Monday, July 24, 2017
Review of voting legislation in the states
https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/voting-laws-roundup-2017
Excellent summary shows more action to restrict access to the ballot in 2017 than to expand.
Charlie Cooper
Sunday, July 23, 2017
Kobach plans to weaken federal voter registration law
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/three-things-trump-could-do-to-hurt-obamacare/
This article contains interesting voting rights info although its headline focuses on Obmacare.
Charlie Cooper
Voting integrity: ID check
The 1993 National Voter Registration Act was aimed at making it easier for more Americans to vote by coupling registration opportunities with driver’s license and public assistance applications and making it harder to kick registered voters off the rolls. Now there’s evidence that Kris Kobach, the vice chairman of Trump’s new Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, wants to change that law.
In emails that were released last week as part of a lawsuit brought against him by the American Civil Liberties Union, Kobach wrote of planned legislation that would amend the National Voter Registration Act so that it explicitly allows states to require proof of citizenship — a passport or a birth certificate — for a voter to register. That news has only added fodder for the chorus of criticism aimed at Kobach and his commission.
We’ve written previously about the many problems with Kobach’s claims of widespread voter fraud. The short version: Nobody knows exactly how much illegal voting occurs, but all the available data points to it being extremely rare. Interestingly, though, it’s just as hard to prove the negative effects of the voter ID laws Kobach has championed.
As with illegal voting, it’s difficult to study voter ID laws, and nobody knows for sure whether they reduce turnout — effectively suppressing legal votes. No two states have exactly the same laws, and most of the laws have been in effect for less than five years. Maybe most importantly, there are confounding factors that make it difficult to tease apart cause and effect — for instance, the states that had adopted a strict voter ID law by 2015 already had lower voter turnout than those that did not. That comes from an analysis of peer-reviewed research on this topic published in May by Benjamin Highton, a political scientist at the University of California, Davis. He found just four studies that were designed to account for these kinds of real-world problems; all came up with results that suggest ID laws have very limited impacts (less than 4 percentage points) on voter turnout.
This is unlikely to be the final word on the subject, of course. Scientifically, this question is at the starting gate, not the finish line. But it’s possible that American politics is currently fighting a heated partisan battle over two risks — voter fraud and ID-law-related voter suppression — that are both extremely small.
Friday, July 21, 2017
Bill in House would counter gerrymandering and 2-party monopoly
MD’s Rep. Raskin co-sponsors this innovative bill.
Charlie Cooper
H: 410-578-8291
M: 410-624-6095
Get Money Out – Maryland (GMOM) 
“We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” – Louis Brandeis
Wednesday, July 19, 2017
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
Monday, July 10, 2017
Friday, July 7, 2017
Howard County Council takes majorl step to set up public campaign finance
The Council overrode the veto of the County Executive.
Charlie Cooper
Thursday, July 6, 2017
DOJ letter requesting voter data from states gets less notice
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/department-of-justice-voter-purge_us_595d22b1e4b0da2c7326c38b
DOJ letter sent same day as Election Integrity Commission request.
Charlie Cooper
Get Money Out – Maryland (GMOM) 
Wednesday, July 5, 2017
MIchigan elections chief completes 36 years service and warns about dark money
http://michiganradio.org/post/warning-about-dark-money-michigan-campaigns
Charlie Cooper
H: 410-578-8291
M: 410-624-6095
Get Money Out – Maryland (GMOM) 
“We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” – Louis Brandeis
Appropriations rider seeks to maintain secret corporate political spending
1.2 million people and thousands of investors are pressuring the Securities Exchange Commission to mandate disclosure of political spending by publicly-traded companies. Republican subcommittee in Congress has authored a rider to the budget bill to strip SEC of the power to pass such a rule.
Charlie Cooper
H: 410-578-8291
M: 410-624-6095
Get Money Out – Maryland (GMOM) 
“We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” – Louis Brandeis
Tuesday, July 4, 2017
Texas Supreme Court upholds campaign finance laws
Unanimously rules that disclosure is required and that corporations cannot make direct contributions in Texas
Charlie Cooper
H: 410-578-8291
M: 410-624-6095
Get Money Out – Maryland (GMOM) 
“We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” – Louis Brandeis
Texas Supreme Court rejects Tea Party challenge to campaign finance laws | The Texas Tribune
https://www.texastribune.org/2017/06/30/texas-supreme-court-upholds-state-limits-corporate-campaign-contributi/