Elections

A national organization dedicated to increasing the number of L.G.B.T.Q. Americans who hold elected office began an effort on Wednesday to lobby states and localities to keep gay neighborhoods united as they begin the once-a-decade process of redrawing congressional districts and other political boundaries.The group, the L.G.B.T.Q. Victory Fund, will push entities tasked with redistricting to consider gay communities as “communities of interest,” or populations with shared political priorities. Its campaign, called “We Belong Together,” was announced a day before the Census Bureau is expected to release data that will be used to inform redistricting.“We’re a distinct population, and our voices need to be heard in government,” said Sean Meloy, the vice president of political programs at the Victory Fund. “We’re trying to empower more people to make that argument to their respective redistricting entity.”In the redistricting process, the officials redrawing a state’s political lines often consider the impact of dividing groups that have shared political interests. Grouping such communities into so-called opportunity districts enables those voters to elect candidates of their choice. Black and Latino Americans have historically been considered communities of interest under the Voting Rights Act, helping to elect thousands of people of color to local, state and national posts. Advocates trying to increase the representation of L.G.B.T.Q. Americans hope to recreate that success.According to a poll by Gallup, 5.6 percent of Americans identify as L.G.B.T.Q. But fewer than 1,000 elected officials in the United States — less than 0.2 percent — are openly gay, according to the L.G.B.T.Q. Victory Institute. And some areas where L.G.B.T.Q. residents are a higher percentage of the population, like Washington, D.C., have no openly gay representatives.The Victory Fund plans to focus its lobbying on the five states where independent redistricting commissions, instead of elected officials, redraw political boundaries. But it said it would support any local organizations looking to further the effort.“The L.G.B.T.Q. community is one that’s often forgotten about,” said State Representative Brianna Titone of Colorado, a Democrat. She signed a letter asking Colorado’s independent redistricting commission to treat L.G.B.T.Q. residents as a community of interest, arguing that the “community continues to fight for basic civil rights while experiencing hate and discrimination.”“The commission knew that we care about this issue,” said Ms. Titone, who is the first transgender person to be elected to the Colorado legislature. “However, they need to be guided on where those communities exist so we can make sure that the maps reflect them.”The Victory Fund hopes to capitalize on grass-roots momentum in areas where locals are already pushing for L.G.B.T.Q. residents to be considered a community of interest. In the absence of federal data, it is also relying on local advocates to identify where those residents live and congregate through other data points, like the locations of L.G.B.T.Q. businesses or health centers.In the early 1990s in San Diego, advocates pulled together data from a variety of sources in order to push for a council district that would encompass all of Hillcrest, an L.G.B.T.Q. neighborhood. That district elected the city’s first openly gay official, and the seat has been consistently held by a member of the L.G.B.T.Q. community ever since. Several have moved on to higher office, including the city’s current mayor, Todd Gloria.Activists cite that seat as evidence that a focus on redistricting is not only effective but can lead to a trickle-up effect in terms of political representation.According to the Gallup poll, nearly 16 percent of Americans aged 24 or younger who are eligible to vote identify as L.G.B.T.Q., much higher than the 5.6 percent among all age groups. Mr. Meloy said the growing population highlighted the need to treat L.G.B.T.Q. Americans as a community of interest.“We want to make sure this is standard practice the next time the census releases data,” Mr. Meloy said. “In order to even reach that 5.6 percent number — which is only going to increase — we need to elect 28,000 more people. So we’ve got a long way to go.” More

The most basic principles of democracy are that the candidate who gets the most votes is elected and that every voter gets an equal say in an election’s outcome. The California system for voting in a recall election violates these principles and should be declared unconstitutional.Unless that happens, on Sept. 14, voters will be asked to cast a ballot on two questions: Should Gov. Gavin Newsom be recalled and removed from office? If so, which of the candidates on the ballot should replace him?The first question is decided by a majority vote. If a majority favors recalling Mr. Newsom, he is removed from office. But the latter question is decided by a plurality, and whichever candidate gets the most votes, even if it is much less than a majority, becomes the next governor. Critically, Mr. Newsom is not on the ballot for the second question.By conducting the recall election in this way, Mr. Newsom can receive far more votes than any other candidate but still be removed from office. Many focus on how unfair this structure is to the governor, but consider instead how unfair it is to the voters who support him.Imagine that 10 million people vote in the recall election and 5,000,001 vote to remove Mr. Newsom, while 4,999,999 vote to keep him in office. He will then be removed and the new governor will be whichever candidate gets the most votes on the second question. In a recent poll, the talk show host Larry Elder was leading with 18 percent among the nearly 50 candidates on the ballot. With 10 million people voting, Mr. Elder would receive the votes of 1.8 million people. Mr. Newsom would have the support of almost three times as many voters, but Mr. Elder would become the governor.That scenario is not a wild hypothetical. Based on virtually every opinion poll, Mr. Newsom seems likely to have more votes to keep him in office than any other candidate will receive to replace him. But he may well lose the first question on the recall, effectively disenfranchising his supporters on the second question.This is not just nonsensical and undemocratic. It is unconstitutional. It violates a core constitutional principle that has been followed for over 60 years: Every voter should have an equal ability to influence the outcome of the election.The Supreme Court articulated this principle in two 1964 cases, Wesberry v. Sanders and Reynolds v. Sims. At the time, in many states, there were great disparities in the size of electoral districts. One district for a state legislative or a congressional seat might have 50,000 people and another 250,000. Those in the latter district obviously had less influence in choosing their representative.In Wesberry, the court held that congressional districts of widely varying size are unconstitutional because they are akin to giving one citizen more votes than another, denying citizens equal protection as a result. The court extended that reasoning later that year to state legislatures in Reynolds. Today the one-person one-vote principle requires roughly equal-size districts for every legislative body — the House of Representatives, state legislatures, City Councils, school boards — except for the United States Senate, where the Constitution mandates two senators per state.After Chief Justice Earl Warren retired in 1968, he remarked that of all the cases decided during his time on the court, the one-person one-vote rulings were the most important because they protected such a fundamental aspect of the democratic process.The California recall election, as structured, violates that fundamental principle. If Mr. Newsom is favored by a plurality of the voters, but someone else is elected, then his voters are denied equal protection. Their votes have less influence in determining the outcome of the election.This should not be a close constitutional question. It is true that federal courts generally are reluctant to get involved in elections. But the Supreme Court has been emphatic that it is the role of the judiciary to protect the democratic process and the principle of one-person one-vote.This issue was not raised in 2003 before the last recall, when Gray Davis was removed from office after receiving support from 44.6 percent of the voters. But his successor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was elected to replace him with 48.5 percent of the vote. So Mr. Schwarzenegger was properly elected.This time, we hope that a state or federal lawsuit will be brought challenging the recall election. The court could declare the recall election procedure unconstitutional and leave it to California to devise a constitutional alternative. Or it could simply add Mr. Newsom’s name on the ballot to the list of those running to replace him. That simple change would treat his supporters equally to others and ensure that if he gets more votes than any other candidate, he will stay in office.A court might not want to get involved until after the election, hoping that as in the last recall election, Mr. Newsom will not end up being replaced by a less popular candidate. But that would be unwise. Undoing an unconstitutional election after the fact would be considerably messier than fixing the process beforehand.The stakes for California are enormous, not only for who guides us through our current crises — from the pandemic to drought, wildfires and homelessness — but also for how we choose future governors. The Constitution simply does not permit replacing a governor with a less popular candidate.Erwin Chemerinsky is the dean of the School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of the forthcoming book “Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights.” Aaron S. Edlin is a professor of law and of economics at Berkeley.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

The Trump Company invested hundreds of millions in the properties during a time when the former president was reporting heavy losses on his income tax returns.LONDON — A Scottish judge on Wednesday opened a path to a possible investigation into the purchase of Donald Trump’s two golf courses in Scotland, in a ruling that could force the former president to explain how he funded the deals.The Scottish government had resisted pressure to demand financial details from Mr. Trump through an “unexplained wealth order,” a powerful legal instrument usually deployed against leading figures in organized crime or drug trafficking.But on Wednesday a judge ruled that Avaaz, an online campaign group, should be given the right to challenge the government’s rejection of calls for such a move.Nicknamed “McMafia orders,” unexplained wealth orders were introduced in 2018 to strengthen the government’s armory against organized crime. Those subject to them can ultimately be forced to forfeit their assets if they are unable to explain satisfactorily how they were purchased.Though it remains far from clear that such an investigation will ever arise in this case, Wednesday’s court decision is nonetheless a setback for Mr. Trump, whose financial and tax dealings are under investigation in the United States.“This was a hurdle we had to jump, and we can now proceed to the substance,” said Nick Flynn, legal director of Avaaz, welcoming the ruling.“If you don’t think there is reasonable suspicion over these purchases then I don’t think you’ve been paying attention,” he added. “It’s the collective responsibility of Scottish ministers to act on this.”Mr. Trump bought a golf course near Aberdeen in 2006. But campaigners have focused more of their questions on the purchase of the larger and more prestigious Turnberry property for $60 million in 2014 — a time when he was reporting substantial losses on his income tax returns. Despite the Trump Organization’s investment of nearly $300 million, none of the Scottish properties have turned a profit.Though Eric Trump once said that most of the company’s financing came from Russia in those years, he has since said that the golf course investments were financed with company funds. Mr. Trump himself has denied that the money came from Russia.On Wednesday, Sarah Malone, executive vice president of Trump International Scotland, described the push to investigate the funding of the organization’s golf courses as “political game-playing at its worst and a terrible waste of taxpayers’ money which further damages Scotland’s reputation as a serious country to invest in and do business.”“We have developed and operate two globally acclaimed, multi-award winning visitor destinations in Scotland and make a significant contribution to the Scottish leisure and tourism economy. This latest attempt to undermine that investment is an utter disgrace,” Ms. Malone said in a statement.Scottish ministers initially rejected the idea of issuing an unexplained wealth order, and there was a dispute over whose responsibility it would be to authorize such an investigation. In February, Scotland’s Parliament voted against a motion, brought by the Scottish Green Party, that would have pressed for more details on the source of the Trump Organization’s money.But on Wednesday in the Court of Session, Scotland’s highest civil court, the judge, Lord Sandison, sided with Avaaz, saying that its legal claim “had real prospects of success” and there was “a sensible legal argument to be had on the matters raised by the petition.” He also rejected Scottish government arguments that the petition had been filed too late to proceed.The decision was welcomed by the co-leader of the Scottish Greens, Patrick Harvie, who said in a statement that he was “glad we are a step forward in getting some clarity over why Trump’s business dealings in Scotland haven’t been investigated. It should never have got to the stage of a legal challenge from a nongovernmental organization for the Scottish government to confirm or deny whether they will seek a ‘McMafia order.’”In a statement, the Scottish government said that “it would be inappropriate for us to comment on an ongoing legal action.” More

US Capitol attackMan charged in Capitol riot also engaged in rightwing street brawlViolence erupted between antifascist protesters and supporters of a far-right preacher Jason Wilson@ More

President Jair Bolsonaro’s attacks on Brazil’s voting system as his standing in the polls slips is drawing comparisons to the messy 2020 election in the United States.RIO DE JANEIRO — Facing the prospect of a crushing defeat at the polls next year, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil is rousing supporters for an existential battle — against voting machines.Beleaguered by the devastating toll of the coronavirus, a sputtering economy and a surging rival, the president has launched a full-throated attack on the electronic voting system Brazil has relied on for 25 years. Unless voters get to record their choice on paper ballots, which the current system doesn’t allow, Mr. Bolsonaro has warned that the 2022 election could be suspended.“An election outside those parameters is not an election,” Mr. Bolsonaro told supporters during a recent rally in the southern state of Florianópolis, calling on his base to prepare to “fight with all the weapons.”The prospect of a destabilizing showdown next year loomed on Tuesday as Mr. Bolsonaro’s government organized a military parade in which armored tanks rumbled past Congress just hours before legislators were scheduled to debate a bill that would require electronic voting machines to print paper ballots.The lower house of Congress voted late Tuesday to reject the proposal.But the campaign for a return to a paper ballot system — a longtime obsession of Mr. Bolsonaro’s — has alarmed leaders in the judiciary, opposition lawmakers and political scientists, who see in his playbook the makings of a power grab in Latin America’s largest nation. Election officials and independent experts say Brazil’s electronic voting system, which was adopted in 1996, has strong safeguards and a stellar track record.“To defile the public debate with disinformation, lies, hatred and conspiracy theories is undemocratic conduct,” Luís Roberto Barroso, a Supreme Court justice and the head of Brazil’s electoral tribunal said in a recent speech.Military vehicles passed by election posters for Mr. Bolsonaro on Tuesday.Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesCiting democratic backsliding in Turkey, Hungary, Nicaragua and Venezuela, Justice Barroso said it has become alarmingly common for leaders who come to power through the ballot box to “deconstruct, brick by brick, the pillars of democracy.”Critics fear that much like President Donald J. Trump convinced many supporters that he was robbed of a victory in 2020, Mr. Bolsonaro is laying the groundwork to dispute an electoral loss in October 2022.Fernando Luiz Abrucio, a political scientist at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, said that such a scenario could lead to far more mayhem in Brazil, where democracy was restored only in the late 1980s, than it did in the United States.“If he loses the election, he can mobilize the military forces, the police, the militias,” Mr. Abrucio said. “The degree of violence could be much greater than the episode in the U.S. Capitol.”The military display on Tuesday triggered a cascade of condemnation statements and memes.Military vehicles parading past Congress on Tuesday.Victor Moriyama for The New York Times“It’s unacceptable that the armed forces have allowed their image to be used in this manner, to raise the possibility of the use of force in support of a coup-minded antidemocratic measure defended by the president,” nine opposition parties said in a statement.Mr. Bolsonaro began railing against the voting system several years ago, when he was a fringe, ultraconservative member of Congress with little power or visibility in the capital.In 2015, he proposed a constitutional amendment requiring that electronic machines print a record of each vote, which would be deposited in a ballot box. Mr. Bolsonaro argued at the time that the redundancy would reduce the “chance of fraud to zero.”Congress approved the measure, but the Supreme Court said it violated privacy and ruled it unconstitutional, which meant the voting system remained unchanged.The matter faded from the political radar until Mr. Bolsonaro emerged as the presidential front-runner following the first round of voting in the October 2018 election. Instead of celebrating his triumph, Mr. Bolsonaro stunned the political establishment by claiming that he had been robbed of an outright victory, which would have required winning more than 50 percent of votes.Even after he won the election in 2018 with a 10 percentage point margin, Mr. Bolsonaro continued to claim, without presenting evidence, that the system was rigged. His quest to discredit the integrity of the election system has become louder and more audacious in recent weeks as Mr. Bolsonaro’s standing in the polls has slipped amid growing exasperation over the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.A poll conducted in early August by the firm Poder Data shows that one in every five voters who supported Mr. Bolsonaro in 2018 would now vote for his main rival, former President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva. In a two-candidate matchup, Mr. da Silva would trounce the incumbent 52 percent to 32 percent, according to the poll.Polls project that the former President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva would win in an election against Mr. Bolsonaro.Miguel Schincariol/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. da Silva on Tuesday accused the president of using the printed vote debate to divert attention from his track record on unemployment and poverty, which have grown during the pandemic.“Bolsonaro must be ready to face this fact: He is going to lose the election,” Mr. da Silva said in a statement, raising the prospect that the incumbent will refuse to participate in the traditional transfer of power rituals. Supreme Court justices have reacted with alarm to Mr. Bolsonaro’s attacks against the voting system, which have played out in lengthy interviews by conservative journalists and in the videos the president broadcasts on social media. Earlier this month, the court opened investigations into the president’s claims about voting machine fraud.Filipe Barros, a lawmaker who supports Mr. Bolsonaro, said in an interview that electronic machines could be tampered with and that paper ballots would create a mechanism to independently certify the outcome recorded by machines.“It’s a risk to democracy,” he said.Experts say the voting machines in Brazil, where voting is compulsory, have robust security measures. They are not connected to the internet, which makes them all but impossible to hack. The identity of voters is verified by a biometric scanner that scans a person’s fingerprint.Brazil’s electronic voting machines are highly secure.Eraldo Peres/Associated PressLast month eight former attorneys general issued a statement calling efforts to create a paper ballot system unconstitutional, arguing that the added step would compromise the right to vote secretly. In Brazil, the attorney general’s office is in charge of investigating electoral crimes.Before the current system was adopted, experts say, it was common for political power brokers to take people to the polls and verify how they filled out ballots.“At no time has the current voting system been called into question, nor has there been any evidence that it has ever been tampered with,” said Raquel Dodge, a former attorney general who was among the signatories of the letter. “Brazil’s electoral system is very advanced, and I believe we need to make this clear and transparent to Brazilian voters and the world.”President Biden’s administration has also demonstrated its support for the current system, with Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, raising the topic with Mr. Bolsonaro during a recent visit to Brasília.American officials conveyed “great confidence in the ability of the Brazilian institutions to carry out a free and fair election with proper safeguards in place against fraud,” Juan González, the senior director for the Western Hemisphere at the National Security Council told reporters on Monday. “We stressed the importance of not undermining confidence in that process.” More

Once again, the Senate will begin a marathon “vote-a-rama,” dealing with dozens of nonbinding amendments before the one vote that counts, passage of a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint.WASHINGTON — Some senators have tried to ban the process. Others simply say it’s the worst part of their jobs.Even Senator Robert C. Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat who created and fortified some of the chamber’s most complex rules before his death, warned the so-called vote-a-rama process could “send some old men to their deaths.”Still on Tuesday, as the Senate turned to a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint that begins the Democrats’ push to expand the social safety net, the tradition of considering hours upon hours of nonbinding budget amendments will once again get underway — with senators forcing politically sensitive votes on their rivals as campaign operatives compile a record for possible attack ads.Only one vote really matters: If all 50 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents give final approval to the blueprint, Senate committees can begin work this fall on the most significant expansion of the safety net since the 1960s, knowing that legislation cannot be filibustered under the Senate’s complicated budget rules.But before that final vote, which looked set to come either late Tuesday or early Wednesday, senators were having to deal with a blizzard of advisory amendments, and like every vote-a-rama that preceded it, it was painful.“It’s a little bit like an extended visit to a dentist,” said Ross K. Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University. “The whole process is an exercise in ‘gotchas.’”The Budget Act limits Senate debate to 50 hours on a budget resolution, but over time the Senate has developed its vote-a-rama custom, which allows for an accelerated voting procedure on amendments even after the 50 hours have expired. In recent years, the practice has allowed just minutes of debate for each amendment followed by a short vote.In practice, any senator can prolong the process by offering new amendments for votes until he or she runs out of steam. The result is a procedural food fight with a silly name that does little other than keep Capitol denizens up past their bedtimes and cause twinges of political pain. (Vote-a-RAHM-a? Vote-a-RAM-a? Depends on the senator.)The amendments can range from the serious to the absurd. During a debate over health care in 2010, Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, forced a vote banning coverage of erectile dysfunction drugs for convicted sex offenders as a way to try to embarrass Democrats who supported the legislation. That prompted Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, to condemn the amendment as a “mockery of this Senate.”But the power of the political “gotcha” is diminishing with overuse. This is the third vote-a-rama this year alone. During the last episode in March — the longest open vote in modern Senate history — the Senate entertained 37 votes on amendments. During February’s vote-a-rama, there were 41.Should Democrats successfully pass the blueprint and draft a multi-trillion-dollar package, a fourth vote-a-rama is expected in the fall.“The budget resolution is usually the platform for political theater, and both sides having votes that are designed to make a statement because none of it is binding,” said Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, who plans to retire next year.Both parties have historically lamented the vote-a-rama process, but neither wants to give it up. Typically, the party in the minority — in this case, the Republicans — revels in the uncomfortable votes it can force upon the majority party that typically controls the chamber, its floor time and what gets voted on.Republicans hammered Democrats on Tuesday over the size of the spending package, the planned tax increases to pay for it and liberal proposals to rein in climate change, which they deride as part of the “Green New Deal.”Senator Bernie Sanders, who is in charge of the Senate Budget Committee, said his plan was simply “to defeat all of the poison pill amendments.”T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesSenators filed hundreds of amendments, including a list from Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, setting up votes to, among other things, add to the budget 100,000 police officers and promote a “patriotic education in K-12 schools” that teaches “students to love America.”Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, had previously vowed “to ferociously attack” the Democrats’ plans. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, said on Tuesday that Senate staff members had processed hundreds of amendments and pledged that “every single senator will be going on the record over and over and over.”Democrats largely appeared sanguine before the whole exercise. Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent in charge of the Senate Budget Committee, said his plan was simply “to defeat all of the poison pill amendments.”“That’s the whole point,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts. “They want to try to make us take what they think will be votes that they can use in television ads. This isn’t about legislating. This is just about jockeying for political advantage.”“We’ll have to endure a certain amount of that,” she added, “but we’ll get the budget resolution passed.”Even Republicans acknowledged that, at least with the budget blueprint, it would ultimately be a fruitless endeavor to derail a proposal that Democrats said they had the votes for.“We just continue to have conversations with colleagues on the other side of the aisle, encourage them not to support it, but I just think we’re going to get rolled,” said Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa. “They’ll wipe the slate clean at the end of the process.”Occasionally, though, a binding vote can take place. Republicans, for instance, could try to insist the Judiciary Committee be cut out of the budget reconciliation process, thus blocking the inclusion of a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants. (But the committee’s inclusion also meant a wider array of amendments could be considered under Senate rules, given the committee’s expansive jurisdiction.)The votes also occasionally produce a moment of truth for politicians. After many Democrats hemmed and hawed over stating their views on a $15 minimum wage this year, a forced vote on an amendment during the vote-a-rama in March revealed seven of the chamber’s more centrist Democrats opposed the increase.Despite the political risks, Mr. Baker said the votes during a vote-a-rama did not typically end up substantially hurting political candidates. Constituents tend to judge their senators on major policy issues, not votes that fly by, often after midnight.“Those kinds of votes can prove to be problematic but in a torrent of amendments, I think it becomes part of the noise,” he said. “That doesn’t mean they’re not going to be scared about it.” More

Dominion Voting Systems, an election technology company that became a target of a baseless pro-Trump conspiracy theory about rigged voting machines, sued the right-wing television networks Newsmax and One America News on Tuesday, accusing them of defamation.Dominion, which also sued Fox News this year, argued in the filings that both channels served as platforms for flagrant falsehoods that devastated its reputation.“The defendants named show no remorse, nor any sign they intend to stop spreading disinformation,” Dominion’s chief executive, John Poulos, said in a statement. “We have no choice but to seek to hold those responsible to account.”Dominion is seeking $1.6 billion in damages from each network. The company also sued Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.com, who has publicly accused Dominion of rigging votes to ensure that President Donald J. Trump would not be re-elected. Mr. Byrne also falsely portrayed Dominion as linked to Hugo Chávez, the long-dead Venezuelan president.Dominion had previously sued Mr. Trump’s lawyers Rudolph Giuliani and Sidney Powell for defamation, along with Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow and another Trump partisan who has relentlessly spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. Fox News has filed a motion to dismiss the Dominion suit.Newsmax, which is owned by Christopher Ruddy, a Trump confidant, responded in a statement on Tuesday: “Newsmax simply reported on allegations made by well-known public figures, including the president, his advisers and members of Congress. Dominion’s action today is a clear attempt to squelch such reporting and undermine a free press.”Representatives for One America News did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

The gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety plans to spend $3 million to recruit and train its volunteers to run for office, with a goal of having 200 enter races in the next election cycle.The program is the latest step in a yearslong effort by groups that support stricter gun laws to become politically competitive with the National Rifle Association, which has kept a powerful hold on American politics as mass shootings have multiplied.That dynamic has begun to shift, with the N.R.A. losing influence among moderate Democrats and more gun restrictions being passed by state legislatures. But even proposals with broad bipartisan support among voters, like universal background checks and red-flag laws, have languished in Congress.Everytown’s new program, called Demand a Seat, will begin this fall and will involve training in the nuts and bolts of running a campaign, as well as instruction from advocates-turned-legislators such as Representative Lucy McBath, Democrat of Georgia. It is aimed at members of Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action, two arms of Everytown, which is backed by Michael R. Bloomberg.“Our volunteers have fought for those people sitting at the table to listen to them, and some wouldn’t, so now our volunteers and gun violence survivors will fight to fill those seats,” said Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action. According to Everytown, more than 100 of its volunteers ran for office last year and 43 won.The group said that more than 50 former volunteers have been elected to state legislatures, 18 to city or county councils, eight to school boards and two to Congress: Ms. McBath and Marie Newman, Democrat of Illinois.Ms. McBath, who was first elected in 2018, said in an interview on Monday that as an advocate with Moms Demand Action she had learned about organizing people, giving speeches and talking about policy with different audiences. But, she said, “I had no idea how to run a campaign.”“I’d never run for office before,” said Ms. McBath, who got involved with Moms Demand Action after her son, Jordan Davis, was fatally shot. “I got a little bit of help from people around me and went to a boot-camp training over a weekend, but I wish I had this kind of structure in place, an ongoing structure I could tie into the entire time.”State Representative Jo Ella Hoye, a Democrat, was elected to the Kansas Legislature in November after leading Moms Demand Action’s Kansas chapter for about three years. She said she had staffed her campaign mostly with fellow volunteers, who made more than 10,000 phone calls for her.“You have this light bulb moment: I used this database for our organizing, and that’s what I’m going to use for our campaign. We take training on messaging and social media,” Ms. Hoye said. “Formalizing it is just going to make that light bulb click a little sooner.”She and Ms. McBath will advise the program’s participants, as will, among others, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta, a Democrat; former Mayor Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans, a Democrat; and former Representative David Jolly of Florida, who was a Republican while in office but has since left the party. More