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Community Voices: Money in politics is a civil rights issue

Cheryl Clyburn Crawford and Avi Green

It was not too long ago that in many states individuals had to pay to vote.

As recently as the 1950s, if you could not pay a poll tax — an actual tax required before one could exercise their constitutional right to vote — you could not participate in the electoral process. Created with the specific goal of preventing African Americans from voting, these poll taxes had grandfather clauses: if your grandfather could vote (before the Civil War) then you could, too. That meant most whites were exempt from the tax.

Today, money is again having a nefarious effect on politics, perpetuating all kinds of inequality.

First and foremost, money has almost become the sole determining factor as to who can run for office. It now takes millions of dollars to even consider running for Congress, Senate or governor. As a result, there are a lot of 1 percenters and millionaires in high office, and very few middle-class, working-class, and poor people — and hardly any people of color.

President Barack Obama is a rare exception. In the US Senate, there are currently only two Latinos, one Asian American, no African Americans, and not one woman of color. If Senators mirrored the real US population, 27 of them would be people of color.

If you want to run for Congress or Senate or governor and you do not have millions of dollars of your own, you need to raise it. That means spending most of your time on the phone with wealthy people talking about issues that appeal to them — and  little or no real time talking to ordinary people like you and me.

For those politicians who do get elected, the lobbying process extends and expands inequality. By hiring former senators and members of Congress, their family members, and their friends and former staff members, lobbying firms working for big corporations ensure that our elected officials learn all about their particular interests and points of view, instead of learning about the needs of the people they are supposed to represent.

In 2010, in Washington, DC, about $3.5 billion was spent on lobbying, mostly by large corporations and big businesses. Another $100 million was spent right here at home, lobbying Beacon Hill.

While average American families struggle, banks get billion-dollar taxpayer-funded bailouts, and give their executives million-dollar bonuses. Many of the largest corporations still enjoy custom tax loopholes, so they pay no taxes at all. We foot the bill.

Corporate agendas rarely reflect the perspectives of working families, women and people of color. According to the Alliance for Board Diversity, fewer than 10 percent of the directors of Fortune 500 companies are minorities, and only 12.7 percent are white women. Three out of every four are white men.

This year, the problem of corporate money in politics is poised to get even worse. Two years ago, the Supreme Court decided in FEC v. Citizens United that corporations could dip directly into their bank accounts to spend money to elect or defeat candidates.

Since this woeful decision, million-dollar contributions have been made to so-called Super PACs, including anonymous donations made through shell corporations — made up legal entities created only for the purpose of hiding the identities of donors.

Without a doubt, the issue of fixing the problem of money in politics so that the political system can deliver meaningful improvements to the lives of ordinary people is one of the great civil rights battles of our time.

To combat racial injustice, the civil rights struggles of the ’50s and ’60s took marches, protests, sit-ins, boycotts, coalitions, and landmark legal rulings.

It also took partnerships between men and women, whites and people of color, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and atheists. Ultimately these working coalitions and partnerships resulted in national legislation like the Voting Rights Act and a constitution amendment to ban poll taxes.

It took decades of work. But it was worth doing. Let’s hope this generation is up to the challenge.

Cheryl Clyburn Crawford and Avi Green are co-directors of MassVOTE.

http://www.baystatebanner.com/natl16-2012-05-03

Roof Deck Fundraiser

June 5, 2012

Boston

Bill would let 16- and 17-year-olds “preregister” to vote

BY: Wilder Fleming

March 22, 2012

When it comes to civic engagement, Massachusetts teens could hit the ground running and automatically be registered to vote on their 18th birthday under legislation approved yesterday by a Beacon Hill committee.

The Legislature’s election laws committee released a package of reforms, which includes a provision that would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to “preregister” to vote. Under the bill, 16- and 17-year-olds could check a box on their application for a driver’s permit and automatically be registered to vote upon turning 18. Those 18 and older can already register in this way through Registry of Motor Vehicle offices.

“In 2008, nearly half of young voters aged 18 to 24 in the country were unregistered,” said the committee’s co-chairman, Sen. Barry Finegold of Andover, at a press conference. He said the initiative could help address this by reaching young people while they’re still in high school, where pre-registration drives could be held. “People who get involved in the political process at an early age are more likely to stay engaged,” Finegold said.

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Submitted by Sovanna on Wed, 04/11/2012 – 12:57am

WHEN IT COMES to ranking the interests of teenagers, political activism would presumably come low on the list, somewhere between heeding good advice and doing the laundry. But teens in Lowell are defying such thinking, as they campaign to lower the voting age from 18 to 17 in their city’s municipal elections.

Read the full article : http://www.utec-lowell.org/gallery/news/17_lobby_commonwealth

And download the PDF : http://www.utec-lowell.org/uploads/commonwealth.pdf

THE PODIUM April 03, 2012|By Ronald L. Rivest

Sometimes, a few votes make a huge difference.

Just ask Rick Santorum. In January, Rick Santorum won the Iowa caucuses, but, because of vote counting and tabulation errors, Mitt Romney was declared the winner. In the two weeks before the error became clear, Romney’s campaign gained momentum, while Santorum’s withered.

Unfortunately, the same problem – or worse – could easily occur in Massachusetts. This year, voters will choose the president, and control of the US Senate may come down to the race shaping up between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren.

How will voters know their votes will be counted accurately? Massachusetts voters cast paper ballots. This is a good foundation for an election system, since the paper ballots form an “audit trail” that can be examined (and if necessary, recounted). In almost all cities and towns in the state, those ballots are slid into machines that read the ballots and total up all the votes at each polling place. The machines are reprogrammed for every election, but only 50 to 75 ballots are used to check the new programming, even though 1,000 ballots or more are likely to be put into each voting machine on Election Day. Votes from each location are then brought together and tabulated. In both steps of the process, there is the possibility of significant error.

To continue reading : http://articles.boston.com/2012-04-03/opinion/31273394_1_audit-election-results-voting-machine-audit-trail

How to Expand the Voter Rolls

Published: April 6, 2012

A country that should be encouraging more people to vote is still using an archaic voter registration system that creates barriers to getting a ballot. In 2008, 75 million eligible people did not vote in the presidential election, and 80 percent of them were not registered.

The vast majority of states rely on a 19th-century registration method: requiring people to fill out a paper form when they become eligible to vote, often at a government office, and to repeat the process every time they move. This is a significant reason why the United States has a low voter participation rate.

To continue reading : http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/07/opinion/how-to-expand-the-voter-rolls.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

BOSTON—Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley has joined 10 other attorneys general in calling on Congress to reverse the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United campaign finance case.

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