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This column is by Rebecca Rolfes, president of the League of Women Voters of Coastal Georgia.

Between 2000 and 2018, 60% to 80% of seats in the Georgia General Assembly were uncontested. The national average of uncontested elections for statewide offices is 35%.

The 2020 election in November will be no different.

In 2011, Republicans got 53.3% of the popular vote but won 68% of the seats.

In 2018, 438,000 people Democrats, Republicans and otherwise -- who went to the polls and voted for Georgia governor failed to cast a ballot in their state representative race.

If this sounds like minority rule, you would be correct. The reason, say reformers, is partisan gerrymandering which stifles competitive races, depresses voter turnout and turns a democratic majority into a representational minority.

New electoral districts will be drawn next year once data from the 2020 U.S. Census is made available to the states. Redistricting, mandated by Article 1, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution is "a brilliant idea that our founding fathers came up with," says Pat Bryd, executive director of FairDistricts GA. "They said the populations going to change. We want to have these districts and we want to adjust the size of those districts and base the number of districts on the census every 10 years. Its wonderful because it means when population has shifted, the representation can shift too."

State constitutions mimic the U.S. Constitution and carry out statewide redistricting on the same 10-year schedule.

The problem in Georgia is that the same people voted into office will draw lines that can guarantee they will stay in office.

In essence, redistricting is the political issue that underlies all political issues because it determines who votes for whom. When redistricting becomes gerrymandering, it enables politicians to pick their voters instead of voters picking their politicians.

"Why do we have politicians who think its OK to allow rural hospitals to close," Bryd asks. "Why do we have politicians who despise Medicaid? We have the politicians we have because districts were created to give them the power base they need."

Shining a light on an opaque process

Redistricting that becomes gerrymandering the drawing of lines to gain advantage for one party or candidate, or to deprive a specific group of voters of their rights distorts the one person/one vote system of democracy. Racial redistricting is illegal per the Voting Rights Act. Partisan redistricting is not.

"If you cannot have your elected officials reflect the public, if those two things are divorced from each other, then the elected officials are not going to do what the public wants and it doesn't matter how much they vote," says State Sen. Elena Parent (D-Dekalb Co.) , a long-time proponent of reform. "Thats totally divorced from what a democracy is supposed to be. It enables minority rule."

Assuming Republicans retain control of the Georgia House and Georgia Senate in the November elections, State Sen. Matt Brass (R-Newnan), chair of the Senate Redistricting Committee, and his House counterpart Rep. Bonnie Rich (R-Suwanee), will have several bright spotlights trained on them when they meet in special session to begin drawing new state electoral lines, probably sometime next August when the U.S. Census data becomes available. Their work must be complete by the time the General Assembly meets in 2022.

The first spotlight will be questions about the Census itself. The Commerce Department, which oversees the count, tried to add a question about citizenship when the Constitution mandates that everyone who resides in the country must be counted. An attempt to shorten the Census was struck down in court. Responses to the Census questionnaire have been lower than normal in the 60% to 70% range compared to 74% in the 2010 census due to the coronavirus.

The second spotlight will be Georgias history of gerrymandering. Georgia has repeatedly been reprimanded by the Department of Justice for gerrymandered districts. In 2001, the maps were so bad that the DOJ redrew them. The last maps drawn in 2011 were approved by then U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, "the first time in Georgia history since the Voting Rights Act that we not only had our maps approved but a new law was not created because they were so bad," says Sen. Brass.

Georgia, like other states, also periodically redraws lines between the 10-year census counts. In 2015, then Secretary of State Brian Kemp was sued in U.S. District Court for an attempt to gerrymander Districts 105 and 111. The General Assembly tabled the effort.

The third and final spotlight -- and potentially the brightest -- will be the more than $50 million raised by the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC) to fix what it terms a "broken system." The NDRC has endorsed 102 candidates who favor redistricting reform Marcus Thompson, a Democrat, running against Rep. Ron Stephens (R-Savannah) in District 164 among them and is targeting Georgia among 13 states.

The NDRC will spend $103,200 of their war chest in Georgia. Their hope is that Democrats will take control of the Georgia House depriving Republicans of the political trifecta: control of the House and the Senate as well as the governors office.

Reformers say that such an outcome will, at a minimum, improve the fairness and transparency of the redistricting process and might ultimately lead to passage of the Democracy Act. That act, proposed by the ACLU and supported by a coalition of 12 other nonpartisan organizations, would amend the Georgia Constitution to take redistricting out the hands of elected officials and create an independent commission.

Some form of the same reform has been enacted in 21 states. In those states, races tend to be more competitive. Candidates more accurately reflect the electorate with more people of color, more women and more candidates without access to large campaign donations.

Voter Turnout 2018 by savannahnow.com

Behind closed doors

Both those in charge of redistricting at the state level and those favoring reform toss the word transparency around as the key to everything that needs to change.

At present, House and Senate committees meet in special session, crunch numbers from the Census data, look at obvious geographic boundaries to ensure whats called contiguity and at less obvious but equally important community of interest groupings, then hold a series of public hearings around the state to develop districting maps. All of this is tacitly agreed to rather than legally binding.

The Transparency Act, proposed last year by Sen. Parent, mandated that public hearings would be held in each district, that they would be recorded and made available on a website. The adjournment of the General Assembly because of the coronavirus meant that the act never got a hearing. Now Sen. Brass has picked up one of the acts provisions and hopes to hold public hearings in all 180 House districts and 56 Senate districts in the state. He would prefer to hold them in person but, given time, distance and the likely persistence of the coronavirus, some or all may be virtual.

According to Sen. Parent, the supposedly public hearings held as part of the existing process are a "sham, for appearances only," while the redistricting process actually takes place behind closed doors in Atlanta. The crucial difference: The Transparency Act would set a standard that is legally binding. Such legal mandates would be an important first step to improving the process, say reformers. Parent, who was gerrymandered out of her House seat in 2012, intends to pre-file the act in mid-November.

"Their goal in 2011 was to draw maps that gave them a two-thirds supermajority in all chambers," Parent said. "We have districts in Georgia that are one precinct wide and four miles long. Decatur is split into four districts. Statesboro is three. Athens is split in half. Their excuse is that means more representatives fighting for a communitys interest. What it really amounts to is an effort to create majority-minority districts."

With the Transparency Act, Parent was looking for what she calls "a smaller lift," something that would improve the process but be easier to pass than a constitutional amendment.

The Georgia constitution is vague on the subject of redistricting, Byrd says. "It doesn't exist. That's pretty vague. The Georgia Constitution section on redistricting includes only the contiguity section." The North Carolina constitution, by contrast, contains a section guaranteeing free and open elections. Georgias says nothing.

The Georgia Constitution has five sentences about voting rights and redistricting. It has 68 pages on the lottery.

Incremental reforms like the Transparency Act may be the best courseindeed the only courseopen to reformers in the face of politically entrenched opposition.

For Sen. Brass, reforming the system would consist of, first, greater transparency. "To me in today's day and age with technology, theres really no excuse for this not to be the most transparent redistricting weve ever had," he says. "I don't mean that just for our state, I mean nationwide. Theres literally no excuse."

Second, he wants a certain percentage of each body to approve the maps. "You couldn't pass your maps with 91 votes," he says. "We might put it at 66%, 67%, something like that. That would be a good step."

Finally, hed prefer that the state resort to mid-year or mid-decade map changes only under specific circumstances. "I don't think you can ban it outright," he says, "but they would be outliers."

Public outcry

Given that so many candidates will run unopposed in 2020, voters will be given little voice in determining reform vs. the status quo. What they can do, Bryd says, is pay attention. The successful challenge to Kemps attempt to gerrymander two districts in 2015 resulted from a "public outcry" of letter writing, phone calls and testimony from nonpartisan voting rights organizations.

The sad fact is, regardless of who is elected, without an independent commission on redistricting, the party in power will likely try to continue to game the system.

Republicans and Democrats are equally guilty of partisan gerrymandering. The party in power wants to remain in power so there is a strong temptation to draw district lines that ensure that will happen. In 1971, Democrat Andrew Young was drawn out of a Congressional seat by a Republican Redistricting Committee. In 1991, Democrats returned the favor by gerrymandering Rep. Newt Gingrich out of office.

Voters struggle to connect the dots between redistricting and issues that matter to them. According to Parent, however, "redistricting touches every single issue."

Redistricting and its evil twin gerrymandering are complicated, a combination of data crunching and geography. That keeps voters from realizing how important they are. Without knowing why, they begin to feel that their vote makes no difference. Voters should care, however, says Brass, "mainly because you want your vote to matter. If the lines are drawn egregiously as we saw in 2001, when they're drawn that badly and you've got voters packed into one district, you're drowning out a lot of other voices."

Originally posted here:
Viewpoints: Redistricting the biggest political issue no one thinks about - Savannah Morning News

On Sept. 29, AL DA hosted a RoundTable discussion sponsored by Pennsylvania AARP all about voter engagement among the 50+ population and its role in determining the outcome of the 2020 election.

The panel, which included Uva Coles, founder and CEO of Inclusiva, Joanne Grossi, president of AARP Pennsylvania, Victor Negrn Jr., vice president of public affairs and marketing at Amerihealth Caritas, and Will Gonzalez, executive director of Ceiba, dove into the issues of 50+ voters this election cycle, their importance to its outcome, and some of the pitfalls around participation in 2020.

50+ Voter Issues

When it comes to issues, an AARP Pennsylvania study from Sept. 15 found that 50+ voters want their Medicare and social security, lower drug prices and protections for people in nursing homes.

Grossi added that no matter the political affiliation, these issues stood out at the top.

It was resounding, she said.

For Gonzalez, the issues are personal.

Wheres my social security that I paid so many years for? Wheres my retirement benefits? Hows my government going to serve when Im in a nursing home? he said.

But beyond the issues, 50+ voters are also the age demographic that has the highest voter turnout and is the population that has been the deciding factor in past elections.

Gonzalez pins that high participation on the history many older voters have experienced involving voter suppression, both legally and illegally.

The older citizen saw when it was almost illegal for us to vote, he said.

They remember the fight it took to get the right to vote and have a voice, and thats not taken lightly.

We are the core voter, said Negrn.

However, he also said that over the past decade, theres been a reduction in voter turnout among the 50+ population. According to a Pew study of voter turnout following the 2016 presidential election, the rate of participation had dropped almost four points between 2008 and 2016 for individuals between the ages of 45 and 64.

Negrn said it doesnt compare to the drops seen in other, younger age groups, but its still a warning of the apathy that is growing around the nation when it comes to the civic duty.

Mentors of younger voters

That apathy runs the risk of not only affecting the 50+ voter population, but often as mentors to younger voters, their overall participation is also further in question.

Coles called voting a generational gift. That means not only are 50+ voters voting for themselves, but the future they want for their children and young family members.

This is how you have an opportunity to inform that future, she said.

When it comes to Black and Latinx 50+ voters in 2020, Coles said to remember the moment.

While every presidential election year is often dubbed the most important in our lifetime, 2020 has been particularly unforgiving with the COVID-19 pandemic and civil unrest.

It has affected everyone no matter their race, religion or political leaning, and many of the most popular overarching issues of the total 50+ population are only driven further home by the disproportionate effects on Black and Latinx populations.

There are the same overarching issues, said Coles.

An issue of mechanics

Another issue that has surfaced thanks to 2020s events is a number of worries about the actual process of voting before or on Nov. 3.

If youre a voter and you want your vote to count, you have to pay attention to the details, said Negrn.

In addition to voting in person, which will be scaled back, voters can also vote by mail, and there will be both dropboxes for mail-in ballots and satellite offices offering voter registration, handling requests absentee ballots and allowing submission of ballots.

For mail-in voting, Gonzalez shared a video put together by Ceiba that broke down all the mechanics of the process.

If voting by mail in Pennsylvania, voters will receive two envelopes for their ballot. One is a secret envelope that ones ballot goes in before being placed inside a larger one that is then signed by the voter.

The mail-in ballots must be filled out in blue or black ink, and the outer envelope does not need a postage stamp.

However, given all the hoops presented, a majority of 50+ voters will instead be voting in person on Nov. 3, according to AARP Pennsylvania data.

Have a plan

But even on that front, voting in 2020 will be very different. Much like former Attorney General Eric Holder told AL DA back on Sept. 15, the panelists stressed the importance of having a plan when going to vote this Election Day.

As part of the plan, voters should not wait and vote as early as possible, while also planning to wait once they arrive at the polling place.

That is especially true for voters of color, where faulty equipment and long waits are often used as tactics of voter suppression, and could be used amid COVID-19, where tensions are at an all-time high.

Voter suppression is real, said Coles. Voter suppression in this moment has been amplified.

To help develop a plan, much like it is the elder populations job to introduce young people to the process of democracy, it is up to young people to make sure the elder population follows through with the plan.

It harkens back to her previously mentioned multi-generational approach to voting.

We have a responsibility and we have to have a plan along with that responsibility, she said.

Pennsylvanias voter registration deadline is Oct. 19.

For more information on voting, go to votespa.com or call 1-877-VOTESPA.

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The power of 50+ voters in 2020 and what they mean to the future of the U.S. - AL DIA News

The Biden campaign has brought in an army of lawyers, including former President Barack ObamasAttorney General Eric Holder, in anticipation of a brawl in the courts with the Trump campaign over the unique challenges that voting in 2020 entails.

The New York Times reported on Monday that hundreds of lawyersincluding Holder, two U.S. solicitors general from the Clinton and Obama presidencies, the former general counsel for Obamas campaigns and the DNC law firm Perkins Coie that has been on the front lines of various voting-related caseshave joined Joe Bidens so-called special litigation unit.

Its unclear what truly lies ahead in the debut season of Law & Order: Special Litigation Unit, but based on what we have seen so far we can surmise that Trump campaign challenges to vote-by-mail expansion and vote counting methodology will be a feature rather than a bug. The Trump campaign has filed suit in multiple states over vote-by-mail expansion, which, it says,invites fraud to benefit the Biden campaign. But vote-by-mail itself is far from the only issue that may arise in the coming weeks and months.

A federal judge in Georgia recently gave voters extra time to return absentee ballots amid the coronavirus pandemic, reasoning that the risk of disenfranchisement is great. Expect this, and any other extensions of time like it, to be challenged in court.

Then there is the issue of the election itself and the rhetoric surrounding its legitimacy.

The Trump campaign and Attorney General Bill Barr have argued against universal mail-in voting, saying that logic suggests the vote could be manipulated both domestically and by foreign bad actors. Barr even cited a false example of ballot fraud on CNN to make his case. The Biden campaign may argue, on the other hand, that the Trump campaign is sowing distrust in the legitimacy and accuracy of the eventual 2020 election both in order to suppress the vote and as a pretext to any potential challenge over which votes should and should not be counted. Will we see a 2020 version of the Brooks Brothers Riot?

The DOJ has stepped in, in at least one instance, to support Alabamas witness requirements for absentee ballots. On the other side, there have been multiple lawsuits over the changes made at the Post Office in the lead-up to the election.

We have even seen Kanye West booted from state ballots after challenges led by Perkins Coie and Mark Elias, one of the lawyers working for the Biden campaign.

It is against this bizarre backdrop that Bidens campaign has ramped up its legal operation, which Dana Remus is heading. Remus is a Yale-educated lawyer, law professor and general counsel at the Obama foundation. Obama was actually the officiant at Remuss wedding.

Remus told the Times that the goal for 2020 is to have a free and fair election with results that can be trusted. Former Obama White House counsel Bob Bauer, a senior adviser on the campaign,said that the Biden legal team, due to the unique challenges of this year, will be far more sophisticated and resourced than other campaigns.

To the end, the campaign has added Obama-era U.S. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. and Bill Clinton-era acting U.S. Solicitor General Walter Dellinger, along with hundreds of other lawyers,to the fold. The Times described Eric Holders involvement as something of a liaison between the campaign and the many independent groups involved in the legal fight over the election, which is already raging in the courts.

[Image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]

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Biden Brings in Hundreds of LawyersBig Names Among Themin Anticipation of Unique Election Legal Battles - Law & Crime

WASHINGTON (AP) Democrat Joe Biden is assembling a team of top lawyers in anticipation of court challenges to the election process that could ultimately determine who wins the race for the White House.

Bidens presidential campaign says the legal war room will work to ensure that elections are properly administered and votes correctly counted. It will also seek to combat voter suppression at the polls, identify foreign interference and misinformation, and educate voters on the different methods available for casting ballots.

The effort, which the Biden campaign described as the largest election protection program in presidential campaign history, reflects the extent of the preparation underway for an already divisive presidential contest in November that could produce significant, perhaps even decisive, court cases over voter access and the legitimacy of mail ballots.

Democrats and Republicans are locked in legal fights on election rules that could help shape the outcome of the vote, and President Donald Trumps campaign has its own attorneys handling cases on a variety of issues.

Trump in recent months has sought to preemptively cast doubt on the election, warning that the expected surge in mail ballots because of the coronavirus pandemic will lead to massive fraud and could open the door to foreign countries to print their own fraudulent ballots.

Notwithstanding Donald Trump and his Republican allies hollow threats and constant misinformation, election officials around the country are working tirelessly to hold a free and fair and election, and we have an extraordinary national team in place to ensure that every eligible voter is able to exercise their right to vote and have their vote counted, Bob Bauer, a senior adviser to the Biden campaign and former White House counsel to President Barack Obama, said in a statement.

Bauer, who served as general counsel to the Obama campaigns of 2008 and 2012, will work with campaign general counsel Dana Remus on voter protection an issue that thousands of Democratic lawyers around the country are also engaged in, according to the Biden campaign.

The campaign is also creating a special national litigation team involving hundreds of lawyers that will include as leaders Walter Dellinger, a solicitor general in the Clinton administration, and Donald Verrilli, a solicitor general under Obama.

Democratic lawyer Marc Elias and a team of lawyers from his firm, Perkins Coie, will focus on protecting voter access and ensuring a fair and accurate vote count.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder will also play an outreach role on the question of voting rights, according to the campaign.

We can and will be able to hold a free and fair election this November and were putting in place an unprecedented voter protection effort with thousands of lawyers and volunteers around the country to ensure that voting goes smoothly, Remus said in a statement.

The Trump campaign issued a statement from deputy manager Justin Clark saying that as Democrats continue their push to weaken reasonable rules preventing fraud like voter ID and signature matching President Trump and his campaign will continue to protect the integrity of the vote.

Our team will continue to fight every day in the courtroom and on the ground to make sure that every eligible voter has the right to vote and that their vote is counted once, Clark said.

The New York Times reported on the legal war room initiative earlier Monday.

___

Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP

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Biden assembles legal team ahead of divisive 2020 election - The Associated Press

A scene from "All In: The Fight for Democracy"

A scene from "All In: The Fight for Democracy"

A scene from "All In: The Fight for Democracy"

You may think youve had enough of political documentaries for one pandemic year. But All In: The Fight for Democracy is the John Lewis: Good Trouble of films about the history of voter suppression in the United States.

We live in an era of the weaponization of voter suppression tactics, according to the film, which was directed by Lisa Cortes and twice-Oscar nominated Liz Garbus (The Farm: Angola USA). The title says it all. The right to vote is the basis of our democracy. When you withhold it, you are doing something profoundly and quintessentially un-American. In the beginning of our Republic, we learn, only property-owning white men were allowed to vote, and therefore only about 6% of the population elected our officials and voted on the laws of the land.

Stacey Abrams, who lost a close, hotly contested and some say tainted gubernatorial election in Georgia in 2018 to its former secretary of state, tells us of her childhood when her parents, both college graduates, would take her and her five siblings to the polls to see them cast their votes. We hear about the time she and her parents were turned away at the gate of the governors residence where she was supposed to attend an event honoring Georgia valedictorians.

The film also features civil rights icon Andrew Young, former Attorney General Eric Holder, and historians such as Carol Anderson and Frances Fox Piven and provides an insightful history of voting rights in this country. The 15th Amendment gave the vote to the freed slaves, resulting in a spate of African American senators. But the Jim Crow laws of the late 19th and early 20th centuries placed limitations on African American voters, using poll taxes, literacy tests, gerrymandering, threats of lynching and outright murder to discourage voting among Black communities.

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'All In: The Fight for Democracy' is required viewing in these times - STLtoday.com