Welcome to the November edition of The Lever. This month, we explore three key takeaways from the recent, off-cycle elections in our Hot Policy Take.
We also share a fantastic report on election audits from our partners along with a heartbreaking story about the increased threats and intimidation that poll workers and civil servants have endured. Let’s get right to it.
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In this month’s Hot Policy Take, we explore Three Takeaways from the 2021 Elections. While expanded voter access in Virginia resulted in record turnout for an off-cycle election, turnout in New York was just under 20 percent of registered voters.
In Virginia, while both Democrats and Republicans turned out in higher numbers than in the last gubernatorial election year, Republicans turned out in greater numbers, refuting the claim that expanded voter access always benefits Democrats. The low voter turnout in New York also calls into question whether the voting rights ballot initiatives that failed to pass truly reflects public sentiment around expanded ballot access measures.
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FROM OUR PARTNERS
Our friends at the Bipartisan Election Center released a new report from their Elections Project detailing eight bipartisan principles for election audits. The report received a unanimous endorsement from BPC’s Task Force on Elections, which includes 29 Republican, Democratic, and nonpartisan election officials from 20 states.
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WHAT WE'RE READING
Don't miss this piece from Vox documenting the troubling, persistent trend of poll worker and other civil servant intimidation across the country.
Democracy doesn’t work unless citizens make it work. This not only means showing up to vote but also helping operate and administer the key institutions in a democratic society — such as schools, polling places, and local health agencies.
Yet over the course of the past year and a half, the Americans who do this critical work — mostly anonymous individuals motivated by a sense of civic duty — have been subject to a wave of violent threats.
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THE MARKUP
The Markup is VRL’s weekly update for insiders on state election legislation. Here’s a snippet from last Monday’s edition of The Markup – a sample of what you can expect each week:
Oklahoma introduces bill that would conduct a sham audit of the 2020 election. In a special session, Oklahoma legislators introduced a bill last week to require a "forensic" audit of the 2020 election in every precinct in nine counties conducted by an "independent third party" appointed by the governor, the president pro tempore of the Senate, and the speaker of the House of Representatives. These partisan elected officials are all currently Republicans, and the bill does not identify any qualifications for the independent third party or any standards for the review. The audit would consist of the three largest and three smallest counties in the state, along with three chosen at the discretion of the independent third party.
This is part of a worrisome trend that gives audit authority to partisan electeds and unqualified third parties, rather than trained election professionals. 18 bills in 7 states have introduced bills to review the 2020 election results. Of these, bills are still pending in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Washington. Additionally, while Texas’s legislative attempts to conduct sham audits all failed, Governor Greg Abbott announced last week that he would use his emergency powers to shift $4 million over for a review of the 2020 election results in certain (mostly Democratic-majority) counties.
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