Tag Archives: elections

Safeguard American Democracy: Oppose the American Confidence in Elections Act and Support the Freedom to Vote Act

Safeguard American Democracy: Oppose the American Confidence in Elections Act and Support the Freedom to Vote Act

Minister Christian Watkins
July 28, 2023

Our country is divided on how to best safeguard American Democracy and the freedom to vote. Some favor continued progress towards a more inclusive democracy with expanded voting protections that benefit all citizens of voting age. Such proponents are in conflict with others who prefer restricted voting laws that make it more difficult for voters to cast a ballot, and whose policies tend to benefit wealthy corporations and individuals. NETWORK Lobby’s Build Anew policy agenda guides our work to forge a multifaith, multi-racial democracy where we all thrive. Paramount to this transformative change is unfettered access to voting. We ask all justice-seekers to join our efforts to safeguard American Democracy and oppose H.R. 4563—the American Confidence in Elections Act and support the Freedom to Vote Act.

While we thank God that the Supreme Court’s holding in Allen v. Milligan protected voting in Alabama’s Black and Brown communities by striking down gerrymandered congressional districts – and the voting power of these communities across the nation, political extremism is still a major threat to our democracy. In 2023, legislators in at least 11 states passed 13 restrictive voting bills. These restrictive voting measures were the result of concerted efforts by dark money special interests and self-serving politicians. Money was funneled to influence policymakers’ decisions to alter voting laws to make it harder for communities of color to vote. Instead of ensuring fair and equal representation promised in our Constitution, Republicans in states across the country have drawn partisan gerrymandered district maps designed to keep political parties and dark money special interests in power.

The prophet Isaiah’s judgement of the rulers and leaders of Jerusalem during their time of seeming prosperity is especially poignant. “They say that what is right is wrong and what is wrong is right; that black is white and white is black; bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter” (Is. 5:20). Sacred reflection is prologue to the contradictory nature of two election related bills recently introduced in the House — the Republican-crafted American Confidence in Elections (ACE) Act (H.R.4563) and the Freedom to Vote Act (FTVA) (H.R.11) — which has bipartisan backing.

The ACE Act (H.R.4563) would:

Limit the choices that voters have when registering to vote
Repeal President Biden’s Executive Order instructing federal agencies to encourage voter registration
Restrict the ability of voters to cast a ballot by mail
Create strict photo ID requirements
Reinforce partisan gerrymandering
Enhance the power of wealthy special interests by increasing contribution limits and maintaining the avenues for anonymous, or dark money, donations

The Act would also restrict private funding of the administration of elections, even as Congressional Republicans refuse to adequately fund the administration of federal elections. And, Washington, D.C. voters are singled out by the legislation as District voters would become guinea pigs for the states, with the establishment of a series of repressive restrictions, including dramatic reductions in drop box access for voters and onerous new voter ID and mail-in voting rules.

Conversely, FTVA (H.R.11), introduced by Rep. John Sarbanes (MD-03) in the House on July 17, 2023, is a transformational pro-voter, anti-corruption bill that is complementary to the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Passage of this bill would be a vital step forward to live into Build Anew’s mission.

The FTVA (H.R.11) would protect the integrity of elections, simplify voter registration, and expand access to the polls. It would:

Protect local election officers and poll workers from harassment and intimidation
Limit gerrymandering
Shine light on “dark money” flooding into campaign advertising

Untraceable funds allow wealthy individuals and corporations to exert undue influence over the political process and erode the democratic ideal of equal representation. The FTVA (H.R.11) would not allow money to effectively drown out the voices of everyday citizens it would enhance the aspirational principle of “we the people” from the Preamble to our Constitution.

The Catholic faith requires that we on honor human dignity. The rise of dark money and undisclosed corporate donations, coupled with restrictive voting measures, casts a shadow on the integrity of our democratic process, and results in diminished dignity for those left out of the process. We are called to recognize and respect the inherent worth and dignity of every human being, no exceptions!

Voting is not only a civic duty but also a means of upholding the dignity of every person, and allowing them to have a voice in shaping their communities, and the larger society. We must actively working towards the elimination of discrimination, prejudice, and systemic racism in all its forms, especially in our elections. NETWORK strongly opposes the House Republican American Confidence in Elections Act The ACE Act, H.R.4563) and calls for the swift passage of the Freedom to Vote Act (FTVA H.R.11).

What We Can Do

Persistence Under Adverse Conditions is Essential for Seeking Justice

Dr. Mara Rutten
Jan 12, 2023

Sr. Kathy Thornton, Sr. Carol Coston, and Sr. Nancy Sylvester

Sr. Carol Coston, OP (center), Sr. Nancy Sylvester, IHM (right), and Sr, Kathy Thornton, RSM (left), served as NETWORK’s first three directors, their tenures spanning the first 30 years of the organization’s existence.

My community recently watched the 2019 Oscar-winning film “Jojo Rabbit,” the story of a young German boy growing up in the last year of World War II. In one scene, Jojo and his mother pass through the public square, where Nazis had recently hanged members of the Resistance.

“What did they do?” Jojo asks her.

She answers, “What they could.”

For those of us who strive for justice in this world, elections can be both inspiring and terrifying, especially when the two main parties refuse to work together. As the House changes hands, we are rightly concerned about what will become of the issues that animate NETWORK’s Build Anew policy agenda: dismantling systemic racism, rooting our economy in solidarity, building inclusive community, and transforming our politics. But whether Congress champions or stymies them, we must carry on, and do what we can.

NETWORK has been in this place before. Although early on it enjoyed the ear of both major parties, that moment was short-lived. Starting with Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, it faced the dilemma of how to lobby “in a milieu in which basic assumptions and values were increasingly alien to ours.” How it persevered through decades of opposition to its mission can be instructive on how to work steadfastly for Catholic Social Justice and the common good in adverse political climates.

Reagan’s approach to cutting programs he didn’t like was to defund them. In his first year, he introduced no new initiatives other than the budget, which drastically cut domestic spending. In this way, he could avoid going through the legislative process, which allowed for public debate about the merits of these programs.

With the regular channels of debate cut off, NETWORK turned to the field, where sisters and social workers could testify to the hardships people were experiencing. It provided members with lobbying kits to help mobilize communities and provide Congress with the much-needed perspective on how its policies affect those in need. It also partnered with 175 organizations to highlight that perspective in a week of HOUSING NOW! events to address rising homelessness.

Despite having a friend in the White House, the 1990s were just as difficult. The GOP’s “Contract with America” promised to shrink government by way of cutting social programs, specifically welfare. The suggested cuts were “mean-spirited calling for harsh, punitive measures for poor women and their children.” Again, NETWORK’s impact was dulled when Congress bypassed traditional hearings, shunting aside organizations protesting its agenda.

“Denied clearance to stand outside House and Senate chambers – where the most effective floor lobbying takes place,” it joined with Pax Christi and several women’s religious congregations to form the Welfare Reform Watch Project. Collecting statistical and anecdotal information about the effects these cuts had on people’s lives, they issued a paper in preparation for a Lobby Day “to insist that welfare reform is about getting people out of poverty not just off welfare.”

George W. Bush also took on social spending under the guise of “compassionate conservatism.” Bush, an evangelical Christian, summed up his governing philosophy by noting, “It is compassionate to actively help our fellow citizens in need. It is conservative to insist on responsibility and results.” This would mean encouraging people to build better lives for themselves without government assistance and to expand responsibility for federally funded programs to religious and community organizations.

NETWORK cautioned that the “proposal implies that individual conversion of ‘morally flawed’ people is the answer to society’s ills, including poverty. This disregards government’s role in shaping social and economic structures that keep people poor” and would enable the government “to abdicate its larger responsibility to protect the rights of the individual and promote the common good.”

Insisting on the government taking responsibility for the welfare of all its citizens is a tenet of Catholic Social Teaching and the thread that has run through NETWORK’s 50-year history. The first Nuns on the Bus tour promoted resistance to Rep. Paul Ryan’s harmful budget, and our members and staff have continued to engage in lobbying and organizing efforts on behalf of such issues as fair tax policies, immigration reform, Medicaid expansion, and reparations.

There have been both wins and losses, but we continue to do the work because we know that the U.S. government’s time is not God’s time. Until our dreams of a just and equitable society come to fruition, we do what we can.

Dr. Mara Rutten is a candidate with the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas and NETWORK’s historian.

This story was originally published in the 1st Quarter issue of Connection. Download the full issue here.

The Faith-Filled Push To Save Democracy

A Stark Choice of Futures Faces Voters in 2022

Melissa Cedillo
October 7, 2022

People cast their votes for federal democracy reform as part of NETWORK’s “Team Democracy” events across the country in 2021. Voting rights, which have come under threat at the state level since the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, are a key component of NETWORK’s efforts to defend democracy.

Upholding a democracy is a daunting task this year. According to the elections data website FiveThirtyEight, 195 out of 529 GOP nominees on the ballot this year “fully denied” the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Dozens of others “raised questions” or accepted the results “with reservations.” Only 71 respondents say they accept the results fully.

As statistics like these surface the vulnerability and fragility of the system, faith groups in Washington and around the country are attuned to the moral urgency that this moment requires.

As the 2022 midterm elections grow closer, the NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice is just one entity among this patchwork of organizations, interfaith coalitions, and campaigns are coming together to respond to election deniers, Christian nationalism, and all the forces that currently threaten democracy in the U.S.

A Particular Threat

Anthea Butler

Anthea Butler, chair of the department of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania and a historian of African-American and U.S. religion, notes that one of the long lasting threats to democracy continues to be Christian nationalism. Butler has written and studied the intersection of race, religion, history, and politics extensively. In her book “White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America,” she outlines the long history of Christian Nationalism and racism in the U.S.

“The first thing to understand about a lot of Christian nationalists is that they don’t want democracy,” Butler says. “Because at [Christian nationalism’s] core, it really wants to set up God’s law, rather than the Constitution, as an operating document for what this country is supposed to be.”

Butler says this form of nationalism poses a threat not only to people who immigrated to the country to flee religious persecution, but also to Christians who do not follow the same political beliefs. Denying the separation of church and state, ignoring the fact that many people who are not Christian live in the U.S., or simply not taking the outcome of the 2020 election seriously are some of the ways Christian nationalism erodes the foundation of a country that celebrates religious freedom.

One group responding to the threat of Christian nationalism is the Center for Faith, Justice, and Reconciliation.

Sabrina Dent

“The ideology that is being promoted by a small group of people that identify as Christians that causes great harm and moral injuries to the community as a whole,” explains Sabrina E. Dent, president of the center.

The center is a community of scholars, faith leaders, organizers, and citizens working to expand the idea of religious freedom in the U.S. The center also works to put on educational programming. The center has worked on immigration issues, LGTBQ+ issues, reproductive health issues, voting rights, environmental issues, criminal justice issues, church and state issues, and voting rights. Whenever the center feels that there is a justice issue, especially when looking at racial and religious minorities, they are willing to speak up and support these groups.

“A lot of our work is done in collaboration with other groups as well because, like I say all the time, this is not work that we could do by ourselves, “ Dent explains.

The Range of Issues

Others, including NETWORK, also see the work of protecting democracy as extending to other freedoms, especially voting rights. Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, himself a Baptist minister, has explained the political as a way to embrace the dignity of all of humanity in his case for expanding voting rights.

“There is no question that voting rights is a moral issue. I have often said that democracy in a real sense is the political enactment of a spiritual idea. This notion that each of us is a child of God, and therefore we ought to have a vote and a voice in the direction of our country and our destiny within it,” Warnock told NPR at the beginning of the year.

“If we don’t have democracy in this country, all human rights in this country are going to be denigrated. We need to fight for democracy,” says Barbara Hazelett, a member of NETWORK’s Virginia Advocates team.

Her group attends public town halls to make comments about justice issues like paid family leave or eliminating practices like solitary confinement. She has attended the local events to hand out leaflets on different topics and talk about state legislation with Virginians. She has also traveled to Washington to advocate for bills.

The comprehensive nature of this work, focusing across a range of issues, exposes a friction that is especially prevalent in Catholic circles, the issue of single-issue voting. Pope Francis, in his 2018 letter Gaudete Et Exsultate, spoke against this approach when he spoke of poverty and human life issues as being “equally sacred” to one another.

He revisited this rhetoric in a June 2020 general audience, in which he noted that “we cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of every human life.”

Min. Christian S. Watkins, government relations advocate at NETWORK, is quick to tie the work of defending democracy to the hyper-racialized rhetoric happening in the U.S. The risk that poses to a healthy democracy is that it continues to feed racist policies that only benefit a few and which intentionally suppress others, especially Black and Brown people. In other words, the system has to live up to its own ideals to protect it in the future.

For the structure of democracy in the U.S. to be authentic, says Watkins, it must include the people that have historically been — and continue to be — left out of democracy: “We have to realize our common bonds, our mutual experiences, our interconnectedness.”