Category Archives: elections

First Wisconsin, now Michigan GOP moves to strip Democrats’ power

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From today’s MSNBC News:

Republicans who control Michigan’s Legislature voted Wednesday to advance a measure that strips campaign-finance oversight power from the Democratic secretary of state-elect, and they were poised to give lawmakers authority to stand up for GOP-backed laws if they think the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general are not adequately defending the state’s interests.

The lame-duck moves followed within hours of similar efforts in Wisconsin, where lawmakers voted earlier Wednesday to shift clout to the Republican-controlled Legislature and weaken the Democrat replacing the GOP governor.

Michigan Democrats in January will jointly hold the governor, attorney general and secretary offices for the first time in 28 years, but the Legislature will continue to be controlled by Republicans.

A day after GOP lawmakers finalized an unprecedented maneuver to gut minimum wage and paid sick leave laws, a Senate panel passed legislation that would create the Fair Political Practices Commission to enforce the campaign-finance law rather than Secretary of State-elect Jocelyn Benson, who ran in part on a pledge to advocate for election transparency.

Democrats called the bill a blatant power grab that would fly in the face of voters.

Read the complete article here.

WI Republicans Approve Bills Stripping Power From Incoming Dem. Governor

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From today’s New York Times:

After a rancorous, sleepless night of debate, Republican lawmakers early Wednesday pushed through a sweeping set of bills that will limit the power of Wisconsin’s newly elected Democrats, including the incoming governor and attorney general.

The legislation, which Democrats vehemently opposed and protesters chanted their anger over, passed through the Republican-held State Legislature after hours of closed-door meetings and some amendments. The votes fell largely along party lines; no Democrats supported the measures.

“That’s what this is about: power-hungry politicians using their grubby hands in their last-ditch effort to desperately cling to power,” said State Representative Katrina Shankland, a Democrat, before the vote Wednesday morning. “All we’ve seen demonstrated today and over the past few days is a contempt for the public.”

The fight over power in Madison came after Republicans, who have controlled the state for the last eight years, lost the offices of governor and attorney general during the midterm elections. Tony Evers, a Democrat, defeated Scott Walker, a two-term governor who drew national attention with a brief run for president.

Read the complete article here.

Georgia Set To Remain A Battleground For Voting Rights Ahead Of 2020

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From today’s NPR News:

When Democrat Stacey Abrams ended her bid last week to become governor of Georgia and the first black woman ever elected governor of any state, she issued a stinging indictment of Georgia’s voting system, a system overseen by her Republican opponent Brian Kemp, who was the state’s top election official during the 2018 midterms.

“Democracy failed Georgia,” said Abrams in a speech acknowledging Kemp would be the state’s next governor.

“Make no mistake, the former secretary of state was deliberate and intentional in his actions,” Abrams said. “I know that eight years of systemic disenfranchisement, disinvestment and incompetence had its desired effect on the electoral process in Georgia.”

In an interview this week with NPR, Abrams spoke about how she was nearly denied the chance to vote in person this year due to a clerical error.

Abrams said she’s preparing to sue the state of Georgia for “the gross mismanagement” of the 2018 election, and announced the launch of “Fair Fight Georgia,” an initiative to “pursue accountability in Georgia’s elections and integrity in the process of maintaining our voting rolls.”

For months, Kemp resisted calls from Democrats and civil rights groups for him to step aside from his role as the state’s top election official. He was also criticized for policies making voting more difficult for people of color, in order to gain a political advantage.

Read the complete article here.

Voting rights groups sue to prevent FL governor from participating in recount

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From today’s Jurist Online Magazine:

Voting rights groups League of Women Voters of Florida and Common Cause Florida filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking an injunction preventing Florida Governor Rick Scott from participating in the voting recount for the US Senate race, in which Scott is a candidate.

The plaintiffs filed the suit in the US District Court for the Northern District of Florida.

The governor has “substantial responsibilities for election administration” including being a member on a three-person committee that certifies election results.  The plaintiffs say:

In light of the pervasive opportunities for the Defendant Scott to improperly exercise power over the U.S. Senate race, his continued interventions in the race violate the basic notion of fairness that no man should be a judge in his own cause.

The plaintiffs allege Scott wants to use his power as governor to impede the recount. Scott accused liberals of “trying to steal the election” and said he wanted the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate the recount, which the plaintiffs say could intimidate election officials.

The plaintiffs gave Scott the opportunity to recuse himself from the case in a letter on Saturday, saying they would bring court action if he refused. Scott did not recuse himself from the case.

Upgrade voting systems, restore Voting Right Act, and end voter suppression

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From today’s USA Today:

In many ways, Election Day 2018 was a good one for American democracy. Millions of people turned out to vote. An unprecedented number of women are headed to Congress, including the first Native American women and the first Muslim-American women to serve on Capitol Hill. In Florida, voters restored voting rights to more than a million peoplewho had been disenfranchised for past felony convictions. In Michigan and Maryland, they approved same-day registration. In Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, and Utah, they said yes to fair legislative districts.

But at the same time, the election provided evidence of what many activists and experts have been saying for years: the machinery of our democracy needs serious maintenance. Together, aging infrastructure and resurgent voter suppression have jeopardized equal voting rights in the United States, turning what should be a source of national pride into cause for alarm.

The costs of poor preparation and outdated election equipment were plain to see. In downtown Atlanta, voters stood in line for more than three hours because only three voting machines had been sent to serve more than 3,000 people. In Richland County, South Carolina, voters reported that machines were changing their selections. Officials worked to address the issue, but the county elections director told the NAACP Legal Defense Fund that he only had one technician for every five polling sites. In Maryland, two precincts ran out of paper ballots; in Detroit and New York City, malfunctioning machines caused many voters to simply give up.

Read the complete article here.

Kemp Resigns as GA Secretary of State, With Governor’s Race Still Disputed

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From today’s New York Times:

Brian Kemp, the Republican who has claimed victory in the Georgia governor’s race, said on Thursday that he was resigning as secretary of state, removing himself from the process of determining whether he had in fact been elected.

With some ballots still to be counted, his Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, is just shy of enough votes to force a runoff. Ms. Abrams has not conceded, and The Associated Press and other major news organizations say the race is still too close to call.

Mr. Kemp attracted mounting criticism during the campaign for his management of an election in which he was also a candidate, but he had dismissed repeated calls from Democrats for him to resign in the weeks before Election Day.

Mr. Kemp made no mention of the elections process on Thursday in his resignation letter to the outgoing Republican governor, Nathan Deal, saying he was resigning because he wished “to focus on the transition to my gubernatorial administration.”

Appearing with Mr. Deal at a morning news conference at the State Capitol in Atlanta, Mr. Kemp said, “I think in light of where we are now, this will give public confidence to the certification process, even though, quite honestly, it’s being done at the county level.”

Read the complete article here.

Election Day: Trump and health care key issues in race for control of the House

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From today’s Washington Post:

Voters who will decide control of the U.S. House said President Trump and health care were two of the most important factors as they chose their candidates in the midterm election, according to preliminary results from a Washington Post-Schar School survey of battleground districts.

Battleground district polls: What voters are thinking on Election Day VIEW GRAPHIC 

More than four in 10 who cast early or absentee ballots or voted early Tuesday mentioned Trump or health care as the most important or second-most important factor for their vote, the preliminary results showed. The economy and immigration were close behind, receiving mention from over 3 in 10 voters in the results.

Roughly 8 in 10 voters rated the economy positively, after months of job and wage growth, but even so, a small majority said they thought the country was headed in the wrong direction.

The poll was conducted Monday and Tuesday among voters across 69 competitive congressional districts.

As the first national election since Trump’s presidential upset in 2016, the midterms gave Democrats an opportunity to capi­tal­ize on his low, 40-percent approval rating, a restive national mood and frustration with one-party leadership in Washington under the GOP.

Read the complete article here.

GA’s Kemp Accuses Dems Of Hacking; Opponent Abrams Labels It A Stunt

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From today’s National Public Radio News:

Just two days before facing Democrat Stacey Abrams in a closely watched race to be Georgia’s next governor, the state’s sitting Secretary of State Brian Kemp — who is also the Republican candidate — says his office has opened an investigation and also asked the FBI “to investigate potential cyber crimes committed by the Democratic Party of Georgia.”

Kemp did not provide any evidence of any wrongdoing. In a highly unusual situation, Kemp is in the position of overseeing the election that will decide his state’s highest office and has faced criticism over how it has been handled.

Democrats responded to the announcement by calling it “a reckless and unethical ploy,” saying Kemp was trying to gain an edge in his neck-and-neck race with Abrams.

“He is trying to rile up his base by misleading voters yet again,” Abrams told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “The Democrats did nothing wrong.”

The accusation emerged on Sunday amid reports that Georgia’s election system, which Kemp oversees as secretary of state, is open to glaring vulnerabilities. It also came shortly after a federal judge ruled that Georgia must relax voting restrictions that could prevent more than 3,000 people from casting ballots in Tuesday’s poll.

Kemp provided few details about his accusation, other than to say, “We have asked the FBI – Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate” the possible crimes. It’s unclear from that statement whether Kemp was using “We” to refer to his campaign or his state office.

Citing a potential for conflict of interest, Georgia Democrats, including former President Jimmy Carter, have unsuccessfully asked Kemp to step aside as secretary of state until after the election.

Read the complete article here.

Native Americans fighting back against North Dakota voter ID law

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From today’s NBC News:

For more than a year, Tiffany Hunts Along has lived in a cherrywood mobile home high on a ridge in western North Dakota, where she knows every jagged hilltop and every flat field. But when asked last week about her street address, she was stumped.

“Hold on,” said Hunts Along, 40, after reaching for her newly issued tribal identification card. “That’s right — I live on Medicine Otter Loop.”

When she, her husband and their young children — Native Americans belonging to the Three Affiliated Tribes, also known as the M.H.A. Nation — moved into the White Oak Park community, there was no street signage and no direct postal service to the home. She fetches the family’s mail from the nearest post office on the other side of town; her old tribal ID had listed her address as a post office box.

She never bothered to learn her street’s name — until now.

Hunts Along plans to cast a ballot in Tuesday’s midterm election, but a change made by North Dakota lawmakers has forced her and an estimated 5,000 tribal citizens who may have IDs with a post office box address to obtain either a new state-issued or tribal identification showing their street address in order to vote. The requirement — meant to prevent voter fraud, state officials say — went into effect in early October.

Nowhere in North Dakota is the registration process more complex — and urgent — than on reservations. Voter rights groups are scrambling to ensure residents understand why they might be turned away at the polls when they present an ID. Absentee ballots must list a home address as well, not a post office box.

The 11th-hour push comes amid a competitive U.S. Senate race in solidly red North Dakota, where the stakes are high: Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, won by fewer than 3,000 votes in 2012. Native Americans, who largely vote Democratic, helped to tip that race in her favor, and she earned more than 80 percent of the vote in the state’s majority-Native counties. Recent polls, however, have given her GOP challenger, Rep. Kevin Cramer, a double-digit lead. His victory would boost the Republican Party’s chances of holding on to their slim majority in the Senate.

Read the complete article here.

GA election fight shows that southern tradition of voter suppression flourishes

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From today’s PBS Newshour:

Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp has been sued for suppressing minority votes after an Associated Press investigation revealed a month before November’s midterm election that his office has not approved 53,000 voter registrations – most of them filed by African-Americans.

Kemp, who is running for governor against Democrat Stacey Abrams, says his actions comply with a 2017 state law that requires voter registration information to match exactly with data from the Department of Motor Vehicles or Social Security Administration.

The law disproportionately affects black and Latino voters, say the civil rights groups who brought the lawsuit.

As a scholar of African-American history, I recognize an old story in this new electoral controversy.

Georgia, like many southern states, has suppressed black voters ever since the 15th Amendment gave African-American men the right to vote in 1870.

The tactics have simply changed over time.

Read the complete article here.