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Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson called abortion the issue that could "save democracy" while appearing on MSNBCs "The ReidOut."

Host Joy Reid asked Johnson on Tuesday about plans to combat "anti-abortion candidates" following the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. While Johnson was dismayed at the restrictions set by Republican legislatures, she remarked how it can be a good chance to mobilize voters.

"Its about mobilization. Look, what we have seen in the immediate aftermath of Roe v. Wade is that we saw these anti-abortion candidates continue to double down and pursue a deeply radical, extreme unpopular agenda around continuing to constrain access to [abortion]. I think what we have done is basically show people what the choices are. You can vote for the people who are really extreme on these issues, or you can actually vote to govern your own body with people who actually support your access to choice," Johnson said.

Planned Parenthood promised to spend over $50 million during the 2022 midterm elections. (REUTERS/Gaelen Morse)

She pointed to Kansas where voters rejected a state constitutional amendment that would have allowed lawmakers to regulate abortion as an example.

HOW RELIGION, ABORTION WILL AFFECT THE MIDTERM ELECTIONS IN FLORIDA AMONG CRUCIAL HISPANIC VOTERS

"Just look at Kansas. Abortion rights were literally on the ballot and we saw Kansas come out in droves to support the right to choose. And so, I think thats incredibly important. The majority of Americans do support access to abortion in every single state. When they really look at whats happening, when they look at the number of states that have done these restrictions, its also actually helping us understand how gerrymandered the states to become, how it is possible that you can have a state where there is a majority support but you actually cant have the laws that you want because you have these politicians who have been safely put into these states," she added.

Johnson then quoted a colleague from NARAL and agreed that "abortion is actually going to save democracy."

Abortion became a larger election issue after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

PRO-LIFE ACTIVISTS BLIND TO HUMAN TRAGEDY CAUSED BY ABORTION RESTRICTIONS: WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL BOARD

A report on Wednesday showed that Planned Parenthood is planning on spending over $50 million in the 2022 midterm elections. This number will beat the companys previous record spending amount of $45 million in 2020.

Johnson has frequently appeared on Reids show and denounced the pro-life movement in May, suggesting they are in line with racist and segregationist attitudes.

"This is a super minority position which is being imposed essentially by Christian nationalists, five Christian nationalists on the court," Reid said. "Does it hit you differently to know that this has grown out of this essentially segregation movement?"

Alexis McGill Johnson denounced Planned Parenthood's original founder Margaret Sanger in 2021 and promised to "examine" her influence on the company. (Photo by Getty Images/Getty Images for Supermajority)

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"I think its completely consistent with the segregationist movement," Johnson answered.

Lindsay Kornick is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to lindsay.kornick@fox.com and on Twitter: @lmkornick.

Excerpt from:
Abortion is actually going to save democracy by mobilizing voters, Planned Parenthood president tells MSNBC - Fox News

(Editors note: Joe Kirby of Sioux Falls has recently joined the South Dakota bogosphere with his blog SIOUXFALLSJOE.COM. Were sharing one of his posts here along with our wishes for success in his venture.)

As a lifelong Republican and casual observer of South Dakota politics, I have had a nagging feeling for several years that something just wasnt working right. The I heard reports from this years Republican convention and it started to sink in.

Our 20th century election system has enabled a small right-wing faction to have outsized influence on political dialogue in our state. Recognizing this, I think we would be wise to modernize our election system to include more South Dakotans in the process.

The Republican convention was reportedly a fiasco

The reports from the Republican State Convention this summer are concerning. A small, but effective right-wing element in the party got out their vote and nearly disrupted the plans of the complacent majority.

The incumbent secretary of state was surprisingly dumped for spurious reasons. The incumbent lieutenant governor almost suffered the same fate, but for some last-minute political maneuvering. And Marty Jackleys bid to return to the office of attorney general was also nearly sidetracked.

I imagine some conservative Republican office holders (Noem and Thune) are scratching their heads wondering how they suddenly became liberals.

Our election system was established in a different time, with different realities

Decades ago, the Republican and Democratic parties were all that mattered in South Dakota politics. Both could field electable candidates. While the Republicans were mostly dominant, the Democrats were certainly relevant with leaders like Daschle, Johnson, Herseth Sandlin and McGovern. Independents and third parties were not so important.

Over time, the two parties put themselves in charge of the states election system, to the exclusion of all others. That may have made sense at the time since they could keep an eye on each other and balance things out.

Eventually, the Democratic Partys influence in the state waned when national Democrats moved left. As the partys voter numbers in the state decreased, the number of independent voters increased.

Independent voter numbers on the rise

Today 49% of registered voters in South Dakota have chosen to be labeled as Republicans. That number is probably inflated by the fact that non-Republicans are motivated to register as Republican if they want their vote to make a difference. The sagest political advice you can get in South Dakota these days is regardless of your political philosophy, you might as well register as a Republican so you can have a meaningful voice in elections. Some are willing to do that, while others understandably refuse to compromise themselves.

Twenty-six percent of South Dakota voters have bravely registered as Democrats, knowing that means they can make little difference in selecting our elected representatives. And 24% have chosen to affiliate with neither party. That number appears to be low based on national trends.

According to recent Gallup polling, 43% of voters in the US now consider themselves independent. Young people especially are opting out of the choice between the two political parties they find objectionable.

Independent voters are second-class citizens in South Dakota

While the political landscape shifted in South Dakota, the mechanics of our elections did not. But no one seems to be challenging that. Most South Dakotans accept the legacy election system as is. It is familiar. We know how it works. And we know that we end up with Republican winners either way. But we should at least understand its shortcomings and what they might be costing us.

The two parties control South Dakotas election processes. The State Board of Elections runs the states elections. Six of the seven board members are appointed by elected officials from the two parties. None are appointed by other parties or by independent voters in the state.

On a more local level, county precinct superintendents and their assistants play a big role in South Dakotas elections. County auditors appoint them from lists submitted by the two parties. The states independent voters are left out of the process.

Independents are even discriminated against if they want to run for office. The signature requirements for their nominating petitions for some offices are much greater than for party candidates. This is not fair. (I wonder if it would survive a court challenge.)

Independent voters are excluded from the primaries

Political parties have decided that they should be able to exclude non-party members from participating in taxpayer-funded primary elections. As a result, 142,000 independent voters in South Dakota are often left without a meaningful role in the primary elections they help pay for.

As South Dakota Democrats became less relevant, they invited independent voters to participate in their primary. But that doesnt accomplish much when the most important election is usually the Republican primary.

A minority of registered voters has absolute control

In recent years we have become a one-party state. With less than half of the states registered voters, Republicans enjoy a monopoly on statewide races. They occupy all three federal offices, plus the office of governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state and more.

Republicans also win 90%+ of legislative races. Most legislative races in the state are uncontested or minimally contested, which leads to the observation that if you didnt get to participate in the Republican primary, you had no voice in choosing your state representatives.

Our legislature wastes time on less important issues

You might think I, as a Republican, should like all this power for my party. But as I mentioned earlier, odd things are happening in our Legislature because of it. I think we are all better off if all South Dakotans get to participate equally.

Now that Republicans are in control in our state, the most interesting debates are between Republicans. Lately, conservative Republicans have been challenged from a small, vocal group that is further right politically.

That has led to lots of fussing about seemingly irrelevant stuff like who gets to use which bathrooms. Wed be better off if our legislators would focus on issues effecting more of us, like economic development, healthcare, prisons and housing.

Democracy is a fiction in South Dakota

Our representative democracy does not appear to be working well in South Dakota. Significant groups of South Dakotans have little or no representation or even involvement in the election process. Meanwhile, the Republican Party is showing signs of dysfunction.

At the same time, disenfranchised groups of voters sometimes resort to petition drives to try to enact laws like expanding Medicaid and legalizing marijuana. Issues like that seem well suited for a more balanced legislature.

All South Dakota voters should participate equally

All of us would benefit if more South Dakotans had a meaningful role in our elections. I would like to see the Legislature update the election administration system to allow independents to have an appropriate role. I would also like to see the Republican Party open its primary to independents to broaden the partys base of supporters and reduce the influence of the vocal right-wing minority.

Joe Kirby is a fourth generation South Dakotan and lifetime Republican. He is a retired businessman who has taken an active role in election reform since helping modernize Sioux Falls city government in the 1990s.

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Sioux Falls blogger and lifelong Republican Joe Kirby writes that democracy is a fiction in South Dakota The South Dakota Standard - The South Dakota...

Editor's Note

A version of this editorial first appeared in the Aug. 18 edition of The Inquirer and Mirror, of Nantucket. It is republished with permission and modified for our local readership.

In the summer of 1943, as World War II raged, E.B. White wrote a small piece in the Notes and Comment section of the New Yorker magazine on the meaning of democracy. One item on his list of things that described democracy was a letter to the editor.

We could not agree more. It is as true today as it was back in 1943 that the letters to the editor section of the opinion pages is the marketplace of ideas. The very act of putting your thoughts in logical and readable order, keeping civil while you disagree and signing your name to it somehow pushes letter-writers above the social media fray of angry opinions.

Recent letters to the editor are like a cross-section of Berkshire concerns: a police chief flagging the need to invest in our youth; comments on the new contours of the annual Josh Billings RunAground; reader reactions to Eagle columnists commentaries; impassioned discussion of a residential tax exemption proposal in Stockbridge; praise for a Shakespeare in the Park production at The Common in Pittsfield.

The coming days opinion pages could very well have a series of letters arguing the opposite sides of all these issues. That is the whole point. Everyone gets their say. Nobody has to agree with us. Everybody, however, has to make their argument in a civil manner and sign their name to it.

And officials might be well served if they read the letters as the voice of the people. The controversial North Street redesign, the debate over where to house Berkshire women inmates, the localized effects of economic and political uncertainty all have been addressed thoroughly this summer in letters to the editor. Meanwhile, a massive influx of letters pertaining to a heated election season show a healthy share of Berkshire voters are engaged with these pivotal races that will shape the countys future. It also demonstrates a citizenry ready and willing to take up that great democratic tradition of civilly convincing their neighbors in the public square. Our leaders ought to be listening to those voices especially those seeking election or reelection to public office.

One type of letter is a reminder that life in a small community can often be different than life in other places: the letter of thanks. These simple thank-you notes for somebody who has helped the writer out in one way or another, often in some small way that did not seem small to the writer, are a reminder of how one should act and that life is not always about rabid political arguments.

E.B. White wrote his essay almost eight decades ago. It is easy enough to say it was a different time, but it is a helpful reminder of how we might still see ourselves reflected in the idea of democracy.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time, he wrote. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is a letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasnt been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad.

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Our Opinion: Letters to the editor are democracy in action - Berkshire Eagle

The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled decisively for the forces of democracy last week, setting the stage to invalidate illicitly proposed amendments to the state constitution. This immediately creates a remedy for voters targeted for exclusion by legislators the courts already determined to be illegitimately elected due to racially gerrymandered legislative maps.

Beyond North Carolina, the ruling provides a blueprint to advocates for democracy to challenge similar laws in their own states courts, where many more voting rights cases will be tried following the U.S. Supreme Courts ruling that partisan gerrymandering is beyond the reach of federal courts.

This case, North Carolina NAACP v. Moore, challenged two of the amendments proposed by a legislature elected from districts the Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional racial gerrymanders where redistricting maps are drawn to favor one party over the other before the amendments were even proposed. After being ordered to draw new legislative districts, the North Carolina General Assembly proposed six amendments to the state constitution, two of which were challenged in this case. One of the amendments added a photo ID requirement for in-person voting to the state constitution. The other reduced the maximum state income tax rate from 10% to 7%.

North Carolina is on the front lines of the battle between democracy and antidemocracy. The state has seen racial gerrymandering, partisan gerrymandering, unconstitutional voter ID laws, constitutional amendments proposed to entrench an unconstitutionally empowered legislative majority, a House of Representatives race rerun due to fraud, and a surprise special session to rewrite the relationship between the executive and legislative branches of the states government. The state legislature has found itself in court so often, it appealed to the Supreme Court to have counsel other than the democratically elected state attorney general.

That all stems from the 2010 midterm elections, when millionaire businessman Art Pope, the states own low-rent version of the Koch Brothers, funded a massive effort to win marginal state legislative seats to control the upcoming redistricting process.

The resulting gerrymander has consistently handed legislative supermajorities to Republicans elected with only minority support from voters. You see, the will of the people of North Carolina frequently favors the Democrats, and so the antidemocrats in the state Republican party work tirelessly to prevent the popular will from controlling the political process.

None of that should happen in a democracy.

Black and Brown people targeted by racially manipulated maps designed to weaken their voting power shouldnt still have to fight for their right to vote year in and year out. Yet, antidemocratic forces would rather rely on the old habits of segregation than come up with an inclusive political message. There should be a remedy when antidemocratic legislators abuse the democratic process to entrench their power; the people should have a means of clawing back their sovereign power other than simply voting out the bad actors in an unfair contest.

Ultimately, the North Carolina Supreme Court did not rule on whether the amendments were validly enacted; they were remanded for further consideration. But the process of getting to that result was a master class in political law from one of my favorite movement judges, Anita Earls. Prior to joining the bench, Justice Earls spent two decades as a civil rights advocate in both government and nonprofit organizations.

While the trial court accepted the NAACPs arguments, ruling the two amendments void due to the unconstitutional composition of the legislature that enacted them, Earls took a more nuanced approach. She grounded her ruling in the equitable principle that when someone holds a position illegitimately, it may not be practical to replace them immediately, and so courts tend to treat their official acts no differently than if they were legitimate. But because its an equitable principle, the court needs to consider whats fair and allowing legislators elected using racist maps to entrench a racist voting restriction in the state constitution is anything but fair.

As consequential as it is, Earls opinion is a narrow one. While the amendments in question may be challenged, their validity must be evaluated on equitable principles. A constitutional amendment proposed by an invalidly selected legislature is only subject to challenge if it either entrenches the political power of its proponents against democratic accountability, perpetuates the ongoing exclusion of some category of voters from the political process, or intentionally discriminates against a category of citizens who were also discriminated against in the election of the illegitimate legislature.

This doctrine is likely sufficient to defeat the voter ID amendment but may not be broad enough to defeat the income tax restriction, if the matter even heads back to the trial court now.

In his dissent, Justice Philip Berger Jr. invoked two federal constitutional provisions, providing a clear invitation for an appeal to the Supreme Court. And while his claim that this matter is a political question courts cant review rings hollow, his constitutional arguments may give the courts Republican supermajority enough ground to interfere.

The Supreme Court is acutely aware the U.S. Constitution is not a democratic document. The defense of such an appeal almost relies on the hope that Chief Justice John Roberts, who authored the opinion in Shelby County that dismantled the Voting Rights Act, will accept the argument that Earls opinion is entirely a matter of state law. This hinges on whether hell be able to convince one of his conservative colleagues to respect states rights when it actually benefits marginalized people.

We should recognize Justice Earls opinion for what it is: An extraordinary remedy for the extraordinary act of attempting to amend the state constitution to solidify partisan gains. While ordinary legislation can simply be reversed by a later legislature elected fairly, constitutional amendments are more permanent, and courts must be able to void them when they are illegitimately enacted toward illegitimate ends.

Brandon Hasbrouck is a Washington and Lee University School of Law assistant professor who researches and teaches in the areas of criminal law, criminal procedure, movement law, and abolition. Find him on Twitter at @b_hasbrouck.

Originally posted here:
Checked and balanced: North Carolina Supreme Court clinches a win for democracy - The Boston Globe

Conspiracy theorists are unlikely to enter Parliament. Photo / George Heard

OPINION:

This week's anti-whatever protest outside Parliament was a fizzer.

The march was trailered with much hand wringing that it might spiral into the occupation that disfigured Pipitea in February and March this year, or at least descend into the violence and aggression of the camp's last days - or even the kind witnessed at last year's anti-vaxx marches.

Sadly, the crowd was peppered with misogynist slogans directed at the Prime Minister, but it would be misleading to suggest these are particularly novel. One slogan - "ditch the bitch" - has been used on multiple woman politicians in this country, and I'm sure abroad.

This doesn't excuse it, but it would be misleading to suggest the venom of this protest is in any sense peculiar to our own time.

New Zealand has always had a lunatic fringe. Members of John Key's office will tell stories of fairly violent and conspiracist anti-TPP protesters trailing the prime minister through the regions.

There are perfectly good reasons to dislike the TPP (and its successor the CPTPP), but it is not, as one marcher proclaimed, a "conspiracy to commit treason".

We have changed as a country since the TPP marches. The conspiracy fringe does appear to have grown, and it appears to have grown more violent.

The Parliament occupation is remarkable because, while deluded, paranoid, vulnerable, and violent people have always existed here and abroad; we've never seen so many of them all at once, and so empowered to bring their worldview to the heart of power (Wellington is not the heart of our democracy, by the way - call me sentimental, but the heart of democracy, in my view, is disbursed, like a benign horcrux, across everyone privileged enough to enjoy the franchise).

You can't come away from watching the excellent Fire and Fury documentary, or read the equally excellent reporting from across the media of the people at the heart of this movement and conclude they don't present some kind of threat, first to themselves, and then to public figures, including politicians and the members of the media.

The most frightening aspect of the protest wasn't the slogans, but the fake court that convicted all MPs of crimes against humanity, but this wasn't frightening because it represented a threat to the real judicial system, but because of the potentially sinister and violent motivations of the people associated with it.

There's a tendency to draw the wrong lesson from these sorts of events. One of the fears, articulated earlier this year and capitalised upon by Brian Tamaki on the forecourt on Tuesday is that this fringe will enter Parliament and disrupt the political system.

This seems overblown.

Based on the turnout of the 2020 election, a new party would need to win a seat or poll 145,953 in the election to enter Parliament. The combined tally of every party that could be considered roughly conspiracist, (including the New Conservatives who scored 42,600), totalled just under 90,000 votes.

The only way into Parliament for these parties, as Tamaki knows, would be an Alliance-style tie-up.

This isn't unique.

Jami-Lee Ross self-consciously tried to emulate the Alliance with Advance New Zealand, and sought parties to join him. Unsurprisingly, fringe groups who cannot even agree on basic science, found it difficult to come together under a single leader. The two parties that went into Advance NZ, Jami-Lee Ross himself and Billy TK's Advance, eventually fell apart.

The Alliance is remarkable because it was so unique. It held together in no small part thanks to the skill and personality of leader Jim Anderton - and even then, the party couldn't survive long in Parliament into the new millennium.

It would take a miracle of political organisation and turnout for these groups to unify and make it into Parliament. The notion of them entering Parliament is a fun hypothetical but one better suited to the pub than the newspaper.

There's a sad irony that this debate is playing out at a time when New Zealanders might be talking about lowering the barriers to parliamentary representation. One of the Government's election reviews is currently looking at lowering the 5 per cent threshold to 4 per cent (still high enough to block any formulation of conspiracist parties from entering Parliament in 2020).

The debate about lowering the 5 per cent threshold is one worth having (as is lowering the voting age).

Since the election of Donald Trump, much ink has been spilled agonising over how "it" could happen here. We jump at every Trumpian shadow cast by our politicians - no matter how fine those shadows may be, or how infrequently they are cast. We wilfully neglect the immense electoral, political, and cultural differences between here and the United States.

Much less time is spent thinking about actual lessons that might be learned from overseas and applied here. One of the problems in the United States has not been that the wrong people get elected, as is the case with Trump, but that too few people vote and their electoral college system distorts the value of what (relatively) few votes are cast.

One lesson worth drawing is to think more about reducing the threshold for entering Parliament, or to consider the case made by the Make It 16 campaign to lower the voting age by two years.

One of the areas where the conspiracy fringe is most likely to obtain elected office is in local government, where apathy and low turnout lower the barrier for entry. It could be worth asking whether local government elections should be reformed so that local body elections more closely resemble general elections, drowning out the lunatic fringe with the electoral equivalent of the denominator effect.

There's a risk we learn the wrong lesson from conspiracy theorists. They are a clear danger to themselves and others, but there's no evidence yet they pose any threat to our democracy or the smooth functioning of Parliament.

See original here:
Thomas Coughlan: Conspiracy theorists not yet threat to democracy - New Zealand Herald