Share this page!

Stephen Wolf Profile picture
Twitter logo
16 Jun, 9 tweets, 5 min read
Potentially huge news for efforts to strengthen democracy!

The For the People Act would enact the most significant voting access expansions since the 1965 Voting Rights Act, ban congressional gerrymandering, & adopt new campaign finance/ethics regulations dailykos.com/stories/2021/3…
Of course, if Manchin still won't curb the filibuster in some way to let Dems overcome GOP obstruction, this won't matter much, but the necessary first step toward setting up a filibuster showdown is to secure majority support & thus Manchin's vote on the bill itself
The reports of the death of the For the People Act (#HR1/#S1) at the hands of Dem Sen. Joe Manchin have been premature
Joe Manchin supports the For the People Act's ban on congressional gerrymandering, which is the most essential part of the bill! But he does oppose some other parts regarding voting access #HR1 #S1
Joe Manchin expresses openness to filibuster reform. He also suggested possibly lowering the cloture threshold from 60 to 55 votes. While these aren't guaranteed to eliminate GOP obstruction like abolishing the filibuster would, it's a starting point
🚨 Joe Manchin lays out his list of provisions in the For the People Act that he supports (banning gerrymandering, yay!) & opposes (allowing no-excuse absentee voting everywhere, boo). This is a key step toward reaching a compromise he can support #HR1 #S1
Manchin says he supports requiring voter ID nationally. If that's the price Dems must pay for his support for the other provisions such as a gerrymandering ban & easier voter registration, Dems should take him up on it by creating a free national ID card for every American
Also, there's a huge difference between a voter ID compromise Dems might support vs. what the GOP is passing in myriad states. Dems could allow utility bill/bank statement for ID, let those who lack one sign a sworn affidavit to vote, provide free ID, etc. GOP laws much stricter
One step at a time, but this is a positive development for reaching a potential compromise

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Stephen Wolf

Stephen Wolf Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @PoliticsWolf

Stephen Wolf Profile picture
4 Jun
Illinois Dems have enacted new legislative gerrymanders & state Supreme Court districts, making IL the 2nd state to enact new legislative maps after the 2020 census. But due to census data delays, these were drawn using population estimates & could draw a lawsuit because of it
Illinois redistricting is badly flawed & IL should adopt proportional representation to ensure fairness.

However, these legislative gerrymanders only counteract Dems' geography penalty & likely fail to obtain a Dem advantage in excess of the popular vote electionlawblog.org/?p=122269
Illinois' Supreme Court has been redistricted for the first time in 6 decades to end the malapportionment that had left one district with as many people as two others combined. The new map is much fairer but counterintuitively still has a huge GOP bias. See this thread for more:
Read 5 tweets
Stephen Wolf Profile picture
25 May
[Thread] Major Illinois redistricting news: Dems have proposed redrawing IL's Supreme Court districts for the 1st time in decades. Compare the current districts (first), which have become badly malapportioned since they were drawn in the 1960s, with Dems' proposed redraw (second)
I wrote a story just last week on how Illinois' malapportioned Supreme Court districts could lead to a decade of GOP minority rule in the legislature as a result of the 2022 elections if Dems don't redraw the court districts to make them fairer, so this news has big implications
Dems' new IL Supreme Court districts would end the malapportionment that has left the 2nd District with as many people as the 4th & 5th Districts combined. Doing so flips the 3rd District from 51-47 Trump to 53-45 Biden & boosts Dem chances of winning the key 2022 election there
Read 5 tweets
Stephen Wolf Profile picture
25 May
From the lame duck power grabs after Dems won governors offices in MI, NC, & WI in 2016-2018 to Trump’s Big Lie to AZ GOP considering stripping power from an elected office only when Dems win it, the Republican Party is increasingly refusing to cede power when they lose elections
Update: Arizona state House GOP has passed a bill in a committee that strips Dem Secretary of State Katie Hobbs' power to defend election lawsuits & hands that power to GOP Attorney General Mark Brnovich, but only through the end of Hobbs' term in 2022 abc15.com/news/state/sec…
In what is a highly petty move, the Arizona GOP's bill also strips Dem SoS Hobbs of her oversight of the state Capitol's museum after she flew a gay pride flag from the Capitol balcony in 2019
Read 4 tweets
Stephen Wolf Profile picture
15 May
Mississippi is now firmly the least democratic state:

Huge barriers to voting

1 in 9 people banned from voting for life due to a felony (Black voters at 2x the rate of whites)

Dems would have to win the popular vote by an impossible 15% to win the GOP-gerrymandered legislature
Mississippi:

Has no early voting

Requires an excuse & *notarization* for both requesting & casting an absentee ballot

Requires voters to register 30 days before Election Day, which is the maximum allowed under federal law, & no online, same-day or automatic voter registration
It is entirely not a coincidence that the state with the highest proportion of Black citizens is also the least democratic in America.

They still have vestiges of their 1890 Jim Crow constitution in effect & until last year even had a hyper-gerrymandered "electoral college" law
Read 5 tweets
Stephen Wolf Profile picture
14 May
A huge blow to Mississippi democracy. Reformers had been trying to pass an initiative to finally adopt early voting & could've used one to ban gerrymandering.

Republicans in myriad states have responded to progressive & democracy-reform initiatives by trying to kill initiatives
The GOP playbook in so many states in the past decade has been to gerrymander & pass new voting restrictions in the legislature, then when activists try to fight back using ballot initiatives, pass legislation trying to kill off the initiative process too dailykos.com/stories/2019/7…
The GOP-dominated Mississippi Supreme Court used an absurd reason for gutting the ballot initiative process amid ongoing efforts to pass voting reforms & Medicaid expansion, & this should be a federal equal protection violation
Read 6 tweets
Stephen Wolf Profile picture
13 May
Sigh. Oklahoma GOP legislators passed their legislative gerrymanders with most Dems voting for them just like they did last decade (story doesn't say if Dems got anything for it), which the GOP will undoubtedly use to argue in bad faith that they didn't gerrymander any districts
This is something that happens from time to time: Democrats in particular are more likely than the GOP to support the other side's gerrymander if the GOP gives certain Dems districts that they like even if they have no hope of winning significant power. Happened in Ohio in 2011
Oklahoma Republicans passed these new legislative gerrymanders using population data estimates since the 2020 census data won't be available until mid-August, risking a lawsuit, though they say could revise them later with hard census data if necessary to equalize populations
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @PoliticsWolf has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @PoliticsWolf!

Read all threads by @PoliticsWolf

:(