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      The US state that fought back after Republicans tried to rig its elections

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      The US state that fought back after Republicans tried to rig its electionsDespite a flurry of legal action and very public disputes between members, Michigan has produced some of the fairest voting maps in the US In recent months, Michigan should have been a hotbed for attempts to rig elections, like it was in 2011. That year, the Republican-led legislature distorted the voting maps so that the GOP was able to win nine of Michigan’s 14 congressional seats despite never earning more than 50.5% of the vote statewide.After Democrats’ historic defeat on voting rights, what happens next?Read moreA decade later, as the redistricting cycle has come around again, the dynamics are just as toxic. The battleground state broke for Joe Biden by fewer than 155,000 votes, and the Republican-controlled legislature has fought endlessly with the Democratic governor about election “audits”, voter IDs and absentee ballots.But this cycle, the state’s redistricting commission has pulled off something remarkable. Despite a flurry of legal action and very public disputes between members, it has produced some of the fairest maps in the US. How did it manage it – and will the maps survive?Neither party was involved in drawing new maps, a process that is open to abuse if politicians are allowed to allocate particular voters to particular districts in order to guarantee a win there. Instead, the responsibility fell to 13 Michiganders – four Democrats, four Republicans and five independents – who were randomly selected by the state.Get the latest updates on voting rights in the Guardian’s Fight to vote newsletterThe Michigan Independent Citizens’ Redistricting Commission (MICRC) includes a foster care worker, a retired banker, an aspiring orthopedic surgeon, a mother of six, a college student and a real estate broker.MICRC, and the approach it epitomizes, came about thanks to Katie Fahey, a Michigan resident and political novice who posted a message on Facebook two days after the 2016 presidential election. She said she wanted to take on gerrymandering and eventually recruited more than 14,000 volunteers to campaign for an amendment to the state’s constitution. It passed with 61% of the vote and created the commission, one of the most successful ways to unrig the redistricting process so far and a potential model for other states.Combatting gerrymandering is no small feat. In 35 states, partisan politicians in the legislatures are mostly or fully in charge of redistricting, and of the maps that have been released and evaluated by the Princeton Gerrymandering Project so far, the average grade is a “D”. States led by both Republicans and Democrats – including Maryland, Texas, North Carolina, Oregon, Ohio, Wisconsin and Illinois – earned the lowest possible grade.While Republicans haven’t gerrymandered as much as Democrats originally feared – in fact, the number of Democratic-leaning seats could increase by a few this year – both parties have nearly eliminated their competition. Of the 287 completed congressional districts, only 42 (14.6%) are competitive, and 13 states have passed maps with zero competitive districts, according to an analysis from the Princeton Gerrymandering Project and RepresentUs.Part of MICRC’s success is that it’s almost entirely insulated from the legislature. In December of 2019, applications to MICRC were randomly sent to 250,000 citizens. The pool of respondents was then trimmed (at random) to 200, though 60 of the applicants had to self identify as Republicans, 60 as Democrats, and 80 affiliated with neither party. At this point, Democrats and Republicans in the legislature were allowed to strike up to 10 commissioners each, after which the final 13 were then chosen, again at random.The results were nearly revolutionary. During perhaps one of the most contentious political processes of the decade, MICRC was able to find cross-partisan agreement. Their final congressional map was approved by eight of the commission’s 13 members – two Republicans, two Democrats, and four independents – and will go into effect before the primaries this year.The congressional map was graded “A” by the Princeton Gerrymandering Project.However, the process still has its critics.Republicans filed a lawsuit claiming that the map arbitrarily “fragments counties, townships, and municipalities” and that it allows too much population deviation between congressional districts.Meanwhile, good government groups were upset about the committee’s first closed-door meeting, and several media outlets sued to have records from the event released to the public. In late December, MICRC turned over documents showing that it was preparing for litigation about how it split Black voters across different districts, while previously they were geographically more concentrated.On 5 January, ​​members of the Michigan house of representatives representing Detroit and others challenged the commission’s maps, arguing that they dilute the voting strength of Black voters, particularly in and around Detroit.However, proving that point in court will be difficult, expensive and time-consuming, says Michael Li, senior counsel for the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program.Federal law dictates that minority voters have the opportunity to elect their candidate of choice, but it doesn’t set a specific threshold for what percentage of voters in a district need to be of that minority group.Li suggested that even if the challenge succeeds, it will probably lead to relatively minor changes around Detroit, as opposed to the commission having to start from scratch.Still, the pressure of drawing – and then having to defend – the map seems to be wearing on the commissioners. One accused the group’s chair of bullying her and introduced a motion to censure her, and members have even disagreed over whether to produce a “lessons learned” documentary about the process, with two refusing to participate at all.Since at least early December, commissioners have also voiced skepticism of their general counsel, who resigned abruptly last week.The episode underscores a potential lesson for states looking to adopt a similar style of commission: non-politicians may be better able to work across party lines but might must be prepared for the rancor, criticism and partisan lawsuits that follow.If the goal is fairer maps, though, the trade-off may be worth it.“On the whole, these maps are really good maps,” says Li, “and markedly different than what we’re seeing around the country.”TopicsMichiganThe fight to voteUS voting rightsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Michigan’s New Congressional Maps Undo Years of Gerrymandering

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      A citizen ballot initiative took redistricting out of the hands of partisan legislators. The result: competitive political districts — and an example of how to push back against hyperpartisanship.One of the country’s most gerrymandered political maps has suddenly been replaced by one of the fairest.A decade after Michigan Republicans gave themselves seemingly impregnable majorities in the state Legislature by drawing districts that heavily favored their party, a newly created independent commission approved maps late Tuesday that create districts so competitive that Democrats have a fighting chance of recapturing the State Senate for the first time since 1984.The work of the new commission, which includes Democrats, Republicans and independents and was established through a citizen ballot initiative, stands in sharp contrast to the type of hyperpartisan extreme gerrymandering that has swept much of the country, exacerbating political polarization — and it may highlight a potential path to undoing such gerrymandering.With lawmakers excluded from the mapmaking process, Michigan’s new districts will much more closely reflect the overall partisan makeup of the hotly contested battleground state.“Michigan’s a jump ball, and this is a jump-ball map,” said Michael Li, a senior counsel who focuses on redistricting at the Brennan Center for Justice. “There’s a lot of competition in this map, which is what you would expect in a state like Michigan.”The commission’s three new maps — for Congress, the State House and the State Senate — restore a degree of fairness, but there were some notable criticisms. All of the maps still have a slight Republican advantage, in part because Democratic voters in the state are mostly concentrated in densely populated areas. The map for the State House also splits more than half of the state’s counties into several districts, despite redistricting guidelines that call for keeping neighboring communities together.The maps may also face a legal challenge from Black voters in the Detroit area, to whom the commission tried to give more opportunities for representation by unpacking them, or spreading them among more legislative districts.Redistricting at a GlanceEvery 10 years, each state in the U.S is required to redraw the boundaries of their congressional and state legislative districts in a process known as redistricting.Redistricting, Explained: Answers to your most pressing questions about redistricting and gerrymandering.Breaking Down Texas’s Map: How redistricting efforts in Texas are working to make Republican districts even more red.G.O.P.’s Heavy Edge: Republicans are poised to capture enough seats to take the House in 2022, thanks to gerrymandering alone.Legal Options Dwindle: Persuading judges to undo skewed political maps was never easy. A shifting judicial landscape is making it harder.Detroit’s State Senate delegation will jump to nine members from five, and its State House delegation to 15 representatives from nine. But local Black elected officials and civil rights groups contend that while the intention may have been noble, the result actually dilutes Black voting strength, not only in general elections but also in primaries, in which elections for Black legislators are almost always decided.The reduced percentages of Black voters in some of the new districts may prevent candidates from winning primary elections on the strength of the Black vote alone, those critics say.“The goal of creating partisan fairness cannot so negatively impact Black communities as to erase us from the space,” said Adam Hollier, a state senator from the Detroit area. “They think that they are unpacking, because that is the narrative that they hear from across the country, without looking at what that means in the city of Detroit.”Republicans were also discussing possible challenges to the new maps.“We are evaluating all options to take steps necessary to defend the voices silenced by this commission,” Gustavo Portela, a Michigan G.O.P. spokesman, said in a statement Wednesday, without elaborating on whose voices he meant.The G.O.P. advantage in Michigan’s Legislature has held solid for years even as Democrats carried the state in presidential elections and won races for governor and U.S. Senate. In 2014, Senator Gary Peters, a Democrat, won the seat formerly held by Carl Levin by more than 13 percentage points. Yet in the same year, Republicans in the State Senate expanded their supermajority, winning 27 of 38 seats.So great a divergence between statewide and legislative elections is often a telltale sign of a gerrymandered map. And a lawsuit in 2018 unearthed emails in which Republicans boasted about packing “Dem garbage” into fewer districts and ensuring Republican advantages “in 2012 and beyond.”But the new State Senate map would create 20 seats that President Biden would have carried in 2020 and 18 that former President Donald J. Trump would have carried, giving Democrats new hopes of competitiveness.The new maps offer no guarantee that Democrats will win either chamber, however. And in a strong year for the G.O.P., which 2022 may be, Republicans could retain their advantage in the Legislature and could also come away with a majority of the state’s new 13-seat congressional delegation.The congressional map includes three tossup seats where the 2020 presidential margin was less than five points, and two more seats that could be competitive in a wave year, with presidential margins of less than 10 points. Two current Democratic representatives, Haley Stevens and Andy Levin, were drawn into the same district, setting up a competitive primary in the 11th District. Both declared their intention to run on Tuesday.The State House will also feature at least 20 competitive districts.Preserving such competition, election experts say, is one of the key goals in redistricting reform.“This is the quintessential success story of redistricting,” said Sam Wang, director of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. “These maps treated the two parties, Democrats and Republicans, about as fairly as you could ever imagine a map being. In all three cases, whoever gets the most votes statewide is likely to control the chamber or the delegation. And there’s competition in all three maps.”Understand How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Defense seeks dismissal of indictment for Gretchen Whitmer kidnap plot

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      Defense seeks dismissal of indictment for Gretchen Whitmer kidnap plotFive men are charged with conspiring to kidnap Democratic Michigan governor over coronavirus restrictions Defense attorneys want dismissed the indictment against five men accused of plotting to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, because of what they call “egregious overreaching” by federal agents and informants.How the domestic terror plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor unravelledRead moreThe government alleges that the men were upset over coronavirus restrictions last year when they conspired to kidnap Whitmer, a Democrat then spoken about as a possible vice-president, even scouting her second home in northern Michigan.Five people are charged with kidnapping conspiracy and face trial on 8 March in Grand Rapids. They have pleaded not guilty and claim to be victims of entrapment. Federal prosecutors have argued the men were not entrapped.In January, a sixth man, 26-year-old Ty Garbin, pleaded guilty. He is serving a six-year federal prison sentence.In a 20-page motion filed in court on Saturday night, defense attorneys alleged FBI agents and federal prosecutors invented a conspiracy and entrapped people who could face life in prison.The attorneys asked a US district judge, Robert Jonker, to dismiss the conspiracy charge, which would effectively knock down the government’s case and other connected charges, the Detroit News reported.The request comes after developments and claims about the government’s team, including the conviction of Richard Trask, an FBI special agent arrested on a domestic violence charge and later fired.“Essentially, the evidence here demonstrates egregious overreaching by the government’s agents and by the informants those agents handled,” defense attorneys wrote in their filing.“When the government was faced with evidence showing that the defendants had no interest in a kidnapping plot, it refused to accept failure and continued to push its plan.”Messages left with the US attorney for the western district of Michigan and the US Department of Justice were not immediately returned.TopicsMichiganUS politicsUS crimenewsReuse this content More

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      America’s Anti-Democratic Movement

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      It’s making progress.American politics these days can often seem fairly normal. President Biden has had both big accomplishments and big setbacks in his first year, as is typical. In Congress, members are haggling over bills and passing some of them. At the Supreme Court, justices are hearing cases. Daily media coverage tends to reflect this apparent sense of political normalcy.But American politics today is not really normal. It may instead be in the midst of a radical shift away from the democratic rules and traditions that have guided the country for a very long time.An anti-democratic movement, inspired by Donald Trump but much larger than him, is making significant progress, as my colleague Charles Homans has reported. In the states that decide modern presidential elections, this movement has already changed some laws and ousted election officials, with the aim of overturning future results. It has justified the changes with blatantly false statements claiming that Biden did not really win the 2020 election.The movement has encountered surprisingly little opposition. Most leading Republican politicians have either looked the other way or supported the anti-democratic movement. In the House, Republicans ousted Liz Cheney from a leadership position because she called out Trump’s lies.The pushback within the Republican Party has been so weak that about 60 percent of Republican adults now tell pollsters that they believe the 2020 election was stolen — a view that’s simply wrong.Most Democratic officials, for their part, have been focused on issues other than election security, like Covid-19 and the economy. It’s true that congressional Democrats have tried to pass a new voting rights bill, only to be stymied by Republican opposition and the filibuster. But these Democratic efforts have been sprawling and unfocused. They have included proposals — on voter-ID rules and mail-in ballots, for example — that are almost certainly less important than a federal law to block the overturning of elections, as The Times’s Nate Cohn has explained.All of which has created a remarkable possibility: In the 2024 presidential election, Republican officials in at least one state may overturn a legitimate election result, citing fraud that does not exist, and award the state’s electoral votes to the Republican nominee. Trump tried to use this tactic in 2020, but local officials rebuffed him.Since then, his supporters have launched a campaign — with the Orwellian name “Stop the Steal” — to ensure success next time. Steve Bannon has played a central role, using his podcast to encourage Trump supporters to take over positions in election administration, ProPublica has explained.“This is a five-alarm fire,” Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic secretary of state in Michigan, who presided over the 2020 vote count there, told The Times. “If people in general, leaders and citizens, aren’t taking this as the most important issue of our time and acting accordingly, then we may not be able to ensure democracy prevails again in ’24.”Barton Gellman, who wrote a recent Atlantic magazine article about the movement, told Terry Gross of NPR last week, “This is, I believe, a democratic emergency, and that without very strong and systematic pushback from protectors of democracy, we’re going to lose something that we can’t afford to lose about the way we run elections.”Theda Skocpol, a Harvard political scientist, notes that the movement is bigger than Trump. “I think things have now moved to the point that many Republican Party officials and elected officeholders are self-starters,” she told Thomas Edsall of Times Opinion.Ballot counting in Wisconsin in November 2020.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesIn plain sightThe main battlegrounds are swing states where Republicans control the state legislature, like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.Republicans control these legislatures because of both gerrymandered districts and Democratic weakness outside of major metro areas. (One way Democrats can push back against the anti-democratic movement: Make a bigger effort to win working-class votes.) The Constitution lets state legislatures set the rules for choosing presidential electors.“None of this is happening behind closed doors,” Jamelle Bouie, a Times columnist, recently wrote. “We are headed for a crisis of some sort. When it comes, we can be shocked that it is actually happening, but we shouldn’t be surprised.”Here is an overview of recent developments:Arizona. Republican legislators have passed a law taking away authority over election lawsuits from the secretary of state, who’s now a Democrat, and giving it to the attorney general, a Republican. Legislators are debating another bill that would allow them to revoke election certification “by majority vote at any time before the presidential inauguration.”Georgia. Last year, Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, helped stop Trump’s attempts to reverse the result. State legislators in Georgia have since weakened his powers, and a Trump-backed candidate is running to replace Raffensperger next year. Republicans have also passed a law that gives a commission they control the power to remove local election officials.Michigan. Kristina Karamo, a Trump-endorsed candidate who has repeated the lie that the 2020 elections were fraudulent, is running for secretary of state, the office that oversees elections. (Republican candidates are running on similar messages in Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and elsewhere, according to ABC News.)Pennsylvania. Republicans are trying to amend the state’s Constitution to make the secretary of state an elected position, rather than one that the governor appoints. Pennsylvania is also one of the states where Trump allies — like Stephen Lindemuth, who attended the Jan. 6 rally that turned into an attack on Congress — have won local races to oversee elections.Wisconsin. Senator Ron Johnson is urging the Republican-controlled Legislature to take full control of federal elections. Doing so could remove the governor, currently a Democrat, from the process, and weaken the bipartisan state elections commission.What’s next?The new anti-democratic movement may still fail. This year, for example, Republican legislators in seven states proposed bills that would have given partisan officials a direct ability to change election results. None of the bills passed.Arguably the most important figures on this issue are Republican officials and voters who believe in democracy and are uncomfortable with using raw political power to overturn an election result.Miles Taylor, a former Trump administration official, has helped to start the Renew America Movement, which supports candidates — of either party — running against Trump-backed Republicans. It is active in congressional races but does not have enough resources to compete in the state contests that often determine election procedures, Taylor told The Times.Gellman, the Atlantic writer, argues that Democrats and independents — as well as journalists — can make a difference by paying more attention. “Grass-roots organizers who are in support of democratic institutions,” he said on NPR, “could be doing what the Republicans are doing at the precinct and the county and the state level in terms of organizing to control election authorities to ensure that they remain nonpartisan or neutral.”For more: Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, was involved in fighting the election outcome, according to the House Committee investigating the Capitol attack.THE LATEST NEWSThe VirusCovid has killed one in 100 Americans 65 or older.Weak health care infrastructure poses challenges for many of Africa’s vaccination programs.A sense of endlessness: Anxiety and depression are taking hold.Other Big StoriesSalvaging belongings from wreckage in Kentucky.William Widmer for The New York TimesTornadoes killed at least 90 people in the U.S. this weekend. Here’s where they struck.Chris Wallace is leaving Fox News after 18 years — and after raising questions about Tucker Carlson’s work — to join CNN.Gov. Gavin Newsom of California called for legislation modeled on Texas’s abortion law to go after the gun industry.A litany of crises is confronting Los Angeles before next year’s mayoral election.OpinionsThe New York TimesThe climate crisis is reshaping the planet. Here’s what it looks like in 193 countries.Gail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss inflation and crime.MORNING READSAnd just like that: It’s Peloton vs. “Sex and the City.”The Media Equation: A climate-change comedy nails the media’s failures.Quiz time: The average score on our latest news quiz was 8.6. See how well you do.Advice from Wirecutter: Beware overpriced, mediocre wines.The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 6Numerous inquiries More

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      William Hartmann, 63, Michigan Official Who Disputed Election, Dies

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      He refused to certify Joseph Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in Detroit but later relented. A foe of Covid vaccines, he was hospitalized with the virus.William Hartmann, one of two Republican election officials from Michigan who initially refused to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election in Wayne County, where Joe Biden had trounced Donald J. Trump, died on Nov. 30 at a hospital in Wyandotte, Mich., near Detroit. He was 63. About two weeks before Mr. Hartmann’s death, which was confirmed by the Michigan Republican Party, his sister, Elizabeth Hartmann, wrote on Facebook that he was “in ICU with Covid pneumonia and currently on a ventilator.” Mr. Hartmann had been outspoken in his opposition to Covid vaccines.He drew national attention after he and another Republican member of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, Monica Palmer, refused to certify the election results. Mr. Biden had won the county, which includes the city of Detroit, with 68 percent of the vote, compared with 31 percent for Mr. Trump.The two election officials pointed to minor recording discrepancies involving a few hundred votes, though the discrepancies had no effect on the outcome: Mr. Biden won the county by more than 330,000 votes. But their refusal to certify the results left the Wayne County board, made up of two Republicans and two Democrats, deadlocked. It also threatened to hold up the certification of Michigan’s entire vote.Their action, The New York Times wrote, “was a stunningly partisan move that would have potentially disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters from a predominantly Black city.”It also contributed to the chaos and confusion that spread across the nation as Mr. Trump became increasingly adamant in falsely asserting that he had actually won the election.The two officials’ stance prompted hundreds of outraged Michigan voters and civil rights activists to immediately hold a Zoom call and accuse the two of trying to subvert the election. A few hours later, Mr. Hartmann and Ms. Palmer certified the results and approved the official tallies.But that led Mr. Trump to personally call them, The Associated Press reported, and shortly thereafter, the officials tried to rescind their votes certifying the results, saying they had been bullied into doing so. They were unable to change their votes back, however, and the Board of State Canvassers went on to certify Michigan’s statewide results. Mr. Biden won the state’s 16 electoral votes with 50.6 percent of the vote to Mr. Trump’s 47.8 percent.Mr. Hartmann was born on Aug. 30, 1958, but little other information about his background is publicly available, and attempts to reach his family were unsuccessful.On his Facebook page, he indicated a long involvement with the Republican Party. He listed his alias as “Taxed Enough Already” and called himself an “international man of mystery.”Mr. Hartmann described himself as the owner of the All In One Campaign, a collaboration of consultants who advise candidates on election strategy; the chief executive and technical engineer at Synergy Services, which calls itself a consulting firm “with a focus on federal and state contracting, along with political consultation”; and the owner and chief executive of Custom Renovation, a building renovation service, in Wyandotte.As The Times reported during the election dispute, Mr. Hartmann had filled his Facebook page with false allegations and conspiracy theories that the 2020 results had been manipulated against Mr. Trump. He said that he was harassed after the Nov. 17 episode, that law enforcement officers had to escort him away from his home to safety, and that he did not emerge for a week.“I was afraid that somebody might recognize me when I was out and want to beat me up,” he told the right-wing news organization The Epoch Times last December. He said he had been pursued by the news media and had received more than 1,500 hate emails.His sister began posting updates regarding his health on Facebook last month after he had contracted Covid. But she said she stopped once the news brought unwanted attention to her family.“Bill is fighting for his life and why someone would want to use this time for their political vomit is disgusting and sad,” she wrote. “My brother is a kind, giving, honest, outstanding man.”Online tributes called him a patriot and a true conservative.Mr. Hartmann made it clear on his own social media accounts that he did not believe in Covid vaccines. He suggested that vaccine passports, showing proof of vaccination, were something out of Nazi Germany. More

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      Nine pro-Trump lawyers ordered to pay $175,000 for sham election lawsuit

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      Nine pro-Trump lawyers ordered to pay $175,000 for sham election lawsuitMoney will cover legal costs of defending against the suit, which were over $153,000 for Detroit and nearly $22,000 for Michigan Nine lawyers allied with Donald Trump were ordered on Thursday to pay Detroit and Michigan a total of $175,000 in sanctions for abusing the court system with a sham lawsuit challenging the 2020 election results.The money, which must be paid within 30 days, will cover the legal costs of defending against the suit, which were more than $153,000 for the city and nearly $22,000 for the state.US district judge Linda Parker, who agreed to impose sanctions in August in a scathing opinion, rejected most of the attorneys’ objections to Detroit’s proposed award, but she did reduce it by about $29,000.Those sanctioned include Sidney Powell, L Lin Wood and seven other lawyers who were part of the lawsuit filed on behalf of six Republican voters after Joe Biden’s 154,000-vote victory over Trump in what officials have called the most secure election in US history.Sidney Powell filed false incorporation papers for non-profit, grand jury findsRead more“Plaintiffs’ attorneys, many of whom seek donations from the public to fund lawsuits like this one … have the ability to pay this sanction,” Parker wrote.She previously ordered each of the lawyers to undergo 12 hours of legal education, including six hours in election law.Michigan’s top three elected officials, the governor, Gretchen Whitmer, state attorney general Dana Nessel and Michigan secretary of state Jocelyn Benson, all Democrats, are seeking the disbarment of four of the nine attorneys, including Powell. She is licensed in Texas.The other three are admitted to practice in Michigan.Powell could not be reached for comment. Wood said he will appeal the order.“I undertook no act in Michigan and I had no involvement in the Michigan lawsuit filed by Sidney Powell,” he said in an email.Wood’s name was on the lawsuit, but he has insisted he had no role other than to tell Powell he would be available if needed.Powell is best known for saying she would “release the kraken”, a mythical sea creature, to destroy Biden’s claim on the White House.But baseless lawsuits in Michigan and elsewhere went nowhere.“There are consequences to filing meritless lawsuits to grab media attention and mislead Americans,” Benson, the state’s chief election official, said in a statement.“The sanctions awarded in this case are a testament to that, even if the dollar amounts pale in comparison to the damage that’s already been done to our nation’s democracy.”TopicsUS elections 2020Donald TrumpDetroitMichiganLaw (US)US politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      How Higher Prices This Holiday Season Could Cost Democrats, Too

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      Rising prices for gas and a holiday meal could come back to bite Democrats, who fear that inflation may upend their electoral prospects in the 2022 midterms.AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — Samantha Martin, a single mother shopping ahead of Thanksgiving, lamented how rising gas and grocery prices have eaten away at the raise she got this year as a manager at McDonald’s.Gas “is crazy out of hand,” Ms. Martin said as she returned a shopping cart at an Aldi discount market in Auburn Hills, a Detroit suburb, to collect a 25-cent deposit.Her most recent fillup was $3.59 a gallon, about $1 more than the price in the spring. Her raise, to $16 an hour from $14, was “pretty good, but it’s still really hard to manage,” Ms. Martin said. “I got a raise just to have the gas go up, and that’s what my raise went to.”Ms. Martin, 35, a political independent, doesn’t blame either party for inflation, but in a season of discontent, her disapproval fell more heavily on Democrats who run Washington. She voted for President Biden but is disappointed with him and his party. “I think I would probably give somebody else a shot,” she said.As Americans go on the road this week to travel for family gatherings, the higher costs of driving and one of the most expensive meals of the year have alarmed Democrats, who fear that inflation may upend their electoral prospects in the midterms. Republicans are increasingly confident that a rising cost of living — the ultimate kitchen-table issue — will be the most salient factor in delivering a red wave in 2022.Democrats’ passage in quick succession of the $1 trillion infrastructure law and, in the House, of a $2.2 trillion social safety net and climate bill, promise once-in-a-generation investments that Democratic candidates plan to run on next year, with many of the policies in the bills broadly popular.But, despite rising wages and falling unemployment, Democrats are also in danger of being swept aside in a hostile political environment shaped in large part by the highest inflation in 30 years, which has defied early predictions that it would be short-lived as the country pulled out of the pandemic.With control of Congress and many key governor seats at stake, Republicans are pointing to public and private surveys that show inflation is linked to Americans’ falling approval of Mr. Biden. And, given the wholesale gerrymanders drawn, particularly by Republicans, in the current round of congressional redistricting, the Democrats would face a high bar in keeping their paper-thin majority in the House of Representatives, even in a favorable environment. President Biden talking with an assembly line worker as he looks over an electric Hummer by General Motors during a plant visit in Detroit last week. Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe president’s recent tour of ports, bridges and auto plants — which was meant to promote the infrastructure legislation — was overshadowed in part by inflation anxieties. As he test drove an electric Hummer at a General Motors plant in Detroit this week, his message of a future of zero-emission vehicles was eclipsed by a present in which Americans are driving more miles in conventional vehicles, contributing to soaring gas prices.Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat in a vulnerable House district, wrote to Mr. Biden this week that inflation was the most pressing concern of her constituents. A former C.I.A. analyst in Iraq, she urged the president to pressure Saudi Arabia to increase oil output.Ms. Slotkin, who won her seat in the midterm wave of 2018, is one of two Michigan Democrats in highly competitive districts that include the Detroit suburbs. In the Trump years, Democrats had mixed results in the populous region, advancing in white-collar communities but losing ground with their traditional union supporters.In an interview, Ms. Slotkin said that during a recent visit home, she heard constantly about the high costs of gas and groceries, and experienced them herself. “I buy groceries, I drive a ton,” she said. “Thanksgiving week is going to be more expensive by a long shot than last Thanksgiving.”[This Year’s Thanksgiving Feast Will Wallop the Wallet.]She acknowledged the political peril that rising consumer prices could pose for her party if it continues next year. “Kitchen-table issues affect Michigan and the Midwest more than any other national issue going on in Washington,” she said.In interviews with voters in suburban Detroit, including from Ms. Slotkin’s district and that of the second vulnerable Democrat, Representative Haley Stevens, residents almost universally acknowledged the pain of rising prices on their budgets. But it was unclear, from their accounts, that Democrats would suffer politically. Most voters ascribed blame according to their party leanings — as they do on almost all issues in an era of hyperpolarization.Margie Kulaga of Hazel Park, a Trump voter in 2020, said she paid 49 cents a pound, up from 33 cents a pound last year, for a 23-pound turkey that she had just bought from a Kroger market. Prices for meat and eggs have risen by 11.9 percent in the Midwest from a year ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.“I blame Biden, his whole administration,’’ Ms. Kulaga, 55, said. “I never used to cut coupons, but now I do.”On the other hand, Gloria Bailey, 63, a special-education teacher who lives in the suburb of Redford, is a Biden supporter who said rising costs should not be laid at his doorstep.“The coronavirus has affected a lot of shipments and deliveries and crops and drivers who bring the food to market,” she said.Container ships waiting to enter the Port of Los Angeles in October.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesThis month, Republicans broadly advanced in elections across the country, especially in Virginia, prompting forecasts of a similar tide in 2022. Glenn Youngkin won the Virginia governorship after emphasizing the rights of parents to control how schools operate and what they teach.But Mr. Youngkin’s chief strategist, Jeff Roe, said the “big takeaway” of the election was how the rising cost of living had significantly motivated voters, an issue that was little covered by the news media. He predicted it would drive Senate and House races around the country next year (many of which he and his firm have a hand in).Biden’s ​​Social Policy Bill at a GlanceCard 1 of 6A narrow vote. More

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      Why Democrats See 3 Governor’s Races as a Sea Wall for Fair Elections

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      Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania all have Democratic governors and G.O.P.-led legislatures. And in all three battlegrounds, Republicans are pushing hard to rewrite election laws.MADISON, Wis. — In three critical battleground states, Democratic governors have blocked efforts by Republican-controlled legislatures to restrict voting rights and undermine the 2020 election.Now, the 2022 races for governor in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — states that have long been vital to Democratic presidential victories, including Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s — are taking on major new significance.At stake are how easy it is to vote, who controls the electoral system and, some Democrats worry, whether the results of federal, state and local elections will be accepted no matter which party wins.That has left Govs. Tony Evers of Wisconsin, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania standing alone, in what is already expected to be a difficult year for their party, as what Democrats view as a sea wall against a rising Republican tide of voting restrictions and far-reaching election laws.The question of who wins their seats in 2022 — Mr. Evers and Ms. Whitmer are running for re-election, while Mr. Wolf is term-limited — has become newly urgent in recent weeks as Republicans in all three states, spurred on by former President Donald J. Trump, make clearer than ever their intent to reshape elections should they take unified control.Republicans have aggressively pursued partisan reviews of the 2020 election in each state. In Pennsylvania, G.O.P. lawmakers sought the personal information of every voter in the state last month. In Wisconsin, a conservative former State Supreme Court justice, who is investigating the 2020 election results on behalf of the State Assembly, issued subpoenas on Friday for voting-related documents from election officials. And in Michigan on Sunday night, Ms. Whitmer vetoed four election bills that she said “would have perpetuated the ‘big lie’ or made it harder for Michiganders to vote.”Republican candidates for governor in the three states have proposed additional cutbacks to voting access and measures that would give G.O.P. officials more power over how elections are run. And the party is pushing such efforts wherever it has the power to do so. This year, 19 Republican-controlled states have passed 33 laws restricting voting, one of the greatest contractions of access to the ballot since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965. Democrats in Congress have tried without success to pass federal voting laws to counteract the Republican push.The prospect that Mr. Trump may run again in 2024 only compounds what Democrats fear: that Republicans could gain full control over the three key Northern states in 2022 and, two years later, interfere with or overturn the outcome of a narrow Democratic presidential victory in 2024.“I would’ve never guessed that my job as governor when I ran a couple years ago was going to be mainly about making sure that our democracy is still intact in this state,” said Mr. Evers, a former Wisconsin schools superintendent. He was elected governor in the Democratic wave of 2018 on a platform of increasing education spending and expanding Medicaid.He and Ms. Whitmer are seeking re-election while vying to preserve the voting system, which was not built to withstand a sustained partisan assault, in the face of intensifying Republican challenges to the routine administration of elections. Mr. Wolf cannot seek a third term, but his Democratic heir apparent, Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania attorney general, has been on the forefront of legal efforts to defend the 2020 election results for nearly a year.The shift from focusing on traditional Democratic issues like health care and education to assuring fair elections is starkest for Mr. Evers, a man so aggressively staid that he’s partial to vanilla ice cream.Campaigning at the World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wis., Mr. Evers said that Wisconsin’s race for governor next year would be “about our democracy.”Lianne Milton for The New York TimesLast week, as he walked through a row of black-and-white Holstein cows at the World Dairy Expo, he predicted that if he were defeated next year, Republican legislators would have a direct path to reverse the results of the 2024 election.“The stakes are damn high,” Mr. Evers said above the din of mooing and milking at Madison’s annual dairy trade show. “This is about our democracy. It’s frightening.”The message that democracy itself is on the line is a potentially powerful campaign pitch for Mr. Evers and his fellow Democrats, one he has used in fund-raising appeals.Republicans dismiss the idea that they are undermining democracy and say that their various election reviews will increase, not decrease, voters’ trust in the system.“It’s full of hyperbole and exaggeration, which is what the Democrats do best on this election stuff,” Robin Vos, the speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly, said in an interview last week at the State Capitol. “All we’re trying to do is make sure that people who were elected were elected legitimately.”Mr. Vos said he was still not sure if President Biden had legitimately won the state. (Mr. Biden carried it by more than 20,000 votes.) It would not take much to swing statewide elections in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Four of the last six presidential contests in Wisconsin have been decided by fewer than 23,000 votes. Other than Barack Obama, no presidential nominee has won more than 51 percent of the vote in any of the three states since 1996.And as Mr. Trump and his allies chisel away at confidence in American elections by making baseless allegations of voter fraud, it is no longer a stretch to imagine governors loyal to the former president taking previously unthinkable steps to alter future results.Governors are required to submit to Congress a certificate of ascertainment of presidential electors. But what if a governor refused?Another scenario could also give a governor outsize power over the presidential election: A state could send competing slates of electors to Congress, and the House might accept one slate and the Senate the other. Then, the Electoral Count Act of 1887 — the guidelines for tallying Electoral College votes, which remained obscure until the violence of Jan. 6 — appears to give the state’s governor the tiebreaking vote.The National Task Force on Election Crises, a nonpartisan group of experts in various fields, warned about such a possibility in a September 2020 memo.“It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that any one of those states falling to a Trump-aligned candidate would pose an existential threat to the survival of American democracy come the 2024 election,” said Ian Bassin, the executive director of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan group dedicated to resisting authoritarianism, who convened the election crises task force before the 2020 election.Republicans have not been shy about their ambitions to change election laws in the three states.In Pennsylvania, Lou Barletta, a former congressman who recently announced a bid for governor, said that as he crossed the state last week, the top issue for voters was “election integrity.”“People talk to me about mandates, about vaccines, but they always bring up election integrity as well,” Mr. Barletta said in an interview. He said that he was waiting for the Republicans’ election review before committing to a full slate of election changes, but that he already had a few in mind, including stricter voter identification laws.Josh Shapiro, the Democratic attorney general of Pennsylvania who defended the results of the 2020 election in the state, is expected to announce his campaign for governor as soon as this month.Susan Walsh/Associated PressJames Craig, the leading Republican candidate for governor in Michigan, has backed bills that would forbid the mass mailing of absentee ballot applications to voters who do not request them and that would enact a strict voter ID requirement. He declined to comment.Those proposed laws are being pushed by Ed McBroom, a Republican state senator, even though he released a report in June debunking Trump-inspired claims of election fraud.“Somebody could pretty easily try to impersonate somebody they don’t know,” said Mr. McBroom, who leads the Michigan Senate’s elections committee.And in Wisconsin, Rebecca Kleefisch, a Republican who served as lieutenant governor under Gov. Scott Walker until 2019, is challenging Mr. Evers with a campaign platform that calls for shifting responsibility for the state’s elections from the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, which her and Mr. Walker’s administration created in 2016, to the G.O.P.-controlled Legislature. Ms. Kleefisch declined to comment. Perhaps no 2022 Democratic candidate for governor is as familiar with Republican attempts to dispute the 2020 outcome as Mr. Shapiro. As Pennsylvania’s attorney general, he defended the state in 43 lawsuits brought by Mr. Trump and his allies that challenged voting methods and the results.“There are new threats every single day on the right to vote, new efforts to disenfranchise voters, and I expect that this will be another huge test in 2022,” said Mr. Shapiro, who is planning to announce a campaign for governor as soon as this month.Last month, Mr. Shapiro filed a lawsuit to block Republicans in the Pennsylvania Senate after they sought the personal information of all seven million voters in the state as part of their election review, including driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is running for re-election in Michigan, where Republican election officials tried to stall the certification of the results of the state’s 2020 presidential race.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesIn Michigan, Ms. Whitmer, who has faced threats of an insurrection in her statehouse and a kidnapping plot, is now fighting a Republican attempt to work around her expected veto of a host of proposed voting restrictions.“The only thing that is preventing the rollback of voting rights in Michigan right now is the threat of my veto,” she said in an interview.Michigan was also home to one of the most forceful and arcane attempts at reversing the outcome in 2020, when Republican election officials, at Mr. Trump’s behest, tried to refuse to certify the results in Wayne County and stall the certification of the state’s overall results. That memory, combined with new voting bills and Republican attempts to review the state’s election results, makes Michigan’s election next year all the more important, Ms. Whitmer said.“If they make it harder or impossible for droves of people not to be able to participate in the election,” she said, “that doesn’t just impact Michigan elections, but elections for federal offices as well, like the U.S. Senate and certainly the White House.”Mr. Vos said he had not thought about the degree to which Wisconsin Republicans could change voting laws if the state had a Republican governor. But this year, the State Legislature passed a package of six bills that would have enacted a range of new voting restrictions.Mr. Evers vetoed them all.“I’ve learned to play goalie in this job,” he said. “And I’ll continue to do that.” More