In the aftermath of the financial crisis, plenty of Americans have seen their credit scores tank. But can that really affect your ability to get a job? Yes, because employers increasingly are relying on workers' credit histories in screening applications.
Same Day Registration is a proven reform that can substantially increase voter turnout among eligible voters -- particularly among those with traditionally lower rates of voter participation -- without compromising the integrity of elections or substantially increasing costs.
The U.S. Supreme Court announced Tuesday that next term it will hear McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, a challenge to limits on the amount of money that a single person may contribute to all federal candidates and parties over a two-year election cycle, known as aggregate contribution limits.
After a campaign season marked by climate silence, the President’s inaugural call for action on climate change left hope that the administration was serious about making climate a priority. And, there were parts in last night’s State of the Union that were promising, beyond the simple fact that he addressed the issue at length. First and foremost, the President tied extreme weather events to climate change.
Here’s another reason why income inequality is so destructive—it’s ruining our planet and increasing the severity of climate change. A new paper from the Center on Economic and Policy Research looks at a novel way to slow climate change: reduce the hours that we work. For reasons that are not entirely understood, shorter work hours are linked with lower greenhouse gas emissions.
The Pew Charitable Trusts released a nifty interactive report this week that compares the 50 states and the District of Columbia on their administration of elections.
Pew gathered information from the Census Bureau, public surveys, and other sources to develop its Elections Performance Index. So far, the data is available only for the 2008 and 2010 elections, but it makes clear that the security of your voting rights depends heavily on where you live.
President Obama raised eyebrows during his inaugural address last month when he put the fight against long election-day lines in the context of the nation’s movement toward “tolerance and opportunity, human dignity and justice.” Now the New YorkTimes says Congress is preparing for a showdown on the issue.
We should be done by now with the idea that a corporation is a single thing. Corporations contain a multitude of conflicting interests and are much more like miniature governments with their own governance structures and election systems than is commonly recognized. While these structures are far more hierarchical and undemocratic than we require of our public institutions, Americans should not be resigned that this is the best or the only way the private sector can be structured.
Democratic lawmakers say allowing voters to register and cast ballots on the same day would increase election participation, but some county officials worry that it would further complicate the voting process.
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States with same-day registration have turnout rates nearly 6 percent higher than states that don’t offer it, according to Demos, a progressive public policy research group.
It falls into the good-luck-with-that category, but nevertheless the Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group and nine other organizations have announced they’re forming a coalition aimed at getting the Wisconsin Legislature to put an advisory referendum on the ballot about the growing problem of unlimited campaign spending.
Using political power to keep employees from organizing unions can be highly effective. That’s one forceful lesson to draw from the new figures on union membership.
A scheme under consideration in Virginia to rig the Electoral College in Republicans’ favor could well violate a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, experts on the law say. But that very provision is itself under challenge by the GOP, and could be struck down by the Supreme Court later this year.
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Brenda Wright, a top lawyer at Demos and an expert on voting rights, agreed. “I think there would be strong arguments” that the change harmed minority voters, she said.
When was the last time you contributed $1,000 to a political candidate or cause? For the majority of donors to Senate candidates, the answer is "very recently."
Not since the years before the Watergate scandal has a small cadre of mega-donors influenced our elections as much as wealthy givers such as casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson, DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, Texas homebuilder Bob Perry, and Chicago media mogul Fred Eychaner did in 2012.
In our discussions around climate change, we’ve noted that while vast majorities of Americans both believe in climate change and think it’s manmade, pushing for action on climate change remains a low priority. This reality leaves Congress and the Administration free to not take any meaningful action on climate change and face little political consequence for not doing so.