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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zztop
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During a nationally televised event hosted by a fan club of former President Donald Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday signed into law contentious and wide-ranging changes to the state’s voting laws, including provisions targeting voting by mail and limiting the use of ballot drop boxes.
Highlighting the sharply partisan debate surrounding Senate Bill 90, passed by state lawmakers last week, DeSantis barred most Florida reporters from attending the event held in West Palm Beach before the group Club 45 USA. Fox News was granted exclusive access.
▪ Floridians now must give a driver’s license number, state ID number or the last four digits of their Social Security number to request a vote-by-mail ballot.
▪ Requests for mail ballots also don’t last as long. Instead of requesting a ballot through the next two general elections — the next four years — requests are limited to the next general election — or two years. (Current requests are grandfathered in.)
▪ Drop boxes are limited to early voting days and hours, unless it’s a drop box at the supervisor’s office, and the boxes must be manned while in use.
Multiple groups, including the civil rights group League of United Latin American Citizens, announced they would sue the state over the new legislation.
“Voter suppression aimed at American citizens just because they are brown or Black is disgraceful, un-American, and frankly unprincipled,” the group said in a statement Thursday.
Highlighting the sharply partisan debate surrounding Senate Bill 90, passed by state lawmakers last week, DeSantis barred most Florida reporters from attending the event held in West Palm Beach before the group Club 45 USA. Fox News was granted exclusive access.
▪ Floridians now must give a driver’s license number, state ID number or the last four digits of their Social Security number to request a vote-by-mail ballot.
▪ Requests for mail ballots also don’t last as long. Instead of requesting a ballot through the next two general elections — the next four years — requests are limited to the next general election — or two years. (Current requests are grandfathered in.)
▪ Drop boxes are limited to early voting days and hours, unless it’s a drop box at the supervisor’s office, and the boxes must be manned while in use.
Multiple groups, including the civil rights group League of United Latin American Citizens, announced they would sue the state over the new legislation.
“Voter suppression aimed at American citizens just because they are brown or Black is disgraceful, un-American, and frankly unprincipled,” the group said in a statement Thursday.
Optimus Prime
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Guess I'll put this here
Forgot about that Jacob guy
=========================
New York Attorney Letitia James wants two right-wing provocateurs to pay up to $2.7 million in penalties for thousands of robocalls allegedly aimed at suppressing the Black vote ahead of the 2020 election.
James said Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman "used misinformation to try to disenfranchise Black communities ahead of the election, in a clear attempt to sway the election in the favor of their preferred presidential candidate."
Wohl and Burkman, conservative political operatives known for smearing political opponents with transparently false accusations, are already facing criminal charges in Michigan and Ohio for the scheme. The pair are accused of trying to influence 85,000 voters in urban areas across the country with the August 2020 robocalls, which were loaded with misinformation about mail-in voting.
The speaker on the call identified herself "Tamika Taylor of Project 1599," and falsely claimed that voting by mail would result in voters "having their personal information used by the police to track old warrants, credit card companies to collect debts, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to track individuals for mandatory vaccines," James' office said.
"Don’t be finessed into giving your private information to the man. Stay home safe and beware of vote by mail,” the call concluded — which would appear to tell people not to vote at all.
Wohl and Burkman have acknowledged in court that they were responsible for the calls, but deny that they did anything illegal. The pair insist the call was an exercise of free speech rights and not designed to intimidate, threaten or suppress voting...............
Forgot about that Jacob guy
=========================
New York Attorney Letitia James wants two right-wing provocateurs to pay up to $2.7 million in penalties for thousands of robocalls allegedly aimed at suppressing the Black vote ahead of the 2020 election.
James said Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman "used misinformation to try to disenfranchise Black communities ahead of the election, in a clear attempt to sway the election in the favor of their preferred presidential candidate."
Wohl and Burkman, conservative political operatives known for smearing political opponents with transparently false accusations, are already facing criminal charges in Michigan and Ohio for the scheme. The pair are accused of trying to influence 85,000 voters in urban areas across the country with the August 2020 robocalls, which were loaded with misinformation about mail-in voting.
The speaker on the call identified herself "Tamika Taylor of Project 1599," and falsely claimed that voting by mail would result in voters "having their personal information used by the police to track old warrants, credit card companies to collect debts, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to track individuals for mandatory vaccines," James' office said.
"Don’t be finessed into giving your private information to the man. Stay home safe and beware of vote by mail,” the call concluded — which would appear to tell people not to vote at all.
Wohl and Burkman have acknowledged in court that they were responsible for the calls, but deny that they did anything illegal. The pair insist the call was an exercise of free speech rights and not designed to intimidate, threaten or suppress voting...............
Optimus Prime
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This is the first time I'm hearing about this bamboo theory
============================
The “audit” to which Stefanik refers is a remarkable exercise in trying to gin up doubt about the results in the state. Authorized by the Republican state Senate, it is being managed by a firm with no demonstrable track record in validating ballots and run by a man whose embrace of debunked conspiracy theories about fraud were elevated by former Trump attorney Sidney Powell.
The effort to review every ballot cast in Maricopa County — which by itself gave President Biden his margin of victory in the state — has been undertaken using an opaque, often inscrutable process, outside of the close view of objective third parties and with the assistance of obviously motivated actors, such as a former legislator who was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
All of this has been known for a while, and all of it suggests that the motivation for the audit is not “transparency and answers” so much as “cobbling together a rationale for claims about fraud.” But no element of the review better captures its nature than an element that was revealed on Wednesday.
One of the people helping coordinate the review is John Brakey, founder of AUDIT Elections USA. Speaking to a reporter from a local CBS affiliate, he explained one of the tests that was being conducted as part of the review process.
“There’s accusations that 40,000 ballots were flown in to Arizona and it was stuffed into the box, okay?” Brakey said. “And it came from the southeast part of the world, Asia, okay? And what they’re doing is to find out if there’s bamboo in the paper.” Because, he added later, “they use bamboo in their paper processing, people in southeast Asia.”
He discussed the high-definition cameras being used to photograph the ballots, noting that it was a process that could identify if ballots were hand-completed. He also made clear that he didn’t really believe the bamboo-ballot theory.
“I don’t believe any of that,” Brakey said. “I’m just saying that is part of the mystery that we want to un-gaslight people about and this is a way to do it.”......
============================
The “audit” to which Stefanik refers is a remarkable exercise in trying to gin up doubt about the results in the state. Authorized by the Republican state Senate, it is being managed by a firm with no demonstrable track record in validating ballots and run by a man whose embrace of debunked conspiracy theories about fraud were elevated by former Trump attorney Sidney Powell.
The effort to review every ballot cast in Maricopa County — which by itself gave President Biden his margin of victory in the state — has been undertaken using an opaque, often inscrutable process, outside of the close view of objective third parties and with the assistance of obviously motivated actors, such as a former legislator who was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
All of this has been known for a while, and all of it suggests that the motivation for the audit is not “transparency and answers” so much as “cobbling together a rationale for claims about fraud.” But no element of the review better captures its nature than an element that was revealed on Wednesday.
One of the people helping coordinate the review is John Brakey, founder of AUDIT Elections USA. Speaking to a reporter from a local CBS affiliate, he explained one of the tests that was being conducted as part of the review process.
“There’s accusations that 40,000 ballots were flown in to Arizona and it was stuffed into the box, okay?” Brakey said. “And it came from the southeast part of the world, Asia, okay? And what they’re doing is to find out if there’s bamboo in the paper.” Because, he added later, “they use bamboo in their paper processing, people in southeast Asia.”
He discussed the high-definition cameras being used to photograph the ballots, noting that it was a process that could identify if ballots were hand-completed. He also made clear that he didn’t really believe the bamboo-ballot theory.
“I don’t believe any of that,” Brakey said. “I’m just saying that is part of the mystery that we want to un-gaslight people about and this is a way to do it.”......
Optimus Prime
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superchuck500
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zztop
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wow, I had no idea this shirt has been going on since the 80s.
In 1981, shortly after Ronald Reagan took office, the RNC decided to embark on a major voter suppression program. Under the name the National Ballot Security Task Force, the RNC engaged in a variety of unsavory and illegal voter suppression tactics. These included “voter-caging” (which involves targeting minority voters with mailings and then seeking the removal of those whose mail is returned as undeliverable from the voter rolls), as well as full-on voter intimidation at the polls. To achieve the latter, the RNC set up signs near minority precincts in New Jersey that warned voters of the risks of committing voter fraud and stationed off-duty sheriffs and police officers at polling places wearing black armbands with “National Ballot Security Task Force” printed on them.
superchuck500
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And of course that’s only the modern era. The Voting Rights Act grew out of all sorts of abuses to keep Americans who had a right to vote from doing so. It has long been a political strategy to retain control.
superchuck500
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SFIDC3
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It certainly fits that party's style over the last number of years...I think that is fairly obvious...that language is used very much on purpose for those that they want to hear it...then once it is pointed out....deny, deny, deny.....
zztop
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the "purity" wording got removed, and it passed
Jim Crow Ballot 'Purity' Phrase Yanked From Texas Vote Suppression Bill At Last Minute
GOP lawmakers ultimately decided not to advertise the segregationist nature of the voting measure.
Also next up is Ohio
Ohio Becomes The Latest State To Introduce A Major Voter Suppression Bill
Like other anti-voting bills being introduced across the country by the GOP, Ohio's HB 294 would place severe restrictions on ballot drop boxes and absentee voting.
JRad
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If only these lawmakers cared about anything else as much as they care about fixing a non-existent problem they made up.
Optimus Prime
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Penalties for election workers too
====================
The right to vote is under attack, as are the people who protect that right. Multiple states have passed or are considering new restrictive voting rules in response to the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen.
There is, of course, no evidence of massive voter fraud in 2020 — and President Biden legitimately won the election — but that has not stopped unscrupulous politicians in states such as Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Florida and Iowa from considering new strict rules on absentee balloting, the ability to use a drop box, and even providing food or water to voters waiting in line.
These attacks on our democracy have received much attention. Far less noticed, however, have been provisions in these laws that penalize local election officials who administer our elections.
Iowa, in addition to limiting voter access by cutting early voting days and forbidding local election officials from mailing out absentee ballot request forms without a specific request from a voter, will now make it a crime if election workers violate the new rules.
Florida has enacted a rule that limits ballot drop box availability to only during early voting hours, and provides that, “If any drop box at an early voting site is left accessible for the return of ballots outside of early voting hours, the supervisor is subject to a civil penalty of $25,000.”
A Texas proposed bill would subject a local registrar to fines if the registrar fails to mail out notices demanding proof of citizenship to individuals otherwise deemed ineligible to vote.
It would also criminalize election workers who “distance or obstruct the view of a [poll] watcher in a way that makes observation reasonably ineffective.”
Arizona legislators want to make it a felony for an election worker to mail an early ballot to a voter who has not requested one........
====================
The right to vote is under attack, as are the people who protect that right. Multiple states have passed or are considering new restrictive voting rules in response to the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen.
There is, of course, no evidence of massive voter fraud in 2020 — and President Biden legitimately won the election — but that has not stopped unscrupulous politicians in states such as Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Florida and Iowa from considering new strict rules on absentee balloting, the ability to use a drop box, and even providing food or water to voters waiting in line.
These attacks on our democracy have received much attention. Far less noticed, however, have been provisions in these laws that penalize local election officials who administer our elections.
Iowa, in addition to limiting voter access by cutting early voting days and forbidding local election officials from mailing out absentee ballot request forms without a specific request from a voter, will now make it a crime if election workers violate the new rules.
Florida has enacted a rule that limits ballot drop box availability to only during early voting hours, and provides that, “If any drop box at an early voting site is left accessible for the return of ballots outside of early voting hours, the supervisor is subject to a civil penalty of $25,000.”
A Texas proposed bill would subject a local registrar to fines if the registrar fails to mail out notices demanding proof of citizenship to individuals otherwise deemed ineligible to vote.
It would also criminalize election workers who “distance or obstruct the view of a [poll] watcher in a way that makes observation reasonably ineffective.”
Arizona legislators want to make it a felony for an election worker to mail an early ballot to a voter who has not requested one........
Optimus Prime
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MT15
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So, this is illustrative of the real point of the GA voter suppression law. These provisional ballots were valid votes cast by valid voters. They were checked and verified as all provisional ballots are. This is the clearest indication that this is definitely not about voter fraud, it’s about controlling the number of votes that can be cast for democrats.
In other words, make the lines long at minority voting precincts, then punish voters who try to vote at a different precinct to avoid the hours long lines. And yes, I know they paid lip service to eliminating the long lines. I don’t believe those are good faith efforts, they wouldn’t do anything to correct them until the next election, and then it’s at the whim of the same people who don’t really want to correct the long lines. In fact they’re the same people who created the long lines to begin with. The Republican Party has abandoned democracy, bottom line. They don’t want to live in our system of government, not really. Unless they can tilt the odds to their favor by doing this crap, not by getting out there and competing for votes.
zztop
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Now Arizona
www.huffpost.com
The governor claimed the bill was about “election integrity.” In fact, it could remove over 125,000 voters from the state’s list to receive mail-in ballots, including some 30,000 Latinx voters, according to the voting rights group Fair Fight Action.
Arizona Gov. Signs Bill To Purge Early Voters Who Don't Vote By Mail In 4 Years
The new law, which could remove tens of thousands of people from the state’s Permanent Early Voting List, is the latest Republican effort to restrict the vote.
The governor claimed the bill was about “election integrity.” In fact, it could remove over 125,000 voters from the state’s list to receive mail-in ballots, including some 30,000 Latinx voters, according to the voting rights group Fair Fight Action.
superchuck500
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More evidence of voter fraud.
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