I'm cross posting a piece here on small donors, which I worked with our president Bob Edgar to put together, looking at the trends in small donor giving this cycle for presidential and congressional candidates -- the two are very different -- and how that impacts our work to limit big money's role and engage more people in our political system.

Check it out below the fold.

This morning I was privileged to address the Connecticut State Convention of Missionary Baptists.  There, in a room of about 200 people, I was the lone white person - talking to a huge crowd who came to the convention to discuss their religion, praise God, and commune with fellow Baptists.  I was nervous beforehand.  Would these good people really want to listen to a white activist talking about something that had nothing to do with their convention or mission?  I had confidence that I would be politely received, but was unsure whether I could generate any enthusiasm for the program.

The Connecticut General Assembly concludes its 2008 legislative session at midnight tonight, and for the first time in a long time, Connecticut Common Cause is playing defense as opposed to trying to shoehorn a reform at the last minute (in 2006, a critical campaign finance reform bill passed in the last two minutes.)

Bills that we were pushing for have either passed and been enacted into law, been tied down on the calendar with no hope of salvation or caught in internecine feuds between the House and Senate.

Now, we have to make sure that the so-called "Do Nothing Session" does nothing to turn back the clock on important reforms.

Some good news in the debate over youth voting came out of the primaries yesterday. This from The Fix at the WaPo:

Good news for the country too. 18-29 years olds are set to vote in greater numbers than over 65 year olds, maybe even this year, which means a new generation of engaged citizens is emerging. A strong democracy needs all its citizens to engage. It would even better if more young people took their parents to vote and vice versa. The strongest indicator of a young person voting is whether a peer, friend or family member has asked them to. I'm sure it also influences other generations.

Sen. John Kerry has launched a petition drive asking that the General Accounting Office investigate the Pentagon's role in producing retired military experts to spread favorable press coverage of the Bush administration's prosecution of the Iraq war.

The major TV news outlets have done little if any coverage of this story - which broke two weeks ago - either out of embarrassment or self-preservation. Under federal law, it is illegal for the government to spread propaganda within the borders of the U.S.

Evidence of what Common Cause predicted in our report on the Indiana Primary for young voters is turning up in the news this evening.  Another victory for the architects of voter suprression in the state.

The reports of student voting problems are here, here and here.  New Voters Project has reported from the ground that students at St. Mary's College, a private institution were unable to vote because their college ID does not count under the law, even though public college IDs would - if they have a valid expiration date.

You don't have to turn people away for having the wrong ID, you just have to get people not to turn up because they know they don't have the ID and can't get it.  Some of the coverage above plays down the impact of the ID law on this primary.  Yes, 12 nuns might not seem like a huge number (it's not even a whole cloister), but it's important to remember that there was a whole convent full of retired nuns that didn't and couldn't turn up because they too didn't have the ID.

In the end, suppressing one vote, disenfranchising one citizen is too high a cost to bear for an unfounded fear which produces a bad law.  It's undemocratic, it's un-American.

In Indiana today young students and nuns, as old as 98, were denied their right to vote because of the strict and vote-suppressing photo ID laws in the state.  The Supreme Court upheld the law in a split decision last week. 

A dozen nuns in their eighties and nineties, barely able to make across the street to vote, were told they could not vote because they didn't have accepted ID.  Four floors of nuns back at the convent for retired nuns couldn't produce ID either, so they didn't try.  According to the AP: