“The use of the immigration databases are inaccurate, discriminatory and inappropriate for voter list maintenance. We know that it results in inaccurate purging of eligible voters,” said Katherine Culliton-González, a lawyer at think tank Demos who represented plaintiffs challenging Florida’s method of striking people from the rolls.
"Countless Ohioans have been denied their right to vote as a result of these purges," said Stuart Naifeh, an attorney for Demos, which is among the organizations challenging Ohio's law. [...]
But national voting rights and civil rights activists said the commission and Trump's call for new laws is just a pretext to suppress voter participation particularly among the poor, the elderly and people of color.
“I’m thrilled that the commission has been disbanded, but also will definitely keep an eye on what it is that these players will do in the next steps,” said Katherine Culliton-González, senior counsel for Demos, a public policy group.
Demos and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) will host a media call to discuss the upcoming Supreme Court oral argument in the case of Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute.
“Ohio is the only state that does it based on not voting in a two-year period,” says Dale E. Ho, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project, which along with the public policy group Demos, is representing Harmon and two Ohio nonprofit organizations. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense to assume that most registered voters move every two years.”
Last fall, Point Loma began offering some of its 4,500 students money to pay for college in exchange for a percentage of their future earnings. The model, known as an income share agreement, requires colleges and students to take a chance on each other, a shared responsibility that attracted Point Loma. [...]
“There were fewer jobs available. So you had students or older workers wanting to retrain for a job,” said Mark Huelsman, senior policy analyst at Demos, a national public policy advocacy group.
The true source of America’s greatness is the diversity of our people. Almost 1 in 4 Americans is an immigrant or the child of an immigrant, and with the upcoming vote on the budget, it’s time for Democrats and Republicans alike to finally pass the DREAM Act. As Congress takes up the spending bill, which may be voted on tonight or tomorrow, Demos urges the leadership of both parties to protect young immigrants whose status is on the line by including a clean DREAM Act in the bill—and to reject the bill if a clean DREAM Act is not included.
“Compared to any other democracy in the world, we have some of the lowest numbers in terms of participation and turnout,” Katherine Culliton-Gonzalez, a senior counsel for the think tank Demos, told WhoWhatWhy. [...]
New York, NY – Today, Heather McGhee, President of Demos, issued the following statement after the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate passed the GOP Tax Scam:
“Today, Congressional Republicans proved once again that they will stop at nothing to enrich the millionaire, billionaire and corporate donors to whom they are beholden—despite the severe cost that will now be paid by working- and middle-class families.
The ACLU and public policy organization Demos, have filed a lawsuit against Ohio’s Secretary of State Jon Husted (R), for violating the NVRA “when he purged voters based on their failure to vote,” a ACLU press release read in part.
Washington, D.C.-- Today’s 5-0 vote by the Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety to advance the Fair Elections Act of 2017 (B22-0192) to the full Council for consideration is a major step forward for the campaign, supporters said today. They called on the Council to immediately schedule a vote to pass the legislation.
Councilmembers Charles Allen, David Grosso, Anita Bonds, Mary M. Cheh, and Vincent C. Gray voted unanimously in favor of the legislation, which passed without amendment.
Washington, DC – Today, over 80 community leaders signed a letter urging Mayor Bowser and the members of the DC Council to support the Fair Elections Act of 2017, important legislation under consideration to create a voluntary, small-donor matching program for local elections.
The increased economic anxiety among black and Hispanic workers is not surprising when considering the fact that working-class workers of color tend to be paid less on the job and, therefore, hold less wealth.
No-loan policies at selective institutions can be eye-catching for low-income students that may not have viewed those schools as a viable option said Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a left-leaning think tank. But they do little to increase equity in higher education because the group of low-income students educated at these schools is so small, he added.
Katherine Culliton-González is senior counsel at Demos(the people), a New York-based nonpartisan, nonprofit voter-rights group active in litigating voting issues, including Pennsylvania’s voter ID law, ruled unconstitutional in 2014.
“Pennsylvania has a history. And it continues to create barriers to the ballot,” she says, “from lack of language access to a lack of poll worker training, no early voting. It not only complicates voting but it sets up real barriers to voters.”
New York, NY – Today, the Republican-led U.S. Senate voted on strictly partisan lines to approve a new tax plan that will increase taxes on working- and middle-class Americans while lowering taxes on billionaires and wealthy corporations. In response, Tamara Draut, Vice President of Policy and Research at Demos released the following statement:
According to a 2012 policy paper from the nonprofit public policy research organization Demos, Maryland and New York implemented their laws after the 2010 census, and both have withstood federal court challenges; Delaware and California's laws will take effect with the next census.
Conservative groups and Republican election officials in some states say the poorly maintained rolls invite fraud and meddling by hackers, sap public confidence in elections and make election workers’ jobs harder. Voting rights advocates and most Democratic election officials, in turn, say that the benefits are mostly imaginary, and that the purges are intended to reduce the number of minority, poor and young voters, who are disproportionately Democrats.