Mediaboss Marketing

A government watchdog group and the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland urged state election officials on Friday to refuse to comply with a data request made by the Trump administration as part of an investigation into the integrity of elections.

The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, created by Republican President Donald J. Trump in May, has asked Maryland and every other state to supply voter data including names, addresses, party affiliation, voting history and partial social security numbers.

Damon Effingham, Common Cause Maryland's legal and policy director, said the request raises "significant concerns among voting rights and privacy advocates."

"The request is breathtakingly broad," Effingham said in a statement.

David Rocah, a senior attorney with the ACLU of Maryland, said Friday "the request is improper under Maryland law on multiple levels."

Much of the requested information is public under Maryland law but must be requested by a registered voter of the state and cannot be used for commercial purposes. Many political campaigns, for instance, obtains such information for purposes of advertising and door-knocking.

The request came in a letter from commission vice-chair and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. The letter does not ask for private information, but rather public voter-roll information.

"In order for the Commission to fully analyze vulnerabilities and issues related to voter registration and voting, I am requesting that you provide to the Commission the publicly-available voter roll data for Maryland," Kobach wrote in the letter.

Nevertheless, Common Cause argues that state law "forbids granting a request made under these circumstances."

"Secretary of State Kobach is a registered voter in Kansas," Effingham said.

State law also says a Maryland voter must submit to the State Board of Elections a statement signed under oath that the requested voter information will not be used for purposes unrelated to the electoral process.

Linda H. Lamone, Maryland's elections administrator, said she has asked Attorney General Brian E. Frosh for guidance in how to respond.

A spokeswoman for Frosh, a Democrat, said the office would evaluate the request and provide Lamone with guidance.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, emphasized that the State Board of Elections "functions as an independent agency."

State laws vary, but the request was met with pushback in some states. Officials from Kentucky, Virginia and New York, for instance, said they would not comply.

In Maryland, leading Democrats condemned the commission's work.

"President Trump's 'voter fraud investigation' is an attempt to suppress and disenfranchise voters, plain and simple," Democratic Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz tweeted. He went on to say that Maryland must join with Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, "and refuse to honor this alarming, politically motivated request."

State Sen. Bill Ferguson, a Baltimore Democrat, called the panel a "voter suppression commission."

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Friday called the outrage over the request "mostly a political stunt."

"This is a commission that's asking for publicly available data," she said.

The commission was created after Trump claimed on Twitter in November that he "won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally." Trump won the Electoral College vote, but Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 2.9 million votes.

The president has never offered evidence to back up his claim. He has been rebuked by both Democratic and Republican officials for undermining confidence in the nation's electoral system.

Frosh said in a letter to Congress this year that voter fraud is not a significant problem in Maryland.

"To date, there are no cases in which it has been determined that an individual who cast a vote in the federal elections held in November 2016 was legally prohibited from doing so...," Frosh wrote. "With only two instances of confirmed voter fraud from the total voter turnout of 2,734,176 in the 2012 Presidential General Election, we can safely say that there is no evidence of coordinated or systematic voter fraud in Maryland."

Baltimore Sun reporter John Fritze contributed to this article.

lbroadwater@baltsun.com

twitter.com/lukebroadwater

Here is the original post:
Common Cause, Democrats urge Maryland not to comply with Trump election data request - Baltimore Sun

A new study finds far more Republican Senate offices pay their interns than Democrat offices do.

Nearly 51 percent of Republican Senate offices offer paid internship compared to just 31 percent of Democrat offices, according to a new study from the bipartisan group Pay Our Interns. On the House side, only 8 percent of Republican offices pay their interns compared to just 3.6 percent of Democrat offices.

"Democrats like to say, Well, you know, you're getting paid with knowing that you're making a difference, Republicans have no illusions that people should get paid for their work," Carlos Mark Vera, one of the study's authors told the Washington Examiner.

From 1973 to 1993 it was standard practice to pay interns working in the House of Representatives under the Lyndon Baines Johnson Congressional Intern Program. The program provided a $1,000 two-month internship to students. However, Congress has not appropriated funds for it since the early 1990s.

Much of the reason many internships are unpaid on Capitol Hill can be attributed to hiring caps. Each representative is limited to 18 paid positions and an additional four positions on their staff.

Vera, says the lack of paid internships provided by Congress combined with high cost of living in the District of Columbia is preventing minorities from pursuing internships on Capitol Hill. He notes there is a great disparity between the participation of Caucasians in internship programs compared to Hispanics and African-Americans.

His study finds Hispanic-Americans have the lowest rate of internship participation, at 53.3 percent, compared to Caucasians at 68.2 percent. African-American participation stands at 59.5 percent, while Asian-American participation is 63.2 percent.

Vera argues unpaid internships favor those of higher socio-economic status because only those who can afford to work for free or have parents that can support their child can seek those opportunities. As a first-generation immigrant from Colombia, Vera says the goal of Pay our Interns is to make public service careers more accessible to minorities and those of all socioeconomic backgrounds, not just on racial lines.

"We're also fighting for the sons of coal miners in West Virginia, this is about opportunities for anyone to enter public service," Vera said.

Pay Our Interns collected their data by contacting members of Congress directly, often meeting directly with representatives and surveying their websites.

The report concludes that while unpaid internships often provide valuable learning experiences, a lack of adequate pay adversely affects minorities, producing a less diverse Capitol Hill workforce. It also recommends raising hiring caps and more transparency concerning how much members, if at all, pay their interns.

Read the original:
More Republicans pay their interns than Democrats: Study - Washington Examiner

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks during a Stop 'Trumpcare' rally in front of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. in May. Alex Wong/Getty Images hide caption

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks during a Stop 'Trumpcare' rally in front of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. in May.

When Senate Republican leaders delayed the vote on their bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was quick to not declare victory.

"We're not resting on any laurels, nor do we feel any sense yet of accomplishment," Schumer said at his weekly press conference, shortly after the surprise GOP decision to punt on a vote. "Other than we are making progress, because the American people are listening to our arguments."

The push to repeal key parts of the Affordable Care Act will succeed or fail based entirely on Republican votes. So arguing is the most that Democrats can do.

Perhaps it's enough. The bill's popularity has cratered as the debate has dragged on. An NPR-PBS Newshour-Marist poll out this week put its approval at 17 percent. As Republicans have scrambled to pull together the bare minimum of votes they need to pass their bill, Democrats have done something the GOP mastered over recent electoral cycles: Oppose a complicated legislative effort by focusing on how it could potentially disrupt voters' lives.

"Health care, in general, is a complicated policy, but for people to understand what this bill would do to them has been pretty simple," said Meghan Smith, a strategist at the public relations firm SKD Knickerbocker.

Smith is helping coordinate messaging for a number of progressive groups trying to block the repeal-and-replace effort. She said the groups are focusing on big-picture ideas, like projections the legislation would lead to higher health care costs for many Americans. The Congressional Budget Office's projection that an additional 22 million people would be uninsured if the Senate bill becomes law has been easy to communicate, as well.

As outside groups have organized ad campaigns and activism efforts, Schumer and the rest of the Senate Democratic Caucus has been holding event after event in and around the Capitol. There's been a clear effort by lawmakers to bring their arguments down to a personal scale.

On Tuesday, most of the Democratic caucus stood on the Senate steps holding large posters of constituents who rely on the Affordable Care Act or Medicaid. As it wound down, Schumer spelled out the messaging strategy. "We ask you those of you from local papers and outlets, to talk to your senator about the person that they are holding up," he urged reporters covering the event.

As the debate has gone on, Democratic lawmakers keep returning to one main attack point. The Senate Republican-drafted bill, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said Thursday, provides "massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. And to pay for that, we're taking away health care from millions and millions of Americans. It's as plain as that."

Democrat after Democrat has made similar arguments on the Senate floor and at various rallies and press conferences in recent days.

Booker orchestrated one of the Democrats' more viral moments on Monday a three-and-a-half-hour live video stream on the Capitol steps, focused on blasting the bill. The video initially began with Booker and Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. Other lawmakers joined in, and, by the end, a large crowd of supporters was there, too.

"It was truly a special moment," Booker said. "It shows the spontaneous outpouring that people have, who feel very passionate about this issue."

Planned Parenthood and other organizations also organized a larger Capitol rally Thursday.

But the question is whether any of this matters. The bill's fate comes down to a dozen or so Republican senators lawmakers who likely don't have much support from the types of people who are showing up at Capitol rallies anyway.

That's why efforts by people like Stephanie Powell may be more important. Powell lives in Anchorage, Alaska, and every morning at around 8 o'clock, she calls the office of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican who represents the state. "I call her Anchorage office, her Juneau office, her Fairbanks office, her Washington office," Powell said.

Powell is progressive, but said she voted for Murkowski. "She's always been Alaska first," she said. But Powell and her family all rely on Medicaid, which she is quick to tell Murkowski's staffers when they pick up the phone. "They know more about my health history than maybe my own mother at this point, because I've been very up front about what this means to us."

The Senate is in recess for the next week. Which means Murkowski and other Republicans who are either on the fence or opposed to the legislation including Maine's Susan Collins, Nevada's Dean Heller, Ohio's Rob Portman, and West Virgina's Shelley Moore Capito will likely be hearing from a lot of people like Powell.

Read more here:
How Democrats Are Fighting The GOP Health Care Bill - NPR

The Democratic Party has reacted to its series of recent election losses by once again concluding that it needs a better economic message. As Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer said Sunday, Democrats need a strong, bold, sharp-edged and common-sense economic agenda. The only disagreement within the party is about how sharp-edged and left-wing that agenda should be. But it is increasingly clear that the problem for Democrats has little to do with economics and much more to do with a cluster of issues they would rather not revisit about culture, social mores and national identity.

The Democratic economic agenda is broadly popular with the public. More people prefer the partys views to those of Republicans on taxes, poverty reduction, health care, government benefits, and even climate change and energy policy. In one recent poll, 3 in 4 supported raising the minimum wage to $9. Seventy-two percent wanted to provide pre-K to all 4-year-olds in poor families. Eight in 10 favored expanding food stamps. It is noteworthy that each of these proposals found support from a majority of Republicans.

The Democracy Fund commissioned a comprehensive study of voters in the 2016 presidential election, and one scholar, Lee Drutman, set out his first key finding: The primary conflict structuring the two parties involves questions of national identity, race, and morality. Focusing on the people who voted for President Barack Obama in 2012 and then Donald Trump in 2016, Drutman found that they were remarkably close to the Democratic Party on economic issues. But they were far to the right on their attitudes toward immigrants, blacks and Muslims, and much more likely to feel people like me are on the decline.

The Public Religion Research Institute and the Atlantic also conducted an important study to analyze the most powerful predictors of whether a white working-class American would vote for Trump. The top predictor was if someone identified as a Republican, a reminder that party loyalty is very strong. But after that, the two best predictors were fears of cultural displacement and support for deporting undocumented immigrants. Those who felt their economic conditions were poor or fair were actually slightly more likely to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Its worth considering how much the Democratic Party has changed over the past 25 years. Bill Clintons party was careful to come across as moderate on many social issues. It had a middle-of-the-road position on immigration and was cautiously progressive on subjects such as gay rights. The Democrats eventually moved boldly leftward in some of these areas, such as gay rights, out of an admirable sense of principle. On others, such as immigration, they did so largely to court a growing segment of Democratic voters, a process that Peter Beinart nicely explains in the most recent Atlantic issue. But in a broader sense, the Democratic Party moved left because it became a party dominated by urban, college-educated professionals, and its social and cultural views naturally mirrored this reality.

The partys defense of minorities and celebration of diversity are genuine and praiseworthy, but they have created great distance between itself and a wide swath of Middle America. This is a cultural gulf that cannot be bridged by advocating smarter policies on tax credits, retraining and early-childhood education. The Democrats need to talk about Americas national identity in a way that stresses the common elements that bind, not the particular ones that divide. Policies in these areas do matter. The party should take a position on immigration that is less absolutist and recognizes both the cultural and economic costs of large-scale immigration. On some of the issues surrounding sexual orientation, it can and should affirm its principles without compromise. But perhaps it is possible to show greater understanding for parts of the country that disagree. California recently enacted a travel ban that now prohibits state-funded travel to eight states with laws that in Californias view discriminate against LGBT people. Meanwhile, California has no problem paying for employees to travel to such havens of tolerance as China, Qatar and Russia.

The more I study this subject, the more I am convinced that people cast their vote mostly based on an emotional bond with a candidate, a sense that they get each other. Democrats have to recognize this. They should always stay true to their ideals, of course, but yet convey to a broad section of Americans rural, less-educated, older, whiter that they understand and respect their lives, their values and their worth. Its a much harder balancing act than one more push to raise the minimum wage. But this cultural realm is the crossroads of politics today.

Read more from Fareed Zakarias archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

Follow this link:
The Democrats' problem is not the economy, stupid - Washington Post

Things are getting so bad for the Republicans that theyre considering a last resort: bipartisanship.

Thats rightthe party that controls the White House, Senate and House might need some Democratic votes.

The immediate focus is the stalled Senate health care bill, which has a public approval rating of only 12 percent to 27 percent, depending on the poll. Nine GOP senators have expressed varying degrees of opposition to the bill. Conservatives dont like parts of it, moderates dont like parts of it, and even with President Trump cajoling lawmakers by phone and in person, the party cant seem to get to 50.

The New York Times says Mitch McConnell gave his senators a warning: Either Republicans come together, or he would have to work with Democrats to shore up the deteriorating health law.

Democrats are willing to negotiate, but their price is preserving most of ObamaCare with some changes. After seven years of Republican promises to repeal and replace the law, that sounds like a non-starterunless Trump and McConnell have no choice.

The larger problem is that the party that now runs Washington hasnt been able to push through a major piece of legislation. Theres been no progress on tax reform, which is tied in some ways to the tax reductions in the GOP health bill. Theres been no progress on an infrastructure program. Theres been no progress on constructing a border wall. And the GOP has to find the votes to approve a debt ceiling increase or face a government default.

Listen to the voices of Republican frustration, as reported by Politico:

Rep. Steve Womack: Wed better get our act together. Were better than this. Were not governing right now. Were stuck.

Rep. Tom Reed: The fact that were not getting to these issues health care, budget, tax reform is frustrating. We came here to move the needle.

The problem for Republicans is that they own these issues now. They are still trying to figure out how to be a governing party. The divisions within the party, and the gap between Trump and Republican lawmakers, has made each step agonizingly slow.

Gridlock in Washington can usually be blamed on the out-of-power party. And the Democrats have done their part to slow-walk just about everything, just as the GOP did during the Obama years.

But we are now faced with a Republican form of gridlock. And their success in 2018not to mention the presidents successwill rest on breaking it.

Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m.). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz.

Read the original:
Could the Republicans rescue themselves by turning to ... Democrats? - Fox News