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Steven Rosenfeld covers democracy issues for AlterNet. He is a longtime print and broadcast journalist and has reported for National Public Radio, Monitor Radio, Marketplace, TomPaine.com and many newspapers. He has written and co-authored three books on voting rights since 2004, including Count My Vote (AlterNet Books, 2008). His next book profiles how Ben Bril, the most famous Dutch Jewish boxer, kept his family alive in WW2.
SHARE Friday, November 10, 2017 We Are Now One State Closer to Having a Corporate-Dominated Constitutional Convention
While Democrats on Wednesday were feeling encouraged and empowered by Tuesday's coast-to-coast rejection of Trumpism, Republican legislators who control Wisconsin did what the GOP does best in elections: voted to rig the system to favor their agenda. Only this time the target wasn't voter suppression; it was the U.S. Constitution.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 13, 2017 Why Can't Alabama Republicans Admit Doug Jones Won Fair and Square?
Roy Moore cannot get a recount under state law, a growing chorus of legal scholars said Wednesday, despite what the state's top election official and the Senate candidate himself might have you believe. (Moore told rallygoers Tuesday night that the race is "not over," and that it will "take some time.")
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 20, 2008 See (Literally) Why Al Franken is Gaining Votes
The Minnesota recount shows exactly why most voting rights advocates conclude that hand-marked paper ballots are the best way to vote. Unlike Georgia, where the final unresolved U.S. Senate seat will be selected in a runoff election in early December and the public uses paperless voting machines, in Minnesota representatives of both parties can clearly see the voters' intent in a deliberative but accurate recount.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 18, 2017 The Roy Moore Debacle in Alabama Is a Showcase of the GOP's Playbook to Rig Elections
The strange saga of Roy Moore's senatorial bid in Alabama has made one thing clear: Nobody should doubt that the GOP is the modern political party most eager to rig election results -- even when the target is a fellow Republican. The GOP has once again seized the spotlight as the party most enthusiastic about rigging elections -- or doing whatever it takes to get the outcome they seek.
(5 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 30, 2008 Hard Lesson for Franken: Not All Votes Get Counted
The Franken campaign said it would not appeal the board's decision. That means that the 3,700 challenged ballots will now play a prominent role in deciding if Franken will become the Senate's 59th Democratic member. The Canvassing Board also told both campaigns to stop frivolously challenging ballots. Local election boards will now review those ballots.
(8 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 9, 2017 Political Panic Is Brewing in the Republican Party After the Democratic Sweeps on Tuesday
What's apparent to Republicans who haven't drunk the Trump-Breitbart-Fox News Kool-Aid is that Trumpism and following the party's white nationalist fringe is a recipe for sending the GOP into the wilderness. Trump-style extremism may help copycats win low-turnout primaries to get onto fall ballots. But it's increasingly apparent that such extremism is a formula for losing in the general election.
(6 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 14, 2019 Could This Be the End of the Electoral College?
There's new momentum around the National Popular Vote movement, where states will award Electoral College votes to elect the president based on which candidate has won the most votes nationwide -- instead of today's state-by-state winner-take-all system.
(18 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 26, 2017 Why Aren't Dems in Congress Raising More Hell to Oppose the Worst GOP Tax Bill Ever?
Why aren't Democratic leaders raising more hell about the worst GOP tax plan ever? Why aren't they doing more to stop a juggernaut from getting closer to passing, one that panders to those who don't need more money at the expense of future generations? Why are so many Democrats acting like the majority of Republicans?
SHARE Tuesday, December 26, 2017 Trump Revives Plan to Separate Immigrant Children from Parents, Reviving Tactic Used by Nazi Germany
The Department of Homeland Security is evaluating separating detained children from their parents as one of several anti-immigration measures in response to an increase in migrants crossing the Mexican border. Separating children from their parents was a notorious tactic used by Nazi Germany in its mass arrests of Jews and other targeted populations during World War II.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 5, 2018 "They're Throwing A Fit": The GOP's Desperate Power Grabs Show How Weak The Party Has Become
The GOP is a party with a strong streak not only of reluctance to relinquishing power or heeding vote outcomes, but also of seeing it as politically virtuous to do whatever it takes to preserve its power. The biggest example of this reflex is its ongoing packing of the federal courts, which began in President Obama's final years, when the GOP-led Senate refused to seat scores of appointees and a Supreme Court justice.
SHARE Sunday, December 3, 2017 Disastrous Republican Tax Plan Is Only the First Step in Long Term Effort to Cut Social Security and Medicare
Grabbing the cash and running might be the way Trump made his fortune and what the GOP is delivering to the richest Americans. But even if Robert Mueller's investigation of the Trump's campaign collusion with Russia eventually brings down this White House, the Republicans ruling Congress remain and are more immediately targeting safety nets.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 19, 2017 Donald Trump Kicked a Hornet's Nest When He Fired Steve Bannon
Trump's firing of Bannon is likely to haunt the White House. As ex-President Lyndon Johnson famously said of infamous FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, "It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in." Bannon and his ilk are not about to allow the GOP to go quietly into the political mainstream.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 28, 2017 Refugees from Puerto Rico's Hurricane Could Tip the Electoral Balance in Florida -- and the Nation
As storm survivors across Puerto Rico, Florida and Texas (and fire survivors in California) struggle to restart their lives, you can be sure that when it comes time to vote they will remember who was on their side. Survival is arguably the most powerful motivating factor in human nature.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 11, 2019 Leading Civil Rights Lawyer Shows 20 Ways Trump Is Copying Hitler's Early Rhetoric and Policies
A new book by one of the nation's foremost civil liberties lawyers powerfully describes how America's constitutional checks and balances are being pushed to the brink by a president who is consciously following Adolf Hitler's extremist propaganda and policy template from the early 1930s -- when the Nazis took power in Germany.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 16, 2017 The GOP Is Plowing Ahead with an Audacious Effort to Hijack the Vote and Rig Elections
The GOP is willing to rewrite the rules when it comes to the democratic process, if that's what it takes for them to win. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he wants to end a process where home-state senators must approve any federal judicial nominee in their state. Blue state senators have been opposing Trump's nomination of right-wingers to lifetime appointments.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, November 9, 2018 The Blue Wave Is Real, and Republicans Are Reeling
There were signs that Democrats were making inroads in previously red states. In Kansas, the anti-immigrant and vote-suppressing Secretary of State, Kris Kobach, was defeated for governor by Laura Kelly, and Kansans also elected Democrat Sharice Davids, a Native American and gay woman, to the House. Davids was one of many women elected on Tuesday, from governors to House members.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 17, 2019 Just How Secure Are the 2020 Elections?
When one hears about the latest trends in using and abusing data that flow online or over cell phone signal paths, one realizes that the best efforts to prevent disrupting the 2020 voting process or corrupting its reported results are akin to a cat-and-mouse game, where the best that defenders are doing is putting up spyware and walls to protect porous ancient systems.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, July 27, 2018 Why the Georgia Governor's Race May Become One of 2018's Nastiest
The winner of this week's runoff for Georgia's Republican gubernatorial nominee, Secretary of State Brian Kemp, is among a handful of high-ranking state officials who have notorious records tilting the fine print of the voting process to create barriers aimed at the opposition's presumed base. So the race for the next governor of Georgia may be one of the dirtiest of 2018.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 2, 2017 6 Loose Ends in Mueller's Investigation That Could End Up Shaking Trump's Presidency
Despite denials by the White House and dismissive right-wing media coverage, special counsel Robert Mueller's opening salvo -- the indictments and a guilty plea -- has stunned Washington for its aggressiveness, legal positioning and comprehensive strategy that suggests the Trump campaign and White House's problems will only deepen.
(7 comments) SHARE Friday, September 20, 2019 In Major Speech, Hillary Clinton Warns Of Four Top Threats To 2020 Election
Hillary Clinton warned that American elections are under escalating assault from domestic and foreign forces threatening the right to vote on Tuesday in a far-ranging speech delivered at the In Defense of Democracy conference in Washington, D.C.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 19, 2017 Trump's Chaos: He Taunts the Public, Holds Programs Hostage and Forces Others to Clean Up His Mess
Trump's proposed tax cuts would raise annual wages by several thousand dollars -- a figure that has been disputed as a long-term projection and over-ambitious. But Trump ending Obamacare subsidies would cause health care premiums to immediately jump by thousands of dollars in 2018 -- and still could, if Congress doesn't act on the Senate HELP proposal.
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 20, 2018 Steve Bannon's Surprising Opinion About Cambridge Analytica
In other words, Bannon's creation is getting far too much attention and credit for being more powerful than it was. Moreover, if the public wants to understand how social media has become a powerful political messaging tool, people should pause and understand that Facebook's profiling of users is not unique among online marketers.
SHARE Friday, February 2, 2018 The Supreme Court Is About to Make Rulings That Will Shape Elections for Years to Come
If the Court rules that Ohio's partisan voter purges are legal, the law that sought to expand voter registration to motor vehicle agencies, state offices and military recruiters -- you can expect the GOP in states like Georgia, Florida, Texas, Wisconsin, North Carolina and elsewhere to copy Ohio's template and selectively purge their voter rolls before this fall's elections.
(10 comments) SHARE Monday, February 5, 2018 Bernie Supporters Betrayed by DNC (...Surprised?)
Berniecrats may feel they need to keep up the pressure throughout the rest of the DNC reform process, no matter how long it takes. But at the very least, it appears their expectation of fast action is only likely to cause more strife. This pressure and posturing is pointing toward more confrontation between the Berniecrats and the political party they are seeking to change.
SHARE Thursday, December 14, 2017 Watch This Republican Economist Squirm as He's Forced to Admit the Truth About the GOP Tax Bill
Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, noticed Stephen Moore, the conservative economist and tax-cut evangelist, walking past and pinned him down on camera, forcing him to admit that not everyone in the country is in line for a tax cut as the GOP has promised.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 23, 2019 Why The DNC Nixed Smartphone Voting In Alaska Democratic Primary
The Rules Committee could not agree that phone-based voting was sufficiently secure in 2020, not when facing Republicans like President Trump -- who routinely says elections are being stolen and would pounce on any issue with a new voting system -- and when other experts are citing ongoing security threats from abroad.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 20, 2018 Powerhouse Commission Ponders Reeling In Facebook and Google Before It's Too Late
Facebook and Google are going to have to become more transparent or face even greater backlash. Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would soon ask its 2 billion users to rate the trustworthiness of the media on their news feeds. That may help identify more and less trustworthy news sources according to each user's values.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 20, 2016 50 Shockingly Extreme Right-Wing Proposals in the 2016 Republican Party Platform
The GOP 2016 platform would make Christianity the official American religion, English the official American language, replace sex education with abstinence-only advice for teenagers, privatize almost all areas of federal services, cut taxes and regulations for the rich and titans of industry, and impose a belligerent foreign policy and military build-up.
(7 comments) SHARE Friday, January 4, 2019 Democrats in Congress unveil ambitious plan to fix our election system
On the second day of the 116th Congress, the new House Democratic majority will introduce H.R. 1, the most comprehensive democracy reform legislation seen this century. It addresses voting rights and electoral procedures, campaign finance rules and loopholes, and seeks to institute higher ethical standards for federal officeholders and more.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, March 29, 2019 Does Maryland have the answer for verifying America's vote count?
here are advances that can make the process more transparent and verifiable before the winners are officially declared. Critics may assert that nothing involving computers can be trusted in voting. But they overlook that remarkably granular and accounting-like methods to verify vote counts have emerged practices that, if encouraged and widely adopted, would only benefit the public, but could be in place for 2020's election.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 11, 2020 Recruiting Poll Workers Is Key to Thwart Trump's Attacks on Our Voting Systems
As the U.S. heads toward 2020's general election amid a pandemic and President Trump's continued attacks on voting from home, both Trump and the GOP are positioning the party for another court-decided electoral outcome.
(8 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 10, 2018 "Democracy Betrayed": The Voting Barriers That Must Be Cleared for Progressives to Win in the Next Two Elections
Voting in blue-state America can be a world apart from voting in red-state America. And even though it's easier today to register and vote, especially for young people, getting people to the polls in non-presidential races remains a very big challenge. Since the 1970s, midterm turnout keeps falling; a third of people who vote in presidential years simply skip the midterms.
(11 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 16, 2017 Democrats Better Focus on the Races That Matter in '18 or We Will Have Another Decade of Right-Wing Extremists in Charge
Daley's take is sobering. He doesn't think Democrats understand the obstacles to retaking the House, nor do they really appreciate how GOP mapmakers created super-majorities in red states that keep passing far-right legislation. Worst of all, these red state-level super majorities are poised to monopolize the next round of political mapmaking, which will set the national stage for the 2020s.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 5, 2019 America Is Missing Its Chance to Fix Our Election System Before We Vote in 2020
A 2019 bill backed by the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections to let counties use digital images of paper ballots to conduct more thorough recounts failed. Its opponents included Republicans (no House co-sponsors), activists who oppose using computers in vote counting, and some officials seeking less work.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 22, 2018 Treason or Treachery: Trump's Legal Troubles Are Heading Into Court and Could Backfire in Spectacular Ways
Americans may soon be learning more about Trump's excesses -- through the lens of the law -- than they ever expected. Patriotism or tyranny, business acumen or money laundering, consensual hush money or illegal contractual muzzles, are heading to grand juries and courtrooms with front pages and cable networks in rapid pursuit.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 30, 2017 Trump's Bizarre Rantings and Tweets Give Cover to McConnell to Ram Through a Huge Tax Cut for the rich
Trump's pro wrestler-like provocations are part of an ongoing barrage to erase the past (Access Hollywood), rewrite history (who voted for him), dismiss fact, and embrace fiction. These impulses were all tell-tale characteristics of totalitarian rulers. The risk is not just that Trump is a sociopath with unique dysfunctions, but that he is indulging in attacks and fantasies as president.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 9, 2017 Trump Proves He's as Dangerous as Kim Jong-un with Threat to Unleash "Fire and Fury" on North Korea
Trump's threats Tuesday mark a new phase in his presidency. The targets of Trump's prior bullying -- most of whom have been domestic -- have no ability to fight back using military force. With his apocalyptic threats, Trump has just shown the world that he is as unstable and unpredictable as North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
SHARE Wednesday, September 25, 2019 Iowa Democrats Will Expand 2020 Caucus To "Satellite" Sites
The Iowa Democratic Party will create satellite caucus sites for 2020's first presidential caucus, under a plan granted conditional approval Friday by the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 28, 2019 Expect More Voting Machine Headaches in 2020
According to the available signs this far, the forecast for 2020 is not exactly reassuring. At the very least, voters may randomly face all kinds of delays, which will not likely boost confidence in outcomes if their candidates or party doesn't win.
SHARE Wednesday, October 17, 2018 Maryland Is the Cutting Edge in Running Trustworthy Elections
Right now, Maryland is the only state using Clear Ballot's digital image audit software for all of its jurisdictions in November. (Vermont also uses the software, but it verifies results in a half-dozen towns after each election -- a fraction of its municipalities.)
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, July 28, 2017 Newt Gingrich Plays Goebbels for Trump in Insane Attack on Justice Department and Mueller
While many political observers have said it is only a matter of time before Trump fires Mueller, what's new and different with Gingrich's latest line of attack is that he's not merely angling to be Trump's top propaganda hitman; he's willing to smear and discredit the Justice Department to protect Trump's presidency, as if Trump's team is above the law.
SHARE Saturday, February 8, 2020 Inside the Iowa Democratic Party's "boiler room" meltdown
DNC Chairman Tom Perez has called on Iowa's state party to recount its results amid complaints from campaigns -- a process that the IDP's 2020 rules only anticipated if a campaign filed a formal request and paid for it upfront.
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, May 4, 2018 Here's the Real Reason Giuliani and Trump Are Admitting to Paying Off Stormy Daniels
The FEC has been hobbled by partisan gridlock and unfilled appointments and has had little impact of the rough and tumble of campaigns in recent years. You can bet that Giuliani knows this and what is really going on is a deliberate attempt to divert attention from the escalating Mueller probe of the Trump campaign's collusion with Russia to the yawn-inducing world of campaign finance oversight.
(8 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 6, 2017 Trump Is on a Mission to Convert White Resentment into a Federal Agency
Trump's White House is putting white power sympathizers in top positions across the government. He's ignoring history and rolling back the clock by rekindling the same post-Civil War sentiments as when whites lashed out at newly freed blacks and immigrants, declaring the federal government and law was meant to serve white America before all others.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 27, 2018 Dutch Spies Caught Russian Hacker Breaching Obama's White House and Dem Party
Dutch spies alerted their American counterparts as early as 2014 about Russian hacking into State Department and White House computers and subsequent Russian hacking of the Democratic Party in the 2016 election, according to a series of reports in Dutch media.
SHARE Friday, August 9, 2019 Will New Voting Systems Be Ready for 2020's Early Presidential Contests?
Deploying new voting systems in 2020's presidential caucuses and primaries is turning out to be more complex than regulators overseeing several high-profile states anticipated, raising questions about whether these systems will be ready or should be used.
(7 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 9, 2017 Complaining About Hillary's Campaign Book Is a Huge Waste of the Progressive Movement's Time
If Democrats are going to get past the Hillary-Bernie divide, it's not just a matter of looking ahead, as Sanders counseled. The party has to create a path where its factions can fairly compete for top posts and nominations, win and lose alternatively, and go on to fight another day. That hasn't happened. Instead, as seen in most Clinton book coverage, old wounds are resurfacing.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 12, 2017 Bannon Is Trying to Take Over the GOP Within One Election: Can He Pull It Off?
The Republican Party's white nationalist, anti-Washington wing led by Steve Bannon is hoping to turn 2018's Senate elections into a GOP civil war in which right-wingers oust Republican incumbents deemed insufficiently loyal and unseat Mitch McConnell as Senate majority leader. The threat posed by Bannon and his allies and funders is very serious.
SHARE Saturday, June 20, 2020 Tech Glitches Plague An Already Chaotic Primary Season
The new disclosures about what impeded primary voters amid protests and a pandemic, as well as recommendations by election officials to the mayor and city council, are not unique to Washington. Revelations keep emerging about issues in intricacies of the voting process -- including new technology-based failures or unnecessary complexities.
SHARE Wednesday, March 28, 2018 In a Strange Twist, the GOP Could Lose Political Party Status in the Nation's Capital
If there are no Republican write-in candidates gaining at least 7,500 votes, then the GOP will cease to exist as a political party in the capital. That official demise would follow the more rhetorical assessments that the president has already destroyed the party.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 22, 2018 The Depressing Reason the Florida House Wouldn't Even Debate an Assault Rifle Ban
Florida Republicans know they can ignore young people's demands, or patronize them, because when they look past the latest wave of outrage and protests, the historic pattern is this slice of the electorate largely doesn't turn out and vote -- especially during non-presidential years like 2018.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 5, 2020 Another New Voting System Causes Problems at the Polls
On the biggest day of the 2020 presidential season so far, Super Tuesday, America's biggest new voting system -- in Los Angeles County -- widely frustrated voters and poll workers in its debut in a jurisdiction that's more populous than 39 states
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 15, 2018 Federal Courts Rule Against Vote Suppression in Florida and Georgia
In the past 24 hours, a fourth federal court ruling was issued in Georgia that will ensure an entire category of ballots must be counted -- those cast by mail that had been rejected based on examining the absentee ballot envelope.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 7, 2018 It Won't Be Easy as the GOP Hoped to Hijack Democracy in Pennsylvania
The Democrats' chances of regaining a House majority received a boost Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling ordering its legislature to immediately revise its congressional map for 2018 elections--or else the state high court would.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, March 16, 2018 Is Social Media Destroying Democracy?
In 2018, we are at a frustrating crossroads where the political world and social media converge. On one hand, the features that allow disinformation to be spread seem to be identifiable. On the other hand, how those features incite political behaviors, especially voting, resists generalizations.
SHARE Sunday, August 27, 2017 White Supremacists Run, Hide and Play Media Games in San Francisco
The Patriot Prayer provocateurs are pushing the limits of these time, place and mannner thresholds. They are prompting the city police to track them, close city parks, divert bus and transit lines, and monitor counter-protests. This is not a game, not after the white power-sparked violence in Charlottesville. Somehow, they think their antics are patriotic and that any ensuing chaos left in their wake is not their fault.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 11, 2020 November Election Sneak-Peak
Looking to the fall, record numbers of voters will be casting mail-in ballots. But sizable numbers of voters will still be looking to vote in person. Election officials will have to adequately prepare for both voting options.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, June 26, 2020 A Looming Election Challenge: What If Mail-in Ballots Never Make It to Voters?
As states keep encouraging voting from home in response to the pandemic and 2020's primaries and runoffs continue, a recurring election administration problem may be playing into Trump's myths about Democrats voting more than once.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 14, 2018 The Florida Election Recount Is About to Get Very Confusing
Florida's statewide recounts first faced technical obstacles surrounding the sorting and scanning of millions of ballots. Now political and legal obstacles are poised to add another layer of complexity over determining who is the next governor, senator and agriculture commissioner.
(9 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 10, 2018 Sorry, Russia Is Not the Biggest Threat to Our Elections -- Facebook and YouTube Are
In 2016, Russia's biggest impact was through propaganda, spreading messaging that pushed American voters' hot buttons, not tinkering with the machinery. That's why this week's microcosm, in which election hacking conspiracies eclipsed real news was noteworthy. It is a mirror of what's happening in our political and media culture, and points to the shape of things to come.
SHARE Wednesday, October 25, 2017 We Have Heard This Before: Bannon and Trump Want to Make More War to End War
Bannon would have Americans believe that Trump is antiwar. But Trump's solutions to seemingly intractable conflicts has been to unleash more military muscle to win, which Bannon said has been validated by the recent capture of two ISIS urban strongholds: its capital in Syria and oil-producing hub in Iraq.
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 1, 2018 Why Are the D.C. Dems Attacking a Progressive Candidate for Congress in Texas?
Why would the DCCC do such an awful thing to a strong Democratic candidate in a critical race? There are many possible reasons, but one likely reason could be that Laura Moser stood up to the DCCC last summer in support of abortion rights. At its heart, the fight pits new progressive blood against centrist party insiders.
SHARE Friday, January 5, 2018 Trump's Vote Suppression Team Is Doing GOP's Dirty Work
Kobach and his ilk will do anything to subvert the process of voting for Democrats and non-whites. They've burrowed into the nooks and crannies of the law and process to exploit ambiguities and contradictions. Just watch what they will try to do in the months ahead--not just with baseless voter fraud accusation, but with screening for citizenship.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 14, 2017 America's Racial Wealth Divide Is Worse Than Thought, Undermining the Middle Class and Deepening Under Trump
The median net worth of black and Latino families stands at just $11,000 and $14,000, respectively -- a fraction of the $134,000 owned by the median white family. Even more disturbing is that when consumer durable goods such as automobiles, electronics and furniture are subtracted, median wealth for black and Latino families drops to $1,700 and $2,000, respectively, compared to $116,800 for white households."
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, May 11, 2020 What happens if Bush-Gore result happens again with Trump-Biden?
Dozens of America's top legal minds convened to consider what would have been unthinkable before Donald Trump's presidency. They gathered to brainstorm what could be done to prevent the country from descending into a "civil war-like scenario," as one participant put it, if Trump and Joe Biden both claim that they won the presidency -- and won't back down.
SHARE Monday, August 10, 2020 How To Make Sure Your Vote Counts In 2020
Partisan battles have gone on for decades over who can vote and how easy or complex voting is. This struggle continues today, even in a pandemic. This article is a guide to successfully voting this fall.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 18, 2008 How the GOP Wired Ohio's 2004 Vote Count for Bush to Win
An election whistleblower who is a Republican, a nationally known data security and computer architecture expert, and an Ohio resident has filed a sworn affidavit in federal court that describes how Republican Party consultants in 2004 built an electronic vote counting network in Ohio that could have stolen votes to re-elect the president.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 15, 2018 America's Voting Machinery Is Hackable, Falling Apart and Privatized -- and the GOP Doesn't Care
Delays and communication snafus show a system that operates at a snail's pace relative to the speed of cyber probes and attacks. To make matters worse, in many states -- and in Congress, as seen in the just-passed federal budget -- there's no willingness to spend the funds needed to modernize voting in the United States.
SHARE Monday, May 25, 2020 Why Absentee Voting Preparations Across the Country Are Worrying Experts
More than 30 statewide
elections will be held in the 91 days from May 19 to August 18, previewing how unfamiliar or difficult absentee voting may be across America this fall. Voting by mail will likely represent well over half the ballots cast; and some amount of Election Day voting will continue but may be very different than normal.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 21, 2017 As Republicans Celebrate Plundering Tax Bill, Democrats Hope It Will Be A Nail in the GOP's Coffin
Whether the tax bill will do for Democrats in 2018 what Obamacare did for Republicans in 2010 is an open question. But Americans are seeing what a GOP monopoly on federal power is bringing, and in poll after poll this month, growing numbers are rejecting it and supporting generic Democrats by double digits.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, September 25, 2017 Important Lessons From George Orwell and Winston Churchill for Resisting Authoritarian Rule in Trump's America
In a really inflamed political situation, in a time of political turmoil, when political parties are changing rapidly, when there's no solid political ground, when compromise is seen as betrayal, when you have a president who believes only in personal loyalty to himself, but doesn't give it back by the way, when you have that kind of situation, people who insist on the facts become the enemies of many other people.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 16, 2008 GOP Voter Suppression Comes to Wisconsin
In WI this past week,the Repub AG Van Hollen,filed a politically timed lawsuit that local election officials say will interfere with turnout for the election on 11/4 and create a bureaucratic nightmare for election workers seeking to process a record number of new voter registrations before then.The game plan is simple: create a bureaucratic nightmare to tie up the election machinery & create bottlenecks to confound voters.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 22, 2018 Trump and GOP Want the Supreme Court to Take on a Major Gerrymandering Battle in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania's GOP gambled and lost in its effort to preserve its supermajority House delegation, but that doesn't mean they are going quietly into the night. They are cornered and desperate and are trying everything to delay implementing the state's new congressional map until 2020.
SHARE Wednesday, April 22, 2020 Pandemic and Voting Rights
When the 2020 election season resumes in Ohio on April 28 and continues in nearly half of the states through July, Americans will see if new voting regimens instituted in response to the pandemic will help voters or preview state-by-state partisan battles over voter turnout.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, April 8, 2018 Travels With Beto: A Progressive Live-Streaming His Campaign Is Closing in on Ted Cruz
O'Rourke seems to be everything that Cruz isn't: personable, positive, empathetic, averse to taunts and pettiness, and crystal-clear about his inclusive and empowering progressive agenda. O'Rourke is a road warrior who is live-streaming his days online and is fully at ease both with the technology and the transparency.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, May 4, 2020 Ohio Primary Adds New Worry for Fall
Ohio's Democratic presidential primary winner was never in doubt, but its voting process was. The April 28 primary, the second statewide vote-by-mail contest since the pandemic interrupted the 2020 election, highlighted new complexities facing voters if the nation shifts to mostly absentee voting this fall.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 4, 2018 Trump's Trade War With China Will Roil Economies of Many 2018 Election Battleground States
A prolonged trade war could put the wider agricultural economy in a tailspin, because, for example, livestock like hogs consume other tariff-targeted grains like soybeans. There's no way that the ripple of effects of toying with regional livelihoods is not going to be a factor in 2018's most competitive elections.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 20, 2017 The GOP Tax Bill Rammed Through Congress on Tuesday Paves the Way to Defund and Dismantle Federal Government
The tax bill's specifics, with almost all of the benefits going to the very rich, confirm that the GOP's lock on federal power is as bad as many predicted before the 2016 election. But the tax bill is also Republicans' opening move to defund government -- apart from national security, the military, infrastructure, and corporate welfare.
SHARE Saturday, March 3, 2018 House Campaign Committee Tries to Push a Progressive Out of 2018 Primary
The DCCC's actions will come under greater scrutiny next week, when Texas holds the first congressional primary elections of 2018. If Laura Moser comes in first or second out a field of seven candidates, leading to a runoff, it will be a major rebuke.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 8, 2018 Sanders and DNC Level Playing Field for 2020 Presidential Debates
The Democratic Party's best-known outsider, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, appears to be on the verge of notching yet another inside-track score that doubtless will come in handy when he runs for president in 2020.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 19, 2017 The #1 Reason the GOP Tax Plan Is an Economic Catastrophe: It Will Send Health Care Costs Through the Roof
The tax bill's changes in the earned income tax credit will divert an estimated $19 billion from poor families. The bill's new requirement that families seeking child tax credit provide a Social Security number will translate into higher taxes for undocumented immigrants, who work and pay taxes but lack that paperwork. The GOP bill is poised to cause real pain and suffering to people who struggle to pay for health care.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 8, 2021 Voting Turnout Up in 2020 Due to Flexible Voting Options
In the 2020 presidential election, 66 million Americans voted with a mailed-out ballot after most states loosened restrictions on qualifications to vote by mail to make voting safer in the pandemic.
SHARE Saturday, December 16, 2017 Another Positive Factor From the Alabama Election That Republicans Don't Want to Talk About
There's one feature of the voting in this week's Alabama special election that elected Democrat Doug Jones to the U.S. Senate that Republicans aren't talking about -- tens of thousands of white voters who were reliable Republicans voted for the Democrat. Alabama's special election shows that red-state America is not as monolithic as Republicans would have you believe.
SHARE Wednesday, May 20, 2015 Clinton Smear Book Author's Past Revealed: He Was Ghostwriter for Jesse Helms
That right-wing propagandist Peter Schweizer has a new book slamming the Clintons is no surprise. But in the weeks since the New York Times and Washington Post used a pre-release copy as the basis for investigative reports criticizing the Clintons while Hillary was Secretary of State, Schweizer's publisher has issued retractions, including revising the e-book version.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 4, 2018 Citizenship Questions in the Census? Trump's DOJ Has an Audacious New Project to Suppress the Vote
Civil rights advocates have raised alarms because the Department of Justice has asked the U.S. Census to include a question about citizenship in its 2020 national survey. But the way the Trump administration has framed this request also shows it's poised to make proof of citizenship the latest voter suppression tool.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 1, 2018 Here's How the Country Could Actually Secure Our Elections If Politicians Actually Cared to Try
Whether the most confidence-inspiring technologies will be built into the ways America verifies the vote is no longer a theoretical question. The Brennan Center for Justice has noted that more than 30 states "say they must replace" their voting systems before the 2020 presidential election. At stake is public confidence for many years to come.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, April 1, 2018 How Online Propaganda Became Mainstream
The way that all of this stuff works from Facebook, from Cambridge Analytica, to the Russian interventions, is that rather than us using computers to think, computers are using our nervous systems to move us around. The computers are getting around our frontal lobes where we make decisions, and down to the simpler more business like parts of our brains where we feel.
(11 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 15, 2008 How Republicans Quietly Hijacked Justice Dept. to Swing Elections
Will this history of vote suppression tactics repeat itself during the '08 presidential election?Republicans are already following Davidson's inventory by seeking to regulate the voting process well before the election.The tactics that can be implemented well before the voting begins-stricter voter ID laws,voter purges, registration drive curbs,tougher provisional ballot laws &easing rules for voter challenges-are already
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 27, 2018 Surfing That Blue Wave: A Democrat With The "Empathy Factor"
The year's first primaries and special elections for Congress and state legislature have shown 2018 is shaping up as a historic blue voter turnout, a cycle where a wave of new Democratic women could be elected, and a year where progressives will move from the sidelines into state and federal offices.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 30, 2020 Why You Should Make Your Voting Plans Now
Americans who want to vote this fall should make a plan, including what to do if something goes wrong --such as their requested mailed-out ballot does not arrive or is late.
SHARE Saturday, December 9, 2017 Progressives and Berniecrats Push Hard to End or Curtail the Superdelegate System
The commission could reduce the number of superdelegates by not making members of Congress automatic delegates. It could require the superdelegates not endorse any candidate until after the final nominating season contest. With 2018's elections looming, it remains to be seen if the Unity Reform Commission will live up to its name.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 30, 2008 More Unfinished 2008 Election Business: Verifiable Vote Counts
Lawyers for the Franken and Coleman campaigns may posture in the press about sloppy ballots, but there is little doubt that the Minnesota recount has integrity and voters will accept the final outcome. In Georgia, in contrast, there is no corollary. It is one of six states where all voters use paperless computers with no means of auditing the vote.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 21, 2007 The Most Important Election Case Since Bush v. Gore?
Indiana's voter ID law, facing Supreme Court review, is a bureaucratic nightmare that disenfranchised voters this November. The law's supporters say it does not stop anyone from voting. But this report found would-be voters from populations that tend to vote Democratic - students, the poor and seniors - were stopped from casting regular ballots. Could this law -- and similar laws in several states -- affect the 2008 election?
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, June 8, 2018 Here's What America's Election Experts Think It's Going to Take to Fix Our Democracy
There's no reason why political contributions should be regulated but political spending should not. Also, the current definition of political corruption in campaign finance law has become meaningless, allowing operatives outside of campaigns and political parties to spend big to sway elections and curry favor with winners.
SHARE Wednesday, November 8, 2017 The Far Right Fantasized About a Gun Battle With Antifa, But Got Another Mass Killer in Gun-Crazy Texas
While healthier and saner people grimace over the country's latest mass shooting, and wring their hands over what we all know will be no meaningful federal response via new gun controls, we have to acknowledge what's happening in America. Violence is growing in our cultural and political vocabulary. News reports keep battering the public with one crisis after another. What's missing? Restraint. Voices of reason.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 13, 2017 Alabama Stunner: Democrat Doug Jones Defeats Right-Wing Extremist Roy Moore in Photo Finish U.S. Senate Race
Moore did not concede defeat, however. In brief remarks to his supporters, Moore's campaign manager said that ballots from overseas military personnel had not yet been counted. (The state will not conduct a recount unless the victory margin is under 0.5 percent; however, that does not stop a candidate from paying for a recount.)
SHARE Saturday, January 13, 2018 Why the 25th Amendment Route for Dumping Trump Will Probably Remain a Fantasy
There may be no greater example of a political party that's eager to put partisan gain before country than today's Republicans. In the executive branch, Vice President Mike Pence constantly fawns over Trump, and Cabinet meetings frequently begin with recitations by Trump's appointees telling the president how wonderful he is. Would these sycophants somehow secretly conspire to fire the boss?
SHARE Friday, July 25, 2008 Three States Accused of Illegally Purging Voter Lists
National voting rights groups have contacted officials in KS, MI and LA in recent weeks because those states appear to be purging registered voters after election officials found duplicate names and birthdays of people on their voter lists and in out-of-state databases,such as driver's license records.The purge issue is only going to rise in profile .Several voting rights groups are studying the process in some swing states.
SHARE Monday, November 2, 2020 Federal Courts Give GOP Opening to Challenge Thousands of Late-Arriving Absentee Ballots
President Trump and his Republican allies are pursuing a full-court press where their success hinges less on winning popular vote majorities and more on disqualifying volumes of absentee ballots via lawsuits to be filed after Election Dayif preliminary results in a few key states are close
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 8, 2020 Trump's Attacks on the Georgia Election Are Failing Miserably -- but Show No Sign of Slowing Down
The rapidly unfolding events in Georgia showcased the lengths that President Trump will go to overturn the 2020 general election's popular vote, the depth of disinformation that he is pushing and many partisans are accepting, and the fortitude of a handful of Georgia's constitutional officers who did not bend under pressure.
SHARE Monday, August 11, 2008 2008's First Disenfranchised Voters: Injured and Homeless Vets
"We may have all kinds of hurdles," Sullivan said. "We may have the clock
running out on us, but we will not give up. This needs to be shoved in the face of every single elected official in the country. We can fix this in a second We are talking about two or three sentences in legislation. We are talking about the integrity of our democracy."
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, July 14, 2008 "Count My Vote" Issues and Solutions
This book aims to ensure that as many Americans as possible are able to vote this November.Here are excerpted suggestions for voters for some of most frequent potential issues.Please read it carefully.Refer to it as necessary and share it with everyone you know.This information is truly color-blind:neither Blue nor Red,it's intended for all Americans.
SHARE Thursday, January 3, 2019 Why election officials are pinning their hopes on different vote-verifying technologies
In early December, the county officials running Florida's elections unanimously endorsed a new way to recount ballots and more precisely verify votes before winners are certified. Why can't problematic ballots quickly be identified and pulled for scrutiny as the public watches online? Americans want their vote counting to be accurate.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, March 30, 2018 It Looks Like the Supreme Court Isn't Going to Intervene in Gerrymandering Cases This Election Year
The problem, conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy alluded to, was figuring out the standard for determining when partisanship crosses a line and becomes an unconstitutional abuse. In another case also before the court, lawyers for the political losing side have argued that it's possible to measure how extreme gerrymanders waste votes. In Maryland, the issue was whether the voters' constitutional rights were harmed.
SHARE Monday, September 28, 2020 Big Swing State Hurdle: Returning Your Absentee Ballot
The Democratic Party and voting rights groups have been winning legal victories to make it easier to vote in the presidential election. But no ruling addresses an issue that some experienced election officials foresee as likely to delay voting at Election Day polling places on November 3.
SHARE Thursday, March 24, 2016 Phoenix Election Chief Blames Voters and Laws for Super Long Lines on Tuesday
Voting in America -- as seen in Phoenix and across Arizona on Tuesday -- has been made unnecessarily complicated for a variety of reasons, many of which are beyond the ability of local election officials to control or predict. That undemocratic reality occasionally surfaces on election days when the last thing a candidate expects is that polling places are unprepared for high turnout.
SHARE Saturday, October 4, 2008 Big Presidential Vote Count Error Found and Fixed in New Mexico
Friday's test raised eyebrows because while it could have affected voters in
both parties who voted a straight party ticket,Santa Fe Cnty is
predominantly Democratic.In February 2008,more than 20,000 people
participated in the Democratic presidential caucus.In contrast,4,445 voted in the county's Republican primary in June.Thus,hundreds if not thousands of potential presidential votes--most for Dems--could have been lost
SHARE Thursday, November 20, 2008 Machine Problems Worsened 2008 Voting Woes
Voting machine issues and the confusion they caused compounded the delays faced by untold thousands of voters this fall.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 7, 2007 California Severely Limits Electronic Voting
California Secretary of State Debra Bowen has ordered thousands of new electronic touch-screen voting machines made by Diebold and Sequoia to be taken out of use for the state's presidential primary on Feb. 5, 2008. Her order means many big counties will have to scramble to change voting systems, and there already is talk of lawsuits to block her action.
SHARE Tuesday, December 4, 2007 AZ Lawsuit a Crystal Ball Into 2008 Presidential Vote Count
A trial starting Tuesday in Tuscon, Arizona, has some of the strongest evidence yet that political insiders can change electronic voting results. The Pima County Democratic Party is seeking all electronic voting records from a recent bond vote, but county supervisors say that data is private. The vote count issues and standoff over election records could be a glimpse of what may unfold in 2008.
(6 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 23, 2008 Will Rush Limbaugh Be Indicted for Voter Fraud?
While this all makes for great talk radio and sounds like fun, there is one catch: What Limbaugh encouraged Republican voters to do in Ohio was a fifth-degree felony in that state, punishable with a $2,500 fine and six to 12 months in jail. That is because in order to change party affiliation in Ohio, voters have to fill out a form swearing allegiance to that party's principles "under penalty of election falsification."
SHARE Thursday, October 23, 2008 Big Setbacks for GOP Voter Suppression Efforts in Swing States
GOP efforts to stop thousands of voters from casting meaningful ballots in 2008 because their registration information does not match government databases with high error rates was set back by legal rulings in WI, OH and NV on Thursday.While the developments in those three states may bode well for accommodating voters in a high-turnout election,the fights concerning whose votes will count on Election Day are far from over.
SHARE Wednesday, October 8, 2008 Democratic Election Protection Strategy's Missing Link: Electronic Vote Counts
private contractors with partisan ties have been hired by state and county election officials to program the software used in computers that count the vote on Election night.It is one thing for Democrats to come out of the starting gate with a lead in voter registration and momentum in the polls;it is another to hold that lead at the finish line,when the votes are counted.There is a rising resistance to going the extra mile to
SHARE Friday, October 3, 2008 Republicans Challenge 6,000 Voter Registrations in Montana
Montana has Election Day voter registration,but only at county offices.Thus,the individuals who live in more remote locations whose registrations were challenged would have to travel to county seats to correct their voter file--a hurdle on Election Day.Also were intended to undermine the efficiency of local elections,because officials who have to respond to the voter challenges are now processing record numbers of new voters
SHARE Friday, July 20, 2007 Bush Govt and States Ignore Poor's Voting Rights
The Justice Department is pressuring 10 states to purge their voter rolls, while states are ignoring laws to help low-income Americans register to vote.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 18, 2008 Election Activists Win Three Key Battles
Voting rights activists won three big battles this week.
The Missouri state Legislature adjourned without taking up a controversial voter ID bill. The Department of Justice settled a lawsuit with Arizona that will force the state to offer welfare recipients the opportunity to register to vote. And Hans von Spakovsky, the White House's controversial nominee to the Federal Election Commission, withdrew his nomination.
SHARE Wednesday, January 9, 2008 Hillary Wins New Hampshire, But the Presidential Race Has Just Begun
The NH primary is not the end of the process,but the true beginning of the second round--one where Dems will get a second chance to take a close look at their eventual nominee.They'll see if the glow surrounding the Obama campaign can hold up under closer scrutiny,and if the Clinton campaign can truly revive itself.The weeks ahead will also give John Edwards and Bill Richardson a final chance to make their cases. Stay tuned!
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 6, 2008 GOP Already at Work to Keep Obama Voters From the Polls
Many of the new voters who were part of Barack Obama's winning coalition in the Iowa Caucuses are targeted by "ballot security" laws passed since 2004 by Republican-controlled state legislatures.
SHARE Monday, June 25, 2007 Will Electronic Voting Reform Create New Ways to Steal Elections?
If history is a guide,political machinations will outsmart the latest efforts to bring accountability to America's newest voting machines. Recent books on how American elections have been stolen-from the founding of the country to 2004-suggest voting machinery may change over time,but sleazy partisan tactics do not:they adapt to the newest way of counting votes.
SHARE Monday, July 30, 2007 Ohio's 2004 presidential election records missing or destroyed
"The extent of the destruction of records is consistent with covering up the fraud that we believe occurred in the presidential election," said Arnebeck,a Columbus attorney."On the one hand,people will now say you can't prove the fraud,but the rule of law says that when evidence is destroyed it creates a presumption that the people who destroyed evidence did so because it would have proved the contention of the other side."
SHARE Wednesday, March 19, 2008 Calling all election integrity activists!
I'm working on a paperback book/election guide to be published this summer. It will tell voters what they need to know to ensure that they can vote this November, and increase the likelihood that their votes will be counted. I'm asking all you activists to help me with this book, because you all know best what's happening in your states. What's happening that will affect the voters on Election Day?