if you're in Colorado, you'll want to know if you're voting in a contested DA race this fall. & also where the candidates differ: this is where reform & mass incarceration are at play.
The short story: there are 4 open DA races in populous jurisdictions (360K to 1.1 million).
Right now, Dems detain one of them, & they're in a position to flip other 3: It's the sort of Clinton-friendly ares that've trended blue (you know that story). But that's only part of it.
1/ 1st district: Jefferson and Gilpin counties. (GOP-held, but Clinton won handily here.) Big contrast here.
The reform-minded Dem says she wants to not criminally charge any drug possession vs & the GOP nominee laments existing departures from punitive 'war on drugs' practices.
2/ 8th District: Jackson & Larimer. (GOP-held, Clinton-carried.)
Larimer is spending $75 million on growing its jail capacity. The Dem, unlike the GOPer, says he opposes this project because we should look for alternatives to jail over "expanding our ability to warehouse folks."
This is district where Elijah McClain was killed, but candidates don't want to talk about case, & there's a lack of stronger commitments to upend system (do not call lists, independent subpoana power...).
4/ 18th District (Arapahoe, Douglas, more): This is the most populous of these districts by far.
The outgoing GOP DA is one of leading foes of reform in recent years. Dem is Sanders-endorsed, supports recent reforms & wants to go further against life sentences.
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I skipped the headline story here assuming you've seen it elsewhere, but if not: the Arizona supreme court just declared abortion illegal. 12news.com/article/news/p…
Katie Hobbs, a Democratic governor, would have the power to appoint replacement if the justices are not retained. (Still, note that in Arizona governors choose within a list proposed by a commission.)
A thread about a messed up situation in Mississippi.
It's on how state officials have voided direct democracy thru an absurd excuse, and how they keep refusing to yield that power back to people.
The state constitution gives people the right to ballot initiatives.
It outlines how they should do so, & how they should collect signatures in each of MS's five congressional districts.
The language was written into the constitution in 1992.
In 2000, Mississippi lost a congressional district, down to four.
No one saw a problem with that until 2021: the state supreme court effectively said that, since there were no longer 5 districts in which to collect signatures, no ballot initiative could be valid.
Tomorrow is extraordinary busy election day... and you may have missed critical battles.
So here's a thread with the 15 races I'll watch most closely, across 4 states. It has some of everything: school boards, local politics, DAs, voting rights...
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1️⃣ Let's start with the Arkansas supreme court races.
Because they're so odd. 2 seats, 4 sitting justices running for them, none of which are their current occupants, plus two outsiders. Depending on the results, the big winner may be Huckabee Sanders.
2️⃣ Moving over to the Texas court of criminal appeals:
Ken Paxton & his far-right allies are targeting 3 GOP judges (Sharon Keller, Barbara Hervey, and Michelle Slaughter) who were part of a ruling that restricted Paxton’s ability to prosecute elections. texastribune.org/2023/12/13/ken…
not all about the Santos seat and Trump/Biden: there are a ton of critical elections coming up literally in coming weeks.
here are just four you should know about.
1. the former sheriff of Los Angeles, ousted after protecting police abuse, is trying a comeback in 3 weeks: boltsmag.org/los-angeles-co…
2. Cleveland's March primary for prosecutor is one of the most interesting of the spring, with two very distinct visions of criminal justice between the incumbent & his challenger. wrote a bit about it here. boltsmag.org/ohio-prosecuto…
NEW: It was just confirmed that Dauphin County, PA, home to Harrisburg , flipped to Democratic control in last week's elections. For the first time in 100+ years.
GOP incumbent conceded this am, h/t @pennslinger.
One reason this matters? Ballot access. See next tweet.
County officials in PA have a lot of discretion to design voting procedures. For instance, many GOP-run counties (like Dauphin) haven't allowed ballot curing.
Two things he mentioned: (1) wanting to expand the number of ballot drop boxes, & (2) wanting to make sure ballot curing is allowed & that the county proactively reaches out to people to inform them of a mistake.