7/26/2024

Vice President Kamala Harris enters the presidential race. A citizen-driven effort to end gerrymandering and reform the redistricting process will be on Ohio’s ballot in November. And, the felony disenfranchisement fight continues in Mississippi after a 5th Circuit ruling.

Harris enters the presidential race, Republicans throw a fit

After President Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Harris, an unprecedented exit that followed months of hand-wringing over Biden’s age, some Republicans have signaled that legal challenges to Harris’s potential nomination may be forthcoming.

“It will be litigated, I expect, on the ground there,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R) said on CNN. The Oversight Project, which is run by the conservative Heritage Foundation, wrote on X that the organization has been “preparing for this moment for months,” in an apparent response to Biden’s campaign departure.

But legal experts said it’s highly unlikely that Republicans could successfully thwart a Harris candidacy through legal challenges to her placement on the ballot — the chief reason being that Biden “was never the Democratic nominee,” said Paul Schiff Berman, a professor at George Washington University Law School.

While Biden was the presumptive nominee, he was expected to officially secure the nomination at the Democratic National Convention this August.

Until it becomes official, “there's nothing to swap out,” Berman said. “And there's no requirement that either political party pay attention to what happens in the primaries.” Now that Biden has left the race, Harris must secure the support of the party’s delegates to cinch the nomination. Read more on the process and Harris’s potential path to the nomination.

Ohio initiative to end gerrymandering will be on the ballot

A citizen-led constitutional amendment that would take redistricting out of the hands of the Legislature and instead task an independent commission with redrawing electoral maps is on the ballot in Ohio.

Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) announced Tuesday the amendment that would end gerrymandering earned enough signatures to be on the ballot in November. The initiative needed at least 413,487 signatures to appear on the ballot.

This comes as more states are opting out of the traditional redistricting process, in which state lawmakers redraw congressional and legislative districts. Critics have decried the process as hyperpartisan and inefficient, as maps often spark litigation over newly drawn districts. Read more about Ohio’s ballot initiative and about how activists are trying to reform the redistricting process.

Why felony disenfranchisement is still on the docket

Last week, as the voting rights of tens of thousands hung in the balance, the nation’s most conservative court upheld Mississippi’s lifetime ban on voting for individuals with certain felony convictions even after sentence completion.

In its opinion, 13 of the panel’s 19 judges ruled that holding Section 241 of the Mississippi Constitution as unconstitutional would “thwart” the ability of the state Legislature and citizens “to determine their voting qualifications.” The plaintiffs' argument that the provision violates the 8th Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment “must fail because felon disenfranchisement is not a punishment, much less cruel or unusual,” the court wrote.

It’s not just Mississippi. In Nebraska, state Attorney General Michael Hilgers (R) recently issued an opinion stating a voter-restoration law that passed earlier this year without the governor’s signature is unconstitutional. The law would allow people with felony convictions to register to vote after serving their sentences.

Hilger argued that the “Constitution vests the power to restore a felon’s right to vote in the Board of Pardons not the Legislature.” Notably, the 5th Circuit admonished the Mississippi plaintiffs to take their concerns to the Legislature if they want the laws to change. Read more about the 5th Circuit’s opinion and Mississippi’s onerous process for restoring voting rights.

OPINION: Can the New York Early Mail Voter Act Survive Its Constitutional Challenge?

“Since 2020, mail-in voting has become a charged partisan issue,” guest author Deborah Franzblau writes. New York is a prime example. After the governor signed the New York Early Mail Voter Act, which allows all residents to vote by mail, last September Republicans immediately filed a constitutional challenge to the law, sparking a lengthy legal process.

“If the law is to survive, the court must accept a radical break from over a hundred years of tradition, and uphold a new reading of the New York Constitution.” Read more here.

What We’re Doing

Democracy Docket staff writer Crystal Hill is watching the Netflix film “Shirley,” starring Regina King, in the wake of Vice President Kamala Harris’s historic bid for the presidency. The film depicts Shirley Chisholm’s time in Congress and her groundbreaking presidential campaign.

The late lawmaker was the first Black woman to be elected for Congress in 1969, representing New York, before unsuccessfully seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972. Her campaign is perhaps best known for its slogan: “Unbought and Unbossed.”

Former Congressman Joe Kennedy III joins Defending Democracy to talk about the local solutions to national democracy problems, the Groundwork Project, whether Election Day should be a holiday and more. Watch on YouTube here.