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    Jennifer Lawrence: I voted for John McCain rather than Barack Obama

    The actor Jennifer Lawrence used to vote Republican, she has revealed. Speaking on the Absolutely Not podcast, Lawrence told host Heather McMahan she “grew up Republican. My first time voting, I voted for John McCain. I was a little Republican.”Lawrence said she remained grateful for her upbringing as it enabled her to “see the fiscal benefits of some of the Republican policies” while also noting that her and the party’s views on social issues “weren’t in line”.“When Donald Trump got elected, that just changed everything,” said Lawrence. “This is an impeached president who’s broken many laws and refused to condemn white supremacy and it feels there’s been a line drawn in the sand.”Despite not voting for him the first time around, Lawrence said she reflected fondly on the years when Barack Obama was in power, saying: “You would go days without thinking about the president.”Speaking before Trump’s election in 2016, Lawrence said she couldn’t “imagine supporting a party that doesn’t support women’s basic rights. It’s 2015 and gay people can get married and we think that we’ve come so far, so, yay! But have we? I don’t want to stay quiet about that stuff.”She also expressed the view that “if Donald Trump is president of the United States, it will be the end of the world. And he’s also the best thing to happen to the Democrats ever.”Earlier this month, Lawrence endorsed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in November’s election saying: “Voting is the foundation of our democracy and our freedom. And I would consider this upcoming election the most consequential of our lifetime.“Donald Trump has and will continue to put himself before the safety and well-being of America. He does not represent my values as an American, and most importantly as a human being.”For the past three years, Lawrence has also served on the board of RepresentUs, which she described as “an incredible non-partisan movement and anti-corruption organisation working to unrig America’s broken political system, and put power back in the hands of the American people.” More

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    Ohio's quarter-mile early-voting lines? That's what voter suppression looks like | David Litt

    In-person early voting started in Ohio this week, and in the state’s largest cities, it was a total mess. In Columbus, the line stretched for a quarter of a mile. In Cuyahoga county, the hours-long wait began before polls even opened.All of this was entirely predictable. Thanks to an Ohio state law passed in 2006 by a Republican-controlled legislature and signed by a Republican governor, the number of in-person early voting sites is limited to just one per county. That means Vinton County, a Republican stronghold in the state’s southeast that’s home to just 13,500 Ohioans, has approximately 97 times more polling-places-per-voter than Franklin County, the deep-blue bastion with a population of more than 1.3 million.The office of Frank LaRose, Ohio’s chief elections official, recently tweeted that “lines are due to enthusiasm”. But blaming voters for the long lines they endure ignores the massive, intentional disparity in resources between the more and less populous parts of the state. Ohio’s politicians have made voting far easier for Republicans and far more difficult for Democrats. But what makes the needlessly long lines that have appeared throughout Ohio’s cities particularly notable is that they are not merely the result of election mismanagement or an ad hoc act of voter suppression. Instead, they reflect a view of democracy that prioritizes the imaginary preferences of land over the very real preferences of people, and in so doing, undermines the principle of “One Person, One Vote”.To understand exactly what makes the actions of Ohio’s Republican politicians so insidious, and so antithetical to modern democracy, it’s important to understand the history of One Person, One Vote – a concept that sounds timeless, but in fact is younger than George Clooney. At the turn of the 20th century, as Americans began migrating from the countryside to cities, rural politicians came up with ways to retain power without having to retain population. The simplest way to do this was to avoid redrawing legislative district boundaries every year. The population of cities boomed – but the number of representatives allocated to them did not.By 1960, American representation, or lack thereof, had become almost farcical. Maricopa county, Arizona, which contained the city of Phoenix and more than half the state’s population, elected just one-third of the state’s representatives to Congress. “One state senator represented Los Angeles county, which had a population of more than 6 million people,” write authors Seth Stern and Stephen Wermiel, “while another represented three northern California rural counties with a total population of 14,294.” Author Anthony Lewis provides an example from Connecticut: “177,000 citizens of Hartford elected two members of the state house of representatives; so did the town of Colebrook, population 592.” (The most egregious example of what political scientists call “malapportionment” was surely in New Hampshire, where one district’s assemblyman represented a constituency of three.)Another strategy politicians used to maintain control despite dwindling popular support was to distribute power by county rather than by population. The most infamous of these was Georgia’s “county unit system”. Created in 1917, the system gave each county a set number of votes in Democratic primaries: urban counties received six votes, towns received four, and rural counties received two. Atlanta’s Fulton county had a population 80 times larger than that of three least-populous counties combined, yet they received an identical six votes. Because Democrats dominated Georgia, the winner of the party primary was the de facto winner of the general election – which made the county unit system a powerful tool for disenfranchising urban voters in general, and Black voters (who were more likely to live in cities) in particular.These kinds of representation-skewing schemes were immoral. But for most of the 20th century, they weren’t illegal. For decades, the supreme court held that district populations were a political question the judiciary had no business deciding. But in 1962, the justices concluded that malapportionment couldn’t be corrected through the normal electoral process. It left voters powerless to reclaim their power. In Baker v Carr Justice William Brennan declared that malapportionment – if sufficiently egregious – violated the constitution.It’s hard to overstate the impact of the Baker decision. In the months that followed, district maps were struck down in a dozen states. The county unit system was overturned. In 1964, the court ruled that congressional districts, not just state legislative ones, were required to have roughly equal populations. As Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice, notes in The Fight to Vote, 93 of 99 state legislative maps were redrawn in just four years.Chief Justice Earl Warren later called Baker v Carr the most important decision issued by his court. He also summarized the principle behind that decision perfectly. “Legislators represent people,” he wrote. “Not trees or acres.” That principle – that power belongs to the people rather than the land – is what we now call one person, one vote.Sixty years after Baker, the urban-rural divide in our politics is starker than ever. Democrats have become the parties of cities and the denser suburbs, Republicans the party of exurbs and rural areas. Democrats have won the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections. But while the Republican party has lagged among America’s people, it represents the vast majority of America’s acres and trees.If there’s a silver lining, it’s that the people have shown themselves willing to fight for representative democracyWhich brings us back to Columbus and Cleveland, where brutally long voting lines have turned casting a ballot into a feat of endurance. It’s no longer possible to directly allocate votes by county (although that’s likely to be tested if Amy Coney Barrett joins the existing conservative majority on the court). But it is still possible to allocate voting resources by county, in an effort to make voting exponentially more difficult for urban voters than for rural ones. The goal of LaRose’s one-polling-place-per-county order is no different than that of the politicians who devised Georgia’s county unit system more than 100 years ago: diminish the political power of the cities at the expense of the countryside.Distressingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, it’s not just Ohio where one person, one vote is under attack. In Georgia’s 2018 election, Atlanta received far fewer voting machines per voter than rural, redder counties elsewhere in the state. States like Wisconsin have been gerrymandered to pack urban voters into a relative handful of districts while giving rural voters as many representatives as possible. Earlier this month in Texas, the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, limited the number of drop boxes for mail-in ballots to just one per county, even though the state’s most populous county has – and this is not a typo – 2,780,000% more residents than the least populous. No wonder that in Houston, long lines of cars are snaking outside Harris county’s single drop-off site.If there’s a silver lining in all this, it’s that the American people have shown themselves willing to fight for representative democracy. Thus far, the attacks on voting in states like Ohio and Texas seem to have backfired, leading to more awareness, more outrage and, ultimately, higher turnout. But in the long term, Americans must reckon with the fact that one of our two political parties increasingly sees representative democracy as either a hassle or a threat.In the 2020 election, there’s good reason to hope that the voters will stand up to defend our system of government. That said, they shouldn’t have to. Democracy shouldn’t be on the ballot every four years. If and when Democrats regain control of Congress, the White House or state governments across America, they’ll have plenty of challenges to tackle. But nothing will be more important – or ultimately, more essential to changing the country’s course – than reasserting a fundamental but fragile principle of our democracy: in America, the ultimate source of power is the people. Period.This article was amended on 15 October 2020 to clarify that the number of polling places per county was limited by Ohio state lawmakers, not the Ohio Secretary of State, as an earlier version said
    David Litt is an American political speechwriter and author of the comedic memoir Thanks, Obama: My Hopey Changey White House Years More

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    Federal judge blocks Texas governor's order to shut down ballot drop-off sites

    On Friday evening, US federal judge Robert Pitman blocked Texas governor Greg Abbott’s order to shut down mail-in ballot drop-off sites across the state as the election is currently under way.Last week, Abbott issued a proclamation limiting each county to only one ballot drop-off site, regardless of size or population. This decision would have led to the closure of drop-off sites across the state, including 11 in Harris county and three in Travis county. A lawsuit was immediately filed by civil right organizations.Critics argued Abbott’s order to close drop-off sites would disproportionately affect larger, more diverse counties and hit communities of color, making it more difficult for them to vote. Harris county has more than 4.7 million residents and is the most populous county in the nation and home to the city of Houston. Travis county is home to Texas’s capital city, Austin. By comparison, smaller counties like Brewster county in west Texas, which has a population of just under 10,000, would remain unaffected by the ruling as it has always only had one drop-off site.Requests for absentee ballots in Texas are higher than previous elections due to the coronavirus pandemic, but concerns of mail slowdowns presented a need for drop-off locations. The ruling by Pitman blocking Abbott’s move is a victory for those deemed eligible to vote by mail in the state, including the elderly and disabled who would have had to travel farther distances to drop off their ballot and risk exposure to Covid-19.Statement from Harris County Clerk @CGHollins:Tonight’s injunction reinstating Harris County voters’ ability to hand-deliver their ballots at 12 county offices is a victory for voting rights. (1/3) https://t.co/t5v4Zb9g6h— Harris County Clerk (@HarrisVotes) October 10, 2020
    In a statement, the Harris county clerk, Chris Hollins, said: “Tonight’s injunction reinstating Harris county voters’ ability to hand-deliver their ballots at 12 county offices is a victory for voting rights. The governor’s suppressive tactics should not be tolerated, and tonight’s ruling shows that the law is on the side of Texas voters.” More

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    How Covid is accelerating the fight for Black voting rights in the US – video

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    Donald Trump’s election campaign in 2016 targeted nearly 3.5 million Black Americans to deter them from voting, and the battle for the right to vote is just as important in 2020. Kenya Evelyn travels to Florida where it’s the Democrats’ most loyal bloc, Black women, who are also bearing the brunt of the coronavirus outbreak, with its impact accelerating the fight for voting rights. From mail-in ballots and early voting, to felon disenfranchisement, Black voters are wielding their power to demand more from Democrats ahead of November
    Black voting power: the fight for change in Milwaukee, one of America’s most segregated cities

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    Mike Bloomberg raises millions to help Florida felons vote

    Weeks after after Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, won a court victory to keep felons from voting until they have paid off fines, restitution and court fees, the billionaire and former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination Mike Bloomberg has stepped in to help them pay off the debts.Bloomberg is part of an effort that raised more than $20m to help felons who have completed sentences vote in the presidential election. That’s in addition to the $100m he has pledged to help Joe Biden win Florida, a crucial state with 29 electoral college votes that Donald Trump hopes will keep him in the White House.A federal appellate court ruled on 11 September that in addition to serving their sentences, Florida felons must pay all fines, restitution and legal fees before they can regain the vote. The case could have broad implications for the November elections.Under Amendment 4, which Florida voters passed overwhelmingly in 2018, felons who have completed their sentences would have voting rights restored. Republican lawmakers then moved to define what it means to complete a sentence.Before the measure passed, Florida was one of four states that permanently banned all people convicted of felonies for life. The ban, rooted in the Jim Crow south, affected an estimated 1.4 million people, including more than one in five eligible Black voters.In addition to time served, lawmakers directed that all legal financial obligations, including unpaid fines and restitution, would also have to be settled. Civil rights groups challenged the law in 2019, saying it amounted to requiring a tax on voting.During a federal trial earlier this year, Florida officials testified that it was extremely difficult to tell people exactly how much money they owe. There is no centralized database for people with felonies to look up how much money is owed and record-keeping can be spotty, especially for crimes that go back decades.In a searing May ruling, US district judge Robert Hinkle said Florida had to allow people to vote if they could not afford to pay outstanding financial obligations. He also ordered the state to come up with a formal way of telling people how much they owe. But the appeals court this month reversed Hinkle’s ruling, even saying Florida had no obligation to tell people how much they owe.With Bloomberg’s help, the Florida Rights Restitution Council (FRRC) is trying to make it easier to pay off fines and fees. The group had raised about $5m before Bloomberg made calls to raise almost $17m more, according to Bloomberg advisers.The FRRC said other donors include John Legend, LeBron James, Michael Jordan, MTV, Comedy Central, VH1, Ben & Jerry’s, Levi Strauss, the Miami Dolphins, the Orlando Magic, the Miami Heat and Steven Spielberg.The money is targeted for felons who registered to vote while the law was in question and who owe $1,500 or less. That accounts for about 31,100 people, Bloomberg advisers say. In a state that decided the 2000 presidential election by 537 votes, that could be critical in a year when polls show Trump and Joe Biden in a dead heat.There are about 774,000 people with felony convictions who cannot vote because they owe money, according to an estimate by an expert for the American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the law.Even with an influx of money, it will be an uphill battle to get people registered ahead of Florida’s 5 October voter registration deadline for the 2020 election. There is still widespread confusion about the law in the state and it can be difficult for people to figure out how much they owe.Organizers say they are not targeting people registered with a particular political party.“To hell with politics, to hell with any other implications or insinuations, at the end of the day it’s about real people, real lives, American citizens who want to be a part of this,” said Desmond Meade, the group’s executive director. “People with felony convictions have had their voices silenced for so long.” More