rights.”
The Complaint alleges that large numbers of eligible voters who are in “inactive” status are regularly disenfranchised because election officials fail to properly use fail-safe affidavit ballot procedures designed to protect all eligible voters’ right to cast a ballot. The problems faced by inactive voters have been acknowledged by the New York Attorney General’s Office in briefing recently submitted to the United States Supreme Court in a separate case, as well as by New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio, who initiated extensive, non-partisan outreach to more than 561,000 inactive voters in New York City in advance of the 2018 elections. Inactive voters were among the many who reported problems trying to vote in New York during the recent primary election held on September 13th.
In its ruling today, the court rejected the State’s argument that voters who are disenfranchised due to a “de facto removal” from the voter registration list have not suffered an injury under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. Judge Alison J. Nathan declined to dismissCommon Cause/New York’s complaint’s as-applied NVRA claim, observing that its charges concerning affidavit balloting deficiencies are supported by allegations from the New York State Attorney General’s Office.
“We are gratified that Judge Nathan has ruled that Plaintiffs can proceed to prove that the failure to inform New York voters in ‘inactive status’ about their right to vote by affidavit balloting can constitute a deficient practice which violates the federal National Voter Registration Act,” stated Jose Perez, Deputy General Counsel at LatinoJustice PRLDEF.
“As Judge Nathan recognized today, federal law guarantees the right of qualified voters to participate in federal elections,” said Neil Steiner, a partner at Dechert, the pro bono law firm partnering with the Lawyers Committee and LatinoJustice in bringing this case. “We look forward to litigating this case and to establishing that all eligible New York voters have an opportunity to cast their ballot as required by the National Voter Registration Act.”
Over the past month, we’ve collected a variety of complaints from voters, but the most concerning come from New Yorkers who’d voted as recently in the June primaries and then could not vote in September,” said Susan Lerner, Executive Director of Common Cause/NY. “Some appear to have been involuntarily dis-enrolled from their party, and others showed up at their poll site to find their names mysteriously missing from the rolls. Thanks to today’s court ruling, we are one step closer to holding the NYC Board of Elections accountable and ensuring voters get the justice they deserve. We are pleased that the court confirmed Common Cause/NY’s standing to help voters address this continuing problem.”
The full opinion can be seen here: Common Cause/New York v. Robert A. Brehm et al.
John Fortier for Roll Call
Steven Rosenfeld for National Memo:
As the close of voter registration approaches in Arizona for the November 6 midterms, it is more than likely that thousands—if not tens of thousands—of registered voters who recently moved inside the state will be walking into a trap on Election Day.
At best, they will face an annoying and inconvenient runaround to find a polling place to cast a ballot that will count. But just as likely many voters who moved to another county will find that their voting status has been suspended for the 2018 election.
Laura Brill for the Civics Center:
Before high school graduation, every student should understand the basic principles of how government works and how to participate fully in our democracy.
This is a pretty simple goal, but we’re far from achieving it. Here at The Civics Center, we are working to change that.
Here’s how.
Adam Liptak for the NYT:
The current docket may appear a little sleepy. But additional cases could change that. Before the new term ends next June, the court may hear cases on partisan gerrymandering, whether a federal employment discrimination law protects gay and transgender people and the fate of a federal program that protects immigrants brought to the United States as children.
There is good reason to think that a Justice Kavanaugh, or any other justice appointed by Mr. Trump, might vote differently from Justice Kennedy on all three issues.
“We are headed for a whole new world,” Irv Gornstein, the executive director of the Supreme Court Institute at Georgetown University, said at a recent news briefing. “The only real questions are how far are we going to go and how fast are we going to get there.”
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism:
A UW-Madison study commissioned by Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell in 2017 estimated that thousands of registered voters in Dane and Milwaukee counties were deterred or prevented from voting because of the photo ID requirement in the 2016 presidential election — a situation that more heavily affected low-income people and African-Americans. The survey was mailed to 2,400 registered voters; 293 were returned.
Based on the sampling weight, UW-Madison political science professor Kenneth Mayer concluded that between 11,701 and 23,252 people did not vote due to confusion over voter ID requirements or lack of proper identification.
Trump won Wisconsin by 22,748 votes.
Mayer’s conclusion was challenged by a free market, limited government legal group, which contended there was no proven linkage between the photo ID requirement and the election results. Will Flanders, research director at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, said the study “pushed a narrative” of voter suppression but did not actually prove it.
“The most this survey can claim to prove is that the administration of the law could have been improved or that the candidates could have run better ground games,” Flanders wrote.
But, with the 2018 general election approaching, stories like Brooke Evans’ show how easily confusion about voting can jeopardize voting. If it were not for her own efforts to help homeless students, Evans said, she herself might not have been able to vote.
Oped in the News & Record.
On September 27, the Native American Rights Fund(NARF), on behalf of its clients, a group of Native American voters in North Dakota, filed an emergency appeal to the United States Supreme Court. They are asking the court to stay a recent Eighth Circuit decision that allows the State of North Dakota to impose new voter identification and residential address requirements in the upcoming election, even though early voting already has begun. Earlier this week, a divided panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit removed a lower court’s order, which was put in to place in April of this year to protect Native American and other voters in North Dakota. The order barred the enforcement of a voter ID law that the District Court identified as discriminatory and unconstitutional. (Read more about the case.) This week’s order from the Eighth Circuit allows North Dakota to begin using the discriminatory new law in the upcoming election. It not only changed the rules of the election after early voting had begun, it created a situation where several thousand people in North Dakota, who are qualified to vote in North Dakota, will be unable to vote in this year’s election simply because they do not have a residential address or because they lack the documentation and/or funds to obtain the required voter identification.
You can find the emergency application here.
Pema Levy for Mother Jones.
Emily Bazelon for NYT Magazine.
Congressional Democrats cleared a key hurdle on Friday in their effort to sue President Trump over whether he is illegally profiting from business dealings with foreign governments, in a case that could give the lawmakers access to the Trump Organization’s finances.
Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the United States District Court in Washington ruled that the lawmakers have standing to sue Mr. Trump for accepting payments and other benefits from foreign governments without obtaining permission from Congress, which would violate the Constitution’s clause that bars federal officials from accepting gifts, or emoluments, from foreign powers without congressional approval.
Judge Sullivan dismissed the Justice Department’s claim that the legislators did not have standing to sue and denied its request to dismiss the lawsuit.
“The court finds that the plaintiffs have standing to sue the president for allegedly violating the Foreign Emoluments Clause,” Judge Sullivan wrote in his opinion. Mr. Trump “has neither asked for their consent nor provided them with any information about the prohibited foreign emoluments he has already allegedly accepted.”
Adam in the NYT:
His performance on Thursday, responding to accusations of sexual misconduct at a hearing of the same Senate committee, sent a different message. Judge Kavanaugh was angry and emotional, embracing the language of slashing partisanship. His demeanor raised questions about his neutrality and temperament and whether the already fragile reputation of the Supreme Court as an institution devoted to law rather than politics would be threatened if he is confirmed
“This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit,” he said, “fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.”
In a sharp break with decorum, Judge Kavanaugh responded to questions about his drinking from two Democratic senators — Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island — with questions of his own about theirs. He later apologized to Ms. Klobuchar….
Chief Justice Roberts spoke in the wake of a series of confirmation hearings tinged with partisanship but nothing like the all-out war the American public saw on Thursday. If the chief justice feared that the court’s reputation could be damaged by them, he has reason to be terrified now.
“We don’t work as Democrats or Republicans,” he said in the 2016 remarks, “and I think it’s a very unfortunate impression the public might get from the confirmation process.”
As it happens, a reliable way to predict how justices will vote in highly charged cases is to check the political party of the president who appointed them. There was one exception to that rule in recent decades: Justice Anthony M. Kennedy could be unpredictable.
My only quibble here is with the use of the word “decades.” Souter and Stevens, for example, also did not follow what would become the Republican party line.
Kim Zetter for NYT Magazine.
Judge Lynn Adelman has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming University of Memphis Law Review). Here is the abstract:
In this paper, to be presented at an election law forum sponsored by the Memphis Law Review and published in a forthcoming issue of the Memphis Law Review, I argue that the law and practice of redistricting should address the question of political fairness. I base my argument on the history of redistricting in Wisconsin which I discuss at some length. Although under the Wisconsin Constitution redistricting is a legislative responsibility, in every Wisconsin redistricting since the 1950s lawsuits were started and courts became involved. Moreover, all of the maps drawn by courts, one by the Wisconsin Supreme Court and three by three-judge federal courts, were politically unfair. This was true whether or not the courts that drew the maps chose to ignore or consider political factors. The fact is, from a political standpoint, none of the courts knew what they were doing.
I contend that state legislatures should establish a standard of political fairness with which redistricting plans must comply. In the absence of such legislation, entities that engage in redistricting, such as courts or commissions, should on their own initiative endeavor to create politically fair plans and utilize all available tools including modern computer technology to assist them. A politically fair plan is one that reflects the political complexion of the state. In other words, the composition of legislative districts should be based on the preference of the state’s voters. Thus, if a state is 53 percent Republican, then 53 percent of its legislative districts should at least lean Republican, and if a state is 51 percent Democratic, then 51 percent of the state’s legislative districts should at least lean Democratic.
In order to determine the political make up of a state, it is essential to rely on a sufficient number of elections held over a sufficient period of time and to avoid elections that are overly determined by candidate specific factors. Thus, a redistricting entity should calculate the percentage of votes received by candidates of both major parties in the five preceding presidential or gubernational elections and average them. This will create an accurate political profile of the state. This process will enable the redistricting entity to establish a standard of political fairness that will govern drawing the map. Under the standard, each party is entitled to a percentage of legislative districts equal to the average percentage of votes it received in the five elections.
Tom Steyer, the billionaire investor and Democratic activist, has directed his political operation to spend more than $5 million aiding Andrew Gillum’s campaign for governor of Florida, an enormous investment that will test whether fired-up Democratic voters can flip control of a state long dominated by Republicans.
The campaign between Mr. Gillum, who is the progressive mayor of Tallahassee, and Representative Ron DeSantis, a conservative lawmaker who has aligned himself closely with the White House, has become one of the clearest contests of strength nationwide between the Democratic Party’s rising liberal wing and the Republican Party as President Trump has reshaped it.
The Second Circuit just denied the Trump admin’s mandamus petition in @NewYorkStateAG’s #2020Census suit. We are also able to move forward with our deposition of Acting Assistant AG John Gore. pic.twitter.com/dGNzD6rdQb
— Amy Spitalnick (@amyspitalnick) September 25, 2018
I’m very much looking forward to participating in this Federal Bar Association lunchtime event in Riverside, California with Doug Johnson on October 23.
Adam Bonica and Gisel Kordestani oped in The Hill:
We at Crowdpac are among the 78 percent of Americans who want to see Citizens United overturned. We are well aware that if Crowdpac’s conditional fundraising platform is challenged in court, it would likely force the courts to revisit the narrow conception of corruption that has allowed big money to dominate our politics. We would welcome a ruling that conditional crowdfunding campaigns are unconstitutional because that would mean money is, in fact, not a form of speech and that Super PACs and dark money are not protected by the First Amendment. To channel President Obama, a prominent critic of Citizens United: How hard can that be, to say that money is money?
The alternative would be to rule that when average citizens use money in this way to pressure politicians it is corrupt, but when billionaires and corporations do it they are merely exercising their First Amendment rights. Such a ruling would be disastrously unpopular and would do deep and lasting damage to the Court’s legitimacy.
Ultimately, we believe the health of our democracy would be best served if money could not be used to pressure politicians. Even if we believe this type of pressure ought to be illegal, that does not change the reality that it is currently within the law. We see no reason to deny small donors the tools they need to fight back.
And so we stand united with 50,000 and counting of our fellow citizens—in equal parts defiance and hopeful anticipation—to ask our leaders in Washington: What are you going to do about it?
Bernard Fraga for the Monkey Cage:
But Democrats confront a major challenge: People of color vote at a substantially lower rate than whites. In my new book, “The Turnout Gap: Race, Ethnicity, and Political Inequality in a Diversifying America,” I explain why. Below are four takeaways on racial differences in who votes…..
3. Vote suppression does not explain the turnout gap
What explains these persistent disparities in turnout between minorities and whites? Many focus on “vote suppression,” or election practices such as voter identification laws, reductions in early voting and precinct closures — all of which are often compared to Jim Crow-era restrictions. Indeed, voter suppression is implemented in places where reducing minority turnout would help Republicans.
But do these laws actually have a large impact on minority turnout? That is not clear. In “The Turnout Gap,” I show that states with these policies actually tend to have higher minority turnout, both before and after implementation. In a separate study of Texas, Michael Miller and I find that voter identification laws disproportionately affect minorities, but the effects are nowhere near large enough to explain the turnout gap.
Unusual story in the Detroit News:
Michigan Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Clement said she faced “bullying and intimidation” while deliberating a case that paved the way for a redistricting proposal to go on the November ballot.
Clement, a Gov. Rick Snyder appointee up for election in November, made the comments to The Detroit News editorial board Monday, a few days after learning the Michigan Republican Party had left her name and photo off door hangers distributed by volunteers in “targeted areas.”
She was one of two GOP-nominated justices who backed a 4-3 ruling that put the redistricting commission plan on the Nov. 6 ballot, a measure Republican officials have opposed.
As she runs for election to the court for the first time, Clement said she encountered pressure from “outside interests” — which she refused to identify — hoping to block the proposal from the ballot as she deliberated her decision.