The Drawing Democracy Coalition, which consists of civil rights, democracy, and community groups across the Commonwealth, has been fighting to achieve fair districts that equitably represent communities of color, low-income people, and immigrants through a transparent process and maximum community engagement. After reviewing the maps proposed by the Joint Committee on Redistricting, the coalition has important recommendations that would improve representation in the MA Legislature.
Tomorrow, the MA Senate will be taking up the VOTES Act, which contains a number of important pro-democracy reforms such as making expanded early voting and vote-by-mail permanent and enacting Same Day Registration so that voters can register or update their registration at the polls.
The MA Senate deserves credit for advancing a strong and comprehensive bill with popular, time-tested, and effective reforms. But the Senate can also make the bill even stronger by including the following amendments:
Amendment #1 (Hinds): Protecting ballot access for eligible incarcerated people, which would require correctional officials to send incarcerated individuals information about their rights, distribute registration forms and absentee ballots to all eligible voters, and ensure that the votes are collected and transferred to election officials, among other reforms to the jail-based voting language.
Amendment #4 (Rausch): Paid time off for voting, which would guarantee workers 2 hours of paid time off to vote, making sure that long hours are not a barrier to participation.
Amendment #111 (Chang-Diaz): Providing Access for Transliterated Ballots, which provides for transliteration of ballots in languages that do not use the Roman alphabet, thereby ensuring that language is not a barrier to full participation.
Amendment #17 (Rausch): Ensuring Access to Ballot Drop Boxes, which requires municipalities to have at least one secure and accessible drop box location with a requirement that larger ones have at least one secured municipal ballot drop box for each twenty-five thousand registered voters.
Amendments #18 & 19 (Rausch): Ensuring Election Day Registration in All Elections / Ensuring Vote By Mail Access in Municipal Elections, which ensure that the reforms in the bill apply to preliminary and general municipal elections. Amendment #28 (Rausch): Permitting Vote By Mail Ballots to be Returned to Regular Polling Places, which would allow voters to drop off mail ballots at their regular polling locations.
Right now, families are charged exorbitant fees to maintain vital connections with incarcerated loved ones. This is a regressive tax on the most vulnerable populations of the Commonwealth that also harms public safety by limiting communication and weakening community bonds .
While only 21 percent of the state’s population is Black or Latinx, more than 54 percent of the people imprisoned by the Department of Corrections are. Black and Latinx children are, respectively, nine and three times more likely than White children to have a parent in prison. As communities already struggle with the high cost of housing, health care, and transportation, no one should be forced to choose between paying rent or buying groceries and maintaining contact with loved ones.
Today, the Judiciary Committee will be hearing testimony on important legislation to eliminate such fees.
Redistricting and YOU: How to Effectively Lobby for Fair Maps in MA
This year — likely this MONTH, the Massachusetts Legislature will be drawing the legislative and Congressional districts for the next decade. The Drawing Democracy Coalition recently released a Unity Map informed by community groups across the state. What are the key features of this map? How does one set priorities in redistricting? What makes a map fair? And how can we be effective advocates?
Next Thursday at 7 pm, we’ll have a discussion with Jordan Berg Powers of Mass Alliance, Beth Huang of the Massachusetts Voter Table, and Roberto Jiménez Rivera of the Boston Teachers Union.
Today (Tuesday, September 28) is National Voter Registration Day, and there couldn’t be a better day to reflect on how we can eliminate the unnecessary barriers people face to participating in our democracy.
This fall, the MA Legislature will likely pass an election reform package that makes permanent the popular voting reforms from the past two years like expanded early voting and vote-by-mail. However, just passing those alone is not enough. We have an opportunity to pass an ambitious bill that finally tackles some of the enduring obstacles to participation.
It means passing Same Day Registration so that all eligible voters can register to vote or update their registration at the polls.
And that means passing strong language around Jail-Based Voting to end the de facto disenfranchisement that too often happens behind the wall and leaves returning citizens unsure about their rights.
We can pass a strong bill that includes such reforms, but for that to happen, your legislators need to be hearing from you.
Upcoming Events
Drawing Democracy Coalition to Release Unity Maps
The Drawing Democracy Coalition will be revealing its unity maps for state legislative redistricting @ 1 pm. Tune in on Facebook to learn more about our proposal for fair districts and how we can build political power for BIPOC, immigrant & low-income communities.
Rally to Defend Abortion: Saturday, 10/2
This Saturday, October 2, please join allies NARAL MA, ACLU of Massachusetts, and Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund of Massachusetts for the Boston Rally to Defend Abortion.
Abortion access and reproductive freedom are under attack across the country. Texas’ SB8 has emboldened anti-abortion politicians to propose copycat laws in their states. To make matters worse, the United States Supreme Court, which allowed this blatantly unconstitutional law to stand, is set to hear the most consequential challenge to abortion rights in thirty years, on December 1.
As a national model for reproductive freedom, Massachusetts must lead the fight to defend abortion.
On Wednesday, October 6, the Election Modernization Coalition is hosting a Lobby Day for the VOTES Act Lobby from 12 Noon to 1:30 PM via Zoom.
As a reminder, the VOTES Act (S.459) would implement many of the reforms that Massachusetts voters have grown used to, like voting by mail and early in-person voting, along with new reforms like Same Day Registration (SDR) and risk-limiting audits.
The Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight is hearing testimony today in support of honoring Indigenous Peoples Day on the second Monday of October.
The Massachusetts Legislature is currently considering a proposal to spend $50 million to build a new women’s prison to replace MCI-Framingham.
Backers of the project often tout that the new facility for the approximately 125 women still incarcerated there will be a “trauma-informed” prison. But here’s the problem: there’s no such thing as a trauma-informed prison. Despite the statistics which have proven that incarceration increases the likelihood that a person will reoffend once released, the state continues to pour money into a carceral system that we know does not keep our communities safe and, instead, increases recidivism.
Alternatives to the carceral status quo are necessary and possible, and the first step is to press pause on the construction of new prisons and jails that lock in the current system. That is why we’re supporting S.2030/H.1905, which would impose a five-year moratorium on prison and jail construction
Starting tomorrow (or, if you’re reading this in the morning, “today”), human rights advocates across the state will begin a week-long walk from Springfield to Boston to bring awareness to the need to create such alternatives to incarceration by directly addressing root causes, such as the inability to access housing, food, and jobs.
If you can join for all or part of the walk, RSVP here!
If you can’t join, you can still make a difference by contacting your state legislators in support of S.2030/H.1905. Send them an email here.
Last week, the right-wing Supreme Court ruled against the extension of the CDC’s federal eviction moratorium, putting millions of tenants at risk across the country.
While we wait for Congress to take action, we can take action here in Massachusetts by passing the COVID Housing Equity Bill.
Massachusetts has hundreds of millions of dollars in federal rental assistance, but the application process is complex and resources are not reaching tenants in time to prevent unnecessary evictions.
The COVID Housing Equity Bill complements and strengthens the work of these existing programs by (1) ensuring that landlords pursue and cooperate with rental assistance programs before evicting, (2) pausing no-fault evictions through March 2022, and (3) pausing residential foreclosures, among other steps.
Housing is a human right, and never has that been more clear than during a pandemic.
If you live in Boston, Brockton, Framingham, Gloucester, Haverhill, Lynn, Malden, Medford, Newton, Peabody, Quincy, Revere, Salem, Somerville, or Worcester, then today is the last day to register to vote or update your registration before the September 14th preliminary. You can do that online here.
That, however, raises a key question: Why do we even have such a 20-day cutoff at all?
Our neighbors in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Connecticut all allow eligible voters to register or update their registration at the polls. In total, 20 states and DC have Same Day Registration.
So we know it’s possible. And we know it works: studies have shown that Same Day Registration is one of the best reforms for increasing voter participation.
When the MA House and MA Senate consider a voting reform package this fall to make some of last year’s changes permanent, it’s vital that Same Day Registration be a part of it.
The pandemic has made many things clear, not least of which is how weak our child care infrastructure is.
And we can change that.
The Common Start Coalition is collecting a set of 1-2 minute videos to send to legislators to make the case for significant investment in the early education and care system, in anticipation of a bill later this legislative session. The Coalition plans to send legislators videos from parents, early educators, and advocates across the Commonwealth about the need for investment.
************************************ VIDEO INSTRUCTIONS
Videos should be under 2 minutes long and can be shot from your cell phone. Please email videos to james@field-first.com and include the spelling of your full name and the city where you live in the email. This will help us determine the legislator for your district.
Outline for Video Testimony
Hi, I’m [name] from [city or town]. If it applies: I’m a [parent/family member/guardian. I’m also [an essential worker, a childcare provider, a family care worker, working from home, unemployed, a business owner, an early educator, etc]. Child care is important to me because [fill in the blank]. When you have the opportunity to fund early education and childcare in Massachusetts, please remember my story because there are many others like me. Please invest in access to safe, high-quality, affordable child care.
Last year, the Legislature passed a police accountability bill that created better standards for police professionalization as well as stronger limitations on the use of force. It was a step forward, but there is much more to be done.
One such example? BanningFacial surveillance technologies.
Facial surveillance technologies are notoriously racist, inaccurate, and harmful. Rather than banning such practices, the bill offered only narrowly tailored regulations and created a Commission to study whether to do more.
They need to do more.
The Commission will be hearing public comment this Friday at 11 am.
Want to see stronger regulations of facial surveillance? You can sign up to give public testimony here — or submit written testimony here.
Tomorrow, the Legislature will hold a hearing on a bill to impose a five-year moratorium on the construction of new prisons and jails.
This is particularly urgent because the state wants to spend 50 million dollars to build a new prison to house just over 100 women, most of whom are safe to release to their homes and families.
This bill is personal because for the last five years I have been visiting a friend in prison, and I have watched with horror what prisons are really like and what they do to a person. My friend has endured torture unlike anything you can imagine — four years in solitary confinement, starvation, and assaults. The prisons here in Massachusetts are brutal, nightmarish places. As a system and institution for rehabilitation, they simply do not work.
The state says this new facility will be different — it will be a “trauma-informed” prison. But, in visiting Andrew over the last five years, I have learned that there is no such thing as a trauma-informed prison because when a person has no autonomy or freedom in their life and when other human beings have complete and total control over them, there can be no progress towards rehabilitation and no healing from past trauma. We have an opportunity to use this five-year moratorium to reimagine rehabilitation. It costs less to send someone to Harvard then it does to keep someone imprisoned in our state. Think of how much money we could save, how many people could be healed if we were putting that $50,000,000 into education, into therapy, into affordable housing, or even just into food to feed hungry babies.
Every time I visited my friend, I would look at the sign on Cedar Junction’s waiting room that said the goal of the prison was rehabilitation. Sometimes when I read that sign, I would laugh at the absurdity of it, sometimes I would cry at the false promise of it. Massachusetts has an opportunity to think outside the box. We can come up with another alternative for treating people — people who have harmed others and themselves. But inflicting cruel punishment and torture does not make anyone safer. Instead we can approach solving this problem with true compassion and real rehabilitation.
PS: For more information, check out this helpful toolkit from Families for Justice as Healing, Building up People Not Prisons, and the National Council of Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls.
