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      ‘It’s time to take action’: faith leaders urge Biden to pass voting rights legislation

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      ‘It’s time to take action’: faith leaders urge Biden to pass voting rights legislationA letter organized by Martin Luther King III and his wife comes after Republicans successfully filibustered bills four times this year More than 800 faith leaders have called on the Biden administration and Senate Democrats to pass voting rights legislation next year.“We cannot be clearer, you must act now to protect every American’s freedom to vote without interference and with confidence that their ballot will be counted and honored. Passing comprehensive voting rights legislation must be the number-one priority of the administration and Congress,” faith leaders said in a letter addressed to the president and Senate members on Wednesday.The letter, organized by Martin Luther King III and his wife, Arndrea Waters King, was signed by various faith organizations, including the African American Christian Clergy Coalition, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action and Faith in Public Life.Signatories include those who come from Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities, including Reverend Canon Leonard L Hamlin Sr of the Washington National Cathedral and Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg of National Council of Jewish Women.“The communities we represent will continue to sound the alarm until these bills are passed. While we come from different faiths, we are united by our commitment to act in solidarity with the most vulnerable among us,” the letter added.The letter comes after Republicans successfully filibustered voting rights bills on four different occasions this year. Most recently, on 3 November, Republicans in the Senate blocked the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Acts – one of two major pieces of voting rights legislation that Democrats have championed in Congress in attempts to prevent Republicans from eroding easy access to the vote.Republicans blocking the key voting rights bill in November was a move seen by many as a breaking point in the push to eliminate the filibuster, the Senate rule that requires 60 votes to advance most legislation.Despite numerous Democrats calling for the elimination of the filibuster, they lack the votes to end the rule due to not only a slim majority but also opposition within their own party. Two Democrats, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, are strongly opposed, arguing that the rule forges bipartisan compromise.Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, described the filibuster on 3 November as a “low, low point in the history of this body”.In Wednesday’s letter, faith leaders said, “Nothing – including the filibuster – should stand in the way of passing the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, both of which have already passed the House and await Senate action and leadership.”According to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice, nineteen states have enacted nearly three dozen laws between January and the end of September that make it more difficult to vote.Wednesday’s letter is a reflection of the growing pressure on Democrats to pass voting rights legislation that aims to outlaw excessive partisan gerrymandering and would require early voting, no-excuse mail-in voting, in addition to automatic and same-day registration.“It’s time to stop lamenting the state of our democracy and take action to address it,” the letter said.TopicsUS voting rightsBiden administrationMartin Luther KingRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Alarm as Texas quietly restarts controversial voting program

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      Alarm as Texas quietly restarts controversial voting programProgram asks people on voter rolls to prove citizenship, sparking concern that eligible voters could be wrongfully targeted Get the latest updates on voting rights in the Guardian’s Fight to vote newsletterTexas officials have quietly restarted a controversial program to ask people on the voter rolls to prove their citizenship, sparking alarm that thousands of eligible voters could be wrongfully targeted.The Texas secretary of state’s office has identified just under 12,000 people it suspects of being non-citizens since September, when the program restarted (there are more than 17 million registered voters in Texas). About 2,327 voter registrations have been cancelled so far. The vast majority of cancellations were because voters failed to respond to a notice giving them 30 days to prove their citizenship.Texas Republicans pass voting maps that entrench power of whitesRead moreThe secretary of state flags anyone as a suspected non-citizen if they register to vote and then subsequently visit the Texas department of public safety (DPS), the state’s driver’s license agency, and indicate they are not a citizen.Local election officials in Texas’ 254 counties are then asked to review the names. If those officials cannot verify citizenship, they are required to send them a letter asking them to prove their citizenship within 30 days or else their voter registration gets cancelled.But election officials in Harris county, the most populous in the state, are concerned about the accuracy of the data being used to challenge voters.After the county mailed proof of citizenship requests to 2,796 people, 167 voters – nearly 6% of those contacted – responded with proof of citizenship. The state removed an additional 161 people from the list of people whose citizenship needed to be verified, according to a county official.“We are not confident in the quality of the information we are being mandated to act upon,” Isabel Longoria, the county’s election administrator, said in an email.In Fort Bend county, just outside of Houston, officials mailed notices to 515 people in October. About 20% responded with proof of citizenship and the rest were removed from the rolls, according to John Oldham, the county’s election administrator. Many of the people who responded said they had accidentally checked a box during their DPS transaction indicating they were not citizens, Oldham said.In Cameron county, along the US-Mexico border, election officials have sent out 246 letter since September, almost all to people with Hispanic surnames, according to the Texas Monthly, which first reported the program restarted. About 60 people have been cancelled so far.After the notices went out, a married couple who had heard about the notices came into the elections office to provide their naturalization papers, even though the couple’s citizenship wasn’t challenged, said Remi Garza, the county elections administrator.“It saddened me too,” Garza said. “People who shouldn’t have to be concerned about this type of proving citizenship felt that they had to do that.”Voting rights groups say they are trying to better understand the process the state is using, but are concerned eligible voters are getting targeted.“​​A US citizen voter who gets a challenge letter is understandably intimidated. And especially for naturalized US citizens, who went through an entire bureaucratic process to be able to vote, getting a letter that accuses them of being an ineligible voter is particularly intimidating,” said Nina Perales, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “People will naturally assume, based on this official correspondence, that they might have made some kind of mistake, or that they are not proper voters.”The program had been on hold since 2019, when a federal judge ordered Texas to stop a similar, error-filled, effort that he described as “ham-handed”. As part of a settlement in that case, Texas agreed to only flag people if they registered to vote prior to the DPS visit in which they indicated they weren’t a citizen. It also agreed to reinstate and challenge voters who provided proof of citizenship, even if it was outside the 30-day window.The citizenship check comes as Republicans have moved to blunt the rapidly growing political power of Texas’ non-white population. Texas prosecutors have sought criminal punishments for people, including non-citizens, who make voting mistakes and the attorney general, Ken Paxton, has zealously pursued claims of voter fraud, which is exceedingly rare in Texas and elsewhere.Bruce Elfant, whose office oversees voter registration in Travis county, said his office so far has internally been able to confirm that less than 100 of the 300 to 400 people flagged by the secretary of state’s office were citizens. Most in the group had been flagged because of clerical errors, he said. His office has not yet sent out any challenge notices and is waiting for more information before it does so.In El Paso county, state officials referred 4,000 suspected non-citizens for review, and around 300 had already offered proof of citizenship, said Lisa Wise, the county’s election administrator. The county isn’t currently cancelling the registration of any voter who doesn’t respond, she said.Federal law prohibits officials from conducting mass voter cancellations within 90 days of a primary election. Texas’ primary is on 1 March, so the state can’t remove anyone who doesn’t respond to a proof of citizenship letter until later this spring.Thomas Buser-Clancy, a senior staff attorney with the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said his organization was trying to understand why eligible voters were being flagged, but it was clear “something is not going right”.“Even if your system flags one eligible voter and threatens to remove them, that’s a problem,” he said. “If you have hundreds, and if you add it up across counties, you’re probably getting to thousands of eligible voters, being threatened with removal.”Sam Taylor, a spokesman for the Texas secretary of state’s office said he was confident in the data.“We’re following the settlement agreement exactly as we’re supposed to. If the counties have additional information where they’re able to cross people off the list who have in fact become citizens and they’re lawfully registered to vote, that’s great. That’s how the process is supposed to work.”But Buser-Clancy noted that those who were able to affirm their citizenship likely only represented a fraction of the eligible voters who were probably affected.“Those people are the lucky ones that both received the notice, like actually went through their mail, looked it up, and had the documentation on hand to send in,” he added. “What that tells you is that there’s some other percentage of people who are going to be removed from the rolls even though they’re eligible voters.”Download original documentTopicsTexasThe fight to voteUS voting rightsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Republicans are shamelessly working to subvert democracy. Are Democrats paying attention?

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      Republicans are shamelessly working to subvert democracy. Are Democrats paying attention? Voting rights activists say the country has not fully awakened to the threat A dry run. A dress rehearsal. A practice coup. As the first anniversary of the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol approaches, there is no shortage of warnings about the danger of a repeat by Republicans.But even as Donald Trump loyalists lay siege to democracy with voting restrictions and attempts to take over the running of elections, there are fears that Democrats in Washington have not fully woken up to the threat.“At the state level we’re raising hell about it but the Democrats on the national level are talking about Build Back Better, the infrastructure bill, lots of other things,” said Tony Evers, the Democratic governor of Wisconsin. “When we think about voting rights and democracy, I would hope we would hear a little bit more about that from the national level.”Hopes that the attack on the Capitol would break the fever of Trumpism in the Republican party were soon dashed. All but a handful of its members in Congress voted against a 9/11-style commission to investigate the riot and many at national level have downplayed it, rallying to the former president’s defense.But it is an attritional battle playing out state by state, county by county and precinct by precinct that could pose the bigger menace to the next election in 2024, a potential rematch between Trump and Joe Biden.An avalanche of voter suppression laws is being pushed through in Republican-led states, from Arizona to Florida to Georgia to New Hampshire. Gerrymandered maps are being drawn up to form districts where demographics favour Republican candidates.Backers of Trump’s big lie of a stolen election are running to be the secretary of state in many places, a position from which they would serve as the chief election official in their state. Trump has endorsed such candidates in Michigan, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada – all crucial swing states.The all-out assault suggests that Trump and his allies learned lessons from their failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election, identifying weak points in the system and laying the groundwork for a different outcome next time.Dean Phillips, a Democratic congressman from Minnesota, said: “It looks like Plan B is populating state elected offices with believers of the big lie and morally corrupt candidates. We should all be concerned about that and, by the way, not just Democrats: everybody.”Yet despite waves of media coverage – recently including the Atlantic magazine and the Guardian and New York Times newspapers – Democrats face the challenge of getting their voters to care. Many are confronting inflation, crime and other priorities and may assume that, having defeated Trump last year, they can stop paying attention.Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington state, said: “It’s still very difficult to imagine the severity and depth of what Donald Trump tried to pull off. It’s hard sometimes to recognise something when it’s new. For the president of the United States to try and stage a coup is unprecedented. It’s hard for people to wrap their heads around it.”Inslee described Trump as “a clear and present danger” who is “trying to remove the impediments that rescued democracy last time”. State governors are not the only ones sounding the alarm about the dangers of complacency or assuming that normal service has resumed.Jena Griswold, a Colorado Democrat seeking re-election, is chair of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, which focuses on electing Democrats to those positions. She said while there’s been a surge of attention from activists and donors to those races, “it is not enough.”“I think one of the issues happening is that because this is the United States, the idea that our most fundamental freedom of living in a democracy is under attack, is hard to really grasp,” she said. “It’s important that we keep leaning in because the folks on the other side are definitely leaning in.”In Michigan, one of the leading candidates in the Republican field is Kristina Kamaro, who has spread lies about 6 January and the election. She is seeking to oust Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat who became one of the most high profile secretaries of state in 2020 when she took steps to make it easier to vote by mail in her state.Like Griswold, Benson, who describes herself as “avowedly not a partisan”, said she noticed increased interest from voters and independent donors, but not from the national Democratic party.“We’re not seeing the same sense of urgency that perhaps ‘the other side’ has shown in investing in these offices,” she said. “With the exception of the vice-president, who’s been enormously supportive and gets the importance of these offices from a voting rights standpoint, I have seen no significant increase in support from national party leaders than what we experienced in 2018, which wasn’t insignificant.”Acolytes of the so-called “Stop the Steal” movement are drilling down even deeper, targeting local election oversight positions that have traditionally been nonpartisan and little noticed, with only a few hundred votes at stake and candidates often running unopposed. Yet these too could pull at the threads of the democratic fabric.In Pennsylvania, for example, there is concern that election deniers are running for a position called judge of elections, a little-known office that plays a huge role in determining how things are run on election day.Scott Seeborg, Pennsylvania state director of All Voting is Local, a voting advocacy group, said the role is essentially the top position at the precinct polling place on election day. They could cause huge disruptions at the polls based on how the office holder interprets rules around ID and spoiling mail-in ballots, he added.Seeborg agreed that not enough attention has been paid to these local races. “There’s no precedent for this, as far as we know in sort of the modern history of elections,” he said. “I don’t think folks anticipated this, I’m not sure how seriously entities like the Democratic party are taking this, but they ought to.”Similar anxieties emerged earlier this week when the grassroots movement Indivisible ran a focus group with members from Georgia, Indiana, North Carolina and elsewhere.Ezra Levin, the group’s co-founder and co-executive director, said: “They’re worried about their governors, they’re worried about their secretaries of state and they’re worried even at a more local level about previously nonpartisan or uncontroversial election administration officials being taken over by a well-funded and very focused operation led by people who have embraced the big lie.“These are not positions, especially at the local level, that are getting as much attention but it’s real. We see Steve Bannon [former White House chief of staff, now a rightwing podcaster] trying to lead the charge, getting folks to take up the lowest level spots in the election administration ecosystem. It’s happening right in front of our eyes.”Levin, a former congressional staffer, noted that the Democratic party is not a monolith but warned that Biden has devoted his political capital – traveling the country to make speeches, holding meetings on Capitol Hill – to causes such as infrastructure rather than the future of democracy.“The big missing puzzle piece in this entire fight for the last 11 months has been the president.”Pressure on the Senate to act intensified this week when 17 governors wrote a joint letter expressing concern over threats to the nation’s democracy. Evers of Wisconsin was among them.In a phone interview, he said Democrats in his crucial battleground state are highlighting the “full throated attack on voting rights” but acknowledged that voters have numerous other concerns.“Everybody’s talking about it but when they go home from the capital and they’re visiting with people, I’m guessing that the conversation talks about more bread and butter things like ‘I want my roads fixed,’ and ‘Thank you for reducing taxes,” Evers added.TopicsUS voting rightsRepublicansDonald TrumpUS politicsUS elections 2024featuresReuse this content More

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      ‘Unlike anything we’ve seen’: the unprecedented risks facing US democracy

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      ‘Unlike anything we’ve seen’: the unprecedented risks facing US democracyFrom attacks on election officials to politicizing election boards, threats to the voting system are deeply worrying Get the latest updates on voting rights in the Guardian’s Fight to vote newsletterHello, and Happy Thursday,For some year-end reporting, I’ve been talking with folks about how 2021 exploded as the year American democracy came under siege. “It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen,” David Becker, an election administration expert and the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told me.For our last Fight to Vote newsletter of the year (don’t worry – we’ll be back in January), I wanted to highlight the most dangerous threats to America’s electoral system.Efforts to inject partisanship into under-the-radar election jobsEach state in the US oversees its own elections. And within each state different counties, and in some places even smaller townships and municipalities, are responsible for running those elections. At each level, there are under-the-radar officials, appointed in some cases and elected in others, who are responsible for enforcing the rules.These are positions that many people have never heard of – their job isn’t to be political, but rather to ensure that the person with the most votes is seated as the winner of the election. Over the last year, however, there’s been an effort to weaponize these offices.One of the first signs came a few months ago in Michigan. The Detroit News reported Republican officials there were nominating people who embraced the idea that the 2020 election was stolen to positions on local boards of canvassers, which play a central role in certifying election results.In Georgia, Republicans have quietly exerted more influence over local election boards across the state, removing Black Democrats from their roles. In addition to certifying election results, those local boards approve polling place locations and consider challenges to voter eligibility.And in Pennsylvania, there’s concern that election deniers are seeking positions as judges of elections. These officials are essentially in charge of the polling place in their precinct.Attacks on election officialsOver the last year, there’s been a surge in harassment against election officials, and many of them have left their jobs. Perhaps the most alarming example of this is happening in Wisconsin, where Republicans are launching an aggressive effort to oust Meagan Wolfe, the non-partisan administrator of the bipartisan body that oversees election in the state, from her role.Observers are deeply concerned. Running an election is an enormously complicated enterprise. Having deeply experienced people leave the field creates an opening for inexperienced, and potentially more partisan people, to fill that void.“Intimidating the professionals who run elections, saying elections are rigged orfraudulent, altering state laws to allow partisans, as opposed to professionals, the final say in who wins elections, will be a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Ben Ginsberg, a longtime prominent GOP elections lawyer, said this week. “No one will have faith in elections.”Campaigns for secretary of stateAt the top of the election bureaucracy in most states is a secretary of state, the chief election official. These secretaries can act alone to automatically mail out absentee ballot applications, for instance, or implement rules around ballot drop boxes. Overlooked for years, these officials wield an enormous amount of unilateral power.“There is no one person who has as much authority [in] protecting the will of the people as the secretary of state,” Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s secretary of state, told me in an interview. “They can do enormous damage but they can also do enormous good.”Trump has endorsed candidates running for secretary of state in almost every swing state, including Michigan, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. All the candidates he has endorsed have supported the idea that the election was stolen.Last year, secretaries of state stood as bulwarks against Trump’s efforts to undermine the election. Officials like Benson debunked some of Trump’s wildest claims. Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, refused to go along with Trump’s request to “find” more than 11,000 votes in Georgia and overturn the results.Lingering distrust in electionsThere is still a staggering number of people who remain unconvinced of the 2020 election results. A September CNN poll found 78% of Republicans do not believe Biden won.Trump’s baseless claims about the election have had an impact. And that’s deeply alarming – a functioning democracy depends on all voters, regardless of whether their candidate won or lost, accepting the results.Also worth watching …
      The Atlantic profiled Crystal Mason, the Texas woman sentenced to five years in prison for using a provisional ballot in 2016. Mason’s case, the profile points out, shows the devastating consequences of unfounded claims about fraud.
      BuzzFeed News has a great look at how election deniers are going door to door in some places across the country.
      Texas restarted an effort to remove non-citizens from its voting rolls, sparking concerns officials may be targeting eligible voters.
      TopicsRepublicansFight to voteUS politicsUS voting rightsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      The network of election lawyers who are making it harder for Americans to vote

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      The network of election lawyers who are making it harder for Americans to voteVoting rights watchdogs have warned of a web of attorneys and groups, some who pushed Donald Trump’s big lie after the 2020 election A powerful network of conservative election lawyers and groups with links to Donald Trump have spent millions of dollars promoting new and onerous voting laws that many key battleground states such as Georgia and Texas have enacted.The moves have prompted election and voting rights watchdogs in America to warn about the suppression of non-white voters aimed at providing Republicans an edge in coming elections.The lawyers and groups spearheading self-professed election integrity measures include some figures who pushed Trump’s baseless claims of fraud after the 2020 election. Key advocates include Cleta Mitchell with the Conservative Partnership institute; J Christian Adams of the Public Interest Legal Foundation; Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation; Jason Snead of the Honest Elections Project; and J Kenneth Blackwell with the America First Policy institute.Voting rights advocates frustrated by ‘same-old, same-old’ meeting with White House Read moreThese conservative outfits tout their goal as curbing significant voter fraud, despite the fact that numerous courts, the vast majority of voting experts and even former top Trump officials, such as ex-attorney general Bill Barr, concluded the 2020 elections were without serious problems.Watchdogs say that tightening state voting laws endanger the rights of Black voters and other communities of color who historically back Democrats by creating new rules limiting absentee voting and same day registration, while imposing other voting curbs.Among the election lawyers and groups advocating tougher voting laws, Mitchell, a veteran conservative lawyer , boasts the highest profile and has sparked the most scrutiny. She took part in the 2 January call where Trump prodded Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to “find” about 11,780 votes to overturn Joe Biden’s victory there. After details emerged about Mitchell’s role on the call, Foley & Lardner, where she had worked for nearly 20 years, mounted an internal review, and she resigned.Trump’s 2 January call also spawned a criminal investigation by Georgia’s Fulton county district attorney that could create problems for Mitchell, say ex-prosecutors, and may fuel scrutiny of the lawyer by the House committee looking into the 6 January Capitol attack. Mitchell, who reportedly raised $1m to help fund a baseless audit of Arizona’s largest county that Trump pushed aggressively, generated more controversy last month when she was named to an advisory board for the federal Election Assistance Commission with backing from her close legal ally Adams whose foundation Mitchell chairs.Using her perch at CPI and another post with the libertarian FreedomWorks that early this year announced a seven-state drive to revamp voting laws led by Mitchell, the lawyer has helped spearhead new state election measures and block two congressional bills – the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act – which Democrats have been trying to enact to counter the wave of new state laws.According to an October update from the Brennan Center for Justice, 19 states had enacted 33 new laws this year that “will make it harder for Americans to vote”.To press for new state voting laws, Mitchell has worked closely with some key groups quietly backing new measures such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, a powerful and shadowy group of state legislators that historically promotes model bills where she used to be outside counsel.At an Alec meeting on 1 December in California, Mitchell helped lead a secretive “process working group” session devoted to election and voting law changes and related matters that included several top legal allies such as Adams and Von Spakovsky, according to reports from the Center for Media and Democracy, and Documented.Adams’ foundation, which in 2020 received about $300,000 from the Bradley Foundation whose board includes Mitchell, has brought lawsuits to defend some of the tough new voting laws in Texas and other states.Top funders of the right’s armada include a family foundation tied to billionaire Richard Uihlein, the Bradley Foundation, and two dark money giants, the Concord Fund and Donors Trust, according to public records.Legal watchdogs raise strong concerns about the new laws promoted by the right in numerous states such as Georgia and Texas, and note that the arguments for changing voting rules seem rife with contradictions.“During the 2021 legislative session, we saw anti-voter organizations push cookie-cutter legislation restricting the right to vote in legislatures across the country,” said Danielle Lang, senior director of voting rights at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center“The same language appeared in state after state without regard for the state’s particular needs. For example, strict cutbacks on access to vote by mail were introduced in states that had wholly positive vote by mail experiences in 2020,” she added.Such complaints have not deterred the legislative blitz by Mitchell with allied lawyers and groups nationwide to change voting laws.Mitchell declined to answer questions from the Guardian about her voting law work or the Georgia probe, though in an interview early this year with the AP she boasted “I love legislatures and working with legislators”, and revealed that she talks to Trump “fairly frequently”, but provided no details.Mitchell’s ties to Mark Meadows, Trump’s ex chief of staff, are palpable, too, including post election as a frenzied and baseless drive was under way to overturn Trump’s loss.On 30 December, according to the Washington Post magazine, Mitchell wrote Meadows and “offered to send some 1,800 pages of documents purporting to support claims of election fraud”.Meadows, who also has a senior post at CPI, now faces contempt charges for reneging on testifying to the House panel about the 6 January Capitol attack and earlier efforts to block Biden from taking office.Mitchell’s effort to support Trump’s baseless case during the 2 January call with Raffensperger could pose new headaches for the lawyer as the Fulton county district attorney’s investigation proceeds. During the call, Mitchell claimed to have evidence of voter fraud, but a top lawyer for Raffensperger’s office replied she was mistaken and faulted her data.“You can’t make yourself much more of a participant to Trump’s efforts that day than actually making statements during the call,” said Michael J Moore, a former US attorney in Georgia. “That’s what Ms Mitchell did. That conduct alone will be enough bait to get the attention of the prosecutors. Whether it’s enough to snare her in the trap, only the DA and the grand jury can answer that.”TopicsUS voting rightsRepublicansUS elections 2020Donald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Protesting voting rights activists arrested as Biden meets with Manchin

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      Protesting voting rights activists arrested as Biden meets with ManchinSixty were detained as the president met with the key Democrat who has become a roadblock to his agenda During a crucial week for Joe Biden’s agenda that will likely feature a political showdown on his Build Back Better legislation in the Senate, voting rights activists are turning up the pressure in Washington.As the US president met with a key centrist Democrat who has acted as a roadblock to his plans – West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin – more than sixty demonstrators were arrested as they protested: singing songs and blocking traffic near the US Capitol.The diverse group of activists came to Washington from around the country and were focused primarily on issues around voting rights and poverty. When the focus turned to voting rights, the talk became more focused on Manchin and the White House’s apparent inability to apply all of its power to pass federal legislation to protect the vote.Arizona students stage hunger strike to urge Sinema to support voting reformRead more“I think we’re moving the ball but we have to get it across the finish line – we’re going to have to keep pushing. They don’t need to be going home for Christmas. We need to get voting rights taken care of,” said Melanie Campbell, president of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, as she waited to speak to the assembled crowd of more than 500 people.As news spread that Manchin was signaling he wants more changes to Biden’s already stripped back Build Back Better legislation because of his concerns over inflation, activists at the rally were not impressed.“That’s his whole game. Slow it down, block it, get things get done for the billionaires, his corporate donors – then to undermine voting rights let all the voting suppression bills get passed that wouldn’t get passed if we had the Voting Rights Act restored and we had federal protection,” said the Rev William Barber, president of Repairers of the Breach.“He’s a trickster. The president needs to go to West Virginia. Stop meeting with him in his office. Go to his state,” Barber added shortly before leading activists into a street protest.With talk of direct actions and in-office protests directed at Manchin and others, Barber and other activists promised to apply more pressure on lawmakers this week.Barber and several other voting rights activists have been frustrated by what they view as a lack of focus and from the Biden administration regarding voting rights.Many have warned the White House that Biden’s 7m vote victory, buttressed by strong turnout in predominately Black cities such as Atlanta, Detroit, Philadelphia and Milwaukee, will be difficult to repeat without cementing the support of those same voters.With 2022 midterm elections on the horizon, the urgency about which agenda items Biden will focus is a hot topic in the activists community.“We go to the streets for non-violent direct action. This is just the precursor,” Barber told the crowd of activists.“If you think this is an action, you watch how we mobilize when we don’t have to be so Covid safe,” said Barber.“There is only one answer to nineteen states that have passed voter suppression laws. There’s only one answer to all this election subversion. There’s only one answer to all this work that they’re doing to purge people from election boards. There’s only one answer to gerrymandering. That is, ‘Pass the acts now!’” said Barbara Arwine, who leads the Transformative Justice Coalition to the crowd.Arnwine was referring to the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The bill would restore provisions in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that were removed by the supreme court’s Shelby v Holder decision in 2013.TopicsUS voting rightsJoe ManchinBiden administrationUS politicsJoe BidennewsReuse this content More

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      Arizona students stage hunger strike to urge Sinema to support voting reform

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      Arizona students stage hunger strike to urge Sinema to support voting reformCollege students say they will be striking indefinitely until Arizona senator agrees to support Freedom to Vote Act Since Monday, a group of 20 college students from the University of Arizona and Arizona State have been on hunger strike in an effort to pressure one of the most heavily criticized Democratic senators, Kyrsten Sinema, to take action on the passage of crucial voting reform legislation.The students say they will be striking indefinitely until Arizona’s Sinema agrees to support the Freedom to Vote Act, a bill that would ensure fair election measures like automatic voter registration and the protection and expansion of vote by mail.‘Time is running out’: can Congress pass a voting rights bill after months of failure?Read moreTheir target is not easy. Sinema, who was once active in the Green party, has drifted far away from the progressive wing of her party and is now widely seen – along with West Virginia’s Joe Manchin – as a centrist roadblock on much of Joe Biden’s agenda. As such, she has earned the anger of many Democrats, from her fellow elected officials to grassroots organizers.The Freedom to Vote Act would directly benefit those most affected by voter suppression laws and gerrymandering, especially Black and brown communities, immigrants and young voters, and voters with disabilities. The students are working with Un-Pac, a non-partisan group organizing in the hope of restoring the Voting Rights Act through the Freedom to Vote Act and eliminating gerrymandering, dark money and other threats to fair representation.Since its introduction, the bill has been consistently opposed by Republican lawmakers and is held up in the Senate where it has been blocked by Republican senators. Despite his promise to restore the Voting Rights Act during his campaign, Biden and the Democratic majority have failed to advance any voting rights legislation this year, despite a broad push by Republicans across the US to pass laws restricting access to the ballot.In 2021 alone, US Republicans have taken full advantage of the filibuster – the Senate rule requiring 60 votes to advance most legislation – and deterred voting rights bills on four different occasions. According to a recent report from the Brennan Institute for Justice, 19 states enacted 33 different laws that make it more difficult for citizens to vote after the 2020 election, in which record numbers of citizens went to the polls. At the same time there has been widespread gerrymandering in mostly Republican states, chipping away at Democratic seats and splitting up voters from communities of color.Last week Sinema agreed to a private meeting with the students via Zoom, where she listened to their concerns and said she supported the passage of the legislation. However, she has a history of supporting the filibuster.“We are very clear from that meeting that Senator Sinema understands our message – that we are hunger striking until the bill passes and we would rather make this sacrifice than suffer the consequences of inaction on federal voting rights and campaign finance reform now,” said Shana Gallagher, executive director of Un-Pac. “We now believe it is incumbent upon President Biden to call another vote before the end of the year.”The students are now traveling to Washington DC, where Biden held the Summit for Democracy. Student organizers Brandon Ortega and Georgia Linden said the protestors will shift the pressure from Sinema and plan to continue striking indefinitely outside the White House in an effort to persuade Biden to talk to them and ultimately, pass the Freedom to Vote Act into law before the end of the year.“We are honestly confused and disappointed that President Biden hasn’t prioritized this more,” said Gallagher. “We don’t understand why he’s not treating this existential issue with the urgency that we are, but we are still hopeful that he has time to change course and our sacrifice will help the administration to act.”As of now, the group is hopeful of drawing the attention of the White House.“We did not originally request a meeting with Sinema but when she found out about our action, she wanted to meet with us to express her commitment to this legislation,” said Gallagher. “Our remaining demand is a meeting with the Biden administration but as of now, we have not heard a response.”The group is well aware that their hunger strike could last longer than they hope, but they are prepared for the hardships.“It’s definitely been difficult, but we do have a medical team and a support team that is taking care of all of us,” said Ortega. “We’re grateful that we have dozens of people across the country doing solidarity fasts and vigils and there has been a lot of support, most notably from a group of veterans who came to the Arizona state house to thank us and to tell us they were humbled by our actions. 84% of Arizonians support this bill, so we’re united as a generation and as a state.”“I would just say, what’s far more dangerous than putting our bodies on the line is losing our democracy forever,” said Linden.TopicsArizonaUS voting rightsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      New York City’s noncitizens will soon be allowed to vote in local elections

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      New York City’s noncitizens will soon be allowed to vote in local elections A measure approved Thursday makes it the largest city to open the ballot box to its 800,000 green card holders and Dreamers New York City could soon become the largest city in the US to give noncitizens the right to vote in local elections, a historic move that would open the ballot box to 800,000 green card holders and Dreamers.The city council approved the measure on Thursday. Only a potential veto from mayor Bill de Blasio stands in the way of the measure becoming law, but the Democrat has said he would not veto it.The council’s vote was a breakthrough moment for an effort that had long languished. Councilman Francisco Moya, whose family hails from Ecuador, choked up as he spoke in support of the bill.New Yorkers reject expanded voting access in stunning resultRead more“This is for my beautiful mother who will be able to vote for her son,” said Moya, while joining the session by video with his immigrant mother at his side.Legally documented, voting-age noncitizens comprise nearly one in nine of the city’s 7 million voting-age inhabitants. The measure would allow noncitizens who have been lawful permanent residents of the city for at least 30 days, as well as those authorized to work in the US, including Dreamers, the children of undocumented immigrants, to help select the city’s mayor, city council members, borough presidents, comptroller and public advocate.“It is no secret, we are making history today. Fifty years down the line when our children look back at this moment they will see a diverse coalition of advocates who came together to write a new chapter in New York City’s history by giving immigrant New Yorkers the power of the ballot,” said councilmember Ydanis Rodriguez, a main sponsor of the bill, after Thursday’s vote.More than a dozen communities across the United States already allow noncitizens to cast ballots in local elections, including 11 towns in Maryland and two in Vermont. But New York City is the largest place by far to give voting rights to noncitizens.Noncitizens still wouldn’t be able to vote for president or members of Congress in federal races, or in the state elections that pick the governor, judges and legislators. The city’s move is likely to enflame an already contentious debate over voting rights. Last year, Alabama, Colorado and Florida adopted rules that would preempt any attempts to pass laws like the one in New York City. Arizona and North Dakota already had prohibitions on the books.“The bill we’re doing today will have national repercussions,” said the council’s majority leader, Laurie Cumbo, a Democrat who opposed the bill. She expressed concern that the measure could diminish the influence of African American voters.Noncitizens wouldn’t be allowed to vote until elections in 2023.It’s unclear whether the bill might face legal challenges. City councilman Joseph Borelli, the Republican leader, said such a challenge is likely. Opponents say the council lacks the authority on its own to grant voting rights to noncitizens and should have first sought action by state lawmakers.TopicsNew YorkUS voting rightsUS immigrationUS politicsDream ActnewsReuse this content More