Public policies can either fuel or ease racial disparities in wealth. This report marks the first-ever systematic analysis of the impact of different policies, highlighting the policies that could help erase the racial wealth gap.
The Rising American Electorate was credited with helping Barack Obama win the presidency in 2008 and his reelection in 2012. Comprised of people of color, women, and young people, this Rising Electorate represents people in constituencies that have been underserved in a political system that increasingly caters to the needs of the wealthy.
Latinos have various national origins and ancestries, as well as generational, citizenship, and political differences. Even within our diversity, Latino unity is on the rise thanks to the emergence of the Latino counterpublic.
Differences of opinion are certainly important, but at some point the question of how inclusive the dominant society must be to the concerns of different people will have to move beyond the realm of personal preference.
The University of Pennsylvania Law Review Online has released a Special Issue on Campaign Finance exploring alternatives to the Supreme Court’s analysis in Buckley vs. Valeo, the foundational money in politics case decided 40 years ago this year.
Brenda Wright, an attorney with the public policy group Demos — which backed the lawsuit along with the Prison Policy Initiative — said the the litigation was aimed at getting localities to account for prisoners where it truly counts.
The ruling concluded that Cranston artificially inflated the population of Ward 6 by treating all inmates of the ACI as residents of the prison for redistricting purposes.
``I’m thrilled that our fight for equal representation has been successful,’’ said Karen Davidson, lead plaintiff, in a news release. ``Fairness in redistricting is a fundamental right and I’m glad the court has vindicated our claims.’’
Lagueux gave the city thirty days to redraw the districts.
“This is a big win for democracy,” said Adam Lioz of Demos, counsel for the plaintiffs. “Prison gerrymandering distorts representation and should no longer be tolerated. This decision should pave the way for other courts to address this long-standing problem.”
Plaintiffs argued that the "prison gerrymandering" improperly considered ACI prisoners as constituents of local elected officials when they are instead "residents of their pre-incarceration communities for virtually all legal purposes, including voting."
"I'm thrilled that our fight for equal representation has been successful," said lead plaintiff Karen Davidson, of Cranston. "Fairness in redistricting is a fundamental right and I'm glad that the court has vindicated our claims."
About 94% of donors to Emanuel's campaign were white, even though white people comprise just 39% of Chicago's total population, according to the new report, from progressive think tank Demos. Emanuel's donors almost entirely (84%) gave large contributions of $1,000 or more. A staggering 80% of his donors had an annual income of at least $100,000 or more, despite just 15% of Chicagoans making six figures.
In May, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review Online will publish a series of essays examining the role that political equality could play in the Supreme Court’s campaign finance jurisprudence. The authors in this collection are helping to relaunch a conversation that has been stagnant for forty years.
Automatic Voter Registration (AVR)—meaning voter registration that occurs without a proactive effort by individual citizens—has caught fire. Here are three major factors that stakeholders must address.
However, money still matters a lot, and it probably matters more on the local and state level than it does nationally. As McElwee notes, the donor class has sharply different ideological beliefs than the public at large. For obvious reasons, they tend to resist the tax increases necessary to pay for better services, and tend to support "centrist" austerity derp like the Bowles-Simpson program. In other words, they're more conservative.
In a nutshell: Rahm Emanuel relied overwhelming on large donations from a very nearly exclusively white pool of donors — who also, as further analysis shows, largely live in the same few rich wards of the city (save for non-Chicagoans, as Emanuel also did a lot of fundraising outside the city). Even Garcia's donors were disproportionately white, though to a much lesser extent. "We expected going in there would be some demographic disparities," McElwee told The Week.
When Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel ran for re-election in 2015, his opponents accused him of representing the elite in a city starkly divided by race and class. A new analysis of campaign finance data shows that, at least from a fundraising perspective, the mayor’s support did indeed come largely from a narrow band of Chicago’s citizens.
Political leverage is another factor separating the top 20 percent from the rest of America. The top quintile is equipped to exercise much more influence over politics and policy than its share of the electorate would suggest. Although by definition this group represents 20 percent of all Americans, it represents about 30 percent of the electorate, in part because of high turnout levels.
2016 will likely be remembered for a deeply polarizing presidential election that brought out huge numbers of voters. It should also be remembered for massive voter disenfranchisement.