ACS video on civil rights enforcement and paper on ranked-choice voting
An email from the American Constitution Society: Earlier today, ACS distributed two sets of materials of likely interest to your readers and the civil rights community.
First, we posted streaming video of a recent panel discussing recent changes in federal civil rights enforcement at the 2006 ACS National Convention. The issue has been in the news cycle since Charlie Savage’s Justice Department expose in The Boston Globe this Sunday. Panelists included the following:
* Roger Clegg, President and General Counsel, Center for Equal Opportunity
* Stuart Ishimaru, Commissioner, U.S. EEOC
* Brian Landsberg, Pacific McGeorge School of Law
* Bill Lann Lee, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP; former U.S. Assistant Attorney General
* Bill Taylor, Chair, Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights
* Judith A. Winston, Winston, Withers & Associates, LLC
Second, we released an ACS Issue Brief by David Cobb, Patrick Barrett and Caleb Kleppner proposing ranked-choice voting as an alternative to plurality systems. “Preserving and Expanding the Right to Vote: Ranked-choice Voting” suggests that that ranked-choice voting presents a unique opportunity to improve our democratic structure by diminishing negative campaigning, improving voter choice, promoting greater discussion of the issues, eliminating the need for costly runoff elections and, ultimately, increasing the political power of all voters.