Demos, the New York-based group, began monitoring North Carolina about a decade ago because it spotted a drop-off in public assistance registrations. Gary Bartlett, the State Board of Elections director at the time, was eager to attract more voters, said Stuart Naifeh, an attorney with Demos.
“He was as dismayed as we were about the low rates,” Naifeh said. “He wanted to work with us to improve that.”
This is not the first time North Carolina has fallen out of compliance with the NVRA. Dēmos, the New York-based group that has put North Carolina on notice, also monitored the state about 10 years ago after seeing a drop in voter registration applications processed by public assistance agencies. Gary Bartlett, the State Board of Elections director at the time, worked closely with Dēmos to get the state back into compliance.
Black culture and the role racism plays in black American history are discussed at length in the national dialogue around race relations. We regularly debate use of the “n-word,” for example, and the impact of historical racism on outcomes for black Americans.
After the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, many pointed at the gap between the black population and their overwhelmingly white elected officials as a symptom of the country’s problem with race.
Less than 10 years ago Demos and other voting rights groups approached North Carolina after an investigation revealed that the state was failing to meet its obligations under Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act—a federal law that requires North Carolina provide individuals who apply for public assistance the opportunity to register to vote.
Barring a dramatic scandal or an unforeseen event, Hillary Clinton will be the 2016 Democratic party nominee for president. While many on the left have complained about her close ties to banks and her past unwillingness to tackle inequality, such complaints are unlikely to be solved by any challenger. Progressives should instead begin creating the infrastructure to shift American politics in a more progressive direction -- and do so while supporting Clinton in 2016.
To date, the Senate has been mostly unsupportive of the Moreland Commission's proposals. The good government groups are hopeful the current wake of scandal will be enough to finally persuade lawmakers to enact real change.
"We think that should be a wakeup call now to the Senate," Scharff said.
"This is not only a political decision,” said Emmanuel Caicedo, a senior campaign strategist with Demos. “This is a moment where our leaders can make a moral and ethical choice about whose voices matter."
Local social service agencies are not giving poor residents adequate opportunities to file and update voter registrations as required by federal law, a letter sent by a group of voting rights advocates warned the North Carolina State Board of Elections and Department of Health and Human Services.
Executives with Project Vote, Demos, Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice were the lead authors of the letter, which is potentially the precursor to a lawsuit if North Carolina officials don't a
In the wake of the recent gutting of the Voting Rights Act, partisans were quick to jump on the opportunity to restrict unfavorable voters. Across the country, conservatives in particular have debated fiercely whether to pursue voter suppression to remain competitive in an increasingly diverse electorate.
The lack of retirement security for middle-class and low-wage workers is a growing crisis that Washington has refused to address, even though it demands immediate attention.
President Obama's recent comments on universal voting have spurred a debate about how such a policy would influence elections. On the Monkey Cage blog, John Sides examines the partisan consequences and argues that turnout would generally benefit Democrats, but that the effect would be modest.
"You are in a Catch-22," said Emmanuel Caicedo, a senior campaign strategist with Demos, one member of a coalition of 79 labor and civil rights organizations that formed the NYC Coalition to Stop Credit Checks in Employment.
"You can't pay your bills and so your credit is bad. And then you can't get a job to pay your bills because of your credit."
Middle class income stagnation, and the inequality that it causes, is the principal economic challenge for the nation — and finance is to blame for it.
Late Tuesday, news broke that yet another unarmed American, a black man named Walter Scott, was killed by a white police officer. As with Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, and Rodney King nearly 25 years ago, the brutality was captured on video for the world to see. The New York Times put the damning evidence at the very top of its homepage and it quickly spread throughout social media networks provoking outrage, disgust, horror, grief. These reactions have come most vocally from black Americans.
On Thursday, a day on which many New Yorkers were squinting in what seemed like the first full sunlight in months, New York Mayor de Blasio announced at Gracie Mansion that he, along with a number of other leading progressives, was putting forward a vision for how to address income inequality. Speaking first, de Blasio said that the group had come together to formulate a template for how best to conquer income inequality, which, he said, is worse today than it was at the height of the Great Depression.
Last week, Massachusetts became the latest state to either settle or lose in litigation over complaints that it wasn’t providing adequate voter registration services at welfare offices.
The settlement is part of a broad effort by voting rights groups to reverse the decline in voter registrations at public assistance offices, which Congress intended to serve as a mechanism for signing up low-income voters. National voting rights groups argue that the decline in registrations is because of improper implementation by staff at government welfare offices. (...)
In preparation for the 2016 presidential election, Democrats appear united around one candidate, while the Republican contest remains far from secured. Many on the left, who view Hillary Clinton’s stances as a tame brand of liberalism, have attempted to draft Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., to run. But the progressives do not need a charismatic leader. Instead, they need to invest in unleashing the disgruntled progressive majority.