Mediaboss Marketing

US: Airbnb has hired multiple lawyers, formerly from tech company Polys legal division, in preparation for the companys initial public offering [IPO] later this year.

It hired Mary Huser has joined as general counsel for risk and regulatory, Iris Chen as deputy general counsel for product, and Miko Ando Brown as associate general counsel for trust and safety.

The company had previously heavily cut its legal department during the 25 per cent layoff round done in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Key changes include the departure of Robert Chestnut, former deputy general counsel and chief of ethics, and Rene Lawson, another deputy general counsel for litigation.

Another significant departure was VP of trust Margaret Richardson, who has previously worked in the companys policy, safety and standards teams. Her previous involvement with Former US Attorney General Eric Holder helped her create Airbnbs anti-discrimination policy.

Airbnbs legal efforts have become more pronounced recently, as its lobbying and litigating wings have both been active. While Airbnb has settled many high-profile lawsuits with cities like New York and Boston, the total number of lawsuits the company has faced in the US has grown significantly since 2018.

Airbnb is rumoured to be aiming to raise $3 billion in an IPO this December. It is seeking to strengthen its relationship with many cities, settling major lawsuits, in anticipation of that development.

All three of the major new hires have significant experience in supporting the legal needs of tech companies. Chen previously worked with Google in its Intellectual Property division for 14 years, while Huser has worked as an in-house counsel with both Blackberry and eBay.

The hires have also been noted for their efforts to improve diversity in the legal industry. Brown started a lecture series focusing on women in leadership, Chen is a member of the Minority Corporate Counsel Association, while Huser is a known inclusion advocate.

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Airbnb bolsters legal division with new hires ahead of IPO - Short Term Rentalz

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Over the weekend, I stepped into an independent record store for the first time since the onset of the pandemic and almost immediately committed the faux pas of saying the word Spotify in front of the owner of said independent record store. John, Im sorry. Please let me back in.

Meanwhile, tell me which podcasts youre listening to. Its totally fine if you listened on Spotify. Find me on Twitter or reach me over email: nicholas.quah@vulture.com. On to the weeks picks.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Hosted by writer and poet Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr., Resistance offers a collection of a few different portraits from the front lines of the Black Lives Matter protests that have swept the country. Ive only been able to listen to the first three episodes, and the stories run the gamut. The first sees Tejan-Thomas Jr. grappling with his own feelings about political activation and participation as he follows a young Black man evolve from being a first-time protester to a possible first-time local-office candidate. The second is a gripping account of an activist trapped in his home for hours as the NYPD tries a number of different tactics to flush him out. The third tells the story of the only Black man in a small Nebraskan town trying to organize its first Black Lives Matter rally, working in the face of his own experiences with racism in the locality.

Resistance is a striking and vivid listen, at least based on its early innings, and one of its more interesting contributions is the way in which it creates an emotional space for people to process their own feelings about political mobilization. But its not exempt from questions and critiques, of course. That it is the product of a corporate media entity Gimlet Media, a content division of Spotify should expose it to some discourse about the rendering of political expression into an entertainment commodity. Folks who are more radical in their politics might also have things to say about the kinds of political action it grapples with and what it leaves out. But on the whole, these are discussions worth having, and the fact that Resistance provokes me to think about it is a sign that its doing something right.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher

I cant even begin to express just how much I love the latest season of Lost Notes, which dropped in its entirety in late September.

Now in its third season, Lost Notes is a nonfiction anthology podcast from KCRW that weaves together great untold stories from the music world. This outing, called Lost Notes: 1980, was entirely curated and hosted by the poet-critic Hanif Abdurraqib, and as you can probably glean from the subtitle, all of its stories revolve around the year 1980. If youre not familiar with Abdurraqibs body of work, you should get acquainted; check out Go Ahead in the Rain, his 2019 book-length love letter to A Tribe Called Quest, or pick up any of his poetry collections. Music, legacy, and the active act of loving art are all themes that tend to pop up in Abdurraqibs creations, and Lost Notes: 1980 is no different.

The enthusiast in me would tell you to work linearly through the season, starting from the Stevie Wonder story all the way down to Grace Jones. But if for some reason you remain skeptical and wish for only a taste, hit up John Lennon & Darby Crash, which revisits how Crash, the co-founder of the extremely influential punk band Germs, took his own life as some means toward achieving cultural immortality only for Lennons murder, which happened less than a day later, to completely overshadow Crashs death.

With the man at the center of its story finally free, In the Dark is dropping one final episode today to wrap up its second season, and it takes the form of an interview with Curtis Flowers himself.

Teenager Therapy is a legitimate phenomenon these days, and the chat-cast featuring a group of teens having sincere conversations about mental health and their lives welcomed special guests in a recent episode: the ex-royals Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, who popped up on the show in honor of World Mental Health Day.

Tracy Clayton already co-hosts a nostalgic pop-culture podcast, Back Issue (with Josh Gwynn), and now shes co-hosting another nostalgic pop-culture podcast, which launches this week: the music-themed My 90s Playlist with Akoto Ofori-Atta.

Lores Aaron Mahnke is producing a fiction podcast series with iHeartMedia and Blumhouse TV thatll star Keegan-Michael Key in the lead role. It will be called Aaron Mahnkes 13 Days of Halloween, and it is scheduled to drop for 13 days leading up to Halloween. That means it will actually start on *checks calendar* October 18, I think?

Heres an interesting artifact: Hearing With Tali Farhadian Weinstein, a Pushkin Industries podcast that launched earlier this month, is basically an interview show in lieu of a political campaign. Weinstein, a former counsel to AG Eric Holder, is running for Manhattan district attorney next year, but obviously it isnt a good idea to be knocking on doors or holding political events right now hence the podcast.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher

I thought Id plug Who the Hell Is Hamish? Its Australian, which may explain why I didnt hear about it when it first came out a couple of years ago, but it got me through a notably dark portion of quarantine and seemed to have the same effect on the people I recommended it to.

Who the Hell Is Hamish? follows a con man as he crisscrosses the globe, swindling victims out of millions at ski resorts in Canada and swanky beach communities in Australia and, despite several near misses, never quite getting caught. At various times, Hamish (a.k.a. Max, a.k.a. Kevin) claims to be an orphan, an orphan who accidentally killed his parents, a twin, a twin who accidentally killed his brother, and a 9/11 survivor. Like most con-man stories, its a lot of fun until it isnt. The second to last episode, an interview with a young woman whose life Hamish upended, is a gut-punch. (Be prepared to spend the next several weeks mistrusting everyone you know.)

Its a wild con-man story with many of the usual contours of wild con-man stories the old he sweeps women off their feet and steals their money gambit and so on but its unusually attentive and sensitive to the victims. Its a good example of a true-crime podcast that tells a great story without overlooking the actual pain at the center of things.

Also: great accents, delightfully incomprehensible Aussie slang, and lots of fun to be had Google Mapping the various beach towns that are mentioned. I cant be the only one who does that, right? Susie A., Chicago, Illinois

And thats a wrap for1.5x Speed! Hope you enjoyed it. Were back next week, but in the meantime: Send podcast recommendations, feedback, or just say hello atnicholas.quah@vulture.com.

Listening notes for the top shows, from Vulture's critic Nick Quah.

Read more from the original source:
Teenager Therapy, Resistance, and 6 More Podcasts Worth Trying - Vulture

Las Vegas political operative Jesse Law is not coy about the chief goal of the Election Day poll-watching operation that the Trump campaign hired him to organize in Nevada.

The main goal is electing the boss, Law told a group of volunteers last week during an online training session that was recorded on video and shared with ABC News.

Law is one of more than a dozen Trump field generals organizing Election Day poll-watching operations in key battleground states and are now engaged in almost-daily training sessions preparing volunteers for long shifts watching the voting process unfold. The presidents campaign is calling it Trumps Army, which they maintain will be a force of 50,000, now being prepped to spend hours quietly eyeballing voters, ready to summon attorneys at the first indication something is amiss.

Ask questions. Were there as observers, Law told trainees in the video. And if its real bad, we'll send mean, nasty, terrible, horrible people called lawyers. And be prepared to escalate.

Law emphasized that the goal is not to interfere with voters, but to flag issues to lawyers, especially if they believe they are witness to acts of voter fraud -- something experts say is a rare occurrence. Rules vary by state, but the campaigns are allowed to have representatives watch the voting process unfold, so long as they don't take steps to disrupt or interfere with those casting their ballots.

Both parties have poll-watching plans for 2020. The Biden campaign effort expects to have a presence at precincts in 21 key states, and is back-stopped by a legal team that includes former Attorney General Eric Holder and former Obama White House Counsel Bob Bauer. A campaign spokesman told ABC News the Biden operation has plans for the largest voter protection program in history, with "thousands" of lawyers and volunteers working on voter protection efforts.

But the widespread presence of Republican poll watchers at polling sites in 2020 will be something new. The party has been restricted from placing partisans inside precincts since the 1980s, when a court ruled that GOP volunteers were systematically harassing and intimidating voters in a manner that violated the Voting Rights Act. A 2018 court ruling lifted those restrictions for the first time in decades.

GOP had 'one hand tied behind its back'

Justin Clark, one of the Trump campaign's top lawyers, said while speaking on a panel about voter fraud at the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) in March that the Republican Party had spent 40 years fighting this battle with one hand tied behind its back."

"In 2020, we have a brand new opportunity to be able to activate an Election Day operations program that's really robust," he said, describing a plan to recruit 50,000 volunteers to surveil the voting process.

Democrats have expressed a desire to match that presence with their own poll watchers. How many volunteers will ultimately participate remains uncertain, but the Trump campaign has already spent millions of dollars on the effort, federal election records show. The undertaking has involved several paid consultants, including Stampede America, a little-known firm run by veteran Republican political operatives that has received over $1 million from Republican-leaning groups to recruit Election Day workers.

Legal experts who reviewed videos of the Trump campaign training sessions at the request of ABC News say instructors like Law are using the right language, but that still may yield the wrong results.

One of the major concerns about poll watching is that it will still lead, intentionally or not, to voter intimidation, said Sean Morales-Doyle, the deputy director of voting rights and election programs at the Brennan Center for Justice.

An 'army' doesnt sound like people just there to observe, Morales-Doyle said. An army sounds like people there to engage in war with the enemy.

Responding to that concern in a statement Sunday to ABC News, Clark pushed back: This isnt about intimidation but about transparency in the election process. Anything to the contrary is just demagoguery.

Trump campaign officials said they view poll watchers as critical to ensuring the fairness of the election, a point the president tried to drive home during the first presidential debate. Trump referenced his plans to mobilize his supporters to monitor the polls, saying he is urging my supporters to go in to the polls and watch very carefully.

You know why? Because bad things happen, he said.

Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine Law School, said in a recent interview with Slate that he grew more concerned about voter intimidation when the president in the same debate refused to condemn a hard-right group known for violent confrontations.

Hes talking about sending poll watchers to places. When he says that in a debate at the same time hes talking about the Proud Boys standing by, its very worrisome, Hasen said.

A voter casts his ballot at the Lexington County Voter Registration & Elections Office on the second day of in-person absentee and early voting in Lexington, S.C., Oct. 6, 2020.

'No spectacles, please'

In videos of recent training sessions obtained and reviewed by ABC News, as well as dozens of pre-recorded state-specific instructional presentations that the Trump campaign distributed online, poll watchers are told explicitly to avoid directly engaging with voters. The training sessions, which were advertised on the official campaign website, were conducted by campaign officials including Law, who has been paid more than $35,000 by the campaign since May, according to federal filings.

You guys have to watch your backs, Law says at one point. If you're over there going, Hey, that voter isn't legal! and it's just a person who is completely legal -- that's a black eye for us. Don't do that.

Instead, Law tells the trainees that if they are seeing a problem, document it and talk to the attorneys about it and get to the bottom of it. No spectacles, please.

Speaking to the volunteers, Law explains the overarching goal of the Trump campaigns Election Day operations -- deterring fraud.

Uncovering fraud, exposing some controversy at the end of the day can pick you up anywhere from a quarter percent to two and a half percent [of the vote] based on what we're doing, he says.

Thea McDonald, the campaign's deputy national press secretary, reiterated that point in response to questions from ABC News, saying poll watchers will be trained to ensure all rules are applied equally, all valid ballots are counted, and all Democrat rule breaking is called out."

But some experts are skeptical saying everything will depend on the approach the poll watchers take on Election Day. Morales-Doyle said he is concerned that on the rare occasion that there is rule-breaking, either intentional or not, it should not be immediately portrayed the result of a widespread conspiracy. The training sessions, Morales-Doyle said, imply the opposite.

Thats the tone that runs throughout and probably is the most concerning, he said. The whole goal of this enterprise is to catch a voter fraud conspiracy that doesnt exist.

Residents wait in line to vote at an early voting site, Oct. 2, 2020, in Chicago.

Questions about some generals in Trump's Army

Despite the warnings against conflict at the polls, some of the officials the Trump team has hired to assist with training poll watchers have had a combative history when it comes to voting questions.

In Nevada, Law was involved in a 2016 lawsuit when Democrats sued Trump's campaign for allegedly training its poll watchers to intimidate voters, according to the Associated Press, though the judge ultimately found no evidence of intimidation.

Law joked about the case during his recent training class, saying the poll watching program had been accused of engaging in suppression of the vote for minority voters. Best news is if you Google my name, that does not show up, he said. Maybe because we were successful. Law referred ABC News' request for comment to the national office.

In North Carolina, the Trump campaign has hired Ryan Terrill to oversee poll watchers. When Terrill worked on former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCroy's gubernatorial bid in 2016, the campaign made repeated allegations of fraudulent voting in what critics called "an apparent effort to overcome a narrow defeat."

Democracy North Carolina, a left-leaning nonprofit organization, maintained later that "despite an avalanche of legal filings and the constant drumbeat of serious voter fraud, nearly all of the fraud allegations the campaign had leveled at 600 voters proved to be false. Voters who initially faced the allegations told the nonprofit at the time they were left "shocked" and "furious."

ABC News was not able to reach Terrill directly for comment. The North Carolina Republican Party did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the report.

A poll worker wearing personal protective equipment directs voters to cast their ballots for the upcoming presidential election as early voting begins in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Oct. 6, 2020.

And just last week, one leader of Trumps Pennsylvania Election Day effort had to be escorted out of a satellite election office in Philadelphia's City Hall. Elections officials there accused James Fitzpatrick of causing a "disturbance," a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Sheriff's office told ABC News.

In Pennsylvania, poll watchers are not allowed in satellite offices, which are locations where voters can register to vote and request and return mail in ballots, among other things, and are not considered official polling locations. The Trump campaign has sued to enable poll watchers to monitor these locations, claiming "bad things are happening in Philadelphia," though a judge tossed the suit over the weekend.

"Mr. Fitzpatrick went inside the facility, he was asked why he was there," said Teresa Lundy, the spokesperson for the sheriff's office. And then he pulled out his cellphone and started doing video and taking photographs, and that's when he was approached asked to leave."

Fitzpatrick did not respond to email and phone messages from ABC News seeking comment. His video of the encounter was posted on Twitter by a Trump campaign staffer. A Trump campaign spokesperson told ABC News the incident was "another instance of Philly election officials denying observers access to the voting places."

A few days after the incident, Fitzpatrick was back talking to Trumps 2020 volunteers. On a video of a training session obtained by ABC News, he can be seen making clear his goal. Discussing an effort to review absentee ballot applications, he said: We're going to need people to go through them and issue challenges.

We think it all comes down to Pennsylvania this year, he told the group. We could use the help. Let us know if youre interested.

This report was featured in the Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2020, episode of Start Here, ABC News daily news podcast.

"Start Here" offers a straightforward look at the day's top stories in 20 minutes. Listen for free every weekday on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, the ABC News app or wherever you get your podcasts.

More here:
As Trump team rushes to train 'army' of poll watchers, experts on watch for voter intimidation - ABC News

By Tim Reid and Karen Freifeld

(Reuters) - Joe Biden supporter Cindy Kalogeropoulos took no chances when her absentee ballot arrived on Sept. 29. The Michigan retiree filled it out, drove 7 miles to the nearest drop box and hung around to make sure election officials picked it up - all within 48 hours of receiving it.

In neighboring Ohio, Biden backers Eric Bjornard, 42, and his wife Abigail moved quickly too. The couple hand-delivered their mail ballots to their local elections office last month, five weeks ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

Democratic leaders have been urging Biden supporters to show up in huge numbers and vote early amid concerns that nothing short of a decisive victory will prevent Republican President Donald Trump from contesting the results, potentially opening the way for state legislatures, the courts or Congress to decide the outcome.

Telling voters to have faith in the democratic process while simultaneously acknowledging that a landslide may be the only way to oust a defiant incumbent is proving to be a delicate balancing act, more than a dozen Democratic Party officials and Biden campaign advisers told Reuters.

Trump has repeatedly and without evidence declared mail voting to be riddled with fraud and the election "rigged" in favor of Democrats, all the while refusing to commit to ceding power peacefully if he loses. The Democratic operatives said they're concerned that amplifying Trump's claims could backfire and suppress turnout by making Biden voters believe their ballots won't count.

What has emerged is an approach that aims to emphasize the power voters hold to send Trump packing if they act early. In Ohio, for example, David Pepper, head of the state Democratic Party, said his team is using Trump's attacks on voting to motivate Biden supporters to return their mail ballots immediately or to vote early in person.

"We are telling people: 'You hear what he is saying, so go and vote, you can stop him,'" Pepper said. "We are flipping the narrative."

Ohio election officials were overwhelmed with vote-by-mail requests for the state's April presidential nominating contest, when in-person voting was sharply curtailed there due to the coronavirus pandemic. Ballots for some voters arrived too late.

Election officials say they're better prepared this time around. Still, Democratic phone banks, text messages, mailings, social media and TV and radio ads are exhorting Ohio voters to act now to "Make It Count". Polls shows the race tied in a state that Trump won by 8 points four years ago.

The sense of urgency resonated with the Bjornards, the Columbus couple that hand-carried their ballots to their local elections office. "I wanted to make sure they have plenty of time to process it," said Eric Bjornard, who works for a robotics software company.

In Ohio, more than 2.4 million mail-in ballots have been requested, double the 1.2 million requested at the same time in 2016, according to the Ohio Secretary of State.

Nationally, 14.6 million people have already cast ballots by mail or through in-person voting, compared to roughly 1.4 million at the same point four years ago, according to the United States Elections Project, a site run by University of Florida political scientist Michael McDonald that compiles early voting data.

Democrats appear to be driving much of that surge. In states that report party affiliation data, nearly twice as many registered Democrats have requested ballots than Republicans have, the data show. For example, more than 960,000 registered Democrats in battleground Florida have already mailed back their ballots, compared with 564,000 Republicans.

PREPARING FOR A DISPUTED ELECTION

While early turnout is encouraging for Democrats, the Biden camp is preparing for the worst.

Democrats say their turnout campaign is especially critical this year as Republicans seek to restrict mail-in voting despite the pandemic, and both parties fight over how votes are tallied in key states. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed in multiple states, many focused on mail-in voting.

The Biden campaign said it has built the largest election protection program in the Democratic Party's history, including thousands of lawyers and volunteers around the country. Dana Remus, the campaign's general counsel, is overseeing a wide-ranging team of lawyers with veteran Democratic lawyer Bob Bauer, now a full-time senior campaign advisor. The team includes former solicitors general Donald Verrilli and Walter Dellinger, former Attorney General Eric Holder, and Marc Elias, a top elections lawyer at the firm Perkins Coie.

The Trump campaign has also assembled a large legal team to prepare for a contested result and to monitor the voting process. That effort is being led by Matthew Morgan, the campaign's general counsel, and Justin Clark, deputy campaign manager and senior counsel to the campaign.

Then there are the post-election preparations. Biden's national legal team is examining a series of scenarios, including those in which Trump casts doubt on the integrity of a close contest, campaign advisors said.

Among them is the possibility that a lengthy or disputed count of mail ballots could result in Republican-controlled legislatures in key states intervening to award their Electoral College vote to Trump. The U.S. presidency is clinched by winning a majority of the 538 votes apportioned to the 50 states and Washington D.C. in the Electoral College.

Typically, governors certify the results in their respective states and share the information with Congress. But it is possible for "dueling" slates of electors to emerge, in which the governor and the legislature in a closely contested state could submit two different election results.

The risk of this happening is heightened in states where the legislature is controlled by a different party than the governor. Several battleground states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, have Democratic governors and Republican-controlled legislatures.

According to legal experts, it is unclear in this scenario whether Congress should accept the governor's electoral slate or not count the state's electoral votes at all.

The law governing Congress's role in such a dispute - the Electoral Count Act of 1887 - is unclear and "untested," said Lawrence Douglas, a legal and elections scholar at Amherst College. "We'd be in unchartered territory," he said.

Those scenarios are far less likely, the Democratic advisors said, if enough Americans make sure to vote early in November's election. The Democrats who spoke with Reuters believe the more votes that are counted and processed before Election Day, the less chance Republicans have to dispute the validity of the results.

Jennifer Holdsworth, an attorney and Democratic strategist, said if Democrats run up the score with the vote count, "our legal job becomes easier."

"If it's a tight election, that goes to Trump's favor," she said. "For Democrats to avoid a potential stolen election... we need to make sure the vote is as overwhelming as possible."

Lawyers for Biden are preparing responses for various scenarios and some "are ready to go if needed," said Bauer, the senior campaign advisor. He and Remus, the campaign's general counsel, declined to discuss contested election scenarios in detail, wary of elevating Republican messaging about potential problems.

"They are trying to sow chaos and confusion and we are focused on not letting them do that," Remus said. "By telling voters how to vote, how to ensure their vote is going to be counted, and giving them confidence, we will pull this election off."

Thea McDonald, the Trump campaign's deputy national press secretary, said it was Democrats, not Republicans, creating mayhem by "irresponsibly" scaring people away from voting in person with their push for mail-in balloting.

"President Trump is absolutely right: mass voting by mail is a recipe for chaos, confusion and disenfranchisement," McDonald said in an email to Reuters. "In a free, fair election, President Trump wins hands down."

McDonald said allegations that Trump might not accept the election results were Democratic "conspiracy theories."

Biden and his running mate, U.S. Senator Kamala Harris, have repeatedly urged people to vote early. During their recent debates with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, respectively, both steered clear of talking about Trump's unfounded claims of a rigged election.

"Vote, vote, vote!," Biden told Americans during his Sept. 29 debate with Trump, when the moderator asked the candidates to reassure Americans about the integrity of the election. "If we get the votes, it's going to be all over. He's going to go. He can't stay in power."

Joe Foster, chair of the Montgomery County Democratic Committee in Pennsylvania, a critical battleground state that Trump won by less than one percentage point in 2016, said the state party has advised county Democrats not to talk about the possibility of Trump contesting the election there, and instead focus on turning out the vote.

The party is sending voters texts, emails, mailers, ads and social media posts urging them to vote as early as possible, as well as detailed instructions on how to fill out mail ballots correctly, Foster said. People are also being encouraged to bring their completed mail ballots directly to elections offices because of concerns that the U.S. Postal Service may be unable to deliver them in time.

"Our goal is to turn out every vote. We need to have big numbers," Foster said.

'DON'T TRUST THE POLLS'

Several national opinion polls show Biden has opened up a double-digit lead since the chaotic September debate in which Trump repeatedly interrupted his rival, then was hospitalized with COVID-19 a few days later. A majority of Americans reject Trump's handling of the pandemic that has killed more than 216,000 people in the country.

In an Oct. 9-13 Reuters/Ipsos poll, 53% of American adults said they disapprove of Trump's virus response, while 41% approve his handling of the pandemic.

But the race remains competitive in key states such as Florida, Arizona and North Carolina that are crucial to winning the Electoral College. Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic nominee, won the national popular vote by nearly three million votes but lost the Electoral College, and thus the presidency.

Judy Daubenmier, chair of the Livingston County Democratic Party in Michigan - another state that Trump won by less than a percentage point - said she is telling voters not to believe Biden's encouraging poll numbers.

"People are scarred from 2016," Daubenmier said. "Nobody assumes Biden is going to win. We are working like we are two points behind. Anything can happen."

Outside an early voting location in Atlanta on Tuesday, the second day of early in-person voting in Georgia, Aquino Lee said he had waited in line an hour to vote for Biden. The 43-year-old said it had been 25 years since he had last cast a ballot.

Pulling on a cigarette, his face mask hanging off an ear, the general contractor said he was determined to do his part to ensure that Trump is a one-term president. "He ain't no leader. We're suffering," Lee said. "Work has dried up and everyone is afraid of corona. He needs to go."

(Reporting by Tim Reid in Los Angeles and Karen Freifeld in New York. Additional reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta and Joseph Ax in Princeton, NJ. Editing by Soyoung Kim and Marla Dickerson)

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Democrats urge early voting, massive turnout as Trump stokes fears of contested election - WTVB News

This column is by Rebecca Rolfes, president of the League of Women Voters of Coastal Georgia.

Between 2000 and 2018, 60% to 80% of seats in the Georgia General Assembly were uncontested. The national average of uncontested elections for statewide offices is 35%.

The 2020 election in November will be no different.

In 2011, Republicans got 53.3% of the popular vote but won 68% of the seats.

In 2018, 438,000 people Democrats, Republicans and otherwise -- who went to the polls and voted for Georgia governor failed to cast a ballot in their state representative race.

If this sounds like minority rule, you would be correct. The reason, say reformers, is partisan gerrymandering which stifles competitive races, depresses voter turnout and turns a democratic majority into a representational minority.

New electoral districts will be drawn next year once data from the 2020 U.S. Census is made available to the states. Redistricting, mandated by Article 1, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution is "a brilliant idea that our founding fathers came up with," says Pat Bryd, executive director of FairDistricts GA. "They said the populations going to change. We want to have these districts and we want to adjust the size of those districts and base the number of districts on the census every 10 years. Its wonderful because it means when population has shifted, the representation can shift too."

State constitutions mimic the U.S. Constitution and carry out statewide redistricting on the same 10-year schedule.

The problem in Georgia is that the same people voted into office will draw lines that can guarantee they will stay in office.

In essence, redistricting is the political issue that underlies all political issues because it determines who votes for whom. When redistricting becomes gerrymandering, it enables politicians to pick their voters instead of voters picking their politicians.

"Why do we have politicians who think its OK to allow rural hospitals to close," Bryd asks. "Why do we have politicians who despise Medicaid? We have the politicians we have because districts were created to give them the power base they need."

Shining a light on an opaque process

Redistricting that becomes gerrymandering the drawing of lines to gain advantage for one party or candidate, or to deprive a specific group of voters of their rights distorts the one person/one vote system of democracy. Racial redistricting is illegal per the Voting Rights Act. Partisan redistricting is not.

"If you cannot have your elected officials reflect the public, if those two things are divorced from each other, then the elected officials are not going to do what the public wants and it doesn't matter how much they vote," says State Sen. Elena Parent (D-Dekalb Co.) , a long-time proponent of reform. "Thats totally divorced from what a democracy is supposed to be. It enables minority rule."

Assuming Republicans retain control of the Georgia House and Georgia Senate in the November elections, State Sen. Matt Brass (R-Newnan), chair of the Senate Redistricting Committee, and his House counterpart Rep. Bonnie Rich (R-Suwanee), will have several bright spotlights trained on them when they meet in special session to begin drawing new state electoral lines, probably sometime next August when the U.S. Census data becomes available. Their work must be complete by the time the General Assembly meets in 2022.

The first spotlight will be questions about the Census itself. The Commerce Department, which oversees the count, tried to add a question about citizenship when the Constitution mandates that everyone who resides in the country must be counted. An attempt to shorten the Census was struck down in court. Responses to the Census questionnaire have been lower than normal in the 60% to 70% range compared to 74% in the 2010 census due to the coronavirus.

The second spotlight will be Georgias history of gerrymandering. Georgia has repeatedly been reprimanded by the Department of Justice for gerrymandered districts. In 2001, the maps were so bad that the DOJ redrew them. The last maps drawn in 2011 were approved by then U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, "the first time in Georgia history since the Voting Rights Act that we not only had our maps approved but a new law was not created because they were so bad," says Sen. Brass.

Georgia, like other states, also periodically redraws lines between the 10-year census counts. In 2015, then Secretary of State Brian Kemp was sued in U.S. District Court for an attempt to gerrymander Districts 105 and 111. The General Assembly tabled the effort.

The third and final spotlight -- and potentially the brightest -- will be the more than $50 million raised by the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC) to fix what it terms a "broken system." The NDRC has endorsed 102 candidates who favor redistricting reform Marcus Thompson, a Democrat, running against Rep. Ron Stephens (R-Savannah) in District 164 among them and is targeting Georgia among 13 states.

The NDRC will spend $103,200 of their war chest in Georgia. Their hope is that Democrats will take control of the Georgia House depriving Republicans of the political trifecta: control of the House and the Senate as well as the governors office.

Reformers say that such an outcome will, at a minimum, improve the fairness and transparency of the redistricting process and might ultimately lead to passage of the Democracy Act. That act, proposed by the ACLU and supported by a coalition of 12 other nonpartisan organizations, would amend the Georgia Constitution to take redistricting out the hands of elected officials and create an independent commission.

Some form of the same reform has been enacted in 21 states. In those states, races tend to be more competitive. Candidates more accurately reflect the electorate with more people of color, more women and more candidates without access to large campaign donations.

Voter Turnout 2018 by savannahnow.com

Behind closed doors

Both those in charge of redistricting at the state level and those favoring reform toss the word transparency around as the key to everything that needs to change.

At present, House and Senate committees meet in special session, crunch numbers from the Census data, look at obvious geographic boundaries to ensure whats called contiguity and at less obvious but equally important community of interest groupings, then hold a series of public hearings around the state to develop districting maps. All of this is tacitly agreed to rather than legally binding.

The Transparency Act, proposed last year by Sen. Parent, mandated that public hearings would be held in each district, that they would be recorded and made available on a website. The adjournment of the General Assembly because of the coronavirus meant that the act never got a hearing. Now Sen. Brass has picked up one of the acts provisions and hopes to hold public hearings in all 180 House districts and 56 Senate districts in the state. He would prefer to hold them in person but, given time, distance and the likely persistence of the coronavirus, some or all may be virtual.

According to Sen. Parent, the supposedly public hearings held as part of the existing process are a "sham, for appearances only," while the redistricting process actually takes place behind closed doors in Atlanta. The crucial difference: The Transparency Act would set a standard that is legally binding. Such legal mandates would be an important first step to improving the process, say reformers. Parent, who was gerrymandered out of her House seat in 2012, intends to pre-file the act in mid-November.

"Their goal in 2011 was to draw maps that gave them a two-thirds supermajority in all chambers," Parent said. "We have districts in Georgia that are one precinct wide and four miles long. Decatur is split into four districts. Statesboro is three. Athens is split in half. Their excuse is that means more representatives fighting for a communitys interest. What it really amounts to is an effort to create majority-minority districts."

With the Transparency Act, Parent was looking for what she calls "a smaller lift," something that would improve the process but be easier to pass than a constitutional amendment.

The Georgia constitution is vague on the subject of redistricting, Byrd says. "It doesn't exist. That's pretty vague. The Georgia Constitution section on redistricting includes only the contiguity section." The North Carolina constitution, by contrast, contains a section guaranteeing free and open elections. Georgias says nothing.

The Georgia Constitution has five sentences about voting rights and redistricting. It has 68 pages on the lottery.

Incremental reforms like the Transparency Act may be the best courseindeed the only courseopen to reformers in the face of politically entrenched opposition.

For Sen. Brass, reforming the system would consist of, first, greater transparency. "To me in today's day and age with technology, theres really no excuse for this not to be the most transparent redistricting weve ever had," he says. "I don't mean that just for our state, I mean nationwide. Theres literally no excuse."

Second, he wants a certain percentage of each body to approve the maps. "You couldn't pass your maps with 91 votes," he says. "We might put it at 66%, 67%, something like that. That would be a good step."

Finally, hed prefer that the state resort to mid-year or mid-decade map changes only under specific circumstances. "I don't think you can ban it outright," he says, "but they would be outliers."

Public outcry

Given that so many candidates will run unopposed in 2020, voters will be given little voice in determining reform vs. the status quo. What they can do, Bryd says, is pay attention. The successful challenge to Kemps attempt to gerrymander two districts in 2015 resulted from a "public outcry" of letter writing, phone calls and testimony from nonpartisan voting rights organizations.

The sad fact is, regardless of who is elected, without an independent commission on redistricting, the party in power will likely try to continue to game the system.

Republicans and Democrats are equally guilty of partisan gerrymandering. The party in power wants to remain in power so there is a strong temptation to draw district lines that ensure that will happen. In 1971, Democrat Andrew Young was drawn out of a Congressional seat by a Republican Redistricting Committee. In 1991, Democrats returned the favor by gerrymandering Rep. Newt Gingrich out of office.

Voters struggle to connect the dots between redistricting and issues that matter to them. According to Parent, however, "redistricting touches every single issue."

Redistricting and its evil twin gerrymandering are complicated, a combination of data crunching and geography. That keeps voters from realizing how important they are. Without knowing why, they begin to feel that their vote makes no difference. Voters should care, however, says Brass, "mainly because you want your vote to matter. If the lines are drawn egregiously as we saw in 2001, when they're drawn that badly and you've got voters packed into one district, you're drowning out a lot of other voices."

Originally posted here:
Viewpoints: Redistricting the biggest political issue no one thinks about - Savannah Morning News