Participatory democracy and civic engagement are bedrock American values. What we should be doing as a nation is working very hard to expand voter participation, and to bring everyone into our electoral system so that everyone has a voice. That’s what democracy is all about.

Expanding voter participation, and not suppressing it, is the way to live up to America’s most cherished ideals. So that’s why it is disturbing  to see concerted efforts in a number of states – driven by conservative governors and legislators – to make voting more difficult with a “round up the usual suspects” approach.

What is the justification for this? I don’t know and I don’t understand. The so-called evidence of the need for this assault on voting rights appears to be anecdotal–stories of mysterious buses appearing at the polling places and dropping off strange people who march inside en masse and cast ballots. These appear to have about as much credibility as Elvis sightings.

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The voting booth is the one place where we all are presumed equal, yet the reality this year is that the playing field is far from level.   This core American value is threatened this year by some politicians who have manipulated laws for their own gain by passing restrictions that could make it harder for millions of Americans to vote.  Numerous independent, non-partisan studies indicate that those most affected by the new rules are minorities, young people, seniors and low-income people.
 
As National Voter Registration Day approaches on September 25, a broad coalition of civil rights, faith-based and social justice organizations, and groups representing communities of color will host a press conference call to discuss the “state of emergency” in voting, the particular challenges facing their communities, and the steps and resources all can use to ensure that they are able to exercise their right and civic duty to vote.   

Download the entire press release below.

Enveloped by red, white, and blue, thousands of black and brown faces will stand out this week at the Democratic National Convention, mirroring an increasingly diverse America and contrasting with scenes from the Republican convention that just ended.

Led by a president with a black father and a white mother, Democrats will tout diversity and sell themselves as inclusionary, sensitive to the most marginalized, and hip to the nation's changing demographics. Of their delegates, one study found, 26 percent are black.

The same study found that 2.1 percent of this year's GOP delegates are black. Republican activists see themselves as defenders of hard work and merit without regard to creed or color - their presidential nominee, after all, is a Mormon - and they recoil at Democrats' use of an affirmative-action system to pick some delegates based on race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

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"Having a party system based on race is not that different from the party systems in the Middle East based on religion," said analyst David A. Bositis, who compiled racial data on the delegates for the nonpartisan Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington.

A "chasm" now exists between Republicans and African Americans, Bositis said. Part of it is a response to the rise of the tea party, he said, which is perceived as hostile to blacks. He said only two of the 165 national GOP committee people are black.

Although Obama helped bring additional blacks into the Democratic column, Bositis said a bigger draw is some of the party's policies. He said that Obama's health-care reform law, for example, helps minorities more than whites because they are more likely to be uninsured.

Read more at Philly.com.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic studies today released its quadrennial report, Blacks and the 2012 Democratic National Convention, which tracks both African American participation at the event and, more broadly, the relationship between African Americans and the Democratic Party.

The Convention Guide provides a comprehensive look at African Americans, their voting patterns and preferences and their relationship as voting citizens to the Democratic Party. It contains historical data about black voting patterns in recent decades and focuses on states where the black vote has the potential to affect the outcome of the presidential election as well as U.S. Senate contests.

Download the full press release below.

While the 2008 Democratic National Convention represented an historic occasion for African Americans and black politics when, for the first time, an African American was the Democratic Party’s nominee for President, 2012 represents a somewhat different but still momentous historic occasion--a black President, Barack Obama, seeking re-election.

The presidential election on November 6, 2012, is likely to be quite different from the Obama-McCain election in 2008.  The political climate in 2012 is greatly changed from four years earlier--the Republicans regained control of the U.S. House in 2010, there is substantial national dissatisfaction with the economy and the general direction of the country.  In 2008, demographic and political changes, along with the Obama campaign’s grassroots and internet organizing, changed the electoral map with Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, several states in the American West, and Florida, North Carolina and Virginia in the South moving from red to blue.

This guide details the range of participation by African Americans in the Democratic Party, the geographical and partisan dimensions of the black vote in recent years, and black voters’ attitudes toward many issues that may be significant in the fall campaign. The information will be of interest to political activists and election watchers, as well as to scholars of American politics. Moreover, by better appreciating their own capacity to be influential, black Democrats will be better able to use their influence in pursuit of their public policy interests.

One way to think about this year's election is as a contest between the impact of a sour economy (advantage Romney) and the power of the nation's shifting demographics (advantage Obama).

Put simply, the groups that support President Barack Obama most strongly — blacks, Hispanics, young people, unmarried women — have been growing as a share of the electorate. Those who support Mitt Romney the most — white working men and older people — have not.

This demographic tide is so strong that some Democrats came away from their 2008 victory feeling that a political reordering was in the works that could be as important as the New Deal realignment that ushered in a generation of Democratic strength after the Great Depression.

The Great Recession put a deep dent in that hope of theirs, as it soured most other optimism around America.

But now both Republicans and Democrats see that the demographic tide is still running. But it is running into the effects of the bad economy.

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The Republican Party says delegates aren't asked to identify their race, so they don't know how many are black. The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which has been counting just that since 1974, said Thursday there are at least 47 black delegates, or about 2.1 percent.

Read more at Google News.

From the convention stage here, the Republican Party has tried to highlight its diversity, giving prime speaking slots to Latinos and blacks who have emphasized their party’s economic appeal to all Americans.

But they have delivered those speeches to a convention hall filled overwhelmingly with white faces, an awkward contrast that has been made more uncomfortable this week by a series of racial headaches that have intruded on the party’s efforts to project a new level of inclusiveness.

The tensions come amid a debate within the GOP on how best to lure new voters. The nation’s shifting demographics have caused some Republican leaders to worry not only about the party’s future but about winning in November, particularly in key swing states such as Virginia and Nevada.

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...despite a speaker lineup in Tampa that includes Artur Davis, a black former Democratic congressman; former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice; and Utah congressional candidate Mia Love, who would be the party’s first black congresswoman if she won in November, just 2 percent of convention delegates are black.

That’s according to an analysis by David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Bositis also said that only two members of the 165-member RNC are black and that none of the leaders of the committees responsible for drafting the GOP platform and adopting the convention rules are black.

“This Republican Party base is white, aging and dying off,” he said.

Read more at The Washington Post.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic studies has released its quadrennial report, Blacks and the 2012 Republican National Convention, showing there are at least 47 African Americans among this year’s GOP convention delegates, or 2.1 percent of the total in Tampa.

The Joint Center’s Convention Guide provides a comprehensive look at African Americans, their voting patterns and preferences and their relationship as voting citizens to the Republican Party. It contains historical data about black voting patterns in recent decades and focuses on states where the black vote has the potential to affect the outcome of the presidential election as well as several Senate contests.

Read more by downloading the full press release below.

The 2008 Presidential election was an historic occasion for African Americans, when for the first time, an African American was elected President.  This year, President Obama is seeking a second term, and there is no reason to expect any change in black voting patterns.  President Obama will almost certainly receive strong black support on November 6.  The Republicans’ nominee, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has little history with African Americans.  Further, the growing influence of the anti-black Tea Party within the GOP makes political appeals to African Americans difficult for any Republican office-seeker.  Finally, Romney’s Mormon faith is off-putting to many African Americans since for much of their history, Mormons held blacks to be inferior to whites.  The divide between African Americans and the Republican Party, once so narrow, has become a chasm.

This guide details the range of participation by African Americans in the Republican Party, the geographical and partisan dimensions of the black vote in recent years, and black voters’ attitudes toward many issues that may be significant in the fall campaign. The information will be of interest to political activists and election watchers, as well as to scholars of American politics. Moreover, by better appreciating their own capacity to be influential, black Republicans, despite their low numbers among the voting population, will nonetheless be better able to use what influence they have in pursuit of their public policy interests.

Mia Love is not a household name. But ask any savvy Republican here, and they’ll tell you the mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah, is one of the party’s political phenoms. Love, 37, is a congressional candidate for Utah’s 4th district. More importantly, she’s a black Mormon with sterling Tea Party credentials. This is the sort of improbable resume that earns you a coveted speaking slot on the convention’s first night — even when you’re down by double digits in one of the most conservative states in the U.S.

When Love took the stage in Tampa Tuesday night, the Utah delegation roared to life, whipping orange Love 4 Utah towels like rabid football fans. Even Stephen Sandstrom, a veteran of the state legislature whom Love beat for the nomination, looked gratified as she drew standing ovations. Love “says a lot about the state of Utah and about where we are as a country,” says Sandstrom, who hastened to add that he was a big supporter. “She’s combating stereotypes about what it means to be a Republican. We’re a big tent.”

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The diversity pageant is a timeworn tactic at Republican conventions. Soul singers performed at the 2000 convention in Philadelphia, when George W. Bush sought to bring more minority voters into the GOP fold. The number of black delegates peaked at 167 in 2004, 16.7% percent of the overall total. But it plummeted again in 2008, and this year’s confab in Tampa drew just 46 black delegates, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and the Atlanta Journal Constitution. According to Pew, 87% of Republicans are white, a figure that has held steady since 2000.

Read more at TIME.