Brenda Wright, a lawyer at the left-leaning advocacy organization Demos, emphasizes that progressives want voter rolls to be accurate. What her group opposes, she said, are purging practices that are known to sweep up eligible voters.
Washington, DC – Today, Demos, Every Voice, People for the American Way, and 23 other organizations sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee opposing John Bush’s confirmation to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth District and Damien Schiff’s confirmation to the Court of Federal Claims. The organizations opposed Bush and Schiff due to their troubling views on the issue of money in politics.
"It's very concerning," said Brenda Wright, vice president of policy and legal strategies at Demos, a liberal advocacy group that's been fighting state efforts to purge voters from the rolls. Wright notes that the main purpose of the motor voter law is to expand opportunities to register to vote, but that millions of eligible Americans are still unregistered.
FESSLER: Brenda Wright is with Demos, a liberal advocacy group. She notes that the main purpose of the motor voter law is to make it easier to register but also harder to remove legitimate voters from the rolls.
WRIGHT: The problems that DOJ should be focusing on are that too few eligible people have access to the vote and are voting. DOJ going after states to force them to do more purging is exactly the opposite of what the department should be doing.
This week we're bringing you a deep dive into how an intersectional approach to money in politics brings new voices to the movement and helps those who are most harmed by big money politics take a stronger leadership role within the movement to stop it.
The League of Women Voters of Missouri and the St. Louis and Greater Kansas City Chapters of the A. Philip Randolph Institute Call on State to Fix Voter Registration at DMVs
“It’s clear that the exact cohort that they were tracking has gone through a fairly tumultuous young adulthood,” said Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a left-leaning think tank.
“The EAC is responsible for creating voting systems guidelines that are intended to help ensure the accuracy and accessibility and security of voting systems that states use,” Brenda Wright, vice president for policy and legal strategies for the public policy group Demos, said in a phone interview.
Clinton’s gun-control positions also appear to have hurt her among voters who flipped from Obama in 2012 to Trump four years later. Demos analyst Sean McElwee constructed an index of views on gun policy. Using data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, he created a logistical model to predict Obama-to-Trump voting, controlling for race, religion, political party, education, gender, racial attitudes, ideology, and age. Views on guns turned out to be a statistically significant predictor of former Obama voters switching to Trump.
In a recent study, I compared the damage from shoplifting with that from just one form of wage theft, the failure to pay workers the legal hourly minimum.
In the United States, Sean McElwee, a policy analyst at the liberal think tank Demos, and Jason McDaniel, a professor of political science at San Francisco State University, examined data from American National Election Studies and reported in The Nation that:
The California legislature is pushing its own ambitious legislation, and is one of several Western states teaming up with Canadian provinces to collaborate on climate solutions. Many now see New York, and the CCPA in particular, as presenting the next opportunity for promising state-level action.
"If every registered millennial voted, their turnout rate would still be lower than those 65 or older," Sean McElwee, a policy analyst at the progressive think tank Demos who studies voting patterns and behaviors, said in an interview. "Registration barriers disproportionately affect youth, who are more mobile and more likely to be renters. The result is that policy doesn't reflect their preferences." [...]
Addressing the needs of these drop-off voters and young non-voters, while reducing structural and political barriers to voting, are critical steps for the Democrats going forward, far more so than trying to win back Obama-to-Trump voters.
Amy Traub for Demos: If you want to make crime pay — and get a lighter penalty if you're caught — you're better off cheating your employees out of their fair wages than trying to nick the latest video game console or pair of designer shoes off the shelves of your local retailer. [...]
This difference stems largely from the historical advantages built into whiteness, and the severe historical economic cost of blackness. Many of these advantages were covered in the Demos and IASP report titled "The Asset Value of Whiteness."
New York should be expanding voters’ rights, demonstrating what real democracy looks like. We should ensure working moms and dads, immigrants and people of color have equal access and voice in our electoral system. In the face of an imminent federal onslaught, we should be saying unequivocally that we stand for good government of the people, by the people and for the people. [...]
"The CHOICE Act would lead our nation in the wrong direction, further skewing our public policies towards the interests of top donors and away from the needs of working families and people of color as a whole", Demos associate policy director Amy Traub said in a statement prior to the vote.