Florida’s online voter registration (OVR) system did not function properly on the day and night of the voter registration deadline. The State has extended the deadline, but not long enough for voters to complete their registrations.
If we are to survive this crisis—and imagine a more equitable, dynamic economy to come, we must start with a recommitment to the value of universal, inclusive public infrastructure.
Potentially thousands of voters were deprived of their right to vote because Florida was “unable to run a functional voter registration website” during the crucial final hours leading up to the registration deadline.
“They collect our data without our permission. They profit from our data. They fail to invest in processes to verify accuracy. And their models are not transparent. This puts Black and Brown consumers at a serious disadvantage.”
The Biden administration should implement its public credit registry proposal to shift power away from an oligopoly that exercises inordinate control over consumers’ financial prospects and towards a fairer system that better respects consumers and reduces racial inequality.
In collaboration with grassroots and faith-based partners working in communities of color, Demos is challenging Florida’s racially discriminatory attack on voting rights in the wake of unprecedented turnout by voters of color in the 2020 presidential election.
Although the path forward is still uncertain, one thing is clear: There is momentum around voting rights, and Americans across the country are ready for our elected officials to do everything they can to make it easier — not harder — to vote.
"Although credit scores never formally take race into account, they draw on data about personal borrowing and payment history that is shaped by generations of discriminatory public policies and corporate practices that limit access to wealth for Black and Latinx families."
"Central to the work of racial justice is ensuring that Black and brown, our most marginalized communities, our most marginalized residents of this country, have access to the ballot."
“The government has not asked questions of the banks for this latest bailout—protecting the priorities of banks and shareholders. But for the rest of us, not so much.”
“In their genesis, they’re about preventing Black people in the South from voting. So especially in our pursuit of a multiracial, inclusive democracy, these laws can’t exist.”
In 2016, a report from the progressive think tank Demosfound that most campaign dollars in local elections were coming from contributors who are white, male and high-income.
“Voting rights is the foundational issue in American politics and American society. Simply put, if we don’t all have an equal say, how can we expect to have an equal chance?”
"State officials are rightly wary of the goals of the commission because it does seem that the whole purpose for setting it up is to justify a preordained conclusion that somehow millions of votes were cast illegally in the last election," says Brenda Wright, vice president for policy and legal strategies at Demos, a progressive think tank. "That's the verdict, and now they want to hold a trial." [...]
Without the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, lenders preying on communities of color would continue to pull in windfall gains, while widening the racial wealth gap and undermining the precarious financial stability of vulnerable households.
Demos (pronounced with long "e") — a public-policy group trying to shape a Democratic agenda on working-class issues like household indebtedness, college affordability and economic challenges facing young people — tested economic messages with an online survey of 1,536 registered voters in June.
FESSLER: Brenda Wright is with Demos, a liberal advocacy group. She notes that the main purpose of the motor voter law is to make it easier to register but also harder to remove legitimate voters from the rolls.
WRIGHT: The problems that DOJ should be focusing on are that too few eligible people have access to the vote and are voting. DOJ going after states to force them to do more purging is exactly the opposite of what the department should be doing.