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Voter Suppression/Election Integrity


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As appeal proceeds, Texas Supreme Court blocks multiple ballot drop sites

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Acting soon after receiving an emergency appeal on Gov. Greg Abbott’s behalf, the Texas Supreme Court issued an order Saturday that temporarily bars counties from opening more than one drop-off site for mail-in ballots.

The court order keeps in place Abbott’s 3½-week-old proclamation barring multiple drop-off locations that had opened in several counties, including Travis County, until the Supreme Court can determine the legality of Abbott’s limit.

With an eye on the fast-approaching Nov. 3 election, the court also set tight deadlines, requiring legal briefs in the case to be filed before 5 p.m. Monday.

A ruling could come as soon as Monday night, though the Supreme Court gave no indication when it might act.

The escalating legal fight started shortly after Abbott issued his proclamation on Oct. 1, the same day Travis County opened four drop-off sites in hopes of making it safer and more convenient for voters to hand deliver their mail-in ballots.

Travis County officials closed three downtown locations the next day, leaving only the drop-off site at 5501 Airport Blvd. in Central Austin, and Common Cause Texas and the Anti-Defamation League followed with a lawsuit seeking to block Abbott’s one-site limit.

The lawsuit prompted state District Judge Tim Sulak, a Democrat in Travis County, to issue an Oct. 15 injunction that blocked Abbott’s order as an impermissible burden on voting rights.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, appealed, but the Austin-based 3rd Court of Appeals upheld Sulak’s injunction on Friday.

Paxton responded with emergency petitions asking the Supreme Court to overturn the injunction and issue a ruling supporting Abbott’s authority to limit ballot drop-off sites.

“The confusion engendered by the trial court’s order, which changes the rules for only the final week of early voting, is significant,” Paxton told the Supreme Court, adding that the lower courts should not be allowed to rewrite election rules after “millions of voters have already cast their ballots.”

Officials in Travis and Harris County, which had to close 11 extra drop-off sites meant to serve more than 200,000 voters who had requested mail-in ballots, said they were trying to ensure that voters could submit ballots amid uncertainty about the Postal Service’s efficiency.

County officials also said they feared one drop-off site would increase lines and the risk of exposure to COVID-19, particularly for vulnerable voters.

Texas law limits who can vote by mail, and the vast majority of mailed votes come from those who are 65 and older or have a disability.

 

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A good one from Dana Milbank: "Republicans’ only way to win is to stop people from voting"

Spoiler

I’m voting twice this year, just as President Trump told me to do.

I returned my absentee ballot the day I got it last month, but the local board of elections, deluged by the volume of ballots, still hasn’t “accepted” my ballot and suggests I cast a provisional ballot in person on Election Day.

In one sense, it doesn’t matter if my vote gets counted; here in the capital, Joe Biden will get upward of 90 percent of the vote. But this year it’s essential to make sure my vote counts — and I hope all small-D democrats, even those in the reddest and bluest states, feel the same.

This election isn’t just to choose a president and a Congress. It’s a referendum on the right to vote itself.

The once-proud Republican Party has determined, correctly, that its only way to prevail in this election is to keep people from voting. Republicans and their allies have devoted some $20 million to wage more than 300 court fights across the country either to strike down election rules that encourage higher voter turnout or to fight lawsuits aimed at easing voting, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

The fix is in. Republicans have won the popular vote for the presidency only once since 1988, and the Senate Republican majority has for years represented a minority of the population. But they have used this minority rule to stack the judiciary, including six of the nine Supreme Court justices. Now Republican billionaires are financing a legal war to block voting rights — and the judges the minority Republicans installed on the courts are trying to shield Republican power from the will of the people.

The only way to break this corrupt scheme is with a popular backlash that overruns the voter-suppression roadblocks.

The Republicans’ legal effort is, the Campaign Legal Center noticed, a cut-and-paste job using the same false claims of widespread voter fraud, coast to coast. The fraud claims almost always fail, but Republican-appointed judges frequently find justification to strike down attempts to allow people to vote safely during the pandemic.

Even as Republicans were celebrating the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett on Monday — eight days before Election Day and after some 70 million had already voted — the Supreme Court sided with the Republican Party in saying that Wisconsin could not count ballots received after Election Day even if they were postmarked before. Never mind that Trump’s man running the Postal Service, a GOP megadonor, has sabotaged postal operations for that very reason.

Days earlier, the Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority agreed with Republican officials in declaring that Alabama can eliminate the practice of curbside voting for people with disabilities and others vulnerable to covid-19 — even though state law does not forbid such a practice.

A few days before the Alabama decision, the Supreme Court said it would quickly consider the Trump administration’s proposal to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census — thereby suppressing the count in Democratic, urban areas — rather than let stand an appellate decision rejecting the proposal.

A few days before that, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to end the census count immediately, despite evidence that this would lead to an undercount of minority groups.

Days before that, the court sided with South Carolina Republicans in saying mail-in ballots must be signed by a witness.

The high court, in rejecting a Democratic request to let stand an appellate court decision aimed at protecting minority voters in Arizona from intimidation and disenfranchisement, also said it will examine that ruling.

These moves by the court to restrict voting were partially offset by two actions Wednesday (over the objections of three conservative justices) that will allow Pennsylvania and North Carolina to have a grace period for counting mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day.

It’s easy to see what’s going on here. Republicans can’t win a popular majority in the racially diverse and urban modern America. Trump himself has acknowledged that, at higher voting levels, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

So Republican officeholders and allied judges use their power (derived from an electoral college and a Senate structure designed when 95 percent of Americans lived outside of cities) to suppress the urban and suburban multiracial majority. They block rehabilitated felons from getting voting rights restored. They fight ballot drop boxes and cause long hours for voting. They restrict the Postal Service and limit polling places. They restrict dissemination, collection and processing of mail-in ballots. New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice says 206 voting cases are pending, on appeal or subject to appeal.

Republicans even boast about their anti-democratic abilities. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, before Barrett’s confirmation, bragged that even if Republicans lose the election, “the other side won’t be able to do much about this for a long time to come.”

He’s taunting you, voters. On Nov. 3, let him hear your reply.

 

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The Trump campaign is bringing a lawsuit based on. among other things,  people's Instagram photos. :roll:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/us/elections/trump-pennsylvania-voter-suppression.html

Putting any ballot besides your own into a ballot box is illegal in PA, just so you know the context.

Quote

Some residents have been left bewildered by the Trump campaign’s attention this year. During the primary election over the summer, Adam S. Goodman, an insurance lawyer, posted a photo on Instagram in which he proudly held up two mail-in ballots outside a drop box. He soon found that the picture had been included in litigation the Trump campaign filed against the city. The campaign used the photo of Mr. Goodman along with other photos to say that some voters were dropping off more than one ballot at drop boxes.

But Mr. Goodman said his husband was simply standing out of the frame when the picture was taken.

 

image.thumb.png.54e7b9d25be742e74f07bfb9d38e96ee.png

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More under the spoiler:

Spoiler

image.png.05d4a951b1e103d85b1a5f037e0a63eb.png

image.png.17931127320f0153abd4f6aad8a2deb3.png

 

The Slate article from the last tweet:

Texas Republicans Ask Federal Judge to Throw Out 117,000 Legally Cast Ballots

Quote

Texas Republicans have asked a federal judge to throw out at least 117,000 ballots cast in Harris County, a heavily Democratic area that has experienced an unprecedented surge in early voting this month. The brazen effort to undo legally cast ballots in a diverse, populous county is an eleventh-hour attempt to diminish Joe Biden’s chances of carrying the swing state on Nov. 3. Republicans claim that Harris County’s use of drive-thru voting violates the U.S. Constitution, requiring the judge to throw out every ballot cast this way—more than 117,000 as of Friday. This argument is outrageous and absurd. But the case landed in front of U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, one of the most notoriously partisan conservatives in the federal judiciary. Democrats have good reason to fear that Hanen will order the mass nullification of ballots as early as Nov. 2, when he has scheduled a hearing.

Because Texas strictly limits mail-in voting, Harris County—which has a population of over 4.7 million people—has sought to make in-person voting safer during the pandemic. Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins, who runs the county’s elections, established 10 drive-thru voting locations for the 2020 general election. Drivers pull into a large tent, where election officials confirm their identity, then give them privacy to vote. The process has proved wildly popular.

Harris County raised the idea of drive-thru voting in June, and Texas Secretary of State Ruth Hughs promptly approved it. The county tested it in July and approved it in August. Yet Republicans did not contest drive-thru voting in court until Oct. 15, two days after the start of early voting. On that day, the Harris County Republican Party, joined by several GOP operatives, asked the Texas Supreme Court to halt drive-thru voting. The court, which is entirely Republican, refused, over a single dissent. Republicans then went back to the Texas Supreme Court, asking it to toss out every ballot cast via drive-thru voting. The court is currently considering that request, though it seems unlikely to side with the plaintiffs given its previous decision.

So Republicans ran to federal court. On Wednesday, they asked Hanen to declare drive-thru voting unconstitutional and void every ballot cast this way. They relied upon a radical theory that is quickly gaining popularity among conservative judges. Republicans alleged that the state Legislature has sole authority over election law under the U.S. Constitution. They also claimed that the Legislature never approved drive-thru voting. As a result, they argued, the procedure is an unconstitutional usurpation of the Legislature’s power, meaning every ballot cast via drive-thru voting is illegitimate.

There are so many flaws in Republicans’ argument that it’s hard to know where to begin. The GOP operatives probably don’t have standing to challenge a voting procedure that merely makes it easier and safer to vote. But leave that aside and look at the merits. The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the legislature does not have sole authority over elections. To the contrary, it has held that different parts of the state government can regulate voting procedures. Thus, the lawsuit’s chief claim—that Harris County has infringed on the Legislature’s constitutional rights—is simply false.

But even if it were true, the lawsuit would still fail, because the Texas Legislature has authorized drive-thru voting. State law explicitly allows counties to create temporary polling locations “in any stationary structure,” including a “movable structure.” Drive-thru voting takes place in large, stationary tents that obviously fit this definition. Indeed, other Texas counties have set up stationary tents at walk-in polling locations to provide extra booths to early voters. No one seriously argues that it is illegal to use tents for walk-in voting. So why are they illegal to use for drive-thru voting?

Republicans cannot provide an answer because there is none. That’s why Texas’ secretary of state approved drive-thru voting, informing Harris County election officials that they could use it for the general election. Republicans are trying to conflate drive-thru voting with curbside voting, a separate procedure subject to a different slate of regulations in Texas. They are lying. Harris County’s drive-thru voting is fundamentally distinct from curbside voting; it more closely resembles traditional in-person voting, with voters entering a polling place in their cars instead of on foot.

As a backup claim, Republicans also alleged that Harris County ran afoul of the equal protection clause, as interpreted in Bush v. Gore, because officials in that county offered a way to vote that other counties in Texas did not. Because Bush v. Gore is not precedent, this argument is utterly frivolous. If Bush v. Gore were precedent, the argument would still be frivolous, because that decision never said counties within a state could not provide different voting procedures. The nuts and bolts of voting vary widely across counties within states, and no court has ever suggested that a county violates equal protection when it makes voting easier in compliance with state law. Bush v. Gore involved vote counting, not vote casting. No SCOTUS precedent supports the proposition that voting procedures must be uniform across an entire state. Some smaller, rural counties in Texas, in fact, have a much easier time voting by mail because of a Republican-implemented rule that allows just one ballot drop box per county.

There are two more reasons the lawsuit should fail. First, Republicans brought this case nearly four months after Harris County announced its intent to provide drive-thru voting this fall. Yet the Republican officials only brought their lawsuit on Oct. 28, as early voting neared its end in Texas. More than 117,000 eligible voters have taken advantage of it, and will be disenfranchised if the lawsuit succeeds. Under a doctrine known as laches, litigants cannot wait to bring a claim until the last minute, then ambush their opponents with a surprise lawsuit. Republicans’ four-month delay in suing Harris County should be enough, on its own, to doom their case. Second, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly warned lower federal courts not to alter voting procedures shortly before an election. Republicans are now asking a federal court to shut down drive-thru voting just before Election Day, when it is in the highest demand, in addition to a request to invalidate votes that have already been legally cast. That request is precisely the kind of preelection challenge that SCOTUS has forbidden.

And yet there is good reason to worry that Republicans will prevail, at least initially. Hanen, the federal judge overseeing the case, is a rabid partisan. During the Obama administration, Hanen attempted to dox more than 100,000 immigrants living in the U.S. and chastised the Justice Department for declining to prosecute an immigrant mother. His behavior on the bench radiated partisan bias. Now Hanen holds the fate of more than 117,000 ballots (and counting) in his hands. Alarmingly, he scheduled a hearing in this case for Monday morning—without even giving Harris County a chance to file a response brief. It is possible that Hanen is rushing to throw a wrench into Texas’ election, purporting to void a vast number of votes in a critical battleground state.

However Hanen rules, his decision will be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. Thanks to President Donald Trump, the 5th Circuit is one of the most extreme and partisan appeals courts in the country and an avowed enemy of voting rights. Its members may be eager to seize upon this case to prevent Joe Biden from carrying Texas. At that point, only the U.S. Supreme Court could end Republicans’ mischief. And SCOTUS’ ultraconservative bloc has already expressed its zeal to throw out as many Democratic ballots as possible under the theory that only legislatures get to run elections.

The 2020 election is entering dangerous territory. Harris County is key to Biden’s Texas strategy, and its residents have already voted in record-shattering numbers. It is heavily Democratic, which makes it a prime target for GOP voter suppression. Republicans think the federal judiciary will thwart a Biden victory in Texas. If they prevail, they will have stolen an election in broad daylight.

:angry-cussingblack:

 

Just wanted to add this:

 

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@Cartmann99, the anger is not directed towards you. I appreciate you and enjoy your posts. The anger is how I feel about this. I don't like to use angry- I carefully analyse my feelings and try to downgrade to disgust or wTF. This is too extreme for those.

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The R’s are petrified of losing Texas and are resorting to all sorts of shenanigans in desperate attempts to cheat and prevent that from happening. Because if Texas turns blue the odds of a Trump win are vanishingly small.

 

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Here’s why they’re so scared:

Although those 100,000 votes in Harris county mentioned in @Cartmann99’s post are a lot, it looks like they’re only a fraction of the votes. It doesn’t make the repug actions any less egregious, but it does show how futile they could turn out to be.

 

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17 hours ago, fraurosena said:

The R’s are petrified of losing Texas and are resorting to all sorts of shenanigans in desperate attempts to cheat and prevent that from happening. Because if Texas turns blue the odds of a Trump win are vanishingly small.

Exactly. You could theoretically become president by only winning eleven states:

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I just saw this horrible article on Yahoo. Friends we are going to have to watch what the state legislatures are doing to suppress voting very carefully over the next 4 years and beyond. This article terrifies me.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-pushes-baseless-fraud-claims-120831079.html

As Trump pushes baseless fraud claims, Republicans pledge tougher voting rules 

Spoiler

Republican state lawmakers have begun to use President Donald Trump’s baseless charges of voter fraud to push for new restrictions on voting.

Although the claims have failed in court to overturn Democrat Joe Biden's Nov. 3 election win, Republican lawmakers, party officials and Trump’s allies in some of the hardest-fought states have begun discussing new rules that rights advocates say could suppress votes in future elections.Pennsylvania Republicans are considering ending absentee voting rules they backed a year ago. Georgia’s Senate Republicans say they want to “fix” the state’s election system with new restrictions. Republicans in Wisconsin want to change early-voting procedures. And new rules have been floated in Texas.

 

“This appears to be laying the groundwork for what may be a more massive and coordinated voter suppression effort in the new year,” said Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “It is a brazen attempt to undermine and obstruct the progress that has been made in 2020 to make it easier for people to vote amid the pandemic.”

 

Steve Guest, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said claims that the party’s proposals amounted to voter suppression were “completely baseless.” “Election laws need to be properly followed so Americans can have confidence in the results,” said Guest. “The RNC will never stop fighting to ensure free and fair elections.”

 

State and federal judges -- some appointed by Trump -- have dismissed more than 50 lawsuits brought by Trump or his allies alleging election fraud and other irregularities. Independent experts, governors and state election officials from both parties say there has been no evidence of widespread fraud.

 

A record 158 million people voted in November’s elections, in part thanks to new rules that made voting easier during the worst public health crisis in a century. A survey by New York University’s nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice found that 29 states and the District of Columbia passed laws and changed procedures to expand voting access during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some eased rules on voting by mail or extended early voting to reduce crowds.

 

Video: Trump questions Russian involvement in hacking

 

State-level Republican proposals to unwind such rules have gained traction with some of Trump’s staunchest allies in Congress.

 

“The election in many ways was stolen and the only way it will be fixed is by in the future reinforcing the (state) laws,” Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky told a recent hearing without providing evidence of fraud. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said on Nov. 9 that oversight of mail-in voting needed tightening. “If we don’t do something about voting by mail, we’re going to lose the ability to elect a Republican in this country," he told Fox News.

 

The new proposals would expand on past Republican Party-led restrictions, including strict voter identification laws passed by nine states since 2005 and voter roll purges that voting-rights advocates say have disproportionately affected minority voters, who tend to back the Democratic Party.

 

Marc Elias, an attorney who has led legal efforts for the Democratic Party and Biden's campaign, said he believes the latest Republican moves are a preview of a coming voter suppression strategy across the country.

 

“I am very concerned that they will use these false claims of fraud, which have been rejected in every court that heard them, as an excuse to disenfranchise voters,” Elias said in an email to Reuters. “They’re trying to do what they have been doing for the last year — or more — to make voting harder in general and in particular for Black, brown and young voters.”

 

“WE WILL FIX THIS”

 

Republicans have long used unfounded theories of illegal voting to justify purges of registration rolls, strict voter identification requirements and restrictions on mail-in voting. A Reuters investigation published on Sept. 9 found that the once-fringe election-fraud theories have become a staple of Republican politics, due largely to the efforts of a small network of lawyers who have promoted it for two decades, funded by right-wing foundations.

 

In 23 states, Republicans now control both the legislature and the governor's office, compared to 15 for Democrats, giving the party strong influence over legislation at a time when Trump’s relentless voter fraud claims have convinced many Republican voters that existing safeguards are inadequate. Polls show that a majority of Republican voters believe those allegations. And a proliferation of right-wing media outlets have amplified them.

 

In Wisconsin, a battleground state that flipped to Biden after voting for Trump in 2016, the executive director of the state Republican Party, Mark Jefferson, told Reuters the state party would work to tighten rules around early voting.

 

Republicans controlled the state legislature and governorship for much of the last decade, and introduced rules like a strict voter ID law.

 

They now argue that state election officials and Democrat-run localities overstepped state law in their efforts to make voting easier during the pandemic and opened the voting process to fraud. Republicans, for instance, claimed that events in city parks to collect absentee ballots from voters were improper. Courts have rejected Republican lawsuits making such arguments and seeking to overturn Trump’s loss in the state.

 

But Jefferson argues that election integrity is at stake, and says Republican lawmakers are already discussing how to increase oversight on early voting, mail-in voting and drop boxes. In Wisconsin and other swing states, those methods heavily favored Biden over Trump.

 

In Georgia, a traditionally Republican-dominated state that Biden narrowly won, Senate Republicans said on Dec. 8 that they would seek to eliminate “no excuse” mail voting, which allows people to send ballots by mail without providing a reason, and to require a photo ID to request a mail ballot. Currently, any eligible voter can vote by mail without stating a reason, such as illness or travel, while no photo ID is required to receive an absentee ballot.

 

“Republicans have heard the calls of millions of Georgians who have raised deep and heartfelt concerns that state law has been violated and our elections process abused,” the state senators said in a statement. “We will fix this.”

 

Georgia’s House Republicans had not reviewed those proposals but will hold hearings on election integrity, said Kaleb McMichen, a spokesman for House speaker David Ralston. Georgia’s Republican governor and secretary of state have also endorsed new restrictions such as requiring absentee voters to provide identification to request their ballot.

 

More immediately, the Republican National Committee and Georgia Republican Party have filed lawsuits ahead of the Jan. 5 runoff election that will decide which party controls the U.S. Senate, seeking to change rules that were in effect in November. They want to curtail use of drop boxes for mail ballots in the election for two Senate seats and have asked for other limits on absentee voting.

 

A battle over voting access is also shaping up in Texas, another state long dominated by Republicans but where Democrats have made inroads.

 

Texas already has some of the country’s toughest voting laws. Since the election, Democrats have proposed expanding early voting to more counties and making election days state holidays. Republicans, who control the state government, have countered with proposed new restrictions, including a ban on officials’ from sending out mail ballot applications to voters who haven’t requested them and criminal penalties for officials who allow ineligible people to vote.

 

'LASTING DAMAGE'

 

In Pennsylvania, the debate over mail voting is an example of how Trump's fraud rhetoric has left Republicans in a political bind.

 

In 2019, the state’s Republican-controlled legislature reached a compromise on an election bill with Democratic Governor Tom Wolf. The package, known as Act 77, eliminated straight-party voting that allowed voters to check a single box on a ballot to vote for all candidates from one party, a Republican priority.

 

It also permitted an expansion of mail voting for all Pennsylvania voters. Most of the opposition to the bill came from Democrats. All Republican members of the state Senate voted for the bill, and all but two Republicans in the state House.

 

But as many Trump supporters blame mail-in ballots for Trump's election defeat in Pennsylvania, the 2019 law has become a liability for the Republicans who voted for it, said Charlie Gerow, a Republican lawyer and consultant in the state. “Those folks sitting around the diner talking politics, they are talking about Act 77,” he said.

 

In the wake of the election, state House Representative Jim Gregory, who voted for the law in 2019, has announced he will sponsor a measure repealing the law, saying his office had “been flooded with calls and emails from constituents who had issues with mail in ballots.”

 

Bryan Cutler, the House majority leader, who also voted for the law, has promised to focus on election rules in the next session to “ensure the chaos and confusion of the 2020 election are not repeated.”

 

Both men have tried to shift blame to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and Democratic Secretary of State for decisions on how it was implemented, including allowing ballots to be counted if they arrived by mail within three days after Election Day. Gregory declined requests for an interview, while Cutler did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

 

One main target of anger has been Al Schmidt, the Republican on the three-member election board in Philadelphia. Before and after the election, Schmidt defended the integrity of the Philadelphia vote count in media appearances – and became a lightning rod for the rage of Trump supporters. He says he has been called a “traitor,” and has police protection at his home because of threats.

 

“The myth is being built, and it’s being accepted,” he said. “That’s the lasting damage. Who’s going to clean up this mess at the end of the day?”

 

(Joseph Tanfani reported from New Jersey and Simon Lewis from Washington. Additional reporting by Tim Reid. Editing by Soyoung Kim and Jason Szep)

 

 

I've lived in both Oregon and Washington with all vote by mail or drop it off at the ballot box and have never felt like it's been a problem. These Republican dreams of voter suppression just make me sick.

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10 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

I just saw this horrible article on Yahoo. Friends we are going to have to watch what the state legislatures are doing to suppress voting very carefully over the next 4 years and beyond. This article terrifies me.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-pushes-baseless-fraud-claims-120831079.html

As Trump pushes baseless fraud claims, Republicans pledge tougher voting rules 

  Hide contents

Republican state lawmakers have begun to use President Donald Trump’s baseless charges of voter fraud to push for new restrictions on voting.

Although the claims have failed in court to overturn Democrat Joe Biden's Nov. 3 election win, Republican lawmakers, party officials and Trump’s allies in some of the hardest-fought states have begun discussing new rules that rights advocates say could suppress votes in future elections.Pennsylvania Republicans are considering ending absentee voting rules they backed a year ago. Georgia’s Senate Republicans say they want to “fix” the state’s election system with new restrictions. Republicans in Wisconsin want to change early-voting procedures. And new rules have been floated in Texas.

 

“This appears to be laying the groundwork for what may be a more massive and coordinated voter suppression effort in the new year,” said Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “It is a brazen attempt to undermine and obstruct the progress that has been made in 2020 to make it easier for people to vote amid the pandemic.”

 

Steve Guest, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said claims that the party’s proposals amounted to voter suppression were “completely baseless.” “Election laws need to be properly followed so Americans can have confidence in the results,” said Guest. “The RNC will never stop fighting to ensure free and fair elections.”

 

State and federal judges -- some appointed by Trump -- have dismissed more than 50 lawsuits brought by Trump or his allies alleging election fraud and other irregularities. Independent experts, governors and state election officials from both parties say there has been no evidence of widespread fraud.

 

A record 158 million people voted in November’s elections, in part thanks to new rules that made voting easier during the worst public health crisis in a century. A survey by New York University’s nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice found that 29 states and the District of Columbia passed laws and changed procedures to expand voting access during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some eased rules on voting by mail or extended early voting to reduce crowds.

 

Video: Trump questions Russian involvement in hacking

 

State-level Republican proposals to unwind such rules have gained traction with some of Trump’s staunchest allies in Congress.

 

“The election in many ways was stolen and the only way it will be fixed is by in the future reinforcing the (state) laws,” Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky told a recent hearing without providing evidence of fraud. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said on Nov. 9 that oversight of mail-in voting needed tightening. “If we don’t do something about voting by mail, we’re going to lose the ability to elect a Republican in this country," he told Fox News.

 

The new proposals would expand on past Republican Party-led restrictions, including strict voter identification laws passed by nine states since 2005 and voter roll purges that voting-rights advocates say have disproportionately affected minority voters, who tend to back the Democratic Party.

 

Marc Elias, an attorney who has led legal efforts for the Democratic Party and Biden's campaign, said he believes the latest Republican moves are a preview of a coming voter suppression strategy across the country.

 

“I am very concerned that they will use these false claims of fraud, which have been rejected in every court that heard them, as an excuse to disenfranchise voters,” Elias said in an email to Reuters. “They’re trying to do what they have been doing for the last year — or more — to make voting harder in general and in particular for Black, brown and young voters.”

 

“WE WILL FIX THIS”

 

Republicans have long used unfounded theories of illegal voting to justify purges of registration rolls, strict voter identification requirements and restrictions on mail-in voting. A Reuters investigation published on Sept. 9 found that the once-fringe election-fraud theories have become a staple of Republican politics, due largely to the efforts of a small network of lawyers who have promoted it for two decades, funded by right-wing foundations.

 

In 23 states, Republicans now control both the legislature and the governor's office, compared to 15 for Democrats, giving the party strong influence over legislation at a time when Trump’s relentless voter fraud claims have convinced many Republican voters that existing safeguards are inadequate. Polls show that a majority of Republican voters believe those allegations. And a proliferation of right-wing media outlets have amplified them.

 

In Wisconsin, a battleground state that flipped to Biden after voting for Trump in 2016, the executive director of the state Republican Party, Mark Jefferson, told Reuters the state party would work to tighten rules around early voting.

 

Republicans controlled the state legislature and governorship for much of the last decade, and introduced rules like a strict voter ID law.

 

They now argue that state election officials and Democrat-run localities overstepped state law in their efforts to make voting easier during the pandemic and opened the voting process to fraud. Republicans, for instance, claimed that events in city parks to collect absentee ballots from voters were improper. Courts have rejected Republican lawsuits making such arguments and seeking to overturn Trump’s loss in the state.

 

But Jefferson argues that election integrity is at stake, and says Republican lawmakers are already discussing how to increase oversight on early voting, mail-in voting and drop boxes. In Wisconsin and other swing states, those methods heavily favored Biden over Trump.

 

In Georgia, a traditionally Republican-dominated state that Biden narrowly won, Senate Republicans said on Dec. 8 that they would seek to eliminate “no excuse” mail voting, which allows people to send ballots by mail without providing a reason, and to require a photo ID to request a mail ballot. Currently, any eligible voter can vote by mail without stating a reason, such as illness or travel, while no photo ID is required to receive an absentee ballot.

 

“Republicans have heard the calls of millions of Georgians who have raised deep and heartfelt concerns that state law has been violated and our elections process abused,” the state senators said in a statement. “We will fix this.”

 

Georgia’s House Republicans had not reviewed those proposals but will hold hearings on election integrity, said Kaleb McMichen, a spokesman for House speaker David Ralston. Georgia’s Republican governor and secretary of state have also endorsed new restrictions such as requiring absentee voters to provide identification to request their ballot.

 

More immediately, the Republican National Committee and Georgia Republican Party have filed lawsuits ahead of the Jan. 5 runoff election that will decide which party controls the U.S. Senate, seeking to change rules that were in effect in November. They want to curtail use of drop boxes for mail ballots in the election for two Senate seats and have asked for other limits on absentee voting.

 

A battle over voting access is also shaping up in Texas, another state long dominated by Republicans but where Democrats have made inroads.

 

Texas already has some of the country’s toughest voting laws. Since the election, Democrats have proposed expanding early voting to more counties and making election days state holidays. Republicans, who control the state government, have countered with proposed new restrictions, including a ban on officials’ from sending out mail ballot applications to voters who haven’t requested them and criminal penalties for officials who allow ineligible people to vote.

 

'LASTING DAMAGE'

 

In Pennsylvania, the debate over mail voting is an example of how Trump's fraud rhetoric has left Republicans in a political bind.

 

In 2019, the state’s Republican-controlled legislature reached a compromise on an election bill with Democratic Governor Tom Wolf. The package, known as Act 77, eliminated straight-party voting that allowed voters to check a single box on a ballot to vote for all candidates from one party, a Republican priority.

 

It also permitted an expansion of mail voting for all Pennsylvania voters. Most of the opposition to the bill came from Democrats. All Republican members of the state Senate voted for the bill, and all but two Republicans in the state House.

 

But as many Trump supporters blame mail-in ballots for Trump's election defeat in Pennsylvania, the 2019 law has become a liability for the Republicans who voted for it, said Charlie Gerow, a Republican lawyer and consultant in the state. “Those folks sitting around the diner talking politics, they are talking about Act 77,” he said.

 

In the wake of the election, state House Representative Jim Gregory, who voted for the law in 2019, has announced he will sponsor a measure repealing the law, saying his office had “been flooded with calls and emails from constituents who had issues with mail in ballots.”

 

Bryan Cutler, the House majority leader, who also voted for the law, has promised to focus on election rules in the next session to “ensure the chaos and confusion of the 2020 election are not repeated.”

 

Both men have tried to shift blame to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and Democratic Secretary of State for decisions on how it was implemented, including allowing ballots to be counted if they arrived by mail within three days after Election Day. Gregory declined requests for an interview, while Cutler did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

 

One main target of anger has been Al Schmidt, the Republican on the three-member election board in Philadelphia. Before and after the election, Schmidt defended the integrity of the Philadelphia vote count in media appearances – and became a lightning rod for the rage of Trump supporters. He says he has been called a “traitor,” and has police protection at his home because of threats.

 

“The myth is being built, and it’s being accepted,” he said. “That’s the lasting damage. Who’s going to clean up this mess at the end of the day?”

 

(Joseph Tanfani reported from New Jersey and Simon Lewis from Washington. Additional reporting by Tim Reid. Editing by Soyoung Kim and Jason Szep)

 

 

I've lived in both Oregon and Washington with all vote by mail or drop it off at the ballot box and have never felt like it's been a problem. These Republican dreams of voter suppression just make me sick.

Michigan voters overwhelmingly passed no reason absentee voting in 2018. They also passed having an independent committee made up of randomly selected Democrats, Republicans, and Independents be in charge of creating the districts. I am anxious to see it this helps solve the gerrymandering issue in my state. Some Republican State lawmakers have been ranting about these two things. I know they will try to get rid of both if they can. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Rethuglikans stop at nothing:

 

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2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Rethuglikans stop at nothing:

 

One of the first things we need to do after addressing the virus/vaccination situation is voting.  If we don't start fixing it, we will forever be in the permanent minority.  We need trackable voting and we need to get rid of the electoral college.  

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  • 3 weeks later...

Somebody was charged for election interference in 2016. He put up ads that told people to vote for Hillary by sending text messages, and 4900 telephone numbers attempted to.

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/trump-supporting-white-nationalist-and-social-media-influencer-charged-with-conspiracy-and-election-interference/

Education is a wonderful thing.

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The United States has a lot of legislators who would love autocracy.

What's even the point of voting  

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Bills being introduced to reduce voting.

Spoiler

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Republican lawmakers in statehouses across the country are moving swiftly to attack some of the voting methods that fueled the highest turnout for a presidential election in 50 years.

Although most legislative sessions are just getting underway, the Brennan Center for Justice, a public policy institute, has already tallied more than 100 bills in 28 states meant to restrict voting access. More than a third of those proposals are aimed at limiting mail voting, while other bills seek to strengthen voter ID requirements and registration processes, as well as allow for more aggressive means to remove people from voter rolls.

It's hard to understate how absolutely shocking I find this. 

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Biden's election victory was only a momentary relief when I see that now an entire party is against democracy. It's so sickening.

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9 hours ago, Smash! said:

Biden's election victory was only a momentary relief when I see that now an entire party is against democracy. It's so sickening.

Yet that same party is the one accusing the other side of being un-democratic. 

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There is one more registered Democrat. This came for OneKid today 

 

BD08FB16-4DE9-4F3C-B12A-B9B6F80C7A48.jpeg

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  • 4 weeks later...

"Republican voter suppression kicks into high gear"

Quote

Voter suppression has long been a Republican interest, but now they’re getting really serious about it.

So serious, in fact, that they’re starting entire organizations dedicated to finding ways to keep Democrats from the polls.

Ken Cuccinelli, the far-right former attorney general of Virginia and Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security under President Donald Trump (that was his actual title), has formed a group called the Election Transparency Initiative. Its goal: to make sure election laws aren’t changed to make it easier for people to vote, especially people who might vote for Democrats.

Its initial focus is on defeating H.R. 1, the voting rights bill Democrats hope to pass through Congress. Here’s how one article described the need that gave rise to Cuccinelli’s effort:

The legislation they oppose would create automatic voter registration nationwide, expand early voting, and make it easier to vote by mail. It is the exact opposite of what conservatives want, and it is coming at a moment when conservative faith in the integrity of elections has never been lower.

None of that has anything to do with “transparency,” but it’s an accurate description of the problem as Republicans see it. Conservative faith in the integrity of elections has indeed never been lower, because conservatives have come to believe that elections Democrats win are fraudulent by definition, and since Democrats recently won key elections, the system must therefore be lacking in integrity.

This belief is not just the province of gullible retirees watching hour upon hour of Fox News and Newsmax every night. It extends all the way up to the Supreme Court, where Justice Clarence Thomas just wrote a dissent recycling inaccurate claims about mail ballots being rife with fraud. It goes to Republican congressional leaders who won’t admit that President Biden won the 2020 election fair and square.

Cuccinelli is being joined by former Georgia senator Kelly Loeffler, who apparently took two lessons from her defeat in the recent runoff election: Too few Republicans turned out to vote, and too many Democrats did.

So Loeffler has launched her own organization in the state, committed to registering Republican voters and seeking “transparency and uniformity in our election process.” “We had unprecedented changes to our election laws in 2020 because of the pandemic,” Loeffler told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “And we need to take a really hard look at the impact of those changes and why it drove trust in our elections so far down.”

Of course, it wasn’t changes to the election laws that led Republicans to believe the election was stolen from them, and in Georgia the only relevant change was a consent decree made by the state’s Republican leadership that reduced the number of legitimate absentee ballots being thrown out. What drove down “trust” was the relentless lies and propagandizing of Trump, aided by people like Loeffler.

But her fellow Georgia Republicans saw Biden win the state and then watched as Democrats won two Senate seats there, and they have now sprung into action. Republicans in the state legislature have introduced a sweeping series of voter suppression measures, including eliminating early voting on Sundays (when Black churches often mount “Souls to the Polls” voting drives), requiring photo ID to both request and return absentee ballots, and limiting the use of drop boxes.

Drop boxes are probably of no particular benefit to Democrats. But Trump somehow got it into his head that they were the locus of conspiracies of fraud, so now all Republicans have to pretend they’re a terrible threat to democracy.

If you can explain why it’s “transparent” to allow early voting on Monday through Saturday but not “transparent” to allow it on Sunday as well, you have a future as a Republican legislator. But this has long been the pattern of Republican voter suppression: Take an example of fraud — vanishingly rare, or even nonexistent but hypothetically possible — then use it as justification to make voting more difficult for huge swaths of the population, so long as those affected will be more likely to be minorities, young people, urban dwellers and anyone else who might vote for Democrats.

The operating philosophy is that if we must disenfranchise 100,000 people to keep one guy from filling out the absentee ballot of his mother who died before Election Day, then we ought to do it. So long as most of the disenfranchised are, you know, the kind of people we’d rather not have voting in the first place.

Something tells me these aren’t the last conservative organizations we’ll see devoting themselves to fighting the expansion of voting rights and promoting voter suppression. The GOP’s policy priorities are widely unpopular, and its most well-known elected officials are the targets of revulsion and ridicule.

The Republican Party knows that it cannot win a national majority if voting is easy and smooth for everyone. So election laws must be shaped to make it harder for some people than others. It’s about the most important political project Republicans have.

 

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image.thumb.png.0a500e1b07432aad366323a7d0d5ed81.png

 

Wow, a repug lawyer saying the quiet part out loud.

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