Kavanaugh’s track record on democracy raises serious concerns,” said Chiraag Bains, director of legal strategies for public policy organization Demos. “A Justice Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court could set us back when it comes to voting rights.” [...]
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.
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.
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?”
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.
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.
[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. [...]
Demos, the voting rights group that challenged Ohio’s voter purge law, said in a statement that the decision “threatens the ability of voters to have their voices heard in our elections.”
“The fight does not stop here. If states take today’s decision as a sign that they can be even more reckless and kick eligible voters off the rolls, we will fight back in the courts, the legislatures, and with our community partners across the country,” Demos senior counsel Stuart Naifeh said in the statement.
For the working poor, getting married is hardly a guarantee of ascendance, explains Amy Traub, an associate director of policy and research at the thinktank Demos. She highlights the reality of surviving with low wages, no paid sick leave, no paid parental leave, and no subsidized childcare. Traub’s research shows that a married couple will see their income go down by 14% after they have a child.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that Ohio could continue to use an aggressive process for removing people from its voting rolls, saying the procedure did not run afoul of federal voter protections.
“If states take today’s decision as a sign that they can be even more reckless and kick eligible voters off the rolls, we will fight back in the courts, the legislatures and with our community partners across the country,” Demos attorney Stuart Naifeh said.
WASHINGTON – In a 5-4 ruling in Husted v. APRI, the U.S. Supreme Court today upheld an Ohio voter purge practice that removes infrequent voters from the registration rolls. The decision creates a danger that other states will pursue extreme purging practices to disenfranchise millions of eligible voters across the country.
On the same day California’s primary election produced decidedly mixed results last week — encouraging for Democrats, less so for progressives — progressive advocates gathered in Los Angeles learned about how politics in California (and nationwide) could be dramatically transformed by driving a stake through the heart of coded, dog-whistle racism, and by confronting it head-on with a call for cross-racial unity to create a better shared future.
Demos’ Race-Class Narrative (RCN) project developed an empirically-tested narrative on race and class that resonates with all working people and offers an alternative to—and neutralizes the use of—dog-whistle racism.
Millions of eligible voters remain unregistered. To fulfill the promise of the NVRA, states must do much more to ensure all Americans have a voice in our democracy.