The Trump administration’s latest attack on immigrants, a proposed rule that would punish families for accessing public benefits, has rightfully come under fire for its potential to threaten children’s health and impose financial hardship on households and communities.
Souls to the Polls is a time-honored tradition, often led by clergy, to activate and engage congregants to exercise their right to vote that starts long before Election Day. It is a mobilization strategy to make the process of voting easier for their congregants. But sadly, voter suppression efforts targeting minorities in subtle and overt ways continue to make Souls to the Polls a critical service — placing the burden of voter education and empowerment on the backs of churches and other civil society organizations, not the government.
Chiraag Bains, a former prosecutor and civil rights attorney at the U.S. Justice Department, said that because criminal codes are so complicated, prosecutors have an incredible amount of flexibility in deciding whether and how to bring a case. Prosecutors normally consider the culpability of the individual, the severity of the offense and what kind of penalty is necessary to deter future misconduct.
Last week, ballot initiatives to improve the functioning of democracy fared very well. In Florida — a state divided nearly equally between right and left — more than 64 percent of voters approved restoring the franchise to 1.4 million people with felony convictions. In Colorado, Michigan and Missouri, measures to reduce gerrymandering passed. In Maryland, Michigan and Nevada, measures to simplify voter registration passed.
We just filed this emergency lawsuit to protect the rights of eligible Ohio voters who were recently arrested and are being held in jail, unable to get to the polls.
“For some 40 years now, the Supreme Court has been issuing decisions that make it difficult to regulate [money in politics],” Chiraag Bains, director of legal strategies at Demos, told WhoWhatWhy. “Citizens United is the crowning achievement of that effort.”
Such lawsuits from the right have yielded mixed results, in part because voting rights advocates like the ACLU, Common Cause, Demos, the Lawyers’ Committee, the League of Women Voters and the NAACP have successfully fought back in court. Private groups defending voters have filed more suits to protect voters than the Justice Department itself in recent years. [...]
Similar interim rules were in place for the 2016 elections and more than 7,500 residents used them to vote, said lawyers for Demos and the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, two groups that sued the state.
In Ohio, registered voters who do not vote in a two-year period are sent a mailing asking them to confirm their address. If they do not respond to the mailing or vote in the subsequent four years, they are purged from the rolls. Represented by Demos and the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, the Ohio chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute -- an organization of black trade unionists and community activists -- has been fighting these purges in court since 2016.
“It’s political stubbornness,” said Stuart C. Naifeh, senior counsel for Demos, a national voting rights law group that is working with the League of Women Voters of Arizona, Mi Familia Vota Education Fund, Promise Arizona, the American Civil Liberties Union and others on this lawsuit and related NVRA issues.
Chiraag Bains of the advocacy group Demos that has monitored the activity of Pilf and its allied groups for several years, said: “Their aim is not to ensure the security of our elections, but to intimidate people from going to the polls. They are promoting purges that prevent eligible voters from participating in our democracy.”
Stuart Naifeh, one of the attorneys pressing the lawsuit against Reagan, said the ruling was deeply flawed, but the groups haven’t yet decided whether to file an appeal.
“Voters should go out there and check their registration to make sure they are update to date, since the secretary of state is not going to do anything about it,” Naifeh said.
Naila Awan, a counsel at Demos — one of the legal firms representing the groups in the lawsuit — said Friday's ruling "sides with democracy and promotes a more robust and inclusive democracy. The state of Missouri has been failing to provide address update services required by the NVRA.
"This disproportionately impacts people of color and low-income individuals, who tend to move at higher rates."
"Today's decision affirms what we have said in this case — that Puerto Rican citizens must be given full and equal access to the franchise. Individuals who are still dealing with devastating losses from Hurricane Maria should not also have to contend with discrimination at the polls," said Stuart Naifeh, senior counsel at Demos, one of several groups that filed the motion for the preliminary injunction.
"Individuals who are still dealing with devastating losses from Hurricane Maria should not also have to contend with discrimination at the polls,” said Stuart Naifeh, senior counsel at Demos. “The court’s order protects the right of Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican citizens to meaningfully exercise their right to vote this fall.”