Madison WI and Washington State attack back on the war on voting

Fantastic news.

Progressive state and local governments are attacking back on the Republican's anti-American war on voting by implementing forward-thinking laws and policies that reduce the barriers between citizens and their ballots.

Yesterday, the Madison (WI) City Council passed an ordinance adding the voter registration form to the pile of paper documents that landlords must distribute to tenants when they move in. This is now law, just in time for the August move-in for UW-Madison students. Half the housing units in Madison are rental units and a large percentage of those units turn over every year.

As Alder Bridget Maniaci, the lead sponsor of the proposal explains, providing voter registration information to citizens when they move into a new place makes sense, since that's when people are changing their address (and they are probably unaware that they must proactively tell some obscure unit of local government they have moved in order to vote months later). From the Isthmus:

The way citizens in the United States vote is based on where they live, Maniaci adds, which means it is sensible to provide them with voting information when they change addresses.
"To provide to tenants voter registration forms at the time they move in, when most individuals are in the process of changing all of their other household information, everything from Netflix to their post-office address to the DMV, that's a very natural time to do this," she says.

As a bonus, getting citizens to register to vote early is cheaper for the city clerk to process than registering people in the crunch leading up to the election, so distributing these voter registration forms will save taxpayers some money.

On the West Coast, Washington State's Secretary of State is unveiling an app that will allow users to register to vote through Facebook. Since Washington State already uses online voter registration, pulling the data from a user's Facebook account and importing it into the voter registration program will make it easier for people to register -- and people can tell their friends about how they registered to vote, creating more of a social norm of democratic self-governance through participation.

Congratulations to Washington and Madison (named after two Founding Fathers, coincidentally) for further implementing the great democratic spirit of our American Republic.

Illinois Democrats attack back in the war on voting with a new law enfranchising citizens

Illinois Democrats continued to expand democracy this week by reducing the barriers that governments puts up between citizens and their ballots.

 

On July 6, Governor Pat Quinn signed into law SB 3722 (passed with exclusively Democratic votes) that contains two innovative and exciting provisions that will lead to more citizens voting this November.

The first extends the period of time when citizens can register to vote and update their address until the Saturday before the election. This Illinois-specific program is called the grace period for voter registration and runs from the regular registration deadline of 28 days before the election all the way (now) until the Saturday before the election. The deadline had been a week before the election before the new law. Grace period registrants must show up in person at the office of the election administrator (or any office they designate); on-the-street registrations or post office or motor vehicle offices all end at the regular deadline 28 days before the election. 

The grace period was implemented in 2005 for the first time (then-Governor Blagojevich's press release is here and my blog posts on the topic are here) with a 14 day window, extended in 2010 into a 21 day window (here is Governor Quinn's press release) and a few days ago, into a 25 day window. 

At least 20,000 people have been able to vote because of the grace period in the 2010 election. I suspect more than 25,000 will be able to vote -- who otherwise would have been turned away from their ballots because of government-imposed administrative deadlines -- in November of 2012.

The second provision of the new law requires election authorities to offer early voting on the college campuses of the major public universities in the state. This requirement will ensure that college students (who often don't have a car) won't have to make their way to the obscure office of the county clerk off-campus in order to cast an early ballot, but instead will be able to go to a high-traffic area and cast their ballot during the few weeks before the election when early voting is offered. 

Congratulations to Senator Michael Frerichs for pushing the campus early vote bill in its original version two years ago and Representative Deb Mell for filing the original grace period extension bill this year.

The text of the law (now Public Act 97-766) is here. 

This is a model for other states that actually want more people to vote (in clear contrast to mostly-Republican states that are increasing the barriers between citizens and their ballots in a War on Voting). 

Or put another way, Illinois Democrats Attack Back in the War on Voting!

Future of government procurement: concession model as shown by Chicago Department of Aviation

The future of government purchasing for things like trains, schools and subways is a concession. The government agency enters into an agreement with a private developer to design, build, maintain, operate and finance the asset for a number of years for a particular price, and after the term expires, the asset reverts back to the government.

This is a better model than the government playing all the roles, as the asset tends to get built faster and with a lower cost to the taxpayer.

We should be developing new streetcars (like the Clark Street streetcar that an organization I work with is promoting) and new high-speed train tracks and trains using this concession model, as much of Europe already does.

That's why I'm particularly happy to see the City of Chicago Department of Aviation put out a Request for Proposals for a new solar photovoltaic generation facility on O'Hare airport's land using the concession model.

The RFP is here and they call for a private developer to finance, design, construct, install, operate, maintain, repair and replace a new ground-mounted facility of solar panels on up to 52 acres.

The Department of Aviation has been very innovative under Commissioner Rosie Andolino and I'm glad they are continuing to push the envelope.

High-rise developments like Wolf Point should include transit to avoid traffic congestion

Cities should be full of buildings, not surface parking lots. People in close proximity make cities the economic engines of the world. Surface parking lots are lost opportunities. Particularly in the core of cities, we should get as many buildings up and full of people as possible.

In Chicago, Wolf Point on the Chicago River just north of the Loop is a prime spot for high-rise development. The Kennedy family owns the site and has proposed building three towers according to this Tribune article. Alderman Brendan Reilly has begun the process of community input to determine whether he should support the project.

A group called Friends of Wolf Point has been organized to convey the views of existing residents to Alderman Reilly. The main concern of the organization is traffic congestion, as there isn't much room for hundreds of cars to navigate the very dense River North neighborhood.

Thus, the fundamental nature of cities -- density -- relies on a network of trains, buses and streetcars as thousands of private automobiles are simply too large and bulky in a dense urban environment. The benefit of a train or bus or streetcar is that it passes through and does not need to be parked in the densest, most valuable part of the city. Private automobiles require lots of parking spaces, which are essentially a waste. They also generate a lot of automobile traffic, putting the streets at or beyond their potential capacity, creating gridlock.

Traditionally, public transportation investment has been divorced from the process of real estate development. The government largely invests in buses, trains and streetcars independently of property development; real estate developers take advantage of the investment by building property around those assets.

This proposal presents an opportunity to merge the two processes for site-specific, innovative transit investments. Instead of only imposing parking requirements on proposed real estate developments, I suggest that cities should impose transit requirements as well. The real estate developer should be required to invest in local bus routes to connect to the closest train station or a small streetcar line to connect to other transit routes. As an example, the Wolf Point developers could be required to finance the operations of a new CTA bus line in perpetuity that will serve the expected thousands of new residents and visitors and connect to the Merchandise Mart Brown line station. The CTA already contracts with private institutions to provide specific bus service like the University of Chicago for the #170, #171 and #172 routes. A similar neighborhood shuttle -- based on the particular needs of the River North neighborhood -- can be developed and financed by the real estate developers (the annual contract cost of these buses are, I believe, in the mid-six figures, as fare revenue covers about half the roughly million-dollar cost of running a neighborhood bus route, plus or minus 100%).

Even better, where circumstances permit, would be laying track and running a portion of a streetcar. These streetcars could be extended over time as real estate development continues or circumstances warrant. The ideal city street isn't dominated by automobiles but rather by pedestrians. Imagine, as an example, what Clark Street could look like with a modern streetcar, as promoted by the new organization the Chicago Streetcar Renaissance.

As we live in the end of the oil era (just ask the Mexican government, which passed one of the world's strongest and most progressive climate and energy laws last month), investing in public transportation in the densest part of our cities is fundamental to our economic growth. We should harness the excitement and money of real estate developers to that public policy objective.

What I would do with unlimited resources

If I had unlimited resources, here are some of the things I would like to do:

1. Launch a campaign to educate people about why the government has made their lives better. The allergy to government as a concept in our country is one of the largest impediments to a higher standard of living. The corporate-funded Tea Party wing of the Republican Party aggressively spins a narrative of "government is bad" and, frankly, there isn't much of a counter-balance in the realm of public sentiment. It isn't intuitive that government improves our lives, so we have a story to tell in order to change hearts and minds.

2. Launch a campaign specifically about public works as a particulalry compelling solution to our economic doldrums at this time. Of course, this one is related to the first, but the old-fashioned term of public works is at the heart of what we ought to do to increase employment, increase income and invest in long-term productivity-enhancing infrastructure like high speed trains and education and research and broadband and renewable energy. This campaign would target regular voters so that a regular swing voter can be convinced that we should be investing in public works rather than the GOP mantra of lower taxes and less government. Especially now that interest rates are about the lowest they have ever been, we should borrow money and build 30- and 50-year projects to make life better now. We can make the case and sell people on it so that it becomes a reflexive answer by candidates as to "what are you going to do to improve the economy?" "Public works."

3. Since Catholic suburban married mothers who don't attend church regularly are one of the core groups of swing voters, I'd like to run a campaign targeted just at those women, by other Catholic suburban married mothers, about why government is a sensible, helpful tool to make raising a family easier. I'd find the voice and the messenger that resonates most with married Catholic suburban moms, and then get that voice and community all over social media, publish a magazine and even launch a weekly talk show on cable to build a community to spread that message.

4. Run issue-based infomercials in secondary cable markets where the cost of a 30 minute ad is under $100. Each infomercial would include a pitch to donate to the organization at the end (like those incredibly effective animal ads where Sarah McLaughlin sings about the arms of an angel) so the infomercials are self-sufficient (minus the cost of production, perhaps). That way the informercial educates all the viewers about the issue and it raises enough money to pay for the cost of running the 30 minute ad in the first place. It could be like a perpetual motion machine where the motion is teaching voters about an issue.

5. Target Republicans and Tea Party people with a Small Government Requires A Small Military message. The military takes up the bulk of all general revenues for the federal government and is way too expensive. It sucks up all our money and doesn't make our life better anywhere close to justifying its cost. The Republican House increased the military budget, despite all the talk of runaway spending and debt crises and blah blah blah. I had a chance to ask on a radio show Congressman Joe Walsh (a leading Tea Party GOP from suburban Chicago) about how he justified voting for a higher military budget despite his calls for a smaller government, and he essentially conceded that he wasn't consistent. The anti-government crowd knows that military spending is way too high, and they know that Republicans have not been consistent on this point. They are vulnerable. More importantly, military spending is way too high, and I'd like to convince regular voters who believe the government is too large to extend that belief into the size of the military budget, as right-wing people are the people we need to actually cut the military budget in half.

6. Run a global campaign for global democracy -- meaning, work to convince regular people around the world that we really ought to have some sort of global elections where we all vote to elect people to serve in the same body. That's such an exciting and revolutionary idea. And it's only inertia and lazy imaginations that prohibit us from realizing global democracy of some kind.

7. Write a book about the revolutionary property of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. This Act of Congress was the first time in history a ruling power decided that new territories would not be colonies but would be equal powers to the existing states. Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin and Minnesota came to be states with equal powers to the original 13 states, but it didn't have to be that way. We could have been colonies with fewer rights than the original Americans. The Northwest Ordinance is overlooked but almost as important as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in creating the character of our Republic. I first stumbled across this when reading a plaque in the Minnesota state capitol, and I wish I had the time and a research assistant to learn more about the revolutionary idea and implementation of the Northwest Ordinance.

8. Promote the European model of concessions for public transit and passenger train service. There are lots of private companies that compete for the right to operate buses and trains all over Europe and the government authorities for cities, suburbs and regions bid out on a regular basis the right to operate transit service along with the mobility subsidy from taxpayers. They get better, more innovative service than we do, and they are finding a more suitable role for private capital to play in public transit. Who would have thought that so-called socialist Europe is so far ahead of anti-government America, but we're still stuck in a monopoly model for transit (the government not only pays for transit but owns, operates, maintains and finances it as well here) while they are getting better, faster and cheaper service from the private sector.

9. Figure out how to restructure our financial industry to get away from a few banks that are too big to fail. Aside from just breaking up the big banks, there must be a way to help small banks become mid-sized banks that can serve our biggest companies. We can repeal the 90s-era laws that allowed banks and investment companies and insurance companies to all merge together, but I'd like to figure out how to help smaller and mid-sized banks and other financial institutions like credit unions to grow larger to provide alternatives to the biggest banks. And I'd like to know what cities and counties and states can do to help grow those smaller banks.

10. The adversarial structure of the American judicial system (a judge is a referee and each side has a lawyer who gets all the evidence in the record) does not work for people who can not afford an attorney. And that's most people. Any eviction proceeding, any small claims issue, most criminal proceedings -- the poor person is out of luck. We should develop a different structure where the judge is less of a referee and more of an active player in getting evidence, questioning the witnesses and bringing justice to the case. We taxpayers are already paying for the judge. Why should we pay for a public defender as well? And in non-criminal cases, there is no public defender, so we rely on the good will of lawyers who volunteer. It's structurally kind of dumb, especially when we start paying for non-profit organizations to try to fill the gap as psuedo public defenders. Let's just have a system where the judge handles more of the case so you don't need a lawyer anytime you go to court. There's a place for the adversarial system - when both parties have resources to duke it out. That's not how it is in most courtrooms today, so let's modernize our structure to reflect how things are (and save lots of taxpayer money in the process).

That's my top ten list of some of the things I wish I could be doing and would be doing if I had unlimited resources.

We are the 1%

We are the 1%.

That's the sobering reality check from the excellent book The Haves and the Have-Nots by Branko Milanovic.

As it turns out, there are a whole lot of poor people in the world. And the United States is so very rich. Even the very poorest Americans living in what we consider to be abject poverty (and they are significantly poorer than the average American) is richer than more than two-thirds of the rest of the world.

For upper middle class Americans (defined as those who earn $34,000 a year per person, not per family), we are the 1%. Turns out, that level of income (after-taxes, per person, in dollars, living in the US) happens to be the line above which sits the top 1% richest people in the world.

Yikes.

I had thought I was part of the 99% (and in the US, I am). But in the world, I am part of the 1%.

Bit of a paradigm shift, right?

So just as I believe it is not only a moral imperative but a practical economic strategy to spend more of the income of the top 1% on public assets that benefit all Americans (like education and sewers and high speed trains and police officers and social workers and parks), I have to extend that logic to spend more of my income on public assets that benefit everyone in the world (like education in India and sewers in Cameroon and high speed trains in Brazil and police officers in Juarez, Mexico and social workers in Malasia and parks in Libya) as a moral imperative and as a solid economic development strategy.

Just as charity balls and voluntary private donations from rich Americans doesn't come close to substituting for the moral imperative and economic development strategy of taxing the 1% more to spend it on public assets that benefit all 100% of us, so too voluntary contributions from we wealthy Americans to relatively impoverished others does not cut it. We ought to be taxed. And that money ought to be spent making people wealthier in poor countries.

It's the same logic. They are the 99%. And spending some of our income to make them wealthier – whether all of us like it or not – is the right thing to do.

Republicans are intentionally blocking Americans from their ballots

It is appalling and craven.

Republican state legislators are intentionally trying to keep millions of Americans from voting.

This article from the Tribune lays out how Republicans are putting up barriers to the ballot -- fewer early voting days, requirements to show photo IDs and government registration and fines for those citizens who help others get registered to vote.

During the days when respectable Americans could justify imposing a literacy test or a tax on people who wanted to vote (as many states did as recently as the 1960s), what side would you have been on? Or if you were alive, what side were you on?

Here is how President Clinton described this wave of anti-American vote-blocking:

"There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today," former President Bill Clinton told a group of college students in July.

It's time to attack back.

The government should handle all voter registration automatically -- we shouldn't make people jump through administrative hoops to register to vote -- and then fine those fantastic citizens who help others jump through the hoops.

Cities and counties should issue photo IDs to all residents and visitors to overcome the new photo ID poll tax requirements. They should require all landlords to give new tenants a voter registration form. City stickers should have a voter registration form included. Anytime a citizen moves and tells any level of government, that agency should automatically prepare a change of address form and send it to the election agency.

And most importantly, we should introduce an element of shame to the politicians who try to block citizens from making a free choice as to which politicians should run the government. Spread the word about what Republicans are doing. Attack back.

There is a war against voting. Attack back.

The Republican Party is waging a war on voting. This Rolling Stone article by Ari Berman explains it.

Republicans have taken control of several state governments and have implemented new laws designed to deny Americans the ability to vote in the presidential election. By making American citizens carry a photo ID with their current address before voting, by reducing the days and hours when polling places are open and by making citizens jump through administrative hoops just to register at their current address, these Republicans intend to win elections by keeping people who intend to vote Democratic from ever casting a ballot.

It’s appalling. And it is time to attack back.

Republicans may control state governments. But Democrats control local governments. And the best way to attack the Republican push to keep Americans from voting is to pass local laws and programs that will result in more people voting.

What can Democratic cities and counties do? Plenty. One main target of the Republican assault: people who move. Republican base voters are older, conservative people who have lived in the same house for years. Younger people who rent (and move every year) are more liberal and vote for Democrats. That’s why Republicans pass laws to make people submit paperwork to some obscure government agency every time they move to update their new address, because lots of people won’t know to do it, and then they won’t be able to vote.

So we can attack back by making sure people who move know they have to follow the ridiculous rule to register at their current address. We can pass local laws that require every landlord to give a voter registration form to every new tenant when they sign a lease. We can pass local laws that require every utility company to include a voter registration form in the first month’s bill for every new customer. And every city and county we control can automatically submit a completed voter registration form for their citizens whenever they update their address with the city or county through a car registration or school address or park program.

And we should really take the responsibility as a government to create an up-to-date voter registration list and proactively register our citizens to vote, rather than putting that burden on the citizen. The unique ID number that each state already issues to each citizen for their drivers license or state ID should be the same unique voter ID in a statewide database for voter registration, so that millions of Americans won't fall through the cracks and not get registered to vote.

Not every Republican elected official is part of the war against voting. And truth be told, some Democratic electeds have joined that war. When I have drafted, lobbied and passed pro-voter laws in Illinois, there were usually one or two Republicans who would vote for the bill, and one or two Democrats who would vote against it. So there are exceptions. But by and large, 95% of the Republicans were against my bills that got more people voting (and were quite clear they didn't want people to vote!) and 95% of the Democrats were for the bills.

There is a war going on. And we’ve been losing it. It’s time for local Democratic leaders to join the rebel forces that are fighting back. For every law they pass that will block one person from voting, we will pass a law that will bring a ballot to one more person. We will not let them win elections by disenfranchising Americans. We will attack back over the next 12 months with new local laws, programs and initiatives to get citizens in Democratic cities and counties registered to vote and prepared to do so under the new rules, so that in November of 2012, the greatest possible number of Americans will choose our leaders.

No government policy should stand between an American and her ballot. Let's attack back.

The rules of democracy matter. Raw disenfrachisement of voters is appalling

I find it appalling when government officials (almost exclusively Republicans, sadly) keep citizens from voting. They do so by putting up deadlines for citizens to register with some obscure government agency days or weeks before the election. They do so by making citizens stand in line in some random neighborhood location for one time period on a weekday. And recently, about a dozen states are requiring citizens to carry around and show photo identification in order to vote.

As if someone is any less of a citizen if they don't have an up-to-date drivers license.

(And in Texas, student IDs explicitly do not count.)

I have a bit of a hobby pushing for more inclusive voter registration laws in Illinois, and I am usually appalled when good-natured and intelligent legislators (again, almost always Republican) turn somewhat savagely against every effort to repeal government roadblocks to citizens exercising their right to vote.

That's why I really like this Colbert Report segment on voter ID laws passed in the last two years. He is clearly angry about them. And so am I. This is inspiring me to work to improve Illinois' laws even more in 2012 and expand the grace period even closer to election day.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Voter ID Laws
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Great video on a new millionaire's income tax rate

This is a really neat video. The ending actually gave me chills.

I love this line: "Rich people are not the cause of a robust economy; rich people are the result of a robust economy."

Nice job.