Tag Archives: campaign trail 2014

The War on Voting May Have Swung These 4 Races

by EdwinFortin Posted on November 6, 2014

Mother Jones

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In several races around the country on Tuesday, the victors won by razor-thin margins. Many of these races were in states that had recently enacted voting restrictions expected to depress turnout amongst minorities, young voters, and the poor, according to a new report released Wednesday by the Brennan Center. No one knows how many of the newly disenfranchised may have voted. Nevertheless, the report’s author Wendy Weiser notes, “In several key races, the margin of victory came very close to the likely margin of disenfranchisement.” Here’s look at the numbers in some of those elections, all via Brennan:

Kansas Governor: Republican Gov. Sam Brownback got 33,000 more votes than his Democratic challenger Paul Davis.

In 2011, Kansas implemented a requirement that voters provide documentation of citizenship to vote, and just before the 2012 election, the state enacted a strict photo ID law.

More than 24,000 Kansas voters tried to register this year, but couldn’t because of the state’s proof of citizenship law. In addition, it’s estimated that the state’s photo ID law reduces turnout by about 2 percent, or 17,000 voters.

North Carolina Senate: Republican House state speaker Thom Tillis beat incumbent Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan by 48,000 votes.

In 2013, North Carolina enacted a law—which Tillis helped write—limiting early voting and same-day registration, which the Justice Department warned would likely depress minority turnout. During the last midterms in 2010, about 200,000 North Carolinians cast their ballots during early voting days that the state’s new voting law eliminated.

Virginia Senate: Democratic Sen. Mark Warner beat GOPer Ed Gillespie by a margin of just over 12,000 votes.

Voters this year faced a new voter ID law that the state enacted in 2013. This type of law tends to reduce turnout by about 2.4 percent, according to New York Times pollster Nate Silver. Applied to the Virginia Senate race this year, that would mean that turnout was reduced by over 52,000 voters.

Florida Governor: Republican Gov. Rick Scott eked out a victory over former Democratic Gov. Charlie Crist by roughly 72,000 votes.

In 2011, Florida reduced the early voting period. The same year, Scott imposed a measure making it nearly impossible to vote for convicts who have already served their time. The move essentially disenfranchised nearly 1.3 million formerly incarcerated Floridians, about one in three of whom are African-American.

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The War on Voting May Have Swung These 4 Races

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The Fight for Abortion Rights Just Got a Whole Lot Harder

by SusieFossey Posted on November 6, 2014

Mother Jones

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The GOP wave didn’t just crash into the US Senate. It flooded state legislatures, as well. By Wednesday evening, Republicans were in control of 67 of the nation’s 99 state legislative chambers—up from 57 before the election. It’s still unclear which party will control two other chambers.

Already, anti-abortion advocates are calling it a big win. Hundreds of the country’s most extreme anti-abortion bills pop up in these statehouses every year, and Tuesday’s results won’t do anything to put a stop to that. But reproductive rights advocates also suffered big setbacks Tuesday in places where they had actually been playing offense. Now, Democratic losses in states like Colorado, Nevada, New York, and Washington could torpedo their efforts to expand reproductive rights.

New York Republicans won a tiny majority in the state Senate, a development that could kill the proposed Women’s Equality Act—an omnibus bill that includes an equal pay measure, protections against pregnancy discrimination, and stronger domestic violence and sexual harassment laws. The bill had previously stalled in the Democratic Senate because of a provision that would give New York women an affirmative right to abortion. But in the waning days of the campaign, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, had pressured legislators to agree to pass the bill in the next session, and the state’s Planned Parenthood affiliates were confident that the election would produce a friendlier Senate.

“We were really hopeful,” says Christina Chang, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood NYC Votes. “But a lot of the folks who won seats have not expressed support for the Women’s Equality Act…After last night’s elections, we have a harder road ahead of us.”

In both Colorado and Washington state, Democrats held majorities in both legislative houses and controlled governor’s mansions going into Tuesday night’s election. By Wednesday night, Republicans appeared on their way to controlling the Colorado Senate and they had captured and outright majority in the Washington Senate.

In recent years, Colorado Democrats have helped reproductive rights advocates check a number of items off their wish list. They increased Medicaid reimbursement rates for family planning services—a move that encourages more providers to offer that type of care—and they passed funding for comprehensive sex education. In 2012, Democrats blocked an effort by anti-abortion forces to pass religious freedom exemptions for health care providers, which abortion rights groups said would jeopardize access to contraception. Last year, Democrats repealed the remnants of a law that criminalized abortion. And this year, Democrats pushed for the Reproductive Health Freedom Act, which would have blocked new abortion restrictions, before backing down in the face of conservative opposition.

That kind of progress will likely come to a halt if Republicans take over the Senate—although reproductive rights advocates again remain hopeful.

“So many of the Republicans in Colorado sent messages to voters about being advocates of women’s health and not wanting to insert government into private decisions,” says Cathy Alderman, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains. “We’re hoping they weren’t just using those issues as political ploys.”

In Washington state, Democrats had been fighting for a bill that would require abortion coverage in most insurance plans sold on the state’s Obamacare exchange. It was a bold measure at a time when many conservative states were banning abortion coverage. The bill stalled in the Senate, where a few renegade Democrats frequently sided with the powerful Republican minority. But additional GOP gains in the Senate would “derail any hope” that the bill will pass, says Elizabeth Nash, a researcher with the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion-rights think tank.

In Nevada, Democrats—who controlled the statehouse before Tuesday—supported a bill to establish comprehensive sex education. The state has some of the highest sexually transmitted infection and teen pregnancy rates in the country, yet schools rarely teach condom use or encourage STI testing. On Tuesday, Republicans won control of the legislature. Republicans roundly opposed the bill the last time it was introduced, and there is little chance that they’ll allow it to pass this year.

“I can’t say that the Republican party has ever been behind Planned Parenthood issues in Nevada, but we do know Nevada is a very pro-choice state,” Alderman says. “We’re optimistic and hopeful that they’ll see comprehensive sex education as smart policy, but we haven’t had their support in the past because of abortion opponents who come out and say that somehow this legislation is about pushing abortion.”

But while turnover in those states is a blow to reproductive rights groups, the 2014 elections didn’t change change the map for abortion rights quite like the 2010 election, when Republicans took over an even larger number of statehouses.

Nash argues that in some other states where Democrats suffered big losses, abortion rights will likely be protected by divided government. In Iowa, Democrats—who, this session, just barely held back an onslaught of anti-abortion bills—hung onto the state Senate. In New Mexico, where Republican Gov. Susana Martinez won reelection, Democrats lost the House but held the Senate. Republicans now control the New Hampshire statehouse, but they failed to unseat Gov. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat who supports abortion rights and will veto most anti-abortion legislation.

In West Virginia, Republicans took control of the House for the first time since 1931 and also won the governor’s mansion. The state Senate, meanwhile, is evenly divided between the parties. But the state was already hostile to abortion rights: Many West Virginia Democrats, including outgoing Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, supported harsh anti-abortion bills when their party controlled the legislature.

So in West Virginia—and many other red states—Republicans didn’t need a wave year for abortion rights to be in jeopardy. The outlook was pretty bleak already.

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The Fight for Abortion Rights Just Got a Whole Lot Harder

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What Happens Today in These Four Races Could Help Determine Our Next President

by JudeStoutds Posted on November 4, 2014

Mother Jones

Jeremy Bird guided Barack Obama to victory in Ohio in 2008, a year, Bird recalls, when “we didn’t see lines and barriers and obstacles” to the ballot box that had so badly marred Ohio’s previous presidential election. But as Obama’s national field director in 2012, Bird watched Ohio with dismay. Voting in Ohio had gotten harder—lines were longer, early voting days pared back, evening hours restricted—but no laws had changed since 2008. So what had happened? Bird says he knows the culprit: Republican Jon Husted, Ohio’s secretary of state. As the state’s chief election officer, Husted has considerable latitude to shape election rules and expand—or limit—access to the ballot box.

On Election Day this year, Bird is again watching secretaries of state. This time around, Bird is the head of iVote, a group that is targeting secretary of state races in four key battleground states—Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, and Ohio. And with good reason: The results of these four races will have serious consequences for voting rights, and they might even help determine the winner of the 2016 presidential campaign.

Each of the four races iVote is targeting, Bird says, features a Democratic candidate seeking to expand voting rights and a Republican pledging—directly or indirectly—to do the opposite. Bird’s group is spending more than $1.25 million on TV advertisements alone, in addition to online ads, grassroots organizing, and direct contributions to candidates where possible under state law.

Perhaps the Democrats’ best shot at winning a key secretary of state race is in Nevada. There’s no daylight in the polls between Democratic state Treasurer Kate Marshall and Republican state Sen. Barbara Cegavske, but there is plenty of space between their positions. Marshall backs same-day voter registration and greater transparency in political spending in state races. Cegavske, for her part, opposes those ideas and instead wants a new voter ID law. In 2011, Cegavske joined several other Nevada lawmakers in proposing a bill eliminating early voting, and she has voted against new campaign finance measures to beef up disclosure of money in politics.

In Colorado, outgoing Secretary of State Scott Gessler has probably garnered more headlines than his five predecessors combined—and not for reasons that a Democrat like Bird would appreciate. Gessler offered to raise money to help pay off fines incurred by the Larimer County Republican Party for not submitting required campaign finance filings. The problem: Gessler’s office issued the fine. (He backed down the fundraising appearance.) A judge struck down Gessler’s directive to county clerks to stop sending 2012 ballots to so-called inactive voters—namely, people who hadn’t voted in the 2010 elections, which included troops stationed overseas. And in 2011, Gessler claimed that 5,000 “noncitizens” had voted in the 2010 elections. Colorado officials later vetted 1,400 of those names and found that 1,200 of those people were in fact eligible voters. (No prosecutions resulted from Gessler’s allegation.)

The race to replace Gessler is close. Democrats are abuzz over the candidacy of Joe Neguse, a rising political star and the son of Eritrean immigrants, who has billed himself as the anti-Gessler. “I’m the guy running to clean up Scott Gessler’s mess,” he said in announcing his candidacy. But Neguse trails Republican Wayne Williams by single digits in polls. Williams, meanwhile, supports the type of voter ID law implemented by conservatives nationwide. Despite efforts by Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper and the Democratic-controlled state legislature to expand voting rights with universal mail-in voting and same-day registration, a Republican secretary of state could throw a wrench in Colorado’s voting system come 2016.

In Iowa, the race between Democrat Brad Anderson and Republican Paul Pate is a dead heat. Anderson, who managed Obama’s Iowa campaign in 2012, has called for mail-in voting, no-excuse absentee voting, and online voter registration. Pate, Anderson’s opponent, toes the GOP line in supporting a voter ID law, a divisive measure that Republicans say protects the integrity of elections and that Democrats say aims to disenfranchise college students and minorities.

Ohio’s secretary of state race is likely to be Democrats’ biggest disappointment of the four campaigns. The Democratic candidate, state Sen. Nina Turner, is probably the best-known of the four iVote-backed candidates: She’s a fixture on MSNBC, which named her one of its “Women Candidates to Watch in 2014,” and her supporters include EMILY’s List, Howard Dean, and talk-show host Jerry Springer. (At a recent debate in Columbus, Turner quoted Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Justin Timberlake—she said she wanted to “bring sexy back” to voting.)

For long stretches, Turner was neck and neck in the polls with Republican Jon Husted, whose restrictions on Ohio voting rights have enraged state and national Democrats. But Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ed FitzGerald’s implosion has dragged down the rest of the party’s ticket, and in its final 2014 poll, the Columbus Dispatch showed Turner trailing by 21 percentage points.

To hear Jeremy Bird tell it, the consequences of these four secretary of state races could mean the difference between smooth, snafu-free elections in November 2016 and the type of debacles seen in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. iVote, Bird says, is a way of taking the fight to the “voter fraud” crowd seeking to limit the vote. “We need to be on the offensive with voting rights,” he says. “We’ve relied on the courts for too long.

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What Happens Today in These Four Races Could Help Determine Our Next President

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North Dakota Pro-Lifers: Don’t Call Our Personhood Amendment a “Personhood Amendment”

by ReyesSmartt Posted on November 3, 2014

Mother Jones

North Dakota is poised to become the first state in the country to recognize a fertilized egg as a person. At least, that’s what opponents say about a controversial ballot measure to amend state’s constitution. Supporters say that’s total bunk.

The proposal, known as Measure 1, would add a single sentence to the North Dakota constitution: “The inalienable right to life of every human being at any stage of development must be recognized and protected.” But the two camps fiercely disagree over whether this language makes Measure 1 a “personhood” amendment—the latest in a series of state proposals defining life as beginning at the moment of conception and giving legal rights to fertilized eggs.

If there was ever a year when that distinction mattered, it’s 2014. Democrats have slammed Joni Ernst, the Republican pick for Senate in Iowa, for supporting personhood. And they’ve hammered Corey Gardner, the Republican nominee for Senate in Colorado, for his past support of a personhood bill. Personhood amendments were developed with the intention of kicking off a legal fight that would eventually overturn Roe v. Wade. But they have failed all three times they have gone before voters—twice in Colorado, and once in Mississippi. Fans of Measure 1 fully recognize the term’s toxicity: ND Choose Life, the official ballot committee for supporters, released a memo arguing that Measure 1 “is not a personhood amendment.” And Christopher Dodson, director of the North Dakota Catholic Conference, says that Measure 1 opponents use the word “personhood” to describe the amendment “because they’re trying to portray it as extreme.”

To reproductive rights advocates and opponents of the amendment, that’s just semantics. “Part of the reason they may have changed some of the messaging is because they’ve been defeated in Colorado and Mississippi,” says Elizabeth Nash, the senior state issues associate at the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. “But the measure is very similar to the personhood amendments you saw in those states.”

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North Dakota Pro-Lifers: Don’t Call Our Personhood Amendment a “Personhood Amendment”

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