ALEC backs down in wake of backlash over voter ID, "stand your ground" laws
Updated at 3:30 p.m. ET
(CBS News) After coming under fire for pushing controversial laws like Florida's "stand your ground" law -- and losing multiple corporate allies -- an influential conservative legislative group announced on Tuesday it is limiting its scope to economic issues.
Indiana State Rep. David Frizzell, the 2012 National Chairman of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), said in a statement that ALEC is eliminating its Public Safety and Elections task force, which dealt with non-economic issues.
"While we recognize there are other critical, non-economic issues that are vitally important to millions of Americans, we believe we must concentrate on initiatives that spur competitiveness and innovation and put more Americans back to work," Frizzell said.
ALEC, an association comprised of 2,000 state legislators from all 50 states and representatives of corporations, drafts templates of legislation for any state to adopt. For instance, the organization in recent years helped lawmakers from a handful of states introduce and pass similar voter ID laws.
Liberal groups have assailed ALEC for pushing a conservative agenda, and pressure mounted against the group in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, when Florida's "stand your ground" law -- a self-defense law pushed by ALEC - received increased scrutiny nationwide. After progressive groups called for a boycott of companies associated with ALEC, companies like Coca-Cola, Wendy's, Kraft and Intuit dropped their ties to the organization. ALEC's statement today does not mention the loss of support and there is no immediate response from those companies that severed ties.
Some of ALEC's detractors called today's announcement a victory, but warned that the group could still have a detrimental impact on the state legislative process. The liberal blog ThinkProgress hailed ALEC's decision as "a monumental move" but said it "does not change the fact that ALEC will continue to push corporate-friendly conservative economic legislation."
Color of Change, the civil rights organization that pressured corporations to drop their ties to ALEC, completely dismissed the announcement and issued a warning to groups still associated with ALEC.
"ALEC's latest statement is nothing more than a PR stunt aimed at diverting attention from its agenda, which has done serious damage to our communities," ColorOfChange Executive Director Rashad Robinson said in a statement. "To simply say they are stopping non-economic work does not provide justice to the millions of Americans whose lives are impacted by these dangerous and discriminatory laws courtesy of ALEC and its corporate backers... If ALEC's corporate supporters will not hold the institution accountable for the damage it has caused nationwide, then the ColorOfChange community will hold them accountable."
The NAACP, has orchestrated protests against and published reports on voter ID laws and voter suppression, said it was encouraged by today's news but that for many Americans "the damage has already been done."
"This year, because of ALEC, millions of voters who had been eligible to vote in 2008 will be denied access to the ballot box," NAACP President Benjamin Jealous said in a statement. "We may never know how many families will be denied justice because of the 'stand your ground' laws that continue to put communities in danger, or how many families will be torn apart under repressive anti-immigrant laws."
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A product of the Public Safety and Elections Committee is still posted, and influencing conservative state legislators.
On September 7, 2007, ALEC's National Board Members gave final approval to a resolution, passed by its members, in support of the current Electoral College system used to elect the President of the United States.http://www.alec.org/docs/Electoral_College_PR.pdf
ALEC's First Vice Chairman, State Sen. Steve Faris (AR), introduced the resolution after his state came close to passing a bill that would have awarded the state's Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote instead of the winner of the state's popular vote. He said "I am proud ALEC has endorsed this resolution and is committed to oppose all national popular vote legislation."
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps. There would no longer be a handful of 'battleground' states where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in more than 3/4ths of the states that now are just 'spectators' and ignored after the primaries.
When the bill is enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes- enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538), all the electoral votes from the enacting states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC.
The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for President. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action.
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in virtually every state surveyed in recent polls.
Americans believe that the candidate who receives the most votes should win.
Despite ALEC's opposition and influence, the bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers in 21 states. The bill has been enacted by 9 jurisdictions possessing 132 electoral votes - 49% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.
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Obviously not.
So why would anyone want to give away their vote to such a person?
....only if they are crooks and certain the vote will be counted in their favor.
I'm tired of given away my rights to crooks.
It's no surprise that conservative ideas ALWAYS hurt the American people AND their communities.
Yeah, because conservatives have such an excellent record of managing money, the economy, and other fiscal issues. <MASSIVE eyeroll>