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Last week, ballot initiatives to improve the functioning of democracy fared very well. In Florida — a state divided nearly equally between right and left — more than 64 percent of voters approved restoring the franchise to 1.4 million people with felony convictions. In Colorado, Michigan and Missouri, measures to reduce gerrymandering passed. In Maryland, Michigan and Nevada, measures to simplify voter registration passed.
Meanwhile, the overall cost of net tuition, fees, room and board rose 69 percent at public universities between 1997-98 and last year, even after being adjusted for inflation, according to the College Board. That’s a period during which the Census Bureau reports that median household earnings fell.
Yesterday’s election results were a major step forward for inclusive, multi-racial democracy in America. The country voted in candidates who look like America: Sharice Davids and Deb Haaland, the first Native American congresswomen; Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, the first Muslim congresswomen; Ayanna Pressley, the first black member of Congress from Massachusetts; Jared Polis, the first openly gay governor; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest female member of Congress; and at least 98 women were elected to the House of Representatives.
We just filed this emergency lawsuit to protect the rights of eligible Ohio voters who were recently arrested and are being held in jail, unable to get to the polls.
Under the current system, eligible voters who are detained pretrial by the state are being unconstitutionally denied their fundamental right to vote. Ohio’s disenfranchisement of these qualified voters violates the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
In the lead up to this year’s midterm elections on Nov. 6 we’ve heard about how young adults, women and people of color are running for office in record numbers.
“For some 40 years now, the Supreme Court has been issuing decisions that make it difficult to regulate [money in politics],” Chiraag Bains, director of legal strategies at Demos, told WhoWhatWhy. “Citizens United is the crowning achievement of that effort.”
Voter suppression is alive and well in Florida where our election protection volunteers reported multiple voting rights violations as well as coercion during early voting and we secured an emergency order in response to the violation of a federal injunction
We secured another win for voters in our Ohio voter purge case, A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI) v. Husted. Voters who were removed from the voter rolls in Ohio without adequate notice will now be able to participate in Tuesday’s midterms.