What’s Entailed in Free & Fair Elections and the Role of Young People

November 2020, 1:00-3:00 PM

America’s election system will be tested like never before this November. Elections aren’t just a measure of what parties and candidates people prefer; they are a measure of who counts in a country (much like the Census, a topic we may also touch upon….)

This election will be the most litigated in U.S. history. According to the Healthy Elections Project, a joint venture of Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, more than 300 lawsuits have already been filed in 44 U.S. states; expect many more to come. Biden has a war room already prepared for this. Pennsylvania may be ground zero for election lawsuits. Things are a mess at the North Carolina Board of Elections. And Texas? In Texas, Republican Governor Greg Abbott was sued by his own Republican Party for early voting. More recently, voters have sued Governor Abbott over orders to close ballot drop off locations (Abbott made a last-minute order that mandates Texas counties can provide no more than one drop-off location for voters casting absentee ballots, which has been sustained by a federal court.) Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee and left-leaning nonprofit groups have been suing for months to ease rules for mail-in ballots during the pandemic, while Republicans have been intervening or suing to challenge such changes, citing concerns about voter fraud. Trump’s reelection campaign also has sued several states over plans to automatically mail absentee ballots or applications to registered voters.

Long before the novel coronavirus, democracy was already struggling. Covid-19 has been a “stress test” for democracy in the United States, exacerbating structural racism and inequality in the U.S. political system and shining a light on vulnerabilities in U.S. institutions. This Civic Forum will tackle critical questions about how to preserve democracy and protect the 2020 election in a time of emergency, how to increase political participation and representation, and how to achieve fair distribution of political power in the long term. Needless to say, young people play a vital role in this, and we will explore voting rights and youth voter engagement as vital ingredients in a broad-based civic solution.

 

So what will it take to increase youth voting rates, in New York and nationally? What can the government do (and not do) on this front, and how can ordinary people get involved? Does it even matter how many people vote given the impact of the electoral college? Our keynote speaker, Brianna Cea, co-founder of Generation Vote and Senior Research and Program Associate in the Democracy program of the Brennan Center for Justice, guided us in conversation about these issues and more.  As one of the interviewees’ in the new Vox/Netflix series Whose Vote Counts put it: “There’s no such thing as forever in a democracy.” It’s up to us to decide what’s next.

 https://youtu.be/i9V7ysT01y0

Background Readings

  1. Election Scenarios

A Contested 2020 Election Would Be Way Worse Than Bush v. Gore by Clare Malone (538, Oct 9, 2020)

The coronavirus pandemic, a deluge of mail-in ballots, a vandalized Postal Service, a resurgent effort to suppress votes (both Democratic and GOP poll watchers are mobilizing--which some fear will turn into voter intimidation, and police are making plans for what to do about armed men at polling places…), potential Russian interference, and a motherlode of lawsuits are bearing down on the nation’s creaky electoral machinery. Many think something has to give--and that many things will--when the time comes for casting, canvassing, and certifying the ballots, and that tabulation and litigation of the “overtime count”—millions of mail-in and provisional ballots—could keep the outcome unsettled for days or weeks. Explore some of the (nightmare) scenarios for 2020, one in which a disputed election could drive the country further apart, and give thought to what correctives could be put in place in the future to strengthen democracy.

  1. The Role and Impact of Vote By Mail

Amid fears of the coronavirus, a record number of voters plan to cast their ballots by mail this year. That’s probably not going to be a problem in states like Arizona and Florida that have traditionally had high rates of mail-in voting, but it could lead to complications in states with less experience, especially battlegrounds like North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Post-election legal fights are all but certain, and in a close race, they might even determine the outcome.

A lack of equipment, outdated state laws, changes at the U.S. Postal Service and constant rhetorical attacks on vote-by-mail from President Donald Trump have only complicated matters. Voting rights advocates worry that many first-time mail-in voters will have their ballots rejected for simple mistakes like not signing the envelope or mailing them too late.

 Democrats fear Trump will use a slower-than-usual vote count to cast doubt on the results, or perhaps even declare himself the winner if the Election Night tally shows him ahead, leading to a messy legal fight and mass protests. In addition, some Republicans are concerned that the president’s attacks will backfire, giving Democrats an advantage in early voting. And Republicans might be right-- early voting so far is very strong--at least 33 million Americans have already voted nationally as of Oct 20 with two weeks to go until Election Day. This amounts to 70% of the total number of early votes cast in 2016, with a 2-to-1 Democratic advantage.

 

  1. The Role and Impact of Social Media

 As we know, social media plays an important role in everything, and this election is no exception. Check out a few articles to inform your thoughts about the role social media should or shouldn’t play in promoting voting and free and fair elections.

 

  1. Voter Suppression

Chronicles the 2013 Supreme Court decision to invalidate a decades-old “coverage formula” naming jurisdictions that had to pass federal scrutiny under the Voting Rights Act, referred to as “preclearance,” in order to pass any new elections or voting laws.  Through doing so, it unleashed an avalanche of voter ID laws, disenfranchising voters and influencing elections. 

In the 2018 gubernatorial race in Georgia, the nation got a preview of the battle for the future of electoral politics in a time of shifting demographics. The Republican candidate, Brian Kemp, was declared the winner over Democratic candidate Stacy Abrams by a margin of less than 2% points: 55,000 votes out of nearly 4 million cast—a record-breaking total for a midterm election in the state.  The election raised widespread questions of voter suppression, in Georgia and beyond, and unleashed Abrams’ quest to enfranchise and empower voters across the nation.

What would happen if political operatives tried to subvert the sacred American principle of “one person, one vote?” What if they hatched and pursued that plan for years before anyone noticed what they were doing? That is the frightening tale told in the feature documentary, Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook. 

With Columbia Journalism Investigations and reporters from the USA TODAY NETWORK, in this 54 min film, New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb reports on allegations of voter disenfranchisement, how unfounded claims of extensive voter fraud entered the political mainstream, rhetoric and realities around mail-in ballots, and how the pandemic could impact turnout.

The long American tradition of threatening voting access — often for Black people and Latinos — has dramatically resurfaced in 2020, this time buttressed by a record-setting wave of litigation and an embattled president whose reelection campaign is built around a strategy of sowing doubt and confusion.

 

V. Voter Turnout and Youth Voter Turnout

You’ve probably heard the statistics. The U.S. has among the lowest voter turnout rates in the world. In 2014, turnout during the midterm congressional elections plunged to its lowest level in more than 70 years. But four years later, with Donald Trump in the White House, midterm turnout soared to its highest in more than a century. Last year, forecasts suggested that more than 150 million Americans would vote this fall—a significant increase over the 139 million who cast ballots in 2016, which would represent the highest voter-turnout percentage in more than a century. That was, of course, pre-pandemic, pre-protests, pre-election validity contestation.  What is likely to happen and what will the implications be? 

Americans vote at much lower rates than most other developed countries, and one of the most common reasons given is that people don’t think their vote matters. Voting does matter, enormously — but it makes sense that so many Americans feel that way. All kinds of systems unique to the United States keep voters from the polls, tip elections in favor of moneyed interests, and give some votes a lot more power than others. To create this miniseries, Vox combed through piles of studies, analyzed reams of data, and spoke to leading experts who have lived these systems from the inside in order to make the issues and their stakes clear. If you’re interested in viewing these but don’t have Netflix, email Sanda and we’ll put together a screening time on Oct 24.  

This report focuses on the benefits of Automatic Voter Registration (AVR) and pre-registration of 16 and 17 year olds. AVR was VERY close to passing in NY in the 2019 legislative session but didn’t, so we do not currently have it.

When more—and more diverse—young people are politically engaged earlier in life, they are more likely to remain engaged in the future and to be part of an electorate that is more representative of the country, which should be a key goal of our democracy. The 2018 midterm elections saw an extraordinary increase in youth participation, but the youngest eligible voters—those aged 18 and 19—still voted at significantly lower rates. That age disparity in youth turnout has long been intractable, but it is far from inevitable. This analysis by CIRCLE at Tufts University does a good job laying out the challenges that the youngest eligible voters face—and ways to address them.

Almost all Americans must register to vote before they can cast a ballot in any election. Some states have registration deadlines as early as about 30 days out from Election Day, a cutoff that has already begun in many places. Why does America even have a voter registration? The history is complicated. Read about the “two sides of the coin” and decide for yourselves!

The American electorate is the oldest it’s been since at least 1970 and is graying at a rapid clip, with the well-off living longer than ever before. There are some 74 million baby boomers alone, and when election time comes, they turn out in droves. During the 2018 midterms, 64% of citizens ages 54 to 72 cast a ballot, compared to 31% of eligible voters age 29 and under. While significant divisions exist within every age cohort (many older people in this country are progressive and poor, just as some young people are rich and right-wing), the divisions between older and younger generations are becoming increasingly salient. People are, for good reason, losing faith in institutions, parties and political processes and questioning long-standing assumptions and everything, it seems, is up for grabs. The lack of intergenerational justice, of equity between the young and old, is an underappreciated facet of the current turmoil, making the role of young people in the political sphere particularly salient.

Civic Education plays a significant predictive role in voting, yet it is sorely lacking in public schools. Explore the role it can play in addressing some of the challenges we’re facing through listening to this podcast with Danielle Allen, political theorist and Director of Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics.