GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – U.S. District Judge Janet Neff today dismissed the lawsuits attacking the voter-approved constitutional amendment that established the Michigan’s Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission. The amendment puts voters – not politicians – in charge of drawing state Legislative and U.S. Congressional election maps through a fair, impartial, and transparent process, with robust public input.

“It is time for fair maps in Michigan,” said Paul Smith, Vice President at Campaign Legal Center (CLC). “Taking partisanship out of drawing electoral maps is critical to advancing the principles of accountability and transparency in government. Voters nationwide are tired of being silenced by special interests, who have exerted their will over the redistricting process for far too long. Now Michigan can turn to the important work of putting their citizen-led commission into action.”

“Michigan’s Constitution begins with, ‘All political power is inherent in the people.’ The courts have vindicated the people’s right to use our political power to take back our redistricting process and unrig our elections,” said Nancy Wang, Executive Director of Voters Not Politicians, the grassroots, nonpartisan group that ended gerrymandering in Michigan. “We are thrilled to see an end to these wasteful lawsuits brought by the Michigan Republican Party, Tony Daunt of the Michigan Freedom Fund, and other opponents of fair redistricting to thwart the will of the people.”

“Thousands of regular Michiganders took the initiative to make our voices heard and our votes count.” Wang continued. “Voters overwhelmingly approved the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, but we knew that those who stood to lose power under a fair, impartial, and transparent redistricting process would do whatever they could to hold onto that power. Our continued, decisive legal victories from the Michigan Supreme Court to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals demonstrate that when the people come together to protect and strengthen our democracy, we will prevail.”

Voters Not Politicians has started to test a free tool in partnership with the Princeton Gerrymandering Project to make it easy and efficient for communities of interest to submit maps to the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission so they have a say in how they are represented. Volunteers are also developing an educational curriculum to help Michiganders learn more about providing compelling, detailed, and localized feedback to help guide the Commission’s decision making.

The application window to serve on the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission closed on June 1, 2020, with 9,367 voters submitting applications, and an independent firm retained by the Secretary of State’s office randomly selected a group of 200 “semi-finalists” that reflects the geographic and demographic diversity of the state. The Legislative leadership has until August 1 to strike up to 10% of the applications in the semi-finalist pool. Then the independent firm will randomly select from the remaining applications the final 13 commissioners – 4 who affiliate as Republicans, 4 who affiliate as Democrats, and 5 who affiliate with neither major party by September 1. A full timeline of constitutional requirements can be found on the Voters Not Politicians website here.

Paul Smith, Mark Gaber, and Annabelle Harless of CLC represented Voters Not Politicians.

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that states have the authority to require presidential electors to vote for the candidate that wins the popular vote in their state.  

Paul Smith, CLC’s Vice President, Litigation and Strategy, issued the following statement:  

“Today’s ruling is the correct one. If electors had been turned loose to violate state law and ignore their state’s voters, they would have been free to accept contributions from wealthy special interests who want to influence our politics, free from any public disclosure. While numerous federal laws require elected officials and policymakers to follow financial ethics and transparency rules, there are currently no federal ethics or transparency laws for presidential electors. The absence of transparency laws, combined with unfettered discretion, would have led to corruption threatening the very legitimacy of the presidential election. 

Voters should go to the polls with the confidence that their vote will count and that their political system will be free from corruption. However far from perfect the current system may be, the chaos of an unbound Electoral College would have been even worse.” 

Campaign Legal Center and Issue One filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the cases, Chiafalo v. Washington and Colorado Department of State v. Baca, arguing that states should have the ability to bind electors to the popular vote. 

Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) today introduced the Judicial Ads Act to increase transparency in the judicial nominations process. Campaign Legal Center endorses the legislation and CLC President Trevor Potter issued the following statement of support:  
 

"Transparency means more accountability. This principle holds true for political campaigns, and it should be no different when it comes to the confirmation of federal judges. Wealthy special interests -- of all political stripes -- secretly spend millions of dollars on ads in support of judicial nominees they believe will advance their causes in the courtroom, and the public has no idea who is behind these ads. This secret spending means that justices and judges may have hidden conflicts of interest. The Judicial Ads Act will finally bring transparency to our third branch of government.” 

ATLANTA, GA – Today, a federal appeals court has granted the state of Florida’s request to stop the expansion of voting rights to hundreds of thousands of voters who were deemed eligible to participate in the 2020 election by a lower court ruling. The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit will hear the case while the implementation of the lower court ruling is suspended.

“Today’s decision is a setback,” said Paul Smith, vice president of CLC. “The district court’s decision to block Florida’s pay-to-vote system followed clear Supreme Court precedent. We are hopeful that the court of appeals will follow suit and confirm once and for all that wealth cannot determine a person’s eligibility to vote.”

In May, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida ruled that conditioning rights restoration on the payment of costs and fees constitutes a poll tax, that Floridians genuinely unable to pay their financial obligations could not be denied the right to vote, and that the state’s inability to track and identify disqualifying financial obligations violated Floridians’ due process rights. The state was ordered to follow a procedure to ensure that individuals who cannot pay their legal financial obligations are not denied the right to vote, including by determining indigency.

Campaign Legal Center (CLC) sued last year on behalf of three individual plaintiffs and all Florida citizens affected by Florida’s law. CLC’s suit – the only one brought as a class action – ensures that future rulings apply broadly to all voters seeking voting rights restoration in Florida.

Florida holds primary elections on August 18, and the deadline to register for the primary is July 20