Voting Rights, Registration and Requirements

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      President Macron Arrives in New Caledonia, French Territory on Brink of Civil War

      by

      New Caledonia, a French territory in the Pacific, is on the brink of civil war as pro-independence activists protest a law that would expand voting rights.President Emmanuel Macron of France has a lot to manage. The European elections are fast approaching, and his party is predicted to lose. There are the frenzied preparations for the Olympic Games in Paris. A manhunt is underway for a convict whose brazen and deadly jailbreak shocked the country.The last place many expected Mr. Macron to be was on a plane to one of France’s territories in the Pacific, where riots have exploded all week. But there he was, arriving in New Caledonia on Thursday with three ministers in tow, on a mission to heal and listen in a territory where many hold him personally responsible for the unrest.“I come here with determination to work toward restoring peace, with lots of respect and humility,” he said when he arrived.The riots were set off by the prospect of a vote last week in the National Assembly in Paris to expand voting rights in the territory. Many in the local Indigenous population worry that the law would hamper the long process toward independence.Mr. Macron planned to meet with local officials and civil-society activists, to thank the police and start a round of dialogue before quickly hopping back on a plane and returning more than 10,000 miles to mainland France.The trip, in many ways, is classic Macron. He feels that any dispute, no matter how heated, can be resolved through personal dialogue with him. But given the local distrust of the government, many believe his trip is not just short, but shortsighted.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Nancy Pelosi, on Reforms to Reinforce Democracy

      by

      The former House speaker, responding to an Opinion essay, points to legislation pending in Congress.To the Editor:Re “The Constitution Won’t Save Us From Trump,” by Aziz Rana (Opinion guest essay, April 28):Mr. Rana makes a strong case for legislative solutions that will reinforce American democracy. To that end, many of the reforms he calls for were already passed by House Democrats in 2022.Our Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act would take these steps:1) Aim to stop voter suppression and election subversion.2) Establish a nationwide redistricting commission to end partisan gerrymandering.3) Empower the grass roots with matching funds for small-dollar donors.4) Curtail the harmful, anti-democracy Citizens United decision by enacting the Disclose Act, which curbs anonymous funders from suffocating the airwaves with misrepresentations.President Biden, a patriotic and determined champion for democracy, has been forceful in his support for these reforms. But shamefully, Senate Republicans are the final obstacle.When we retake the House, hold the Senate and re-elect Joe Biden in 2024, the filibuster must be pulled aside so this democracy-advancing legislation can become law.Doing so will enable us to pass important legislation to protect our planet from the fossil fuel industry and protect our children from the gun industry, to name a few examples where big dark money stands in the way of progress.It is our duty to empower the public, reduce cynicism in government and put people over politics.Nancy PelosiWashingtonThe writer is the former speaker of the House. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Homeless Voters in Georgia Could Face New Hurdles Under New Law

      by

      After more than 40 years of struggling with drug addiction and homelessness, Barry Dupree has a distinct memory of a milestone in his recovery: casting a ballot in the 2020 election.“I felt like a human being, I felt like I was part of the world,” Mr. Dupree, 64, said. He had gotten sober and found shelter at Gateway Center in Fulton County. “I felt as though my word was listened to, my suggestion of who I wanted was heard.”There are thousands of voters like Mr. Dupree across Georgia and the country, those experiencing homelessness who are able to vote with the proper identification. They receive election related-mail at shelters, relatives’ addresses, temporary locations or P.O. boxes, and the vast majority vote in person.A single-sentence provision in a new election bill in Georgia could complicate voting for some of the state’s homeless population. The bill, which has passed both chambers of the State Legislature and is awaiting Gov. Brian Kemp’s signature, would require all election-related mail for those “homeless and without a permanent address” — such as registration cards, sample ballots and absentee ballots — to be sent to the county registrar office.“I felt like a human being, I felt like I was part of the world,” Barry Dupree, 64, said of voting. Mr. Dupree, who now lives in his own apartment, voted in the 2020 election while living at Gateway Center.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesThe full impact of the change is unclear. Under the bill, voters who are homeless would need to go to the county registrar’s office to see if their registration was up-to-date, to learn about a change in a polling location or request and receive an absentee ballot. Voters with a permanent residence would receive information like this at their homes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      The 2024 Election May Be Decided By Nonvoters. If They Vote.

      by

      “I wish God gave green noses to undecided voters, because between now and election eve, I’d work only the green noses,” Matt Reese, one of America’s first full-time political consultants, liked to say.Listen to this article, read by Natalia CastellanosOpen this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.Decades after Reese helped John F. Kennedy win the 1960 Democratic primary, consultants no longer need to wish for divine intervention. Microtargeting — the kind of selective persuasion efforts that Reese dreamed of — has become a fixture of 21st-century campaigns. Field operatives now target swing voters house by house, carrying computer tablets loaded with polling, registration and market-research data. And everyone understands that in close presidential elections, a few thousand votes in one state or another may decide the winner.But as Americans grow more polarized in their political identities, the number of swing voters diminishes. So a different kind of inconsistent voter grows more important: one who vacillates not so much between parties or candidates but between voting and not voting. Let’s call them the “ambivalent voters.” They’re the ones who often believe that showing up at the polls just isn’t worth the hassle.Elections, historically, are decided not only by those who cast votes but also by those who don’t. President George W. Bush edged out Al Gore in the 2000 election by 537 ballots in Florida. Yet there’s a case to be made that the five million Floridians who were eligible to vote in that election but did not were the ones who really tipped the balance. And nearly half of Americans regularly join the opt-out club. According to the University of Florida Election Lab, 44 percent of citizens who were eligible to vote in 2020 did not. The political scientists Lyn Ragsdale and Jerrold G. Rusk of Rice University have calculated that from 1920 to 2012, the slice of voters who sat out presidential contests averaged 42 percent. But in any given election, those who stay home or tune out may change: Fully 25 percent of the ballots in 2020 were cast by people who didn’t vote in 2016. A “nonvoter” can transform into a voter at any time — and if most of them break in the same direction, their decision to participate can be decisive.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Major Layoffs at Fair Fight, Voting Rights Group Founded by Stacey Abrams

      by

      Fair Fight, the liberal voting rights group founded by Stacey Abrams, is laying off most of its staff and scaling back its efforts in response to mounting debts incurred by court battles.Lauren Groh-Wargo, who led the organization before stepping down to manage Ms. Abrams’s second unsuccessful run for governor in Georgia in 2022, said she was returning as interim chief executive to lead the cuts, including laying off 20 employees — or 75 percent of the current staff.She added that Fair Fight was $2.5 million in debt with only $1.9 million cash on hand. Fair Fight raised some $100 million from 2018 to 2021.The cuts, in a decision made by the group’s board, would decimate a prominent liberal group that was once a fund-raising powerhouse for Democrats. The news was first reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.Fair Fight has been involved in drawn-out legal battles over voting rights — for example, against a right-wing group, True the Vote, that sought in 2020 to remove some 250,000 registered voters in Georgia from voter rolls ahead of runoff elections for the state’s two Senate seats. A federal court ruled narrowly in favor of True the Vote this month.Fair Fight lost another court battle against the state of Georgia in early 2023, having claimed that restrictions on voter registration and absentee ballots violated voting rights. The group was ordered to pay more than $231,000 to cover the state’s legal fees.Ms. Abrams, at one point considered one of the nation’s most influential Democrats, founded Fair Fight after losing her first run for governor against Brian Kemp in 2018, but has not recently been involved with the group. Her efforts at building Democratic infrastructure in Georgia and driving voter turnout among the state’s people of color culminated in Democrats’ flipping both of Georgia’s Senate seats on Jan. 6, 2021.Ms. Abrams then lost her rematch against Mr. Kemp in 2022, and liberal grass-roots organizers and activist groups in Georgia, including Fair Fight, warned late last year that national financial support for their efforts had dried up ahead of the 2024 election. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      The U.S. Lacks What Every Democracy Needs

      by

      The history of voting in the United States shows the high costs of living with an old Constitution, unevenly enforced by a reluctant Supreme Court.Unlike the constitutions of many other advanced democracies, the U.S. Constitution contains no affirmative right to vote. We have nothing like Section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, providing that “every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein,” or like Article 38 of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany, which provides that when it comes to election of the Bundestag, “any person who has attained the age of 18 shall be entitled to vote.”As we enter yet another fraught election season, it’s easy to miss that many of the problems we have with voting and elections in the United States can be traced to this fundamental constitutional defect. Our problems are only going to get worse until we get constitutional change.The framers were skeptical of universal voting. The original U.S. Constitution provided for voting only for the House of Representatives, not for the Senate or the presidency, leaving voter qualifications for House elections to the states. Later amendments framed voting protections in the negative: If there’s going to be an election, a state may not discriminate on the basis of race (15th Amendment), gender (19th Amendment) or status as an 18-to-20-year old (26th Amendment).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

    • 163 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Vanessa Joy, Transgender Candidate in Ohio, Is Disqualified for Not Disclosing Birth Name

      by

      Vanessa Joy, who wanted to run for a state House seat, said she was unaware of a statute that said candidates must disclose previous names on nominating petitions.A transgender woman was disqualified from a race for the Ohio House of Representatives after she did not include her previous name in election materials, raising the prospect that transgender candidates would face similar barriers elsewhere.Vanessa Joy, a real estate photographer running as a Democrat in Ohio’s 50th District, was informed in a letter from the Stark County Board of Elections on Tuesday that she had been disqualified from the state House race.The board cited a state law that requires a person running for office to list on the candidacy petition any name changes within five years of an election, and it gave Ms. Joy until Friday afternoon to appeal.Ms. Joy, who hopes to be among the first openly transgender elected officials in Ohio, said in an interview that she had appealed the board’s decision and planned to challenge the law in court.“Had I known this law existed, I likely would have bit the bullet and put my deadname next to my legal name,” she said, using a term for a transgender person’s birth name.“I would have done it because I care enough to get on the ballot, but this will be a huge barrier to entry for transgender people,” she said, adding that many transgender people have their birth names sealed out of concern for their safety.Ms. Joy noted in her appeal letter that Ohio’s candidate guide made no mention of the law and that the county elections board had not raised any concerns when she submitted the dozens of signatures required to secure a place on the ballot.She also argued that the law had been “applied unevenly.” At least two other transgender legislative candidates will appear on ballots in Ohio this year despite not having included prior names in their election paperwork, according to the L.G.B.T.Q.+ Victory Fund, a national organization that supports L.G.B.T.Q. candidates. The organization said it was not clear if those candidates changed their names within the last five years.Ms. Joy, 42, grew up in a conservative Christian household. She came out as transgender two years ago after the death of her father, who she said would have disapproved of her decision to transition. She also left her job running the family’s manufacturing company to work as a photographer.She said she chose to publicize her transition on social media and in a podcast as Republicans have advanced a wave of measures nationwide restricting medical care for transgender people, regulating which public bathrooms they can use and dictating which youth sports teams they can play on.“The Republicans have an absolute stranglehold supermajority in Ohio, and I want to give other people my age the courage to get out and run or vote,” she said. “If they can see a trans girl in red Ohio running for office, maybe they’ll be like, Well, I can do it, too.”Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who focuses on voting rights, said the Ohio statute had a practical purpose.“The reason you’d want to know prior names of a candidate is if they have something in their past they were trying to hide, like a criminal history or some embarrassing incidents,” he said. “Voters want to be able to judge backgrounds.”However, in the history of voting rights in the United States, many laws that appeared neutral had the consequence of being exclusionary, said Atiba Ellis, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.“In the anti-transgender political environment in Ohio, this disqualification raises that specter of concern that this becomes a new mechanism of exclusion,” he said.Melanie Amato, a spokeswoman for the Ohio secretary of state, said the office was aware of the disqualification.“The law applies to everyone and there is no discussion to have this law amended at this time,” Ms. Amato said in an email.A record number of transgender candidates sought and won office last year, according to Sean Meloy, the vice president of political programs for L.G.B.T.Q.+ Victory Fund, and he expects that trend to continue in 2024.Mr. Meloy said there was no accounting of how many states had laws like Ohio’s that could pose a barrier for such candidates.In 2017, there were no known openly transgender legislators in the United States, according to an LGBTQ+ Victory Fund database. This year, at least 14 transgender people are serving in state legislatures. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Ramaswamy Repeats Call for Ballots to Be English Only

      by

      Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican tech entrepreneur running a long-shot campaign for president, doubled down Friday on his pledge to tighten voting laws if he is elected.In his remarks in Ames, Iowa, he reiterated his promise to make English the only language on ballots. The language minority provisions of the Voting Rights Act prohibit such English-only ballots in many cases. His promise, which he has highlighted frequently in recent months, is one of many voting reforms that have become popular among Republican voters that he has seized on.“One thing I will work with Congress to deliver is a minimal federal standard for our federal elections,” he told voters at the Friday event. That standard would include “single-day voting on Election Day, as a national holiday with paper ballots, government-issued voter ID to match the voter file, and yes, English as the sole language that appears on a ballot.”Mr. Ramaswamy, who is polling far behind his Republican rivals in Iowa at fourth place, has long called for extraordinary rollbacks to voting rights in other ways as well. Early on in his campaign, he generated attention by calling for Americans under 25 to be barred from voting, unless they pass the civics test required of immigrants seeking citizenship or unless they serve in the U.S. military or as a first responder.He said over the summer that had he been in former Vice President Mike Pence’s position on Jan. 6, 2021, he would not have certified Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory until Congress agreed to pass huge changes to the electoral system.“In my capacity as president of the Senate, I would have led through that level of reform, then on that condition certified the election results,” he told NBC News in August.Mr. Ramaswamy, the son of Indian immigrants, has also called for English to be made the national language in the country.Leah McBride Mensching More