We secured another win for voters in our Ohio voter purge case, A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI) v. Husted. Voters who were removed from the voter rolls in Ohio without adequate notice will now be able to participate in Tuesday’s midterms.
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 a state where elections have been won or lost by only one vote, protecting the right of eligible voters to have their voices heard will uphold the fundamental principles on which our democracy is supposed to operate.”
Despite elite colleges’ efforts to diversify, they are still limited in their ability to serve as true engines of economic mobility, said Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a left-leaning think tank.
“It does go against what we think higher education should be and it goes against our belief in a meritocracy,” he said. [...]
The American education system is defined by its decentralization; states, local areas, and schools wield considerable power over how students are educated, from preschool through college. But federal government's role in education is to still make sure American students have both a champion and a protector, an agency dedicated to the notion that when all students are able to thrive, our communities, our economy and our civic life become stronger.
This unfinished legacy is what makes the tenure of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education so tragic.
In a blow for voting rights today, an Ohio federal court ruled that the state does not have to provide relief to allow purged voters to participate in this November’s mid-term elections.
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.
“When we’re talking about elite schools and, certainly, free medical schools, I don’t think that’s what’s going to be driving the policy process,” said Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a think tank with operations in three cities including Boston that advocates for a diverse, expanded middle class and racial equality. [...]
Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, argues: “We cannot rely on states to fund education on their own or even allow for collective bargaining in many states. So I think that the federal government has to step in and provide some real financial leverage in order to raise the number of teachers, raise the job quality for teachers and raise, even if it’s nonteaching jobs, the positions that have been eliminated, particularly in two-year colleges but across the education system.”
“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.”
JEFFERSON CITY, MO – A federal judge in the Western District of Missouri issued an order today requiring the State of Missouri to take immediate steps to prevent Missourians from being denied their right to vote in this November’s election as a result of the state’s failure to comply with the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
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."
By Secretary Michele Reagan’s own estimate, 384,000 people did not have their voter registration addresses updated in accordance with the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) when they made an address change with the Motor Vehicle Division.
"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.