Voting Law Proposals and Voting Rights Efforts (2 Viewers)

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    MT15

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    This is, IMO, going to be a big topic in the coming year. Republicans have stated their aim to make voting more restrictive in just about every state where they have the means to do so. Democrats would like to pass the Voting Rights Bill named after John Lewis. I’m going to go look up the map of all the states which have pending legislation to restrict voting. Now that we have the election in the rear view, I thought we could try to make this a general discussion thread, where people who have concerns about voting abuses can post as well and we can discuss it from both sides. Please keep memes out of this thread and put them in the boards where we go to talk about the other side, lol.
     
    When working the polls during the 2020 presidential election, i was expecting to have to tell people they weren't allowed to have political shirts, ie MAGA.. But to my surprise, i didn't see anyone. Now because of the rise in the QAnon/ Jan 6 supporters, I am expecting to see something at the polls on the 8th. Hopefully not.. If i do, GTFO... lol
    When we voted in 2016 I saw a really large, older man try to vote wearing his MAGA hat. I watched a little old lady, maybe half his size, stand up to him. She first asked him politely to remove his hat, to which he growled no. Then she informed him he wouldn’t be voting if he didn’t, which he didn’t like at all. She just stood firm and didn’t engage any further with his complaining. Eventually he took it off and stuffed it in his pocket. I was so proud of that little old lady. We old ladies don’t give a shirt anymore, lol.
     
    HOUSTON — With a week to go before Election Day, a showdown is emerging between state and local leaders here over how to protect the security of the vote without intimidating voters and election workers.

    The clash is playing out in Harris County, Texas’s largest jurisdiction and home to Houston, where state and local Republicans are deploying monitors to oversee the handling of ballots in the Democratic enclave. Local Democratic officials have said the move is an effort to intimidate voters — and asked the Justice Department to send federal observers in response.

    The result could be a partisan showdown, in which two different sets of monitors face off on Election Day in this giant metro region. That’s not including the thousands of partisan poll watchers who are expected to fan out at voting locations across Texas.

    GOP officials and conservative poll watchers say heightened scrutiny is necessary to prevent election fraud and mismanagement. Voting-rights advocates and local leaders, meanwhile, say the GOP is scaring voters and election workers alike — and undermining faith in the results for a county that Republicans are pushing hard to win control of on Nov. 8.

    The conflict reflects how much mistrust has infused election season across the country, giving rise to fears of confrontation and even violence between groups with wildly divergent beliefs about how best to protect democratic rights.

    The dynamic is particularly heightened in the cities of politically contested states, where Democrats tend to control elections and where Republicans have mounted aggressive poll-watching campaigns...............

     
    The 2022 midterm elections are underway, with many Americans, in particular Republicans, increasingly fearful that the outcome will be affected or even determined by election fraud.


    Thousands of poll watchers have been dispatched. Drop boxes are under surveillance.

    Many GOP candidates in key battleground states refuse to say they will accept the results if they received fewer votes than their opponents.


    A Fox News poll conducted in early October found that 55 percent of those surveyed were extremely or very concerned about voter fraud.

    Among Republicans, nearly three-quarters said they were that concerned.

    These fears have been further fanned by the constant refrain by former president Donald Trump and his allies that Joe Biden triumphed in the 2020 race only because he stole the election — a lie that has been debunked over and over again.


    Here’s the truth:
— By every single metric, election fraud is rare in the United States.
—

    Almost no elections in the past 50 years have been flipped because of documented voter fraud, with occasional exceptions at the local level.


    There are logical reasons for this.


    The decentralized system of American elections — where elections are run by more than 8,000 local governments and almost 90 percent of Americans vote on paper ballots, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission — make it impossible to steal a nationwide election through voter fraud…….

     
    PHOENIX (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday ordered armed members of a group monitoring ballot drop boxes in Arizona to stay at least 250 feet away from the locations following complaints that people wearing masks and carrying guns were intimidating voters.

    U.S. District Court Judge Michael Liburdi said members of Clean Elections USA, its leader and anyone working with them are also barred from filming or following anyone within 75 feet (23 meters) of a ballot drop box or the entrance to a building that houses one. They also cannot speak to or yell at individuals within that perimeter unless spoken to first............

     
    PHOENIX (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday ordered armed members of a group monitoring ballot drop boxes in Arizona to stay at least 250 feet away from the locations following complaints that people wearing masks and carrying guns were intimidating voters.

    U.S. District Court Judge Michael Liburdi said members of Clean Elections USA, its leader and anyone working with them are also barred from filming or following anyone within 75 feet (23 meters) of a ballot drop box or the entrance to a building that houses one. They also cannot speak to or yell at individuals within that perimeter unless spoken to first............

    wanna bet they don't care what the judge says and will continue to do it? and will face no consequences from law enforcement when they continue?
    Personally, i think everyone who goes to the drop box should cal 911 and report them that they feel in danger and threatened.
     
    A woman says a Smokey Point, Wash. USPS worker refused to take her mail-in ballot, claiming he said he could "refuse service to anyone" in a now-viral TikTok. She believes that this was an attempt at "voter interference."

    In the video posted by TikToker Jenn Marie (@_jenn_marie_) on Oct. 25, she stands outside of the USPS branch and shows the pre-paid mail-in ballot envelope that was rejected at the counter.

    "Tell me you live in MAGA country, without telling me you live in MAGA country," she says in the clip. "I am actually a resident of the state of Pennsylvania because my wife is in the Navy. So I have to vote absentee."

    She continues to state that the worker said he "has the right to refuse service to anyone, so you're going to have to take that somewhere else" when she tried to submit her mail-in ballot.

    The caption reads, "Sir, I will literally buy a plane ticket to PA before you stifle my vote."..........


    Language in the videos


     
    There is no reason to stand near drop boxes in Arizona and monitor who is casting ballots.

    After all, there is no evidence at all that drop boxes are a vehicle for casting fraudulent votes.

    The Associated Press contacted election administrators across the country and found no significant examples of fraud being committed using drop boxes. Yet there has been a movement to do precisely that.


    Much of the concern about drop boxes, of course, derives from the film “2000 Mules,” which showed no actual examples of people casting multiple ballots illegally. (One man accused of voting illegally in the film is now suing for defamation.)

    The standard of behavior deemed suspicious in the film is … low, meaning that those choosing to “monitor” drop boxes have no benchmark against which to evaluate voters. Meaning that anything at all might be considered “suspicious.”

    One drop-box monitor, for example, publicly posted a photo of a man casting a vote whose car had no license plate, as reported by NBC News — though it is not really clear why that’s worth elevating as a concern.


    This is vigilantism. People have appointed themselves as monitors after being convinced that something nefarious is happening, after believing the dishonest claims of films like “2000 Mules” or people like former president Donald Trump.

    It is a group that thinks the indifference and inaction of officials isn’t a function of those officials correctly understanding that the alleged threat is fake but, instead, sees the inaction as part of a conspiracy.

    They are taking things into their own hands and into the online enforcement community, such as it is……..

     
    I went to election commisoner class last night. They just like to give everyone a rundown on any changes.
    One of the things she talked about was how someone has been passing out flyers accusing Ascension Parish of the voting machines being connected to the internet and being sent to Syria and other countries to be counted and to demand that all votes return to paper ballots. She was like, these people are idiots, do not believe any of it, If anyone asks you about it, you can let them know these machines 1) arent connected to the internet or even connected to each other 2) The machines are smart enough to count on its own and 3) all counts are tallied by parish emplyees and no one else, no third party or outside companies.
    Anyone wanna take the over/under on what political affilation the ones who are distributing these lies are tied to?
     
    (Reuters) - The canvassers in California's Shasta County in September wore reflective orange vests and official-looking badges that read “Voter Taskforce.” Four residents said they mistook them for government officials.

    But the door knockers didn't explain where to vote or promote a candidate, the usual work of canvassers ahead of a big election.

    Instead, they grilled residents on their voting history and who lived in their homes, probing questions that might have violated state laws on intimidation and harassment, according to the county's chief election official.

    At one house, they interrogated a couple about the whereabouts of their adult daughter. At another, they listed names of registered voters and demanded to know if they still lived at the address.

    The incidents highlight how a once-routine staple of American elections -- door-to-door canvassing -- has been adopted by former U.S. President Donald Trump's supporters since the 2020 election to prove his baseless claims of voter fraud, or potentially disenfranchise voters by stoking doubts about voter registration books.

    In at least 19 states, pro-Trump canvassers are using their findings to press election officials to clean up what they claim are inaccurate voter-registration lists, saying they could open the door to fraudulent voting.

    In at least one state, Michigan, they plan to use their list of alleged irregularities to challenge voters in the Nov. 8 election.

    Canvassers believe such efforts are uncovering evidence that voting machines were rigged in 2020 to steal the election from Trump, according to a review by Reuters of the groups' literature and reports.

    But the activists often seem more interested in undermining confidence in U.S. democracy than trying to improve it, said Arizona's Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican. "They're hoping that we fail. They're hoping that mistakes occur and they're even trying to do things to disrupt the system," he said...........

     
    PHOENIX (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday ordered armed members of a group monitoring ballot drop boxes in Arizona to stay at least 250 feet away from the locations following complaints that people wearing masks and carrying guns were intimidating voters.

    U.S. District Court Judge Michael Liburdi said members of Clean Elections USA, its leader and anyone working with them are also barred from filming or following anyone within 75 feet (23 meters) of a ballot drop box or the entrance to a building that houses one. They also cannot speak to or yell at individuals within that perimeter unless spoken to first............

    Surprised he changed his mind after the ruling the other day.
     
    What a mess
    ===========
    A messy legal dispute over absentee ballots is happening in Pennsylvania, and the results of the state’s closely fought elections might depend on how it comes out.


    If this sounds familiar, that is because it echoes a similar fight over mail-in ballots that occurred in 2020. Joe Biden’s margin in the key swing state was larger than the number of votes in question, but that did not stop Republicans from claiming, falsely, that his victory was illegitimate.


    This year’s fight is over whether the state should discard potentially thousands of mail-in ballots that arrive with a small technical error.

    Pennsylvania absentee voters are supposed to sign and date their ballot envelopes. The date they write would matter if election officials used it to verify that ballots arrived in time.

    They do not.

    Instead, mail-in ballots are stamped according to when they arrive at election offices. Any that show up past 8 on election night do not count.

    The voter-provided dates are a meaningless formality.

    Republicans nevertheless claim that otherwise eligible ballots that arrive in envelopes without handwritten dates or with incorrect dates should be void.

    Handing them a win, the state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that election offices should segregate and preserve — and not count — deficient ballots.


    The ballots are to be preserved because the legal dispute is probably not over.

    The federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars election officials from denying someone the vote based on “an error or omission” on paperwork that “is not material in determining whether such individual is qualified.”

    Federal courts are the likely next battlefield in the fight, though judges might not rule before next week’s election.

    If the count in a major race is close enough that the ballots in question would make a difference, post-election court challenges are almost guaranteed……

     
    I don’t think this move by DeSantis has received enough attention:

     

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