The group behind a popular get-out-the-vote technology platform said Friday that it's registered more than 100,000 new U.S. voters since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, a surge that came amid mounting Republican efforts to make it harder to register and vote.Vote.org sa...

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The group behind a popular get-out-the-vote technology platform said Friday that it’s registered more than 100,000 new U.S. voters since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, a surge that came amid mounting Republican efforts to make it harder to register and vote.

Vote.org said that 84% of voters registered in the new wave are under age 35. Nearly 1 in 5 new registrees is 18 years old. Andrea Hailey, the group’s CEO, said that “since 2020, we have led the largest voter registration drive in U.S. history,” with more than 7.8 million people registered.

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Earlier this month, U.S. House Republicans passed Rep. Chip Roy’s (R-Texas) Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of American citizenship to vote in federal elections. Republicans claim the bill is meant to fix the virtually nonexistent “problem” of noncitizen voter fraud.

However, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) slammed the bill as a “xenophobic attack” meant to silence “Black voices, brown voices, LBGTQIA+ voices, [and] young voices.”

Earlier this year, U.S. Senate Democrats also reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation its sponsors say will “update and restore critical safeguards of the original Voting Rights Act.”

Meanwhile, Republican-controlled state legislatures and red-state governors are enacting laws imposing tough restrictions on voter registration, with violations punishable by stiff fines that critics say are meant to dissuade people from registration drives and similar efforts.

Again under the guise of preventing fraud, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year signed legislation limiting voter registration drives, with fines of up to $250,000 for violators.

“These draconian laws and rules are like taking a sledgehammer to hit a flea,” Cecile Scoon, an attorney and president of the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters, toldThe New York Times in an article published Friday.

  • tardigrada@beehaw.orgOP
    12·
    1 month ago

    ‘Kamala-mania’ also catching on in Europe among U.S. voters living overseas

    The US government’s Federal Voting Assistance Program estimates there are 2.8 million Americans living overseas who are eligible to vote in federal elections. In 2016, according to the program’s calculations, only 6.9% of them did so.

    Democrats hope they’re now seeing some of that untapped potential activated. DA [Democrats Abroad] said registrations to vote outside the US via the Federal Post Card Application have quintupled in the first three days of this week, rising to more than 3,000, compared with the same period last week. This process registers voters of either party, but DA said the number of its new members also tripled from Monday to Wednesday.

    And similar to what Democratic fundraisers have seen in the US, Porter said money from Americans — foreign citizens are not allowed to donate to US election campaigns — is also pouring into DA. “We do get donations regularly, but this is off the charts,” she said.

    • FIash Mob #5678@beehaw.org
      7·
      1 month ago

      Foreign citizens are not allowed to donate to US election campaign

      Oh, they can indeed. That money just takes a more circuitous route. You might buy a few thousand of Trump’s books or rent a block of rooms at one of his hotels for a while. That’s a lot of money in his pocket that he can loan his campaign at 20% interest legally, and then funnel right back into his pocket. It’s legal and both sides do it.