Tag Archives: 2024 Election Cycle

“The Surprising Impact of North Carolina’s New Voter ID Law”

voter id,

NY Times: 2024 is the first general election under the state’s new voter ID law. Overall, the new voter ID law did not result in many votes being rejected. That said, the current law is significantly more voter-friendly than the original, which drew the legal challenge. North Carolina’s law is still stricter than most because it requires both mail and in-person voters to show proof of identity.

“But unlike the 2013 law, it offers voters an array of acceptable ID cards, from drivers licenses to student IDs to free state ID cards. If voters have no ID — older people who do not have a driver’s license and mail voters who do not have printers to copy their IDs, among many others — they can ensure their ballots count with the affidavit of explanation, or can show an ID later at a local elections office.”

Lots of interesting facts in this article:

  • “November’s election offered some evidence that the voter ID law disproportionately hindered Democrats. Of the 2,169 provisional ballots involving ID problems, registered Democrats cast 42 percent, registered unaffiliated voters 30 percent and registered Republicans 26 percent, said Michael Bitzer, an expert on North Carolina politics at Catawba College.”
  • Even a small impact might matter, as in the tight race for the judicial seat in NC this cycle.
  • “Today, however, at least 35 states have ID requirements, a prerequisite that has become broadly popular among voters across party lines who see it as a common-sense precaution.”

Given the complete lack of evidence of in-person voter fraud, the popularity of these last still baffles me!!

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“This Election’s Surprising Bright Spot for Progressives Is a Very Big Deal”

judicial elections,

Mark Joseph Stern (Slate) offers a round-up on state supreme court races and analysis.

“Across the country, voters also elected liberal justices to their state Supreme Courts, which function as a key backstop for civil rights and democracy as federal courts lurch rightward. Progressives didn’t win a clean sweep, but they emerged with an impressive scorecard, carrying seats in battlegrounds like Michigan and safely red states like Kentucky and Montana. Left-leaning judicial candidates even prevailed in deep-red Arkansas and Mississippi, bucking the national shift rightward.”

It was not a clean sweep:

  • Republicans secured a 6–1 conservative majority on the Ohio Supreme Court.
  • A liberal lion on the Oklahoma Supreme Court lost a retention vote.
  • “Progressives . . . failed to knock off conservative justices who faced retention elections in several purple states, including Arizona.”
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“Losing GOP candidate for NC Supreme Court challenges 60,000 ballots as recount starts”

absentee ballots, ballot access, judicial elections, provisional ballots, recounts,

News&Observer: Jefferson Griffin, the Republican candidate for North Carolina Supreme Court, requests a recount where he trails by 625 votes while also filing “a series of election protests on Tuesday challenging the validity of over 60,000 ballots cast across the state.”

His complaints, some of which have already been rejected by courts include:

  • “[C]ounties improperly counted ballots from voters who voted early but died before Election Day.”
  • Votes should be rejected from those “serving a felony sentence as of Election Day.”
  • Votes should be rejected from individuals who failed to attach “a driver’s license number or Social Security number” to their voter registrations, even though state law does not require this.
  • Votes from “military and overseas voters who have never resided in North Carolina” should be rejected despite laws that appear to permit this in certain circumstances.
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“Mandate? Fuller election results increasingly show GOP gains were small.”

voting

Aaron Blake (Washington Post) argues that more information about the 2024 Election adds nuance to the overall picture.

“[A] more holistic look — at races not just for president and the Senate but also for the House and state legislatures — reinforces the reality that voters actually didn’t shift toward Republicans that much.”

The mitigating evidence (for now) includes:

  • “We learned a while back that Republicans lost most of the swing-state Senate races — four of five.”
  • Trump didn’t win a majority of the popular vote, and his popular-vote margin over Vice President Kamala Harris is slim “(currently at 1.7 points and falling).”
  • “[I]f you take tiny and politically unusual Vermont out of it, Republicans gained less than a seat per state, and flipped 0.4 percent of seats nationwide — about 1 out of every 250.”
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“Californians turn down minimum-wage increase”

Uncategorized,

Politico

“The defeat of an initiative to raise the minimum wage to $18 an hour makes California the first state to reject a statewide minimum-wage increase at the ballot in almost 30 years, an outcome likely to reverberate across organized labor nationally.”

But it might be a mistake to over-read its implications:

“In the past half-decade, California service unions have effectively plotted to raise minimum-wage standards by industry and location, setting a patchwork of wage floors that rendered the $18 initiative obsolete for much of the state’s low-paid workforce.”

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Election Update: House of Representatives might be at 217(R)-215(D)

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Given the new vote tallies in the five outstanding races, Politico estimates that the House will be down to a very narrow margin after cabinet appointments. From the morning feed:

“GOP Rep. JOHN DUARTE’s lead dwindled yesterday while fellow Republican MICHELLE STEEL fell further behind in the latest vote tallies. If Duarte loses and other current leads hold, Republicans could be left with 220 seats at full strength. And with three expected vacancies due to Trump Cabinet nominations, the House could spend months at 217-215 — meaning Republicans could not lose a single member on a straight party-line vote.”

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“Gov. Josh Shapiro defends Sen. Bob Casey’s recount choice and points to Dave McCormick’s own failed recount”

recounts

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the costs of accuracy in the vote are causing political fallout. Governor Shapiro reiterates that PA law provides for an automatic recount where the margin is below 0.5% in statewide races and that McCormick himself has invoked the right in the past. Casey currently trails by 0.25% of the vote.

“‘PA doesn’t need to waste millions of tax dollars on a recount for the US Senate that won’t change the outcome of Election Day,’ Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward (R., Westmoreland), the top Republican in the state Senate, wrote on X last week. ‘Protect our tax dollars and tell Senator Casey to stop. McCormick won.’”

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NC Supreme Court Race–Update

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WRAL News: North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs, the Democratic incumbent, appears to have won her judicial race by “625 votes out of 5.5 million.” There are still some outstanding votes to be counted, but her Republican challenger has invoked his right to call for a recount. This was necessary to meet the legal deadline. Should the additional votes place him in the lead, Justice Riggs still has an opportunity to call for a recount.

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“Effort to repeal ranked choice voting and open primaries in Alaska on track to narrowly fail after latest ballot count”

absentee ballots, primaries, , ,

From Anchorage Daily News:

“Results posted Monday showed 50.03% of voters opposed the measure repealing ranked choice voting, while 49.97% were in favor of the repeal. Just 192 votes separated the two camps, with more ballots set to be counted.”

A final count is expected on November 20, the final day for accepting absentee ballots from overseas.

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“FBI investigating post-election text threats sent to Latino, LGBTQ people”

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In the immediate wake of the election various, mostly young, black people were targeted with texts and emails directing them to report to the plantation. Now, the Washington Post reports that similar threats were sent to the Latino and LGBTQ communities.

“‘Some recipients reported being told they were selected for deportation or to report to a reeducation camp,’” the agency said in a statement[.]”

The texts claimed to be from Trump supporters, but the campaign has denied any involvement.

“It was not immediately clear how many messages were sent by the anonymous users, but thousands more messages . .  .  were blocked by wireless carriers once they were made aware of the situation, according to Nick Ludlum, senior vice president of CTIA, a trade group for the U.S. wireless communications industry.” 

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Party Politics is Transactional Politics

political parties

The theory of associational party building, which Didi Kuo and I have written about, started with my in-depth look at the work of Harry Reid in Nevada. It is perhaps not surprising then that of all the commentary on the 2024 Election in the last two weeks, the one that has resonated most with me is that of Adam Jentleson (former Chief of Staff to Harry Reid). Jentleson makes three points:

  1. The electorate is not as polarized we have “been conditioned to think” in our echo chamber.
  2. The 2024 Election indicates the potential for realignment.
  3. The politics of that realignment remain fluid, but for Democrats to succeed in winning that fight, they will have to accept that party politics is transactional politics.

The Democratic Party’s inability to form a supermajority, Jentleson argues, is a result of its failure to perform the essential mediating function of a party: prioritizing winning over placating the demands of the ideological issue-based groups in its partisan network.

The flip side to that is that the problem with the Democratic Party’s partisan network is that it is filled with coalition partners who are fundamentally anti-party and do not get transactional politics. He does not say this, exactly.

He also does not say that a critical difference between the two parties is that while elites dominate both, Republican Party elites are fundamentally transactional in their relationship to the party: “Do what it takes to get into office, and then when you get there, we expect you to do this and that.”

A key measure of party building is the ability to win office, a point Didi and I made at great length. Without power, associational parties cannot deliver for their constituents. What we did not highlight was our slightly different conceptions of party institutions. I have long accepted a broader conception of the party as a partisan network.

The 2024 Election leaves me reconsidering. Perhaps Didi and others are right that networked political parties are fundamentally different institutional beasts than traditional federated parties— profoundly weaker, at least when their partisan network is dominated by groups that do not prioritize political power over ideological purity.

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A message to the “third-party curious”

third parties,

Micah Sifry offers a thoughtful reflection on how to engage with those who feel alienated with our two-party system. Sifry notes, “All seven key battleground states will have at least one spoiler candidate on the ballot,” and only a few months ago, “one-quarter of Americans [said] they didn’t feel represented by either party.”  Unlike those pushing to keep these parties off the ballot, Sifry offers a message to the “third-party curious on the left” as well as important resources about effective third-party politics in the U.S.

“In my humble opinion, the message to bring to third-party curious voters on the left is simple: Your idealism is admirable. We need you to keep pushing for real change. But until we change our two-party system, either to a proportional representation system or one that (like New York and Connecticut) allows smaller parties to “fuse” by cross-nominating candidates, voting for third-party candidates in close elections won’t advance your cause. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz aren’t perfect, but if elected you’ll be able to keep pushing them. The opposite will be true under Trump-Vance.

This isn’t a message that will convince everyone, and it’s important to recognize that some third-party voters have never voted for a major party candidate. We see these people in every state in every election. For them, voting is a moral act, not a tactical one. Asking them to give up that belief is like insisting a vegan eat meat.”

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Ground Game: LULAC Endorses Harris

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CBS News: The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the nation’s oldest and largest Latino civil rights organization with a membership-base of over 130,000 breaks with a 90-year tradition and endorses Harris.

“LULAC has a formidable grassroots operation in key battleground states — not just the ones in the Southwest, a senior source in the organization tells CBS News.”

The N.Y. TImes adds that the endorsement which is from the group’s political action committee followed a unanimous vote. And more from CBS News:

  • “More than 36.2 million Latinos will be eligible to cast ballots for president this year, the highest in electoral history, according to Pew.”
  • Latino voting strength is growing in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
  • “Nearly one in four voters in Arizona is Latino.”
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“Trump’s focus on Georgia election board raises fears for November vote”

election administration,

Washington Post: Critics, including members of the state’s GOP establishment, worry about the administrative changes to Georgia’s election rules–on the election and on voters’ confidence in the count.

“Since May, an unambiguously pro-Trump majority has controlled the state election board. And it got to work this week approving a raft of new rules that critics say could void valid votes, place onerous burdens on overtaxed election workers and potentially delay the certification of results.

With just three months until the fall election — and less time until the start of early voting — they say it is also far too late to impose new standards, with the likely result being confusion and even chaos for election officials and voters alike.”

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