Tag: Voter Suppression

The Race Is On

It has been reported that 47 or our 50 states has some form or another of voter restriction bills on the table…..

The race is on to suppress as much vote as possible…..

Even though the 2020 election is over, many Republicans are still holding onto the “Big Lie,” or the baseless claim that voter fraud cost former President Donald Trump the presidential election. Trump has managed to not only persuade his base that the election was “stolen,” but now many state legislators are using it as a justification to restrict voting rights. Over the last few months, a bevy of bills have been introduced at the state level that — if passed — could make it harder for millions of Americans to cast their ballots. 

The States Where Efforts To Restrict Voting Are Escalating

The state that has made the news as the worst of the worst is Georgia…..they even went so far as to make it illegal to give food or water to people waiting in line to vote….but why is Georgia such a big deal?

From November 2020 to January 2021, the story of the state of Georgia was pro-Democratic: Democratic candidates for president and the U.S. Senate all won. But more importantly, it was pro-democratic. Joe Biden, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock won in part because of aggressive efforts by grassroots groups in the state to increase the number of people who voted compared with past Georgia elections. Two of the state’s top Republican elected officials, Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, rejected a major push from then-President Trump and other Republicans to effectively overturn the results of the state’s presidential election because Biden had won. The events in Georgia, along with a similar rejection of Trump’s false fraud claims in Arizona by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, were perhaps the clearest examples of how America’s democratic systems had held firm and prevented Trump from cheating his way to a second term.

A lot has changed since then.

Why Georgia’s New Voting Law Is Such A Big Deal

The House has passed a sweeping reform of voting rights entitled HR1…..interested?

Then read it for yourself…..https://my.lwv.org/california/diablo-valley/article/summary-hr-1-people-act

Now the Senate controlled by Dem has enter a long shot bid for voter rights….

In a long-shot bid to enact voting reform on a federal level, Senate Democrats will introduce their version of the For the People Act, a comprehensive voting reform and anti-corruption bill.

Why it matters: In the aftermath of the 2020 election, states across the U.S. are considering voting restrictions, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) will hold a press conference Thursday to announce the S1 legislation.

The state of play: The House passed the companion bill For the People Act (H.R. 1) on March 4. The Senate proposal looks virtually similar and would include:

  • The bill would allow universal same-day voting registration and automatic registration for Americans age 18 and up.
    • It would also prohibit the purging of voter rolls and allow every voter to cast votes by mail.
    • It would also provide at least 15 days of early voting to Americans nationwide.

    The bill will also offer campaign finance reform, and would require super PACs and issue advocacy groups to disclose donors contributing more than $10,000.

    • The bill’s ethics components would require the president and vice president to publicly disclose their tax returns.
    • It will also prohibit members of Congress from serving on the boards of for-profit entities.

https://www.axios.com/senate-for-people-act-voting-reform-anti-corruption-94291b80-3961-4bae-978d-1aa4e3f15d65.html

At least the much hated Dems are trying to preserve our right to voter without restricting our access…..

Time for ALL Americans to wake up and watch the slow deterioration of our rights….it is begin with the only way our voices can be heard…..the vote.

Do not sleep through this assault…..for it will not stop there.

I urge you to stand out now……or this will not stop with one right….all are in danger.

Be Smart!

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“lego ergo scribo”

Voter Rights And Suppression

All Americans have the right to vote….but about 43 states out of the 50 are trying to change that dynamic…..basically it is the GOP trying to avoid any defeats…..not what is best for the people of their state and the country…..it is all about party over country.

Some may ask….how could this happen?

It began in the where else….the South.

A little historic perspective……

George White of North Carolina served two terms in Congress between 1897 and 1901. He was the only Black member during those years, and he would be the last Black person elected to the U.S. House for nearly another three decades.

North Carolina Democrats made certain of that. A new state constitutional amendment, ratified in 1900, required passage of a literacy and education test before registering to vote, as well as pre-payment of a poll tax. By 1904, the number of registered Black voters in North Carolina had plummeted to nearly zero.

https://www.salon.com/2021/03/18/racist-gerrymander-north-carolina/

The Dems are trying to make the exercise of one’s rights easier (as it should be)…..here are the two bills, one from the House and the other from the Senate….

Click to access BILLS-116hr1pcs.pdf

And from the Senate….

Click to access SIMPLE-SECTION-BY-SECTION_S.-1%20Final.pdf

Before you agree or disagree with these bills at least read them and know what is in them…..or do what most Americans do….go to social media and get lies and misinformation….it is your choice.

Personally I believe it you are a citizen and over 18 years old then you should be able to vote without any restrictions from scared old white guys that are treading water on their control of this nation.

You may ask how this is even possible the violation of the peoples right to vote…..

We thought with the passing of the Voter Rights Act we had made it possible for ALL Americans to exercise their right of vote……if so how can this suppression move by conservs be possible?

You want someone to blame for the attack on our rights then look no further than the Supreme Court…..

How could this be you may ask.

Georgia’s voter restrictions were dashed into law Thursday by Republicans shaken over recent election losses and lies about fraud from former President Donald Trump, yet the measures also developed against a backdrop of US Supreme Court decisions hollowing out federal voting rights protection.

In another world, before the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, Georgia would have had to obtain federal approval for new election practices to ensure they did not harm Blacks and other minority voters.
And at another time, before the Roberts Court enhanced state latitude in a series of rulings, legislators might have hedged before enacting policies from new voter identification requirements, to a prohibition on third-party collection of ballots to a rule against non-poll workers providing food or water to voters waiting in lines.
But the conservative court has increasingly granted states leeway over how they run elections.
As the justices have turned away challenges to state policies, they have expressed sympathy for local officials who face potentially intrusive federal regulation and protracted litigation. Led by Roberts, the court has also dismissed concerns about the consequences for minority voters as it has curtailed the reach of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
“Our country has changed,” Roberts wrote in the Shelby County landmark, “and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions. … (V)oter registration and turnout numbers in the covered states have risen dramatically in the years since.”
 
This is what we get when ‘political activists’ are put on the highest court in the land…..we get rulings that will strip us of our rights….slowly but steadily.
 
Time for some changes to the way the Supreme Court is staffed……when the court is making laws doing the job that has been set aside for the legislative branch of government. 
 
They should be upholding the law not making it.
 
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“lego ergo scribo”

To Vote Or Not To Vote

There are at least 43 of the 50 states that are trying to stop people from voting….a right they have under the Constitution (remember that document?)…..

Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Although, of course, the denial of the franchise on the basis of race or color violates the Fifteenth Amendment and a series of implementing statutes enacted by Congress, the administration of election statutes so as to treat white and black voters or candidates differently can constitute a denial of equal protection as well.  Additionally, cases of gerrymandering of electoral districts and the creation or maintenance of electoral practices that dilute and weaken black and other minority voting strength is subject to Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment and statutory attack.

The most egregious bill of all of them is from the state of Georgia…..and the governor had a hurried bill signing to prevent any opposition.

With opposition gathering outside his office, Gov. Brian Kemp signed new voting restrictions into law Thursday less than an hour after they passed the General Assembly. Calling the legislation “Jim Crow 2.0,” protesters outside the Capitol said voters were being disenfranchised. A Democratic state representative was arrested and removed by force after she knocked on Kemp’s door to try to witness the signing, the Journal-Constitution reports. Supporters, including Kemp, said the legislation would safeguard the integrity of elections. Georgia became the first battleground state to limit voter access since the November presidential election, in which President Biden carried the state over former President Donald Trump, per CNN.

The legislation rewrites Georgia voting laws. It adds voter ID requirements, limits the number of drop boxes for ballots, and permits the state to take over local elections. Runoffs will be held more quickly after general elections, leaving as little as one week for early voting. “It’s like the Christmas tree of goodies for voter suppression,” one Democrat said on the Senate floor. Republicans said the new law would increase trust in the state’s elections after Trump’s claims of fraud last November, though Georgia election officials—including Republicans—say there’s no evidence of widespread fraud. Republicans in other states are pursuing similar legislation, and President Biden called such efforts “un-American” on Thursday. He said he’ll do everything he can to block them.

I have been warning people since the 80s that our rights would be under assault…..and few paid attention.

All this suppression because of the “Big Lie” of massive voter fraud…..which by the way has NEVER….let me say again….NEVER been proven.

As Yogi once said….”It ain’t over ’til its over”.

This has just begun.

(More on this issue later)

Stand up or lose your rights!

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“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thoughts–25Mar21

I try to point out eh moronic people that in government for my state of Mississippi.

I am sick of religious morons trying to force this country into some sort of theocracy……they try to use religion to force the country into obeying their archaic myths…..

One of the lamest things I have heard came from the mouth of a Senator from Mississippi, Cindy Hyde-Smith……this is her take on the possibility of Sunday voting…..”Souls to the polls” program…..

Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) on Wednesday defended Georgia Republicans’ proposal to ban early voting on Sundays by saying allowing voting on that day would go against God’s word.

The Georgia Republicans’ proposal to ban Sunday voting is seen by many critics as a thinly veiled effort to stop Black churches from conducting “souls to the polls” voter drives that helped Democrats win Senate elections in the Peach State earlier this year.

However, Hyde-Smith argued that they’re really only interested in obeying God’s command to keep the Sabbath Day holy.

“God’s word in Exodus 20:18, it says remember the Sabbath and keep it holy,” she said.

Hyde-Smith also emphasized the importance of obeying God’s views on Sunday voting by taking out a dollar bill and pointing out that it says “In God We Trust” on it and that senators’ oaths of office end with the words, “So help me God.”

(rawstory.com)

Someone please inform this mental midget that those words were not part of a dollar bill until 1957.

Time to get the religious bullsh*t out of government.

And time for idiots like Mississippi to get out of politics and find people that want to work for the entire population not the white majority.

Hyde-Smith is a racist pig and the country and the state of Mississippi will be better off without her babbling.

These so-called religious types are tiresome.

Enough Said!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–04Mar21

The GOP lost in the last election….they lost the Senate, The House and the Presidency…..so instead of looking for a vision for the future they do what they have been doing for decades….they look to the past and the suppression of the vote.

The big push by state GOP bigots is to find ways to keep people from voting and even to let a governor overturn the legal vote…..

Across the nation, supporters of former President Trump are working to pass state legislation changing laws to limit access to voting and give them more control over election outcomes. With a rallying cry about the presidential election having been stolen from Trump, and basing their plans on the premise that large turnouts benefit Democrats, state legislators are seeking major changes to help Republicans win the presidency next time, the New York Times reports. The efforts could help Republicans, who’ve won the popular presidential vote only once in the past eight elections, gain control of government despite being a minority party. “The typical response by a losing party in a functioning democracy is that they alter their platform to make it more appealing,” said a University of Wisconsin expert. “Here the response is to try to keep people from voting. It’s dangerously antidemocratic.” The national GOP showed its support last week by forming a panel to look at state election laws, which Republicans have done in various states.

Some efforts seem illogical. Republicans won the presidential and Senate races in Iowa, which reported record turnout and essentially no election fraud last fall. But GOP legislators have voted to shorten early voting by nine days, close polling places an hour earlier, and make absentee voting rules more restrictive. They also moved to take county auditors’ authority away to made decisions about local voting. “Most of us in my caucus and the Republican caucus believe the election was stolen,” a GOP state senator said. Nebraska Republicans want to change to a winner-take-all system for its electoral votes because President Biden was awarded one vote last time. But New Hampshire Republicans want to adopt Nebraska’s current system because Democrats have been winning presidential elections there. A bill in Arizona is more direct, per NBC: The Legislature would have the power to revoke the secretary of state’s certification of electoral results “by majority vote at any time before the presidential inauguration.”

Time for true Americans, not the numb skulls that support bigotry and hatred, to stand up and demand that ALL votes and voters MUST participate….

If this nation is to survivor then ALL Americans need to participate and ALL Americans  should have their right to vote to be guaranteed.

Can HR1……stop all this theft?

The House passed HR1. The bill: -Enacts automatic voter registration -Ends partisan and racial gerrymandering -Institutes public financing of elections -Expands early voting -Prevents voter purges -Exposes dark money -Counters Citizens United

Get behind this bill anyway you can…..we need to end all this suppression and oppression of the American people.

DEMAND YOUR RIGHT!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

To Prevent Voter Fraud

For years we have been hearing Donald the Orange go on and on about voter fraud….and before him there was the GOP rattling on about it as well…..on and on…..and no serious fraud has ever been located in all the so-called investigations…..but it continues and it continues to be pure bollocks.

Now that he, Donald, is president he is determine to make anyone that does not vote for him as a illegitimate vote….first it was to call into question mail-in voting….and now he wants to send in military.police to polling stations….

President Trump is threatening to send law enforcement to polling places for the upcoming presidential election, part of a growing pattern of rhetoric in which he has suggested that he wants to make it harder for Americans to vote, the AP reports. During an interview Thursday night with Fox News host Sean Hannity as part of the counter-programming for the Democratic National Convention, Trump suggested he’d bring in both federal and local law enforcement. The president has repeatedly asserted, without evidence, that there will be widespread voter fraud this November. “We’re going to have everything,” he said. “We’re going to have sheriffs, and we’re going to have law enforcement, and we’re going to hopefully have US attorneys … But it’s very hard.”

But federal law prohibits sending “any troops or armed men” to any polling place in the country, and any effort to send them is a criminal offense punishable by up to five years in prison. One caveat: Troops can be sent in “to repel armed enemies of the United States” during voting. The law would also bar the president from sending in nonmilitary law enforcement if they are armed. Most marshals and FBI agents usually are. The Justice Department routinely conducts monitoring of polling places on Election Day with both federal observers, who are generally allowed inside polling places without written permission, as well as prosecutors and some FBI agents to ensure compliance with federal voting-rights laws.

But can he do this?

Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, told ABC News the president can’t give orders to local sheriffs and can’t send federal forces into polling places.

“There’s no law that I’m aware of that permits, or that would authorize, the president to deploy federal law enforcement or military or anything like that for domestic use in and around in or around polling places,” Ho told ABC News. “Just checking someone’s ID at the door doesn’t really do anything from an election security perspective — from a voter intimidation perspective, I can see how having law enforcement ask people for IDs when you’re entering into a polling location could be intimidating.”

But we do have an presidential ass kisser in the DoJ…will he MAKE it legal?

Are we becoming a new “Banana Republic” under the rule of Donald the Orange?

Learn Stuff!

Then VOTE!

I Read, I Write, You KNow

“lego ergo scribo”

That Mail-In Vote

There has been lots of lip service among our elected officials about the proposal to allow mail-in voting…..especially from the bullshitter-in-charge…..Donald the Orange…..

As always the GOP is worried about voter fraud…..they are always worried about voter fraud whenever there is a proposal for the expansion of voting to make it more available to more people…..so their opposition is absolutely nothing new.

Donald the Orange has issued threats for these mail-in votes….

President Trump threatened to withdraw federal funds Wedneday after apparently misinterpreting a move from Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. The president, who has repeatedly criticized Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, claimed the state had sent absentee ballots to 7.7 million voters. “This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State,” he tweeted. “I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this Voter Fraud path!” Benson, however, had sent applications for mail-in ballots, not the ballots themselves. “I also have a name, it’s Jocelyn Benson,” she tweeted. “And we sent applications, not ballots. Just like my GOP colleagues in Iowa, Georgia, Nebraska, and West Virginia.”

In another tweet, Trump said the military had been sent to deal with flooding in Michigan, but Whitmer “must now ‘set you free’ to help.” Trump is strongly opposed to expanding mail-in voting amid the pandemic, but it’s not clear who he believes needed to authorize Michigan’s decision; Republicans have long “resisted efforts to inject federal oversight” into state elections, Politico notes. In another tweet Wednesday, the president threatened to cut off funding to Nevada for sending out “illegal vote by mail ballots, creating a great Voter Fraud scenario.” Rep. Dina Titus slammed Trump for “threatening to harm Nevadans” and said that the decision to make June 9 congressional primaries all-mail was made by Nevada’s Republican secretary of state, the Nevada Independent reports.

Is there any evidence that there would be an increase in voter fraud if there is mail-in voting?

In short: voting by mail is more convenient for some voters but more difficult for others, and these conflicting factors appear to cancel each other out, dampening any partisan advantage. Moreover, the vast majority of nonvoters don’t participate not because it’s too inconvenient to vote, but because voting isn’t a habit for them. Maybe they don’t care about politics, maybe they don’t think their vote matters, maybe they don’t like any of the candidates, or maybe it’s some combination of all of the above. But the bottom line is that these voters’ decision to vote depends more on whether somebody around them can motivate them to vote, not whether they are able to vote by mail or in person.

…

There are three main ways states vote by mail. First, there are “universal” vote-by-mail states, which is when all registered voters automatically receive a ballot, but this is fairly rare. Just five states currently conduct all-mail elections by default: Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington (although a handful of states allow certain elections to be conducted by mail or some of their counties to vote by mail). Next, there are “no-excuse” vote-by-mail states, which is the most common method of voting by mail in the U.S. — 29 states currently use it in federal elections. Under this system, any registered voter can vote by mail, but must first request a ballot. And finally, there are 16 states that are “excuse-only” vote by mail, which means voters must provide a reason as to why they can’t show up at the polls in order to get their ballot. Although some states might expand the types of excuses accepted in 2020 — the coronavirus is already a valid excuse for general election voters in New Hampshire, and in Texas there’s a lawsuit over whether the coronavirus should be considered a valid excuse for the state’s July primary runoff elections.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-is-no-evidence-that-voting-by-mail-gives-one-party-an-advantage/amp/

Just the GOP trying hard to limit the people that can vote….same as it ever was…..

Just a side thought….most voter fraud convictions have been from the GOP…..something to think about.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–19Nov18

We have had a midterm election and as usual the GOP is claiming voter fraud to explain their losses….I mean it has to be fraud because no one would vote against their racist agenda, right?

But wait the dude that sits in cat bird seat of power has a better explanation of why his idiotic ideas failed……

President Trump asserts that Republicans are losing elections because people are donning disguises to vote illegally. Trump made the claim while discussing the Florida recount with the Daily Caller, along with his belief that Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes should be fired (more on that here, here and here). The full transcript of the interview shows the president also brought up California before making his disguise statement, so it wasn’t clear which state he meant when he said this:

  • “The Republicans don’t win and that’s because of potentially illegal votes, which is what I’ve been saying for a long time. I have no doubt about it. And I’ve seen it, I’ve had friends talk about it when people get in line that have absolutely no right to vote and they go around in circles. Sometimes they go to their car, put on a different hat, put on a different shirt, come in and vote again. Nobody takes anything. It’s really a disgrace what’s going on. The disgrace is that, voter ID. If you buy, you know, a box of cereal, if you do anything, you have a voter ID.”

The Guardian, which along with other media outlets paints the “disguises” claim as being about Florida, notes that Florida counties face a 3pm deadline Thursday to finish their machine recounts and that it’s not clear all of them will be able to comply; six federal lawsuits have been filed so far over the election in the state. The New York Times reports that thousands of ballots may be disqualified due to signature mismatches, though US District Judge Mark Walker on Thursday extended a deadline on that. He gave voters whose ballots were discounted over their signatures until 5pm Saturday to show a valid ID and resolve the issue, reports the AP. He also chastised state election officials: Florida is “the laughingstock of the world election after election, and we chose not to fix this.” (Trump earlier called Florida ballots “massively infected.”)

You gotta love the bullshit these a/holes can stir, right?

The GOP has become the whiny ass losers they have always been but hid very well…..they come out of the woodwork when they are losing….like there has got to be fraud because we know that everyone loves a Repub right?