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Formation | 2016 |
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Founder | Lawrence Lessig |
Purpose | Promote citizen equality and reform institutions that currently defeat that equality |
Location | |
Methods | Litigation and advocacy |
Executive Director | Adam Eichen |
Charles Kolb, Celinda Lake, Lawrence Lessig, Richard Painter, Robert Reich | |
Website | equalcitizens |
Equal Citizens is an American non-profit, non-partisan group that is "dedicated to reforms that will achieve citizen equality". [1] It was founded in late 2016 by Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig to continue the effort to bring about the set of reforms he proposed during his 2016 presidential campaign. Notably, as its inaugural campaign, the group launched "Electors Trust" immediately after the 2016 general election. They did this to provide free and strictly confidential legal support to any elector who wished to vote their conscience. Working together with several other groups, such as the Hamilton Electors and celebrities, the campaign resulted in the largest number of "faithless" electoral votes ever cast in a single presidential election. [2]
Equal Citizens has engaged in other high-profile legal cases across the U.S. on topics ranging from altering the campaign finance system with litigation to end super PACs, to amending the presidential election system with litigation that challenges the winner-take-all system of the Electoral College, to expanding vote-by-mail access [3] to young voters.
As of 2021, Equal Citizens is a coalition partner in the Declaration for American Democracy coalition [4] advocating for the passage of the For the People Act, John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and D.C. Statehood.
Equal Citizens also hosts the podcast Another Way, [5] hosted by Lawrence Lessig. The podcast is part of the Democracy Group, [6] a network of podcasts organized and funded by The McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State.
In August 2015, Lawrence Lessig announced his candidacy for the 2016 Democratic Party's presidential nomination. Lessig described his candidacy as a referendum on campaign finance reform and electoral reform legislation and stated that, if elected, he would serve as president with these proposed reforms as legislative priorities. Specifically, the main focus of Lessig's presidency would be to pass the Citizen Equality Act which has three main objectives: (1) Equal right to vote, which includes implementing automatic voter registration and moving voting days to a national holiday; (2) equal representation, achieved through the passage of the Fair Representation Act; and (3) citizen funded elections, or public financing of congressional elections. In November 2015, Lessig ended his presidential campaign, and created Equal Citizens from the campaign infrastructure. Equal Citizens serves as the operational hub for accomplishing the reforms proposed in the Citizen Equality Act.
The group comprises two sister organizations: EqualCitizens.US, a 501(c)(4) organization, and Equal Citizens Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization. EqualCitizens.US carries out grassroots advocacy campaigns, while the Equal Citizens Foundation focuses on educational and litigation projects. Both organizations aim to achieve the same mission of citizen equality.
Lessig is the founder and president of Equal Citizens.
The following individuals serve as the Board of Directors of Equal Citizens Foundation:
Funding for Equal Citizens comes from small-dollar online donations and grants from philanthropic foundations. Equal Citizens does not accept funds from governments, intergovernmental organizations, political parties, or corporations.
In September 2017, Equal Citizens launched a 30-day crowdfunding campaign to fund their litigation to challenge winner-take-all in the Electoral College. In those 30 days, over 35,000 people signed up, over 5,000 people donated, and the crowdfunding goal of $250,000 was met several days before the deadline. [7]
Equal Citizens' mission is to "end the corruption of our representative democracy by restoring the core promise of citizen equality in our Constitution".
The group has three main issue areas: [8]
In 2017, Equal Citizens launched three high-profile litigation projects that sought to reform the Electoral College and campaign finance. Two of the litigation projects have concluded, while one is currently being processed in the federal court system.
Equal Votes was a legal challenge to the constitutionality of a state's ability to allocate their electoral votes in a winner-take-all basis. [9] Lessig argued that based on the "one person, one vote" principle already articulated by the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore , the winner-take-all system is unconstitutional—it is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause that ensures all votes must be treated equally under the law. [10] By allocating their Electoral College votes according to winner-take-all, Equal Citizens believes states effectively discard the votes of United States citizens in the vote for president.
The Equal Votes litigation team is led by Bush v. Gore lawyer David Boies and includes attorneys from distinguished law firms across the country such as Alston & Bird and Steptoe & Johnson. The litigation strategy advisory team includes former White House chief ethics lawyer Richard Painter, and legal scholars Samuel Issacharoff and Guy-Uriel Charles.
In September 2017, Equal Citizens launched a 30-day crowdfunding campaign to raise $250,000 to fund the beginning stages of the Equal Votes project, and succeeded in meeting the funding goal before the deadline. [11] During the campaign, the law firm of Boies, Schiller & Flexner volunteered to lead the litigation pro bono. [12]
On February 21, 2018, under the leadership of Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, the litigation team filed four lawsuits in four states—California, Texas, Massachusetts, and South Carolina—on behalf of a diverse group of Democrats and Republicans whose votes for president do not matter in the general election under the winner-take-all system. All four cases raised constitutional claims grounded in the 14th and 1st Amendments. In addition, the suits in Texas and South Carolina claimed the present system violates the Voting Rights Act by disenfranchising minority voters. [13] Lessig said that he hoped one of the four cases would get to the Supreme Court "before too far into the 2020 presidential cycle". [14] The Supreme Court denied [15] certiorari on the Equal Vote cases in 2021.
In the 2016 United States presidential election, ten electors voted or attempted to vote contrary to their pledges in the Electoral College. In Washington state, three electors were each fined $1,000 for their vote, and in Colorado, one elector was removed and two others were threatened for breaking their pledge. In 2017, Equal Citizens filed the case Baca v. Colorado Department of State [16] on behalf of three electors in Colorado and Guerra v. Washington State Office of Administrative Hearings [17] on behalf of the three electors who were fined by Washington State.
In explaining the litigation, Equal Citizens' chief counsel Jason Harrow argued that "the framers of the Constitution intended presidential electors to be able to exercise independent judgment in casting their votes for president of the United States". [18] In March 2017, an administrative law judge rejected the arguments of the Washington plaintiffs. Thurston County Superior Court Judge Carol Murphy later denied their claim in December 2017. [19] After the ruling, Harrow said that Murphy's decision did not affect Equal Citizens' goal of eventually taking the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. [20] The Washington Supreme Court later upheld the fines. In April 2018, U.S. District Court Senior Judge Wiley Y. Daniel rejected the Colorado plaintiffs' case, declaring that they lacked standing. [21] Equal Citizens appealed the judge's decision, [22] and a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled 2–1 in favor of the electors, finding that Colorado's faithless elector law is unconstitutional. [23] The Washington electors further appealed their case to the U.S. Supreme Court, while Colorado also appealed the decision of the Tenth Circuit. On January 17, 2020, the Supreme Court agreed to hear both cases during the 2019–2020 term. [24] On July 6, 2020, the Court ruled unanimously against the electors, deciding that states have the power to force electors to follow the state's popular vote. [25] [26] Lessig said following the decision: [27]
When we launched these cases, we did it because regardless of the outcome, it was critical to resolve this question before it created a constitutional crisis. We have achieved that. Obviously, we don't believe the Court has interpreted the constitution correctly. But we are happy that we have achieved our primary objective—this uncertainty has been removed. That is progress.
Alaskan law limits contributions to independent political groups. [28] But these limits are no longer enforced because of a federal court decision, SpeechNOW.org v. FEC. Alaska, however, permits residents to file a lawsuit if the state election management body, the Alaska Public Offices Commission, is not enforcing its election law. Under these rules, on January 31, 2018, Equal Citizens brought a complaint on behalf of three Alaska citizens, including James Barnett, a former Anchorage municipal politician, claiming the Alaska Public Offices Commission did not enforce the law by letting two Alaskan super PACs accept contributions greater than the amount stipulated by Alaska law. [29] The two super PACs involved are Interior Voters for John Coghill, an outside group that supported the election of Republican state Senate majority leader John Coghill, and Working Families of Alaska. [30] The goal is to relitigate the federal court decision SpeechNOW.org v. FEC that created the legal entity of super PACs. [31]
The case is currently at the Alaska Supreme Court, where it was argued in January 2021. [32]
In December 2016 Lawrence Lessig, Mark Lemley, and Michael Hawley established The Electors Trust with the backing of Equal Citizens, to provide pro bono legal counsel and a secure, anonymous communications platform for the 538 members of the United States Electoral College who could potentially become faithless electors to prevent the election of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. [33] [34] The goal of the organization was also to help electors determine whether there was sufficient support to prevent Donald Trump's election. [35] In December 2016, Lessig claimed that there were between 20 and 30 Republican electors considering voting against Trump. [36]
The Electors Trust offered counsel through California law firm Durie Tangri. [37] On December 15, 2016, Lessig told reporters that The Electors Trust had spent $20,000 for security for its lawyers due to threats from Trump supporters. [38]
Lessig and The Electors Trust represented Christopher Suprun, an elector from Texas, who announced he would vote against Donald Trump regardless of how his state voted. [39]
Working together with several other groups such as the Hamilton Electors as well as celebrities, the campaign resulted in seven "faithless" electoral votes, the most ever cast in a single presidential election. [2] However, five of these seven faithless electors defected from voting for Hillary Clinton, while two of these seven faithless electors were pledged for Trump. This meant that the campaign fell 35 faithless Trump electors short of the 37 needed to potentially change the outcome.
In June 2018, Equal Citizens launched an advocacy campaign partnered with Demand Progress, the EFF, Public Knowledge, and the Internet Archive to pressure Congress to change provisions in the Compensating Legacy Artists for their Songs, Service, and Important Contributions to Society Act (The CLASSICS Act). [40] Their main demand, articulated in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, was to add a registration requirement to any copyright extension, so as to allow unregistered works to pass into the public domain. [41]
In May 2018, Equal Citizens, in partnership with musician Bassnectar and the electronic music festival Electric Forest, launched the Creative Democracy Contest, in which online users could enter art depicting facts about American democracy for prizes. [42] Judges for the contest included Lawrence Lessig, actress Bridgit Mendler, and artist Sebastian Wahl. [43]
Lester Lawrence Lessig III is an American legal scholar and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. He is the founder of Creative Commons and of Equal Citizens. Lessig was a candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for president of the United States in the 2016 U.S. presidential election but withdrew before the primaries.
In the United States, the Electoral College is the group of presidential electors that is formed every four years during the presidential election for the sole purpose of voting for the president and vice president. The process is described in Article II of the U.S. Constitution. The number of electoral votes a state has equals its number of Senators (2) plus its number of Representatives in the House of Representatives, the latter being dependent on the Census's reported population. Each state appoints electors using legal procedures determined by its legislature, equal in number to its congressional delegation totaling 535 electors in the 50 states. A 1961 amendment granted the federal District of Columbia three electors. Federal office holders, including senators and representatives, cannot be electors. Of the current 538 electors, a simple majority of 270 or more electoral votes is required to elect the president and vice president. If no candidate achieves a majority there, a contingent election is held by the House of Representatives to elect the president and by the Senate to elect the vice president.
In the politics of the United States, elections are held for government officials at the federal, state, and local levels. At the federal level, the nation's head of state, the president, is elected indirectly by the people of each state, through an Electoral College. Today, these electors almost always vote with the popular vote of their state. All members of the federal legislature, the Congress, are directly elected by the people of each state. There are many elected offices at state level, each state having at least an elective governor and legislature. There are also elected offices at the local level, in counties, cities, towns, townships, boroughs, and villages; as well as for special districts and school districts which may transcend county and municipal boundaries.
In the United States Electoral College, a faithless elector is an elector who does not vote for the candidates for U.S. President and U.S. Vice President for whom the elector had pledged to vote, and instead votes for another person for one or both offices or abstains from voting. As part of United States presidential elections, each state selects the method by which its electors are to be selected, which in modern times has been based on a popular vote in most states, and generally requires its electors to have pledged to vote for the candidates of their party if appointed. A pledged elector is only considered a faithless elector by breaking their pledge; unpledged electors have no pledge to break. The consequences of an elector voting in a way inconsistent with their pledge vary from state to state.
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among a group of U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their electoral votes to whichever presidential ticket wins the overall popular vote in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The compact is designed to ensure that the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide is elected president, and it would come into effect only when it would guarantee that outcome.
Electoral reform in the United States refers to efforts to change American elections and the electoral system used in the United States.
The 2008 United States presidential election in Alaska took place on November 4, 2008, as part of the nationwide presidential election held throughout all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Voters chose 3 electors, or representatives to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.
The 2016 United States presidential election was the 58th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 2016. The Republican ticket, businessman Donald Trump and Indiana governor Mike Pence defeated the Democratic ticket of former secretary of state and First Lady of the United States Hillary Clinton and the junior senator from Virginia, Tim Kaine, in what was considered one of the biggest political upsets in American history. It was the fifth and most recent presidential election in which the winning candidate lost the popular vote. It was also the sixth and most recent presidential election in US History in which both major party candidates were registered in the same home state; the others have been in 1860, 1904, 1920, 1940, and 1944.
The election of the president and the vice president of the United States is an indirect election in which citizens of the United States who are registered to vote in one of the fifty U.S. states or in Washington, D.C., cast ballots not directly for those offices, but instead for members of the Electoral College. These electors then cast direct votes, known as electoral votes, for president, and for vice president. The candidate who receives an absolute majority of electoral votes is then elected to that office. If no candidate receives an absolute majority of the votes for president, the House of Representatives elects the president; likewise if no one receives an absolute majority of the votes for vice president, then the Senate elects the vice president.
This article contains lists of official and potential third-party and independent candidates associated with the 2016 United States presidential election.
The 2020 United States presidential election was the 59th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 2020. The Democratic ticket of former vice president Joe Biden and the junior U.S. senator from California Kamala Harris defeated the incumbent Republican president, Donald Trump, and vice president, Mike Pence. The election took place against the backdrop of the global COVID-19 pandemic and related recession. The election saw the highest voter turnout by percentage since 1900, with each of the two main tickets receiving more than 74 million votes, surpassing Barack Obama's record of 69.5 million votes from 2008. Biden received more than 81 million votes, the most votes ever cast for a candidate in a U.S. presidential election.
In the 2016 United States presidential election, ten members of the Electoral College voted or attempted to vote for a candidate different from the ones to whom they were pledged. Three of these votes were invalidated under the faithless elector laws of their respective states, and the elector either subsequently voted for the pledged candidate or was replaced by someone who did. Although there had been a combined total of 155 instances of individual electors voting faithlessly prior to 2016 in over two centuries of previous US presidential elections, 2016 was the first election in over a hundred years in which multiple electors worked to alter the result of the election.
The 2020 United States presidential election in Alabama took place on Tuesday, November 3, 2020, as part of the 2020 United States presidential election in which all 50 states and the District of Columbia participated. Alabama voters chose nine electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote pitting incumbent Republican President Donald Trump and his running mate, incumbent Vice President Mike Pence, against Democratic challenger and former Vice President Joe Biden and his running mate, United States Senator Kamala Harris of California. Also on the ballot was the Libertarian nominee, psychology lecturer Jo Jorgensen and her running mate, entrepreneur and podcaster Spike Cohen. Write-in candidates were permitted without registration, and their results were not individually counted.
The 2020 United States presidential election in Alaska took place on Tuesday, November 3, 2020, as part of the 2020 United States presidential election in which all 50 states and the District of Columbia participated. Alaska voters chose three electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote pitting incumbent Republican President Donald Trump and his running mate, incumbent Vice President Mike Pence, against Democratic challenger and former Vice President Joe Biden and his running mate, United States Senator Kamala Harris of California. The Libertarian, Green, Constitution, and Alliance Party nominees were also on the ballot, as was an Independent candidate.
The 2020 United States presidential election in California was held on Tuesday, November 3, 2020, as part of the 2020 United States presidential election in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia participated. California voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote, pitting the Republican Party's nominee, incumbent President Donald Trump, and running mate Vice President Mike Pence against Democratic Party nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his running mate Kamala Harris, the junior senator from California. California had, in the 2020 election 55 electoral votes in the Electoral College, the most of any state. California was one of six states where Trump received a larger percentage of the two-party vote than he did in 2016. This election also marked the first time since 2004 that the Republican candidate won more than one million votes in Los Angeles County, due to increased turnout.
The concept of a "tipping-point state" is used in some analyses of United States presidential elections. In a list of states ordered by decreasing margin of victory for the winning candidate, the tipping point state is the first state where the combined electoral votes of all states up to that point in the list give the winning candidate a majority in the Electoral College.
Chiafalo v. Washington, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case on the issue of "faithless electors" in the Electoral College stemming from the 2016 United States presidential election. The Court ruled unanimously, by a vote of 9–0, that states have the ability to enforce an elector's pledge in presidential elections. Chiafalo deals with electors who received US$1,000 fines for not voting for the nominees of their party in the state of Washington. The case was originally consolidated with Colorado Department of State v. Baca, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), a similar case based on a challenge to a Colorado law providing for the removal and replacement of an elector who does not vote for the presidential candidate who received the most votes in the state, with the electors claiming they have discretion to vote as they choose under the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution. On March 10, 2020, Justice Sonia Sotomayor recused herself in the Colorado case due to a prior relationship to a respondent, and the cases were decided separately on July 6, 2020. Baca was a per curiam decision that followed from the unanimous ruling in Chiafalo against the faithless electors and in favor of the state.
How to Steal a Presidential Election is a 2024 non-fiction book written by Lawrence Lessig and Matthew Seligman which examines the various legal frameworks that the loser of a presidential election in the United States could use to assume office in spite of the election results. Cataloging several courses of action a losing presidential election candidate or members of their party could take in the aftermath of a contested election, the book also examines critical failures in the Electoral Count Act of 1887 (ECA) and the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 (ECRA). The book was inspired by the events of the 2020 United States presidential election and the subsequent attack on the Capitol.