08/19/2022
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Welcome back! ICYMI: read Marc’s latest article explaining the constellation of well-funded, right-wing groups working to make voting more difficult and free and fair elections less likely. |
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The Arizona GOP’s Far-Right Spiral |
On Monday, a lawsuit was filed by voting rights organizations challenging several provisions of Arizona’s Senate Bill 1260 for imposing “severe restrictions” on the right to vote. The law requires county recorders to cancel a voter’s registration if they receive confirmation that the voter is registered to vote in another Arizona county, creates a process to remove voters from the state’s permanent vote-by-mail list if the voter is registered in another county and makes it a felony to forward a mail-in ballot to a voter who may be registered in another state. For the first two provisions, county recorders are not obligated to notify voters that their registration is at risk or ask voters to confirm that they have moved.
This week, Democracy Docket covered another phenomenon — the Arizona Republicans’ hypocritical stance on mail-in voting after 30 years of support and success. In 1991, the state enacted a law allowing all voters to vote by mail without an excuse (previously, voters had to have an excuse to cast mail-in ballots). This law, and subsequent updates, received broad bipartisan support. Nearly 90% of Arizonans voted early in 2020, the majority by mail. How did this stunning reversal on a popular policy come about? Read “The Rise and Fall of Mail-in Voting in Arizona” for more.
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Arizona’s Republican Party has embraced anti-democracy as a guiding principle. The state GOP is likely the most extreme in this country — the party’s recent nominees for governor, secretary of state, attorney general and U.S. Senate confirm that trend. You don’t want to miss journalist Robert Draper’s inside look into the Grand Canyon state’s most fanatical base.
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Trial Begins Over Montana’s Voter Suppression Laws |
Today, a Montana state court wrapped up the first week of a two-week trial. During the trial, the plaintiffs in three lawsuits, consolidated under Montana Democratic Party v. Jacobsen, are challenging three separate laws for violating the Montana Constitution. The lawsuits allege that the 2021 laws particularly burden the right to vote for young voters, Native voters, elderly voters and voters with disabilities. Find courtroom updates here and read our latest Case Watch to get caught up on this important trial.
In one of two Spotlights published this week, hear directly from one of the plaintiff groups involved in the Montana trial. Keaton Sunchild, the political director for Western Native Voice, describes why the group is fighting for Native American voters in “We Deserve a Say at the Ballot Box, Too.” |
Racial Gerrymandering vs. Racial Vote Dilution, Explained |
As we know, redistricting can be a fraught process where bad actors pass unfair and unconstitutional maps. One way map drawers can manipulate district lines to produce certain electoral outcomes is to rely on race. There are two distinct ways that maps can impermissibly use race — racial gerrymandering and racial vote dilution. Unfortunately, these concepts are often confounded with one another; in our latest Explainer, we break down the difference.
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Racial gerrymandering: A state may not use race as the predominant factor in assigning voters to districts in any federal, state or local electoral maps unless it has a compelling reason to do so. If the map drawers use race without a compelling reason, that’s a racial gerrymander and violates the U.S. Constitution.
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Racial vote dilution: This claim is brought against a map when a state’s minority voters cannot elect the candidates of their choice, often because the map drawers “packed” the voters into one district and “cracked” them across several districts in order to weaken their collective voting power. Section 2 of the VRA is designed to protect against this type of race-based vote dilution.
Depending on the context, racial gerrymandering and racial vote dilution claims can be brought either separately or in tandem. However, the interaction of racial gerrymandering and racial vote dilution claims may only get more complicated when the Supreme Court decides Merrill v. Milligan in its 2022 term.
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Alaska and Wyoming Reveal Former President Donald Trump’s Grip on the GOP |
This week, Alaska and Wyoming held their primary elections. Alaska uses ranked-choice voting and results are slow to come in, but early primary numbers indicate that pro-Trump Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) and anti-Trump Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) both have a solid chance at reelection come November, a sign of the unique political environment that defines our country’s largest and northernmost state.
In Wyoming, outspoken Trump critic and Jan. 6 committee member Rep. Liz Cheney (R) lost her primary by huge margins. Cheney has some abhorrent policy positions — and that’s the point, she is by all means an ideal conservative candidate — so it’s extremely indicative of the GOP’s anti-democratic streak that she has been cast out of the party on such absolute terms. Additionally, Trump-endorsed candidate Chuck Gray (R) won the Republican nomination for Wyoming secretary of state. There’s no Democrat running against him, meaning the state representative who supports false claims about fraud in the 2020 election is all but confirmed as the first “Big Lie” chief elections official of the 2022 election cycle.
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At the end of July, U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) introduced a bill that proposes major changes to how Washington, D.C. conducts its elections. Since the district is not a state, Congress retains the right to modify its laws whenever it wants — a warning sign of steps Republicans might take to interfere with Washington if they take control of Congress next year. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) vowed to defeat the bill, stating that it “is ironic that Republicans are abusing their undemocratic power over D.C. to try to make voting harder in a jurisdiction that is denied voting representation in Congress.” That reminds us, today is a great day to push for D.C. statehood.
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The North Carolina State Board of Elections adopted new rules clarifying the role of partisan election observers. The decision follows reports from the state’s May primary election that partisan election observers breached the rules of conduct. A survey of local election officials revealed that party observers verbally harassed voters and poll workers, entered restricted areas in polling places and engaged in other forms of intimidation. Learn more about the new rules here.
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Don’t forget about Ohio! Yesterday, an important deadline passed for the Ohio General Assembly to redraw the state’s congressional map. It’s been 30 days since the state Supreme Court struck down the map for being a Republican partisan gerrymander in violation of the Ohio Constitution. Since the General Assembly failed to enact a constitutional map within this time, the responsibility now goes to the Ohio Redistricting Commission. We don’t have high hopes though — the commission has blatantly disregarded multiple court orders to redraw other maps.
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Election workers in a small, deep-red Texas county have resigned because of harassment. “After the 2020 (election), I was threatened, I’ve been stalked, I’ve been called out on social media,” said Anissa Herrera, the county’s election administrator. Gillespie County Judge Mark Stroeher added: “Unfortunately, they have driven out our elections administrator, and not just her, but the staff. Everybody has resigned.” This story exemplifies a growing, dangerous trend of threats towards election officials inspired by Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. In fact, on Tuesday, the DOJ indicted a Missouri man for allegedly threatening an Arizona election official via voicemail.
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SPOTLIGHT: Conservatives Have Been Packing the Courts for Years |
By Rakim Brooks, a public interest appellate lawyer and president of Alliance for Justice. Read more ➡️ |
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Control of state legislatures is more important than ever before. Wondering how to get involved? Tune into the State Power Series, cohosted by Sister District and Vote Save America, on Aug. 30 at 8 p.m. EDT to learn all about how progressives can sustain state efforts. And, join Sister District's phone banks at a time convenient for you (don’t worry, you’ll get training so no experience is necessary).
On Tuesday, Aug. 23, we are watching the primary elections in Florida — a state that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is working hard to transform into an authoritarian environment. We’re reading an op-ed by an elected state attorney fired by DeSantis on why the stakes are so high in the Sunshine State. New York will also hold a primary election for U.S. House and state Senate races after redistricting troubles delayed the redrawing of new districts.
National Poll Worker Recruitment Day took place this past week. You can help power democracy in your community by signing up to be a poll worker — find out how at Help America Vote.
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Have a question? Join Marc and Democracy Docket today on Twitter Spaces at 2 p.m. EDT for a discussion and Q&A on the latest democracy news. (Twitter Spaces is like a podcast, but live. You can listen to it without having a Twitter account.) |
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