Your weekly source for analysis and insight from experts at the Brennan Center for Justice

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The Briefing

In Wisconsin, a challenger won big against an incumbent state supreme court justice. The surprise result suggests President Trump and his allies are making a strategic mistake in their effort to curb voting. We saw the horrific sight of people risking their health, waiting in long lines to vote. Voters want to vote safely, and sometimes they take it out on the politicians who try to stop them.

All that reflects new polling showing wide and bipartisan support for steps that will make it possible to vote safely in November. . A new Brennan Center poll

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conducted by Benenson Strategy Group finds that four out of five Americans believe that states should give all voters the option of mail ballots for the November election, including 57 percent of Republicans. The further away you get from Washington, the less partisan this really is.

Vote by mail favors neither party, and much of the country already uses it with infinitesimal

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fraud. In fact, none of the five states that hold their elections primarily by mail has had any voter fraud scandals since making that change. In the pandemic, mail ballots are a necessary option

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, along with ample early voting and clean, safe, in-person voting. A growing number of Republican governors and election officials are urging citizens to vote safely and asking Congress for help.

Trump, nonetheless, continues to rail against steps to make voting available. Today, there was an all-caps presidential tweet

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A lesson to those who offer these increasingly tinny claims of misconduct: voters want to vote. Politicians should let them.

Democracy

Gerrymandering Meets the Coronavirus

Rarely have the real-world policy consequences of gerrymandering been as frighteningly illustrated as they were in Wisconsin last week. With a near supermajority in the state assembly, thanks to one of the most aggressive gerrymanders in U.S. history, Wisconsin Republicans ignored calls to postpone the elections. “Republicans could act brazenly without fear of electoral blowback because gerrymandered maps make it virtually impossible for them to ever lose their legislative majority,” writes the Brennan Center’s Michael Li. “By baking electoral results into the DNA of districts, gerrymandering has taken away an important check and balance from Wisconsin voters.” // Read More

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The White House Personnel Office Is Undermined When We Need It Most

The Presidential Personnel Office (PPO) is designed to quickly vet and appoint critically needed personnel. Now that it’s been gutted by Trump, it has become a vehicle for enforcing loyalty and carrying out vendettas. “Doing away with the senior level position on global health and pandemics at the White House [and] dramatically scaling back the Centers for Disease Control’s global health security initiative designed to fight epidemics abroad” have hampered the government’s response to the coronavirus, writes Brennan Center Fellow and former PPO head Rudy Mehrbani. // Washington Post

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The Census in the Latino Community

The Brennan Center’s Mireya Navarro spoke to three experts about how to improve the Latino count this spring amidst the coronavirus pandemic: Carlos Menchaca, co-chair of the 2020 Census Task Force of the New York City Council; Emely Paez, director of government affairs and civic engagement for the Hispanic Federation; and Jorge Luis Vasquez Jr., associate counsel at LatinoJustice-PRLDEF. Says Menchaca, “If you are at home right now feeling helpless, feeling like you’re trapped, then the thing that you can do to help yourself and your community and your city is to get people to fill out the census.” // Read More

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A version of this interview

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also appears in Spanish.

Justice

Stopping the Growing Prison Pandemic

The Covid-19 outbreaks now surging through prisons and jails weren’t just predictable, they were predicted. Now, with at least 8 federal prisoners who have died from the virus, and hundreds who have tested positive, it’s time to end the largely arbitrary approach to determining which prisoners are released, says Brennan Center Fellow Andrew Cohen.

“The cruelty shown the prisoners who have been kept locked up as the virus spreads doesn’t just end with them,” writes Brennan Center Fellow Andrew Cohen. “It attaches to the staff who guard them, and to their families, their lawyers, and to everyone who interacts with them.” // Read More

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Constitution

Presidents Have Emergency Powers We Aren’t Allowed to Know About

One of the government’s best-kept secrets is a set of classified documents known as “presidential emergency action documents” consisting of draft proclamations and executive orders that the president can quickly deploy to assert broad authority in a range of worst-case scenarios. There’s no evidence that the executive branch has ever consulted with or even informed Congress about their contents. “Congress should move quickly to remedy that omission and assert its authority to review these documents, before we all learn just how far this administration believes the president’s powers reach,” write the Brennan Center’s Elizabeth Goitein and Andrew Boyle. // New York Times

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Events


Check out the Brennan Center’s upcoming virtual events:

Should a Pandemic Pause Our Civil Liberties?

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Thursday, April 16 | 7:00 p.m. – 8:15 p.m. ET

With Faiza Patel (Director, Brennan Center Liberty & National Security Program), Masha Gessen (Staff Writer, the New Yorker), and Amol Sinha (Executive Director, ACLU-NJ). Journalist Angélique Roché will moderate.
Co-hosted with WNYC Greene Space


Co-hosted with WNYC Greene Space
The Fight for a Fair Count: Keeping the 2020 Census on Track

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Monday, April 20 | 6:00 p.m. – 7:15 p.m. ET

With Janai Nelson (Associate Director-Counsel, NAACP Legal Defense Fund), Adriel I. Cepeda Derieux (Staff Attorney, ACLU Voting Rights Project), Thomas Wolf (Counsel, Brennan Center Democracy Program). Osita Nwanevu of the New Republic will moderate.

Co-hosted with Brooklyn Historical Society and NYU's John Brademas Center

News

Lauren-Brooke Eisen on coronavirus in prisons and jails // C-SPAN

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Elizabeth Goitein on intelligence during coronavirus // Wall Street Journal

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Lawrence Norden on the urgency of preparing for the November election // USA Today

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Myrna Pérez on the fight for voting rights in Florida // PBS

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Michael Waldman on vote by mail and partisanship // New York Times

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Wendy Weiser on transitioning to vote by mail nationwide // The Atlantic

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Have an issue you'd like us to cover? Feedback on this newsletter? Email us at

[email protected]

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The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law is a nonpartisan law and policy institute that works to reform, revitalize – and when necessary defend – our country’s systems of democracy and justice.

Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
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