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.
Voting Law Proposals and Voting Rights Efforts (1 Viewer)
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DaveXA
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They can try, but I don't think they'll be able to pull off any sort of actual success. Maybe do some damage in the short term, but they won't get very far.
LA - L.A.
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I don't think they can seize control, but any group determined to inflict pain, death and destruction will do just that. I'm not thinking American Civil war, but am worried about American's own version of The Troubles of Northern Ireland.
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GrandAdmiral
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Who? No. They challenged because my name showed up twice at the same address but different apartment, despite the the fact the rolls showing a single vote each election.
Optimus Prime
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Four years after Donald Trump and his loyalists repeated groundless claims of election fraud, counties across the United States are working to ensure 2024 won’t be a repeat of 2020 by taking extreme measures to demonstrate that US elections are not “rigged”.
His allegations about how the 2020 election was “stolen” spread on social media, resulting in baseless theories circulating, and which left much of the public with residual distrust of the vote-counting process. Those fears haven’t subsided since 2020 and Trump continues to push the idea that the voting process in 2024 will be flawed.
Officials across the country are now trying to restore voters’ trust by promoting transparency. Some of those measures include GPS trackers on machines, offering public tours, providing 24/7 video surveillance and educating voters.
“The best way to create trust in our election system is to make it as transparent as possible and ensure the public is involved in supporting that process,” Colorado’s Mesa County recorder Bobbie Gross told The Independent.
The pro-Trump district in Colorado is working particularly hard to restore voters’ trust after one of the county’s former clerks, Tina Peters, was charged in August with seven counts related to a security breach during the 2020 election.
The “secure rooms,” where the county’s election equipment lives, are now only accessible with a badge, and even then, workers have to enter in pairs “for accountability”, Gross said. The county keeps 24/7 camera surveillance on this equipment, including ballot boxes, to ensure security – even when there’s not an election going on. If anyone requests video footage, the county will provide it, Gross said.
The county also holds open houses, including one planned for Election Day, allowing the public to witness the process, inspect the equipment and ask questions, Gross said. Providing the public tours is important, she added, because “there’s a lot of things that I think the public is not aware of – how an election was conducted and what our checks and balances are – so we really try to make sure that we can get that out to the public”.……
www.independent.co.uk
His allegations about how the 2020 election was “stolen” spread on social media, resulting in baseless theories circulating, and which left much of the public with residual distrust of the vote-counting process. Those fears haven’t subsided since 2020 and Trump continues to push the idea that the voting process in 2024 will be flawed.
Officials across the country are now trying to restore voters’ trust by promoting transparency. Some of those measures include GPS trackers on machines, offering public tours, providing 24/7 video surveillance and educating voters.
“The best way to create trust in our election system is to make it as transparent as possible and ensure the public is involved in supporting that process,” Colorado’s Mesa County recorder Bobbie Gross told The Independent.
The pro-Trump district in Colorado is working particularly hard to restore voters’ trust after one of the county’s former clerks, Tina Peters, was charged in August with seven counts related to a security breach during the 2020 election.
The “secure rooms,” where the county’s election equipment lives, are now only accessible with a badge, and even then, workers have to enter in pairs “for accountability”, Gross said. The county keeps 24/7 camera surveillance on this equipment, including ballot boxes, to ensure security – even when there’s not an election going on. If anyone requests video footage, the county will provide it, Gross said.
The county also holds open houses, including one planned for Election Day, allowing the public to witness the process, inspect the equipment and ask questions, Gross said. Providing the public tours is important, she added, because “there’s a lot of things that I think the public is not aware of – how an election was conducted and what our checks and balances are – so we really try to make sure that we can get that out to the public”.……
The extreme measures the US is taking to prove elections are safe
Four years after claims of rampant election fraud punctured public confidence, counties across the US are trying new measures to restore voter trust and protect workers who have taken much of the heat
www.independent.co.uk
Optimus Prime
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A few months after Election Day 2020, a sheriff’s deputy and a second man walked into the office of the Rutland Charter Township clerk in southwest Michigan. Clad in dress clothes, the man identified himself as a private investigator and said he was conducting a criminal investigation into election fraud.
“It was kind of a shock,” recalled the clerk, Robin Hawthorne. “We didn’t have any discrepancies. We passed the canvass with flying colors, so it was like, ‘What are they doing here?’”
Hawthorne is a Republican in a solid-red township of 4,100 people. She had been Rutland Charter’s clerk since 2001 and had never encountered anything like this.
Hawthorne answered the private investigator’s questions, she said, as the deputy recorded the conversation on his phone. But when they asked to see her vote-counting machines, she was adamant.
You can look at them, she recalled telling the men, but you can’t touch anything.
They got up to leave instead. But before doing so, Hawthorne said, they insisted that she not mention their visit to anybody to protect the investigation.
“I was like bull crap,” she said. “You’re not going to come in here, grill me like this and I’m not going to find out what’s going on.”
She soon learned that the deputy and the private investigator had visited other township offices as part of an effort to find evidence of election fraud. And the man responsible for it was the top lawman in the area — Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf.
Leaf fashions himself as a “constitutional sheriff.” Sheriffs like him see themselves as holding supreme authority in their counties, exceeding that of state and federal law enforcement officials. They have become prominent figures in the election denial movement, and according to critics, among the most dangerous. “Constitutional sheriffs” believe they have the authority to seize voting machines, assemble armed posses to patrol near polling stations and refuse to enforce any law they view to be unconstitutional.
“This is vigilantism hiding behind a badge,” said Matt Sanderson, an election lawyer in Washington. “No official in this country has unchecked power, and it’s absurd to say that a local sheriff of all people would have some constitutional superpower to disregard courts and laws in pursuit of an extralegal agenda.”
Even though efforts to prove election fraud in 2020 fizzled out, constitutional sheriffs have only grown in stature in recent years. Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence, said he fears the possibility of one of these sheriffs interfering in the election process in a pivotal state like Michigan or Wisconsin.
“The worst case scenario is in a key swing state one of these knucklehead sheriffs tries, and somehow succeeds, in seizing ballots or stopping the voting process,” Figliuzzi said. “That allows Trump to claim victory and then their trained militia members come in and do who knows what.”
Leaf did not respond to phone or email messages seeking comment.
It’s difficult to say how many constitutional sheriffs exist in the U.S. The most prominent group, the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, was founded in 2011 by Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff and member of the Oath Keepers militia. He has claimed that 10% of the nation’s 3,000 sheriffs are members, along with 10,000 ordinary citizens.
The group held a conference in Las Vegas last May, drawing a crowd of current and former sheriffs as well as election-denying Trump-world celebrities like MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Mack delivered a speech in which he called federal and state agencies “the gestapo of America” and said “the sheriffs are going to have to stop it.”..............
www.nbcnews.com
“It was kind of a shock,” recalled the clerk, Robin Hawthorne. “We didn’t have any discrepancies. We passed the canvass with flying colors, so it was like, ‘What are they doing here?’”
Hawthorne is a Republican in a solid-red township of 4,100 people. She had been Rutland Charter’s clerk since 2001 and had never encountered anything like this.
Hawthorne answered the private investigator’s questions, she said, as the deputy recorded the conversation on his phone. But when they asked to see her vote-counting machines, she was adamant.
You can look at them, she recalled telling the men, but you can’t touch anything.
They got up to leave instead. But before doing so, Hawthorne said, they insisted that she not mention their visit to anybody to protect the investigation.
“I was like bull crap,” she said. “You’re not going to come in here, grill me like this and I’m not going to find out what’s going on.”
She soon learned that the deputy and the private investigator had visited other township offices as part of an effort to find evidence of election fraud. And the man responsible for it was the top lawman in the area — Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf.
Leaf fashions himself as a “constitutional sheriff.” Sheriffs like him see themselves as holding supreme authority in their counties, exceeding that of state and federal law enforcement officials. They have become prominent figures in the election denial movement, and according to critics, among the most dangerous. “Constitutional sheriffs” believe they have the authority to seize voting machines, assemble armed posses to patrol near polling stations and refuse to enforce any law they view to be unconstitutional.
“This is vigilantism hiding behind a badge,” said Matt Sanderson, an election lawyer in Washington. “No official in this country has unchecked power, and it’s absurd to say that a local sheriff of all people would have some constitutional superpower to disregard courts and laws in pursuit of an extralegal agenda.”
Even though efforts to prove election fraud in 2020 fizzled out, constitutional sheriffs have only grown in stature in recent years. Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence, said he fears the possibility of one of these sheriffs interfering in the election process in a pivotal state like Michigan or Wisconsin.
“The worst case scenario is in a key swing state one of these knucklehead sheriffs tries, and somehow succeeds, in seizing ballots or stopping the voting process,” Figliuzzi said. “That allows Trump to claim victory and then their trained militia members come in and do who knows what.”
Leaf did not respond to phone or email messages seeking comment.
It’s difficult to say how many constitutional sheriffs exist in the U.S. The most prominent group, the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, was founded in 2011 by Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff and member of the Oath Keepers militia. He has claimed that 10% of the nation’s 3,000 sheriffs are members, along with 10,000 ordinary citizens.
The group held a conference in Las Vegas last May, drawing a crowd of current and former sheriffs as well as election-denying Trump-world celebrities like MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Mack delivered a speech in which he called federal and state agencies “the gestapo of America” and said “the sheriffs are going to have to stop it.”..............
A 'constitutional sheriff' tried to seize voting machines in 2020. Officials are bracing for a repeat.
In a rural county in southwest Michigan, a sheriff who sees himself as holding supreme authority has become a hero in the election denial movement.
www.nbcnews.com
Optimus Prime
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As a public school educator who was once declared principal of the year, Liza Burrell-Aldana talks to young people about their responsibility to this country.
So it shook her Thursday evening, she said, when a poll worker at an early-voting site in Fairfax County, Virginia, looked at her driver’s license and asked her, twice: “Are you a citizen?”
She said she was. The worker then asked whether Burrell-Aldana had proof of citizenship in her purse, she recalled.
“Who asks that question? I was like, ‘Why would I carry that with me?’” Burrell-Aldana said.
Burrell-Aldana, who immigrated from Colombia in 2002 and became a U.S. citizen in 2011, hadn’t been asked such questions when she voted in three previous presidential elections, and said the political climate seems to have given license for people to ask.
The incident played out as Donald Trump and many Republicans have falsely claimed that waves of noncitizens are voting, stoking fears. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) has embraced the issue, pushing for a daily scrub of voter rolls. Voting rights activists throughout the country, meanwhile, are worried that this rhetoric will lead to eligible voters being harassed or afraid to cast their ballots.
It is a violation of Virginia law for a poll worker “to require or even to ask a voter to provide anything more than” a form of identification when they check in to vote, said Ryan Snow, a voting rights attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
On Saturday, elections officials in North Carolina felt compelled to issue basic reassurances about who is allowed to vote. “It does not matter if you were born a U.S. citizen or were naturalized or acquired citizenship. And it does not matter if you are a citizen, but your family members are not. Citizenship is citizenship, and it pertains to you,” according to the statement.
Attempts by noncitizens to vote are extremely rare. An audit by Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, released last month, showed 20 noncitizens were registered to vote — out of 8.2 million citizens on the state’s voter rolls.
Snow said rhetoric to the contrary is dangerous because it can lead to incidents such as the one in Virginia, or worse. “It ends up being a barrier to voting,” Snow said.
Burrell-Aldana, in considering why her citizenship was questioned this year and not in past years, noted an environment where demeaning jokes about Latinos and others seem to be thrown around easily — as they were at a recent Trump rally at Madison Square Garden.
“I do look like a Latina and I sound like a Latina,” Burrell-Aldana said. “I think that was the reason why.”
Whatever the reason, officials at Fairfax County’s Office of Elections said the poll worker at the Franconia Governmental Center has been removed.............
So it shook her Thursday evening, she said, when a poll worker at an early-voting site in Fairfax County, Virginia, looked at her driver’s license and asked her, twice: “Are you a citizen?”
She said she was. The worker then asked whether Burrell-Aldana had proof of citizenship in her purse, she recalled.
“Who asks that question? I was like, ‘Why would I carry that with me?’” Burrell-Aldana said.
Burrell-Aldana, who immigrated from Colombia in 2002 and became a U.S. citizen in 2011, hadn’t been asked such questions when she voted in three previous presidential elections, and said the political climate seems to have given license for people to ask.
The incident played out as Donald Trump and many Republicans have falsely claimed that waves of noncitizens are voting, stoking fears. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) has embraced the issue, pushing for a daily scrub of voter rolls. Voting rights activists throughout the country, meanwhile, are worried that this rhetoric will lead to eligible voters being harassed or afraid to cast their ballots.
It is a violation of Virginia law for a poll worker “to require or even to ask a voter to provide anything more than” a form of identification when they check in to vote, said Ryan Snow, a voting rights attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
On Saturday, elections officials in North Carolina felt compelled to issue basic reassurances about who is allowed to vote. “It does not matter if you were born a U.S. citizen or were naturalized or acquired citizenship. And it does not matter if you are a citizen, but your family members are not. Citizenship is citizenship, and it pertains to you,” according to the statement.
Attempts by noncitizens to vote are extremely rare. An audit by Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, released last month, showed 20 noncitizens were registered to vote — out of 8.2 million citizens on the state’s voter rolls.
Snow said rhetoric to the contrary is dangerous because it can lead to incidents such as the one in Virginia, or worse. “It ends up being a barrier to voting,” Snow said.
Burrell-Aldana, in considering why her citizenship was questioned this year and not in past years, noted an environment where demeaning jokes about Latinos and others seem to be thrown around easily — as they were at a recent Trump rally at Madison Square Garden.
“I do look like a Latina and I sound like a Latina,” Burrell-Aldana said. “I think that was the reason why.”
Whatever the reason, officials at Fairfax County’s Office of Elections said the poll worker at the Franconia Governmental Center has been removed.............
Optimus Prime
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Many of the people preparing to cast votes for Donald Trump in the Electoral College in 2024 were involved in his plot to subvert the election in 2020.
Some are even facing criminal charges for it.
Of the 93 Republicans designated as prospective presidential electors for Trump from the seven battleground states, eight are facing felony charges for signing false Electoral College certificates in 2020, according to a POLITICO analysis. Another five signed similar certificates in 2020 but were not charged. And at least six others played notable roles in challenging the results of the 2020 election or promoting election conspiracy theories.
All told, at least 1 in 5 prospective Trump electors from battleground states this year had some connection to the scheme to overturn the 2020 election.
There’s little reason to believe that Trump or his allies would attempt to reenact the false elector scheme, given the prolonged criminal proceedings against the fake electors and the maturation of the “Stop the Steal” movement. But the reemergence of these Republicans demonstrates the power that election denialism continues to hold in a Republican Party led by Trump, who routinely foments false claims of voter fraud — and has deployed some of those same false claims to raise doubts about the 2024 election.
Rather than being punished or shunted aside for their role in an attempt to overturn a democratic election, they’ve been elevated. The GOP has rewarded those accused of felony crimes with a return to the coveted position they stand accused of abusing four years ago.
Despite the sweeping losses election deniers have suffered at the ballot box, rejection of the last presidential outcome continues to be a mainstream belief among GOP leaders within the states. A significant share of these electors come from within the official state party apparatuses, including party chairs from Georgia, Nevada and Arizona.
“It would appear that the party leadership in the states where there are fraudulent electors serving as electors again are not taking seriously things like the criminal charges that have been brought against these fraudulent electors,” said Mary McCord, a Georgetown law professor and executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection............
Some are even facing criminal charges for it.
Of the 93 Republicans designated as prospective presidential electors for Trump from the seven battleground states, eight are facing felony charges for signing false Electoral College certificates in 2020, according to a POLITICO analysis. Another five signed similar certificates in 2020 but were not charged. And at least six others played notable roles in challenging the results of the 2020 election or promoting election conspiracy theories.
All told, at least 1 in 5 prospective Trump electors from battleground states this year had some connection to the scheme to overturn the 2020 election.
There’s little reason to believe that Trump or his allies would attempt to reenact the false elector scheme, given the prolonged criminal proceedings against the fake electors and the maturation of the “Stop the Steal” movement. But the reemergence of these Republicans demonstrates the power that election denialism continues to hold in a Republican Party led by Trump, who routinely foments false claims of voter fraud — and has deployed some of those same false claims to raise doubts about the 2024 election.
Rather than being punished or shunted aside for their role in an attempt to overturn a democratic election, they’ve been elevated. The GOP has rewarded those accused of felony crimes with a return to the coveted position they stand accused of abusing four years ago.
Despite the sweeping losses election deniers have suffered at the ballot box, rejection of the last presidential outcome continues to be a mainstream belief among GOP leaders within the states. A significant share of these electors come from within the official state party apparatuses, including party chairs from Georgia, Nevada and Arizona.
“It would appear that the party leadership in the states where there are fraudulent electors serving as electors again are not taking seriously things like the criminal charges that have been brought against these fraudulent electors,” said Mary McCord, a Georgetown law professor and executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection............
I put nothing past them. Just because I am paranoid that doesn’t mean they are not out to get me.
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Nebaghead
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Grrrrrr…..
At least the judges are doing the right thing. Unlike the SC and Virginia.
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