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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brandon
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How long did it take them to discover this?
Like ten seconds of someone going "Hey, wait a minute?"
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Hopefully this holds up and other states follow suit
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Mississippi’s lifetime ban on certain felons voting constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and violates the Eighth Amendment, a federal appeals court ruled Friday, potentially paving the way for tens of thousands to regain their voting rights.
A panel of 5th Circuit judges ruled 2-1 in favor of the plaintiffs, writing that the section at issue in Mississippi’s state constitution “ensures that they will never be fully rehabilitated, continues to punish them beyond the term their culpability requires, and serves no protective function to society.”
“In so excluding former offenders from a basic aspect of democratic life, often long after their sentences have been served, Mississippi inflicts a disproportionate punishment that has been rejected by a majority of the states and, in the independent judgment of this court informed by our precedents, is at odds with society’s evolving standards of decency,” wrote judge James L. Dennis, joined by judge Carolyn Dineen King, both of whom were appointed by Democratic presidents.
If it holds, the decision would affect about 30,000 Mississippians who have served sentences for felonies covered by the disenfranchisement clause, the plaintiffs estimate.
The clause dates back to Mississippi’s 1890 constitution, which the state “adopted in reaction to the expansion of Black suffrage and other political rights during Reconstruction,” the ruling notes. The provision applied to felons convicted of crimes that included murder, bribery, theft and perjury, among other crimes.
The plaintiffs succeeded using an uncommon legal strategy for voting rights cases, focusing on the Eighth Amendment and its prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
Past felons’ voting rights cases have often centered on arguments that disenfranchising them violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause — an argument the suit also made unsuccessfully. Those cases include a separate challenge to Mississippi’s rule, which the 5th Circuit rejected and the Supreme Court declined to take up this year.
Jonathan Youngwood, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, said his team pursued every line of argument it found substantial. He said the Eighth Amendment was relevant in particular because Mississippi’s ban has been permanent in the vast majority of cases where it applied.
“If you commit a crime when you’re 22 years old, and you serve a year or six months and you get out, it can’t be that decades later you can’t vote. That just can’t be what the Constitution allows in 2023,” said Youngwood, an attorney at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett……..
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Mississippi’s lifetime ban on certain felons voting constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and violates the Eighth Amendment, a federal appeals court ruled Friday, potentially paving the way for tens of thousands to regain their voting rights.
A panel of 5th Circuit judges ruled 2-1 in favor of the plaintiffs, writing that the section at issue in Mississippi’s state constitution “ensures that they will never be fully rehabilitated, continues to punish them beyond the term their culpability requires, and serves no protective function to society.”
“In so excluding former offenders from a basic aspect of democratic life, often long after their sentences have been served, Mississippi inflicts a disproportionate punishment that has been rejected by a majority of the states and, in the independent judgment of this court informed by our precedents, is at odds with society’s evolving standards of decency,” wrote judge James L. Dennis, joined by judge Carolyn Dineen King, both of whom were appointed by Democratic presidents.
If it holds, the decision would affect about 30,000 Mississippians who have served sentences for felonies covered by the disenfranchisement clause, the plaintiffs estimate.
The clause dates back to Mississippi’s 1890 constitution, which the state “adopted in reaction to the expansion of Black suffrage and other political rights during Reconstruction,” the ruling notes. The provision applied to felons convicted of crimes that included murder, bribery, theft and perjury, among other crimes.
The plaintiffs succeeded using an uncommon legal strategy for voting rights cases, focusing on the Eighth Amendment and its prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
Past felons’ voting rights cases have often centered on arguments that disenfranchising them violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause — an argument the suit also made unsuccessfully. Those cases include a separate challenge to Mississippi’s rule, which the 5th Circuit rejected and the Supreme Court declined to take up this year.
Jonathan Youngwood, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, said his team pursued every line of argument it found substantial. He said the Eighth Amendment was relevant in particular because Mississippi’s ban has been permanent in the vast majority of cases where it applied.
“If you commit a crime when you’re 22 years old, and you serve a year or six months and you get out, it can’t be that decades later you can’t vote. That just can’t be what the Constitution allows in 2023,” said Youngwood, an attorney at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett……..
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This is terrible. MAGAs are trying to ruin our election process.
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Bullied by Her Own Party, a Wisconsin Election Official’s GOP Roots Mean Nothing in Volatile New Climate
In the face of repeated calls to back Donald Trump's bogus claims that the 2020 election was stolen, Marge Bostelmann of the Wisconsin Elections Commission remains resolute: “I’m a Republican who stands up for the truth and not for a lie.”
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Why I would wager that there are states that have had this on the books for years I would also wager that many former Confederacy states did it to keep Blacks who served time from voting when they were done with their sentence.
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Republicans in North Carolina passed election administration legislation on Wednesday night that curtails absentee voting, empowers partisan poll watchers and restricts private funding for elections.
Voting rights advocates and Democrats have warned that the measure, which passed both chambers in the state’s legislature along party lines, erodes access to the ballot in the battleground state.
Gov. Roy Cooper (D) is expected to veto the legislation, but Republicans can overturn his decision because they have veto-proof majorities in both legislative chambers.
In a statement Thursday, Cooper said the measure is one of many “harmful bills also currently being pushed by extreme MAGA Republican legislators.” “The North Carolina local and state elections boards conducted secure and accurate elections that resulted in a Republican supermajority and a Trump win in NC,” Cooper noted.
“But now, using the “big lie” of election fraud, this same legislature wants to block voters they think won’t vote Republican, legitimize conspiracy theorists to intimidate election workers and anoint themselves to decide contested elections.”
Notably, the law ends a three-day, post-Election Day grace period for mailed absentee ballots. Under existing law, absentee ballots in North Carolina must be postmarked by Election Day in order to be accepted, but they can arrive at election offices up to three days after the election.
The GOP legislation changes the deadline for receipt of mail ballots to the close of polls at 7:30 p.m. on Election Day……
Voting rights advocates and Democrats have warned that the measure, which passed both chambers in the state’s legislature along party lines, erodes access to the ballot in the battleground state.
Gov. Roy Cooper (D) is expected to veto the legislation, but Republicans can overturn his decision because they have veto-proof majorities in both legislative chambers.
In a statement Thursday, Cooper said the measure is one of many “harmful bills also currently being pushed by extreme MAGA Republican legislators.” “The North Carolina local and state elections boards conducted secure and accurate elections that resulted in a Republican supermajority and a Trump win in NC,” Cooper noted.
“But now, using the “big lie” of election fraud, this same legislature wants to block voters they think won’t vote Republican, legitimize conspiracy theorists to intimidate election workers and anoint themselves to decide contested elections.”
Notably, the law ends a three-day, post-Election Day grace period for mailed absentee ballots. Under existing law, absentee ballots in North Carolina must be postmarked by Election Day in order to be accepted, but they can arrive at election offices up to three days after the election.
The GOP legislation changes the deadline for receipt of mail ballots to the close of polls at 7:30 p.m. on Election Day……
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PHOENIX — The election officials piled into the front row of a federal courtroom — a show of support for a local public official who has endured more than two years of attacks for his role in helping to certify Donald Trump’s loss in Arizona in 2020.
Clint Hickman’s simple act — which was required by law and his oath as chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors — resulted in hundreds of mostly anonymous threats. Hickman, a 58-year-old Republican who has served as a supervisor for a decade, says he is so tired of election denialism and hostility toward rank-and-file staff that he has not yet decided if he will run for reelection next year.
On Monday, he came face-to-face with one of his harassers.
Mark Rissi, a 65-year-old from Iowa who has worked in customer service in recent years, walked into the courtroom using a cane. He slowly passed Hickman as he made his way to the defendant’s table. In April, he pleaded guilty to sending threatening communications to Hickman and the state’s former attorney general, Mark Brnovich, also a Republican.
He was in court to receive his punishment.
The remarkable scene in the Phoenix federal courthouse this week reflected the extent to which the institutions of American politics and justice continue to grapple with the fallout of Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud, which swept many of his supporters into a frenzy and led to an onslaught of threats and attacks on local officials who merely did their jobs carrying out the election and then accepting the results.
Now, many of those who embraced the threat of violence or violence itself as they questioned the election results are facing federal prosecutors — and having to explain their actions and often face consequences.
Rissi came into Hickman’s life Sept. 27, 2021, nearly a year after the election and days after the conclusion of a partisan and unreliable review of 2.1 million ballots cast by Maricopa County voters affirmed Joe Biden’s win. That review garnered international attention and raised hopes among fervent Trump supporters and believers in disinformation that the former president’s loss would be reversed.
Rissi called Hickman’s office and left a voice mail.
“Hello, Mr. Hickman, I am glad that you are standing up for democracy and want to place your hand on the Bible and say that the election was honest and fair,” Rissi said, according to court records and an audio of the recording obtained by The Washington Post. “I really appreciate that.”
Rissi spoke slowly and calmly, giving the initial impression that his message was one of support. Then his voice quickly changed.
“When we come to lynch your stupid lying commie a--, you’ll remember that you lied on the f---ing Bible, you piece of s---,” Rissi angrily said. “You’re going to die, you piece of s---. We’re going to hang you. We’re going to hang you.”
Weeks later, on Dec. 8, 2021, Rissi left a message for the attorney general. Rissi said he and his family members were victims of a crime — “the theft of the 2020 election,” court records said.
“Do your job, Brnovich, or you will hang with those son-of-a-b----es in the end,” Rissi said. “We will see to it, torches and pitchforks. That’s your future. … Do your job.”
Rissi’s attorney, Anthony James Knowles, told the judge that at the time of the calls, there was “a lot of misinformation being promulgated” by Rissi’s family and the media.
“People start believing this stuff,” Knowles said. “Again, not a justification.”
At the sentencing hearing this week, Rissi stood when it was his turn to speak — and he expressed remorse.
“First, I’d like to offer my apologies to the victims,” he said.............
Lanza issued a sentence of 30 months — six months more than requested by the Justice Department, drawing audible gasps in the courtroom.
The judge said he hoped the punishment would deter those dissatisfied by future election outcomes, showing that there is an “unambiguous and serious line” that cannot be crossed when contacting public officials. He echoed concerns voiced by a prosecutor about an alarming exodus of government election workers amid a hostile and threatening environment. He said a “general deterrence” was “extremely important.”.................
Clint Hickman’s simple act — which was required by law and his oath as chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors — resulted in hundreds of mostly anonymous threats. Hickman, a 58-year-old Republican who has served as a supervisor for a decade, says he is so tired of election denialism and hostility toward rank-and-file staff that he has not yet decided if he will run for reelection next year.
On Monday, he came face-to-face with one of his harassers.
Mark Rissi, a 65-year-old from Iowa who has worked in customer service in recent years, walked into the courtroom using a cane. He slowly passed Hickman as he made his way to the defendant’s table. In April, he pleaded guilty to sending threatening communications to Hickman and the state’s former attorney general, Mark Brnovich, also a Republican.
He was in court to receive his punishment.
The remarkable scene in the Phoenix federal courthouse this week reflected the extent to which the institutions of American politics and justice continue to grapple with the fallout of Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud, which swept many of his supporters into a frenzy and led to an onslaught of threats and attacks on local officials who merely did their jobs carrying out the election and then accepting the results.
Now, many of those who embraced the threat of violence or violence itself as they questioned the election results are facing federal prosecutors — and having to explain their actions and often face consequences.
Rissi came into Hickman’s life Sept. 27, 2021, nearly a year after the election and days after the conclusion of a partisan and unreliable review of 2.1 million ballots cast by Maricopa County voters affirmed Joe Biden’s win. That review garnered international attention and raised hopes among fervent Trump supporters and believers in disinformation that the former president’s loss would be reversed.
Rissi called Hickman’s office and left a voice mail.
“Hello, Mr. Hickman, I am glad that you are standing up for democracy and want to place your hand on the Bible and say that the election was honest and fair,” Rissi said, according to court records and an audio of the recording obtained by The Washington Post. “I really appreciate that.”
Rissi spoke slowly and calmly, giving the initial impression that his message was one of support. Then his voice quickly changed.
“When we come to lynch your stupid lying commie a--, you’ll remember that you lied on the f---ing Bible, you piece of s---,” Rissi angrily said. “You’re going to die, you piece of s---. We’re going to hang you. We’re going to hang you.”
Weeks later, on Dec. 8, 2021, Rissi left a message for the attorney general. Rissi said he and his family members were victims of a crime — “the theft of the 2020 election,” court records said.
“Do your job, Brnovich, or you will hang with those son-of-a-b----es in the end,” Rissi said. “We will see to it, torches and pitchforks. That’s your future. … Do your job.”
Rissi’s attorney, Anthony James Knowles, told the judge that at the time of the calls, there was “a lot of misinformation being promulgated” by Rissi’s family and the media.
“People start believing this stuff,” Knowles said. “Again, not a justification.”
At the sentencing hearing this week, Rissi stood when it was his turn to speak — and he expressed remorse.
“First, I’d like to offer my apologies to the victims,” he said.............
Lanza issued a sentence of 30 months — six months more than requested by the Justice Department, drawing audible gasps in the courtroom.
The judge said he hoped the punishment would deter those dissatisfied by future election outcomes, showing that there is an “unambiguous and serious line” that cannot be crossed when contacting public officials. He echoed concerns voiced by a prosecutor about an alarming exodus of government election workers amid a hostile and threatening environment. He said a “general deterrence” was “extremely important.”.................
fooferdoggie
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old enough to knowq better but with age wisdom did not come. my wife partenmts in their 80s are so gullible when it comes to trump.
Bigdaddysaints
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Do as i say but don't do as i do..
GOP state lawmaker arrested in Alabama on felony voter fraud charges
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CoolBrees
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Say it with me!
Every accusation is a confession
Every accusation is a confession
DaveXA
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Hey, I guess it's one way to prove fraud exists. Yeah?
Optimus Prime
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I swear it seems that the ratio of Republican vs Democrat voter fraud cases is 90-10
and it feels like most of the 10 are honest mistakes, parolees being told they could vote, they moved but didn't update new address, someone passed away after sending in early mail in ballot vs the absolute intention to commit fraud on the other side
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