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Paul Smith

Updates

Updates

 

 

Today, the Tampa Bay Times published an op-ed by CLC’s Blair Bowie and partners from Alabama Appleseed, a small nonprofit that has partnered with CLC to educate the public about barriers to voting rights.

The piece calls attention to the importance of voter education and empowerment to spread the word about the passage of Amendment 4 in this year...

During the 2016 election cycle, the National Rife Assocation’s (NRA) political and lobbying arms spent over $25 million supporting Trump, mostly for television advertising, and distributed and placed those advertisements using the same network of consulting firms that placed the Trump campaign’s own advertisements.

In fact, in the final stretch of...

It is easy to cast Washington, D.C. as lethargic and unbending to reform efforts. Congress failed to pass any legislation in response to foreign interference in the 2016 election, and increasingly looks uninterested in passing any legislation at all. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has become so dysfunctional that watchdog groups, like...

This post is part of a series on Take Care and the Election Law Blog on legislation to reform U.S. elections.

 

The 2018 election provides us with two main insights on American democracy. First, our democratic system of government is falling down on the job. In this past election cycle, dark money flooded our digital spaces, voters faced a series...

The 2018 midterm race for Maine’s Second Congressional District marks the first federal election successfully conducted using Ranked Choice Voting.

Ranked Choice Voting (“RCV”) allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference when marking their ballots, and provides for additional rounds of tabulating votes where no candidate receives a...

Issues

Today, Campaign Legal Center (CLC), Issue One and five former lawmakers from both parties submitted comments urging the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to clarify that the ban on personal use of campaign funds should apply to leadership PACs, in order to stop politicians from using the PACs as their personal slush funds. The organizations and...

On Friday, November 9, 2018 the Maricopa County Superior Court ordered all county recorders statewide to permit voters to “cure” their signature mismatch issue by the Wednesday, November 15 deadline to fix conditional provisional ballots. The parties agreed that the “cure” period requires county recorders to provide notice to voters with supposed...

In Tuesday’s election, Americans overwhelmingly voted to support measures that end extreme partisan gerrymandering, improve the way we fund elections to give every day voters a voice in the political process, expand voting access and move toward a more ethical and accountable government.

Campaign Legal Center helped draft and advise on many of...

Today, Campaign Legal Center (CLC), Dēmos and the MacArthur Justice Center filed a class action lawsuit challenging Ohio’s policy of disenfranchising eligible voters arrested just prior to the election and held in detention through Election Day. 

Under Ohio’s current system, eligible voters who are held pretrial by the state are being...

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia ordered Secretary of State Brian Kemp to allow voters who were wrongly flagged as non-citizens to be allowed to cast regular ballots.

Campaign Legal Center (CLC), Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, on behalf of a coalition of...

Over the past decade, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) has developed a well-deserved reputation for dysfunction. It has deadlocked on more and more enforcement matters, stood idly by while hundreds of millions of dollars in dark money have flooded our elections, and failed to take even basic steps to update campaign finance law for the 21st...

CLC sent a letter on October 22 to Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan on behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens Arizona (LULAC – Arizona), the League of Women Voters, and the Arizona Advocacy Network Foundation requesting that all mail-in voters be notified if their ballot is deemed unsatisfactory and have an opportunity to...

Recently, in a victory for transparency in elections, a D.C. District Court struck down a Federal Election Commission (FEC) rule that had allowed as much as $769 million in dark money to flow into our elections since the 2010 election cycle, according to a new Campaign Legal Center analysis.

As a result, groups that make independent expenditures...

Kevin Wong from Nevada thought he could not vote because of a past conviction. But he visited the website RestoreYourVote.org and learned the truth about his rights. He registered to vote that same day.

Kevin was incarcerated until 2016 and was released the day before that year's presidential elections. Highly interested in politics, Kevin was...

Frustrated by the failure of elected officials to address money in politics, ethics issues, attacks on voting rights and partisan gerrymandering – citizens across the country are taking the fight to protect democracy into their own hands through the state ballot initiative process.

During the call Citizens Take Charge: 2018 State Ballot...

Tired of waiting on Congress or the United States Supreme Court, citizens across the country are taking charge of democracy reform through state ballot initiatives.

This November voters will have the chance to vote to end extreme partisan gerrymandering, improve the way we fund elections to give every day voters a voice in the political process...

On Tuesday, November 6, citizens in North Dakota will vote on a ballot initiative that would go a long way to shedding light on financial influence over state government. Measure One would increase the transparency of spending in state elections, set limits on lobbying and misuse of campaign funds, and establish a state ethics commission.

Measure...

Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett agreed to update the state’s website to correct inaccurate information about voter registration laws for citizens with past felony convictions. Tennessee’s actions come after over six months of pressure from Campaign Legal Center (CLC).

Tennessee has agreed to do three things:

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) approved a rulemaking petition, filed by Campaign Legal Center (CLC), Issue One and five former lawmakers from both parties. Published in the federal register today, The petition followed the release of our joint report, How Leadership PACs Became Politicians' Preferred Ticket to Luxury Living, highlighting the...

In our continued battle to end partisan gerrymandering, Campaign Legal Center (CLC), along with co-counsel, filed an amended complaint challenging Wisconsin’s 2011 state assembly map as a partisan gerrymander in the U.S. District Court in Wisconsin.

In June the Supreme Court declined to address the merits of the lower court’s decision. However, in...

Issues

Recently-released emails from Judge Kavanaugh’s time in the George W. Bush White House provide new insight into the nominee’s view on money in politics—and reveal that his hostility towards any reforms to limit the influence of big money on our political system may be deeper and more radical than his public judicial opinions have suggested.

Why do...