Hundreds of Thousands Were Added to Rolls or Updated Their Voter Information in First 10 Weeks of Motor Voter Program
Sacramento – California has expanded the number of people ready to participate in democracy by modernizing its voter registration system, according to numbers released today by the California Secretary of State’s office. Under the new program, called California Motor Voter, eligible voters are added to the rolls when they interact with the Department of Motor Vehicles, unless they opt out.
Today, Democratic members of the House of Representatives released the Aim Higher Act, a bill that would reauthorize the Higher Education Act, the federal law which authorizes a broad range of student aid programs and governs the federal role in higher education.
Demos, a public policy organization based in New York, has this response:
The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision has made it even more difficult for minorities to affect politics with money, said Adam Lioz, political director for the left-leaning advocacy group Demos.
The two researchers focused specifically on inheritances among families where at least one parent has a college degree. They looked at families like this in order to test the notion that higher education is some great equalizer. [...]
Fortunately, new research suggests that shying away from race is less effective with voters than exposing it as a scam that helps guys like Trump and Putin get richer and more powerful.
Chiraag Bains, Director of Legal Strategies for Demos
“Do you believe that the Constitution requires that we allow corporations and wealthy individuals the unfettered ability to translate their economic might into political power through campaign contributions and expenditures—even if it drowns out the voices of working-class Americans and erects barriers to candidates of color who lack access to big money and the mostly white donor class?”
Considering who “deserves” an affordable education obscures an important truth: higher education serves of all us. According to a report by the left-leaning think tank Demos earlier this year, “There is a persistent link between public spending on colleges and higher tax revenue, lower public assistance spending, greater health outcomes, and lower crime rates.” [...]
Chiraag Bains, the Director of Legal Strategies for Demos, issued the following statement tonight in response to the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Trump:
“With the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump’s second nominee to the Supreme Court in less than two years, the stakes couldn’t be higher for individuals and families whose lives are directly impacted by the Court’s decisions.
Torpey’s show, “Paid Off,” which premieres July 10 on TruTV, is just the latest evidence that student debt is now “part of the popular zeitgeist,” said Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a left-leaning think tank. “This is a problem that a lot of people can relate to,” he said.
But according to our in-depth analysis of data from Demos and NCES, black and Hispanic students are paying more when it comes to student loans than white students.
I have served as Demos’ president for the last four years, but I’ve worked there for 16 — practically my entire adult life. As I look back on what we’ve built together, I feel called to share some reflections from those years, for each of us who yearns to see our nation live up to its democratic promise.
It’s not just a disorganized group of citizens spontaneously challenging voters at the polls. It’s a coordinated campaign by groups like True the Vote that are well funded to try and reduce voting, often for partisan advantage.
New York, NY – Today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Janus v. AFSCME Council 31 is a blow to workplace democracy—furthering the consolidation of power arrayed against workers by big business and greedy special interests.
Washington – In response to the news that Justice Anthony M. Kennedy will retire from the Supreme Court, Demos Director of Legal Strategies Chiraag Bains released the following statement:
NEW YORK, NY – Today Vijay Das, a campaign strategist at Demos, issued the following statement on the Trump administration’s end to the ‘zero tolerance’ immigration stance that has led to the forced separation of families and the traumatic accounts of infants and toddlers being ripped from their parents.
[T]he public policy organization fights for racial equity, an expanded middle class and shaving the amount of money used in politics. Demos has just released a landmark report exclusively to theGrio explaining its studied view of why the Trump administration is bad for Black people and they have receipts.
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling to uphold Ohio’s controversial voter purge law spotlights the growing clout of right-wing “election integrity” groups that have aggressively bullied and sued states and jurisdictions into kicking thousands of voters off their rolls. [...]