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U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland delivers remarks on voting rights at the Department of Justice on Friday. Tom Brenner/Pool/Getty Images hide caption

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland delivers remarks on voting rights at the Department of Justice on Friday.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday offered a fierce defense of voting rights, which he described as an indisputable "cornerstone" of American democracy, as he outlined a series of measures meant to protect those rights.

"There are many things open to debate in America, but the right of all eligible citizens to vote is not one of them. The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy, the right from which all other rights ultimately flow," Garland said during remarks to the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.

Following former President Donald Trump's baseless claims of a stolen 2020 election, many Republican-led legislatures across the country have in recent months sought to pass restrictive voting measures that critics have argued are often designed specifically to disenfranchise racial minorities and the poor.

Garland noted that at least 14 states have passed new laws this year to make it harder to vote. Those states include Georgia, Florida and Arizona.

"To meet the challenge of the current moment, we must rededicate the resources of the Department of Justice to a critical part of its original mission: enforcing federal law to protect the franchise for all eligible voters," Garland said.

As part of this mission, Garland said the Justice Department would double the number of voter enfranchisement lawyers in the Civil Rights Division and more closely scrutinize laws that relate to the right to vote, including examining state legislation for possible disenfranchisement against Black voters and other people of color.

Garland also said the department would examine recent reviews of state 2020 election results. The Department of Justice has already raised concerns about a GOP-led review of ballots in Maricopa County, Arizona.

The attorney general said his department's ability to protect voting rights was hampered by a 2013 Supreme Court decision that struck down a key provision in the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Garland called on Congress to advance two bills on voting rights that have the backing of most Democrats but seem unlikely to pass.

As the nation's chief law enforcement official, Garland also vowed to combat disinformation campaigns that may deter people from voting, as well as publish guidance for how states should move forward with mail-in ballots a topic that became a focal point of the partisan divide during the 2020 race.

"Nearly two and a half centuries into our experiment of 'government of the people, by the people, for the people,' we have learned much about what supports a healthy democracy," Garland said. "We know that expanding the ability of all eligible citizens to vote is the central pillar. That means ensuring that all eligible voters can cast a vote; that all lawful votes are counted; and that every voter has access to accurate information. The Department of Justice will never stop working to protect the democracy to which all Americans are entitled."

Later Friday, Vice President Harris, who's been put in charge of the Biden administration's efforts on voting issues, lauded new measures signed into law in Nevada, where state Democrats there pushed for expanded voting access.

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AG Garland Vows To Defend Voting Rights As The 'Cornerstone' Of American Democracy - NPR

Still, Shapiro and many other experts believe political parties have suffered a major loss in clout, which in turn has been a loss for democracy in general.

"Political parties are the core institution of democratic accountability because parties, not the individuals who support or comprise them, can offer competing visions of the public good," write Shapiro and his Yale colleague, Frances Rosenbluth, in a2018 opinion piece. Voters, they argue, have neither the time nor the background to research costs and benefits of policies and weigh their personal interests against what's best for the majority in the long run.

To show what can go wrong with single-issue voting that lacks party guidance, Shapiro and Rosenbluth point to California's notorious Proposition 13, a 1978 ballot initiative that sharply restricted increases in property taxes. At first, the measure seemed like a win to many voters. Yet over the years, the new rule also decimated local budgets to the point where California's per-pupil school spending now ranks near the bottom of a list of the 50 states.

Parties serve many other important roles, including facilitating compromise, says Russell Muirhead, a political scientist at Dartmouth University and Rosenblum's co-author. As an example, Muirhead points to theUS Farm Bill, which the two parties renegotiate roughly every five years. Each time they sit down, "the Democrats want food support for urban people and Republicans want support for farmers, and somehow, they always come to an agreement," Muirhead says. "The alternative is favouring one side or simply passing nothing at all."

Perhaps most important, the US's two main parties have traditionally cooperated in acknowledging their opponents' legitimacy, as Rosenblum and Muirhead write. Other nations, such as Thailand, Turkey and Germany, have banned political parties that their governments have seen as too destabilising to democracy. American parties' cooperation has helped keep the peace by reassuring US voters that even if they lose today, they may well win tomorrow. Now, however, this fundamental rule is being broken, say Rosenblum, Muirhead and others, with some party leaders even accusing their opponents of treason.

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Can we have democracy without political parties? - BBC News

"Our entire democracy is now at risk." Those are the unvarnished words of more than 100 scholars with expertise in the history of democratic breakdown around the world.

Now, they're warning the U.S. could transform into a political system that doesn't meet even "minimum conditions" for free and fair elections. We'll hear their warnings, and solutions.

Susan Stokes, professor of political science and director of the Chicago Center on Democracy at the University of Chicago.Co-director of Bright Line Watch, an academic initiative to monitor democratic practices in the U.S. and call attention to threats to American democracy.

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst. (@JackBeattyNPR)

Anna Grzymala-Busse, professor of international studies and director of The Europe Center at Stanford University. Senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institution for International Studies and the Hoover Institution. (@AnnaGBusse)

Steven Levitsky, professor of government and director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University.

New America: "Statement of Concern" "We, the undersigned, are scholars of democracy who have watched the recent deterioration of U.S. elections and liberal democracy with growing alarm."

Democratic Erosion: "Civil Society and Democratic Decline: A Look at Poland" "Poland was once seen as a model post-Soviet transition to democracy. Between 1989 and 2014, Poland built democratic institutions, joined the EU, NATO, and the OSCE, and experienced significant economic growth."

The Guardian: "American democracy is at risk from Trump and the Republicans. What can be done?" "Academics rarely agree about the big issues, and generally hesitate to enter the political fray by signing collective public statements."

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Democracy At Risk: Scholars Offer Warnings And What Can Be Done - WBUR

Despite consistent economic growth rates over the past two decades, Peru remains a deeply unequal and divided nation, with the wealthier and whiter population in its cities reaping most of the benefits of a neoliberal economic model put in place in the 1990s by Ms. Fujimoris father.

When the pandemic ripped through Peru, it exacerbated those social and economic gaps, hitting hardest those who could not afford to stop working, who lived in cramped conditions, or who had limited access to health care in a country with a weak safety net.

The elections played along the same economic, racial and class lines, with Ms. Fujimori drawing most of her support from urban areas, and Mr. Castillo finding his base in the rural highlands, home to more mixed-race and Indigenous Peruvians.

Mr. Zavaleta, the political scientist, said he thought the chaos of the election, including Ms. Fujimoris attempts to overturn votes, had deepened the differences between Peruvians.

And I believe that it will have relatively long-lasting effects, he went on.

Outside the election authority on Thursday, Max Aguilar, 63, said he had traveled hours by bus, from the northern city of Chimbote, to defend Mr. Castillo.

We believe that the far right has already had enough time to show us that things can be better and they havent done it, he said.

So we, the people, are saying no, that is enough. And we are betting on a change. We have a lot of confidence in Professor Castillo.

Sofa Villamil contributed reporting from Bogot, Colombia.

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Peruvian Election, Still Undecided, Pushes a Democracy to Its Brink - The New York Times

When Sen. Joe Manchin announced he would oppose the For the People Act, Steve Benen of MSNBC spoke for many Democrats when he declared that Joe Manchin is prepared to be remembered by history as the senator who did little more than hope as his countrys democracy unraveled.

One can share Democrats alarm about the state of our democracy without concluding that the For the People Act was the answer.

H.R. 1 is a mashup of sound ideas (requiring a paper record of each vote) with outdated and arguably unconstitutional measures banning so-called dark money at a time when small-dollar donations are more important; and limiting speech, which the American Civil Liberties Union, among others, opposes.

Some are now saying the Democrats should turn to the John Lewis Act as a response to Republican efforts to curtail voting rights in the states. But the Lewis Act is off-point, too.

Look, Republican efforts to limit early and absentee voting are destructive because they ratify the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen. These laws deserve the strongest condemnation, and Democrats would be justified in running ads reminding voters that Republicans were acting in bad faith.

But not all of the measures in these laws are objectionable. Requiring an ID strikes many people as simple common sense. An Economist/YouGov poll in April found that 64% of Americans agreed with the statement: Photo ID should be required to vote in person. Among African Americans, 60% agreed. Democrats should not die on this hill.

Moreover, the far more pressing emergency is the Republican Partys loosening attachment to democratic procedures and to truth itself. As we saw in the aftermath of 2020, 147 Republican officeholders were willing to decertify the Electoral College count. A few brave local Republican officials resisted tremendous pressure to alter or misreport the results of elections. They demonstrated integrity. For their trouble, instead of being lauded and celebrated as heroes of democracy, they have been censured by GOP committees across the country as the legend of the Big Lie has seized the minds of rank-and-file Republicans.

The Republican Party is barreling toward disregarding the actual vote count in a presidential contest. The John Lewis Act does not address this.

There is something Democrats can do at the federal level to respond to the threat: They can amend the Electoral Count Act of 1887. Republicans would be unlikely to filibuster this law, so Democrats can pass it with a simple majority vote.

This law was passed following the contentious Hayes-Tilden election in 1876 a contest that was so close it threatened to tear the country apart just 11 years after Appomattox. Here is a sample of its brilliant draftsmanship:

If more than one return or paper purporting to be a return from a State shall have been received by the President of the Senate, those votes, and those only, shall be counted which shall have been regularly given by the electors who are shown by the determination mentioned in section 5 of this title to have been appointed, if the determination in said section provided for shall have been made.

It goes on and on like that. Laws should not be written to obscure but to clarify.

The law directs governors to certify their states results and the slate of electors chosen by the voters. But it also specifies that in a case of a failed election (not defined) in which the voters have not made a choice, the state legislature can step in to appoint electors.

As the votes were being counted in 2020, Republican influencers like radio host Mark Levin were suggesting that state legislatures had a constitutional duty to reverse the will of the voters and name their own slate of Trump electors. When Sen. Lindsey Graham was asked by Sean Hannity about possibly invalidating votes, he said, Everything should be on the table.

The Electoral Count Act decrees that if one representative and one senator object, in writing, to the counting of any states electoral votes, the bodies must adjourn to their chambers to debate the matter.

As Ed Kilgore has recommended, Congress should amend the Electoral Count Act to clarify that only electoral votes certified by individual states will be counted and that the vice presidents role is purely ceremonial. Further, the threshold for objections to state electoral vote counts should be much higher than two.

I would add that a supermajority should be required to decertify any states electoral votes, not just a simple majority as the law now permits. Additionally, the law should be amended to eliminate the failed election section that empowers legislatures to substitute their preference for that of the voters. There are armies of law professors who can provide relevant language and good ideas for other changes.

Forget H.R. 1. Forget campaign finance. Dont perseverate on whether poll watchers can distribute water to voters waiting in line. Its not the vote casting but the vote counting that needs attention. Now.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the Beg to Differ podcast.

Send letters to letters@suntimes.com.

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The real threat to democracy is how your vote is counted | Charen - Chicago Sun-Times