Vote-By-Mail

This country needs to have two or more vibrant political parties contesting elections and trying to win the battle of ideas by persuading voters that their proposals are best. But when one of the major political parties doesn’t really believe in elections and in democracy, then it follows that it can’t possibly win the hearts and minds of citizens at the ballot box because the outcome of free and fair elections doesn’t really matter to them. That sick mindset will eventually destroy that party. If it ceases to believe in elections, then it will cease to be able to win them. The great majority of Wisconsinites and Americans will never adopt that cynical and destructive vision. It’s up to Republicans to dramatically change direction and to again work to strengthen democracy instead of trying to destroy it.

“We’re an outlier in that we didn’t do anything this year, but it’s not that surprising because New England has been dragging on this issue for a long time,” Marion said. “Prior to the pandemic, we weren’t building the infrastructure necessary to push this,” Marion said. “We were working on voting rights but we weren’t building as much as we should have.”

Not all of those honored on this list are registered lobbyists. But they are all key players who the nation’s biggest companies, advocacy groups, labor unions and trade associations turn to when they want their voices heard in the nation’s capital. The ranks of policy experts, influencers and advocates run deep in Washington, but these are the people who stand out for delivering results for their clients in the halls of Congress and the administration. ... GRASSROOTS: Karen Hobert Flynn and Aaron Scherb, Common Cause 

“Specifically with the mail-in voting bills, that was a direct reaction [to the pandemic],” Joanne Antoine, executive director of Common Cause Maryland, a nonprofit backing voting rights legislation, said. Previous attempts to pass legislation in Maryland simply to create a study of mail voting failed due to opposition in the state House of Delegates. But this year, both chambers adopted legislation to allow mail-in voting and approve the mailing of ballot applications to all registered voters. “It was interesting to see, because of the pandemic, the willingness,” Antoine said. “It was almost as though everyone had a change of heart and they realized that this can work.”

Susan Lerner, the executive director of the civic watchdog group Common Cause New York and a proponent of all three initiatives, argued that the success of Republican and Conservative attacks highlighted the fragility of democracy itself. “There was a strong anti-democratic push and the pro-democracy folks stayed home,” she said. Finally, as written, the ballot questions, which required voters to flip their ballots over to weigh in, were hard to understand, according to Common Cause and like-minded groups. “The ballot language for 1, 3, and 4 was frankly impenetrable,” Ms. Lerner said of the three measures that went down to defeat.

“We’ve had a very functional system of election administration,” said Common Cause Ohio Executive Director Catherine Turcer, adding, “It is genuinely surprising that after a successful election where more Ohio voters participated than ever before, that any legislator would think about making it harder to vote.” ... Turcer, of Common Cause Ohio, said voters’ confidence would grow if they understood the election rules already in place. “The distrust of election officials and election administration has run really deep, and we need to do a good job of educating people about how elections work and what kind of security measures we have,” she said. “We shouldn’t assume that wrong things are being done. We should all go into it asking good questions but waiting to understand how it actually works.”