Mediaboss Marketing

The 2021 legislative session is continuing to prove that Jim Crow is alive and well. As of June 21, according to the latest Brennan Center research, 17 states have enacted 28 new laws that restrict voting access. Though other states yet in session may follow, Georgia, Texas, and Arizona have risen to the top as critical inflection points.

The voter suppression wrought by Georgias massive new law has garnered not only national media attention but that of Congress. On July 19, the U.S. Senate Rules Committee traveled to Georgia for a field hearing on SB 202 and the case it makes for passing the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, as well as U.S. Senator Rev. Raphael Warnocks Preventing Election Subversion Act.

Sen. Rev. Warnock:

But if we passed federal voting rights protections, we can reverse these restrictions. We can pass legislation that would create uniform national standards so that your right to vote wouldnt depend on where you live in. We can protect the freedom of voters to decide how they want to votewhether its on Election Day, during early voting, or by mail. And we can strengthen election security by providing new funding for states to replace old voting machines and enhance training for election administrators.

Texas legislators recently traveled to Washington to make a similar case. At the end of May, with SB 7 on the brink of passage and adjournment looming, House Democrats denied the quorum needed to hold a vote by leaving the chamber. Governor Greg Abbott called a special session for July, and voter suppression returned as HB3 and SB1. This time, House Democrats left the state to block these bills and demand federal reform.

People For the American Way President Ben Jealous:

Gov. Abbott and Republican Senate leaders have threatened lawmakers with arrest to try to force them to attend the session. And he has said he will keep calling special sessions until he gets his way. Thats why the Texas legislators came to Washington, D.C. They brought an urgent message to members of Congress: the only way to protect voters from voter suppression at the state level is to pass national voting rights legislation.

The twists and turns of Arizonas story further lay bare the politics of voter suppression and its grave consequences. Governor Doug Ducey cleared the way for a new voter purge when he signed SB 1485, which punishes permanent early voters who miss two elections by forcing them to confirm in writing that they still want to vote by mail or theyll stop receiving ballots. Gov. Ducey also signed a state budget that includes anti-voter provisions. While the legislature attempted to move a massive voter suppression package nearing adjournment in an already extended session, an ongoing feud between Sen. Townsend and Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita flared up again and killed it.

All Voting Is Local Arizona:

As we plan for the next election and begin to experience the effects of new anti-voter laws, our votes and our voices will be more necessary than ever. Arizona voters will not be silenced. The Arizona Legislatures rush to push through cruel election-related policies was designed not only to create deliberate barriers between voters and the ballot, but also to avoid public scrutiny of these measures. The real opportunity for change lies in how these bills are implemented.

Read the original:
Fighting for Democracy as Attacks Continue in the States - People For the American Way

In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, we assess the state of American democracy with the help of a new survey from Bright Line Watch, a group of political scientists who monitor threats to our democratic systems.

Former President Donald Trumps false message that American elections are fraudulent has permeated much of the Republican Party, particularly at the state level, where candidates are running on those ideas and lawmakers are passing laws they say are designed to prevent fraud.

On Monday, dozens of Texas House Democrats left the state to try to prevent the passage of voting restrictions there. And on Tuesday, President Biden gave a speech urging the U.S. Congress to pass bills designed to protect and expand voting rights. Activists have called on Senate Democrats to end the filibuster to do so.

Bright Line Watch has surveyed Americans and experts alike on what they think about Republican and Democratic efforts. One of the organizations co-founders, Dartmouth College professor of government Brendan Nyhan, discusses the results with Galen Druke.

Originally posted here:
Politics Podcast: Americans And Experts Agree That Democracy Is Struggling - FiveThirtyEight

STATE REPRESENTATIVE Armando Walle, a Democrat from Houston, brought an unusually big suitcase when he travelled to Washington, DC, this week. For several months Democrats in the Texas legislature have been fighting an uphill battle against an election integrity bill touted by Republicans, including Governor Greg Abbott. The flight of the Democratic caucus to the capital temporarily halts a measure that would have been controversial at any time. Now, when so many Republicans are still repeating the former presidents lie that the last election was fraudulent, the struggle has assumed Texan proportions.

Your browser does not support the

Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android.

In May, on the final day of this years regular legislative session, Democrats walked out of the Texas House, denying Republicans the quorum they needed to pass the bill, or any other (the Texas House has a rule stating that two-thirds of members need to be present for the chamber to pass laws). Mr Abbott responded by vowing to summon the legislators back for a special session to tackle the issue, and to veto funding for the legislative branch of state government in the meantime. He followed through, calling legislators back to Austin for a special session which began July 8th, triggering the events that led to Democratic lawmakers leaving the state by private planes, and could, perhaps, end with an outright constitutional crisis in Texas.

Republicans control both chambers of the state legislature by healthy margins. If Congress remains unmoved by the pleas of the refugees to pass a new federal voting law, the Democratic state lawmakers will soon find themselves in an awkward limbo, counting down the days until the special session ends on August 7th, with no clear plan after that point. We are living on borrowed time, a group of Democratic leaders said in a statement.

Meanwhile, in Austin, Republicans are fuming. As soon as they come back in the state of Texas, they will be arrested, Mr Abbott declared on a local news station (thereby rather undermining his claim to be upholding democratic standards). They will be cabined inside the Texas Capitol until they get their job done. He also vowed to call as many special sessions as necessary until the end of next year to ensure that the legislation is passed.

Stopping the state legislature from functioning in the name of saving democracy puts Mr Walle and his Democratic colleagues on tricky ground. There is precedent for quorom-breaking flights, but breaking one norm to save another one requires a weighing of relative damage. The Democrats argue, fairly, that the Republican bill is motivated by the Trump-boosted myth about a stolen election and, perhaps less fairly, that Republicans cannot win Texas without suppressing the votes of non-white Texans, who lean Democratic. That the first version of the elections bill targeted early voting on Sundays, when many African-Americans go to the polling station after church, was the tell.

The current version of the bill is better. A couple of provisions would bar innovations that Houstons Harris County pioneered last year (such as 24-hour and drive-through voting). These proved popular and worked well, but banning them would be failing to encourage voting rather than suppressing it. However the bill also seeks to expand the power of partisan poll watchers, which could facilitate voter harassment and intimidation. In the 2020 election some local Republican officials tried to recruit poll watchers to volunteer in heavily black and Hispanic precincts.

Im OK having a battle of ideas and losing; that happens to me, as a Democrat, all the time, says Diego Bernal, a Democrat representing San Antonio. This is about rigging the system to produce a certain outcome. This view is so widely held by Texas Democrats that they will happily take a stance that looks doomed. We live on these ideals of freedomwell, not everybody was free in this country when it was created, says Mr Walle. Not everybody had the right to vote. We had a civil war; we had Reconstruction; we had Jim Crow, we had state-sanctioned discrimination. His grandfather, born in 1930, lived through some of those experiences, and is now, at age 91, still a Texas voter. Hence the big suitcase.

For more coverage of Joe Bidens presidency, visit our dedicated hub

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Texodus"

The rest is here:
Texas Democrats suspend democracy in the name of upholding it - The Economist

For Immediate Release 07.16.2021 Governor Hutchinsons Weekly Address | Democracy in Action

Governor Hutchinson'sweeklyradioaddresscan be found in MP3 format and downloadedHERE.

LITTLE ROCKLast week, I announced I would be traveling the state for a series of Community COVID Conversations, and today Id like to talk about why these exercises in democracy matter.

The tours are a throwback to the time when community leaders and constituents had more meetings at town hall and all-day picnics.

The topic for the tour is the pandemic, but listening tours are valuable for any topic. When it comes to working through issues, nothing beats face-to-face conversations.

I have met with folks in six cities so far. Each meeting is as different as the community I am visiting, but each is alike in one way each is democracy in action. Democracy is a big and noble concept that we can practice simply and in the smallest venues.

The goal of the Community COVID Conversation is for me to hear first-hand your concerns and ideas. Likewise, the meetings give you the chance to hear directly from me. This kind of opportunity often is the start of understanding. In the end, we still may not agree, but we may understand.

During the meeting in Batesville, one gentleman said something Im sure he has expressed often, but this time he had the opportunity to get it off his chest directly to the governor. And I had the chance to respond directly.

He said many people arent taking the vaccine because they dont trust the government.

I said, Let me ask you what advice you would give me.

Shoot straight with the people, he said. Tell them the facts.

I told him I agreed 100 percent that we must tell the truth, and the truth is that we have a deadly disease that is still killing people so we must continue to push vaccinations, the best solution to beating COVID.

Then I offered advice that he probably didnt expect, and to be honest, Im not sure I had ever said it exactly this way. I told him that since he doesnt trust politicians, that he should talk to an expert that he does trust, whether its his doctor or someone at a medical clinic. That way, I said, you bypass the government, which cant solve most of our problems anyway.

Another moment of democracy grew uncomfortable because it was so honest. A constituent name a couple of controversial COVID treatments and asked a doctor in the audience whether he would prescribe either.

He asked: Are you giving (them)?

The doctor said: No sir we are not

The constituent asked: If the patient asks for it ... will you give it?

The doctor said no patient had asked for either of the treatments.

The constituent pressed for an answer: But would you?

The doctor paused six seconds to answer. Then he answered with the courage of his training and belief: No. I probably would not.

Did either gentleman change his mind? I doubt it. But each was free to speak his mind in a moment of democracy at its most fundamental level.

Soon I will announce the next towns on the Community COVID Conversation tour. The number of cases of COVID and those hospitalized with it continues to rise, so I continue to encourage everyone to get vaccinated. Im hopeful that as the tour continues, we will find ways to reassure those who are hesitant, and soon, the tour wont be necessary.

CONTACT:Press Shop (press@governor.arkansas.gov)

Read more here:
Governor Hutchinson's Weekly Address | Democracy in Action : Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson - Governor Asa Hutchinson

I came to The New York Times in 1992, 29 years ago this summer, as the first intern in its graphics department. I arrived in Manhattan, a little Black boy from a hick town in Louisiana, and it blew my mind.

In those first months I saw how one of the best newsrooms in the country covered some of the biggest stories of the era, and it shaped me as a journalist and in my reverence for the invaluable role journalists play in society.

I arrived weeks after the Los Angeles riots following the acquittal of police officers in the Rodney King beating, and just before the Supreme Court reaffirmed Roe v. Wade. The city was under the control of the first Black mayor in its history, David Dinkins.

I would soon watch in person as Bill Clinton was nominated for president at the Democratic National Convention in Madison Square Garden, just about 10 blocks south of The Timess offices, and I would watch a massive and very political gay pride parade march through Times Square as the community reeled from the scourge of AIDS. In 1992, a staggering 33,590 Americans died of the disease as it became the number one cause of death among men aged 25-44 years, according to the C.D.C.

This, in many ways, was an extraordinary time to be a journalist.

Newsroom employment was at a high, and throughout the 1990s, and even into the early 2000s, a slight majority of Americans still had a great deal or fair amount of trust in the news media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly, according to Gallup.

In 1992, there was no MSNBC or Fox News, no Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or TikTok. Also, there werent many, if any, mainstream news organizations online. The Times didnt start online publication until 1996, and then it was not the truly transformative force it would become.

Since the 1990s, newsrooms have seen tremendous, truly terrifying, contraction. On Tuesday, Pew Research Center issued a report that found newsroom employment in the United States has dropped by 26 percent since 2008.

Last month, Poynter reported on a survey that found that the United States ranks last in media trust at 29 percent among 92,000 news consumers surveyed in 46 countries.

Furthermore, a report last year by the Knight Foundation and the University of North Carolina found:

Since 2004, the United States has lost one-fourth 2,100 of its newspapers. This includes 70 dailies and more than 2,000 weeklies or nondailies.

At the end of 2019, the United States had 6,700 newspapers, down from almost 9,000 in 2004.

Today, more than 200 of the nations 3,143 counties and equivalents have no newspaper and no alternative source of credible and comprehensive information on critical issues. Half of the counties have only one newspaper, and two-thirds do not have a daily newspaper.

Many communities that lost newspapers were the most vulnerable struggling economically and isolated.

The news industry is truly struggling, but the public is oblivious to this. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2018 found that most Americans think their local news media are doing just fine financially.

The report explains, About seven-in-ten say their local news media are doing either somewhat or very well financially (71 percent).

I guess I can understand the illusion in some ways. We have celebrity journalists writers, radio personalities and anchors in a way that didnt exist before.

There were popular and trusted news figures, to be sure, but the proliferation of sensational, personality journalists is a newer and growing sector of journalism.

Also, we are now able to access and share more news than ever before. This all leads to a feeling that we are drowning in news, when in fact pond after pond is drying up and the lakes are getting smaller.

I share all that to say this: Democracies cannot survive without a common set of facts and a vibrant press to ferret them out and present them. Our democracy is in terrible danger. The only way that lies can flourish as they now do is because the press has been diminished in both scale and stature. Lies advance when truth is in retreat.

The founders understood the supreme value of the press, and thats why they protected it in the Constitution. No other industry can claim the same.

But protection from abridgment is not protection from shrinkage or obsolescence.

We are moving ever closer to a country where the corrupt can deal in the darkness with no fear of being exposed by the light.

Go here to read the rest:
Opinion | As the Press Weakens, So Does Democracy - The New York Times