"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.
“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.
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.
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. [...]
"One thing driving Labour’s over performance was youth turnouts," Sean McElwee, a policy analyst who studies voter attitudes and behavior at the progressive think tank Demos, said in an interview.
McElwee thinks that Labour’s success could be a model for progressives in the United States provided they learn some key lessons about how to enlist and galvanize voters.
Kathy Culliton-Gonzalez, a lawyer who works on automatic voter registration at Demos, a progressive think tank, said some of the momentum toward automatic voter registration was born out of the controversy surrounding the results of the 2000 election, long lines to vote across the country in the 2012 election and efforts to pass voter ID laws to make it more difficult to vote.
Employers’ growing interest in helping workers pay back their student loans “reflects that many, if not most, workers entering the workforce have to contend with their student loans,” said Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a left-leaning think tank. [...]
A group of civil-rights organizations, including the A. Philip Randolph Institute, the think tank Demos, and the ACLU of Ohio, filed a lawsuit against Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted challenging the supplemental process’s legality in early 2016.
“It doesn’t do anything to address the root problems of college affordability and of rising student debt,” said Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a left-leaning think tank. Those include state disinvestment in higher education, a trend that the federal government could help reverse, according to Huelsman, by using federal money to encourage states to up their investment in their public colleges. [...]
A 2015 report by Demosfound that California had one of the country’s the lowest ratios of DMV voter registration applications to DMV transactions, between 0.01 and 0.1. [...]