Beyond The Network - Election Edition

Below are some highlights for what is happening on the political reform front inside and outside the Midwest Democracy Network region during Tuesday’s elections.

2010 Judicial Elections Increase Pressure on Courts, Reform Groups Say
According to a Justice at Stake analysis,  Election Day 2010 brought a new round of special interest money, nasty ads and wedge issue politics into America’s courtrooms, breaking several spending records and spreading costly, ideological hardball campaigns into new states.

In Michigan, Supreme Court candidates were vastly outspent by political parties and an out-of-state group in a TV ad war whose cost was estimated at $5 million to $8 million and organized efforts to unseat high court justices failed in Illinois.

As they have done several times over the last decade, voters rejected efforts to change judicial selection systems.In Nevada, Question 1,  which would have replaced competitive elections with judicial appointments and retention contests, was defeated.But in Kansas, voters in District 1 also defeated efforts to scrap a merit selection system and switch to competitive contests.

“Pressure on impartial justice is growing,” said Bert Brandenburg, executive director of the Justice at Stake Campaign.“Judges are facing more demands to be accountable to interest groups and political campaigns instead of the law and the constitution.”

For more information, visit the Judicial Elections 2010 website.

Republicans take majority in Midwest
Republicans will control both houses of the legislature in Michigan, Pennsylvania,  Ohio, Wisconsin and Indiana after Democrats entered the election with control of the lower house and Wisconsin’s Senate, according to Stateline. All those states also will have Republican governors come January, giving the party sizable opportunities to implement policy.

Republicans also picked up the Montana House, both houses of the Minnesota Legislature and both houses of the Maine Legislature. Maine joined Wisconsin in going from complete Democratic control of state government,  including the legislature and the governorship, to complete Republican control. The hotly contested New York Senate remains up in the air, as do legislative chambers in Colorado, Washington and Oregon.

Reports of Intimidation and Electronic Problems Surface at Polls Across the U.S.
According to The New York Times,  officials from the Election Protection Coalition, an association of voting rights groups that operated a national hot line for voting-related complaints, said that by early Tuesday evening their hot line had received more than 15,000 calls, with the most coming from California, Texas, Pennsylvania, New York and Georgia.

Although most were general inquiries, nearly 2,100 involved reports of problems like polls opening late, machine malfunctions and confusion over voter registrations. More than 200 calls involved claims of voter intimidation.

“One of the most worrisome things we’re seeing is an uptick in voter intimidation and misinformation compared to prior elections,” said Wendy Weiser, director of the voting rights and elections project at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

Articles
Scattered snags reported in midterm balloting - CNN
A Roundup of Voter Problems - Fox News
Thousands of Complaints on Election Day Trickery - ABC News
Some complaints surface amid stepped-up efforts to monitor voting fraud - The Washington Post

New challenge on campaign finance declined
According to The Washington Post,  the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit requiring groups to register as political action committees even if they spend money in federal elections independent of the candidates or political parties.

Eight of the nine members of the court upheld disclosure requirements in the Citizens United case, which allowed unlimited spending by corporations and unions to support or oppose candidates

It was the second time since the court’s controversial 5 to 4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that the justices have passed on a challenge that would again bring the issue of campaign finance to the court.