Voter Suppression & Election Theft by the Republican Party

[Bact PhD]

Dec 15, 2021 17:00:57 GMT goldenvalley said:

Dec 15, 2021 16:41:19 GMT LFC said:

More cases of voter fraud found!

I wonder how many snowbirds in Florida and Arizona do this kind of double voting.  

It probably happens a lot more often than we’re aware of. Given how many of the snowbirds are “up there” in age, it’s possible in many instances that the double voting is inadvertent…but sometimes it isn’t.

[AnBr]

"If you do it for one time you basically destroy the Senate as we know it," Manchin said.

I would certainly hope so.

[AnBr]

Dec 15, 2021 17:06:29 GMT LFC said:

Interesting protest.

The family of Martin Luther King Jr. is calling for "no celebration" of MLK Day without the passage of voting rights legislation, putting pressure on President Joe Biden and lawmakers to act on federal voting rights bills that have stalled in Congress.

Martin Luther King III, his wife Arndrea Waters King and their daughter Yolanda Renee King plan to mobilize activists on MLK weekend to push for Biden and Congress to apply the same efforts to federal voting rights bills that they used to pass the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. They hope to send the message: "you delivered for bridges, now deliver for voting rights."

"President Biden and Congress used their political muscle to deliver a vital infrastructure deal, and now we are calling on them to do the same to restore the very voting rights protections my father and countless other civil rights leaders bled to secure," Martin Luther King III said in a statement Wednesday, adding that they "will not accept empty promises in pursuit of my father's dream for a more equal and just America."

The Kings and local groups plan to rally supporters in Phoenix on January 15, the date of King's birthday, "to restore and expand voting rights to honor Dr. King's legacy." On January 17, the federal holiday commemorating the civil rights leader's birthday, the family and other activists will march across the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge in Washington, DC.

The actions will call on Biden and the Senate to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and "ensure the Jim Crow filibuster doesn't stand in the way."

I think Dems should keep to the planned MLK Day events and have a unified message that Republicans are coming to attack black people and take away their voting rights. They have piles of proof that this is true at this point. They have a big, public pulpit. They need to use it to jam the GOP's actions down its collective throat.

LBJ was once asked why he pushed for the Voting Rights Act so soon after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. He replied that civil rights were meaningless without voting rights.

[pnwguy]

Dec 16, 2021 13:25:55 GMT AnBr said:

LBJ was once asked why he pushed for the Voting Rights Act so soon after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. He replied that civil rights were meaningless without voting rights.

It would be great if there was video footage, or even audio, of LBJ saying that. It would be powerful for DNC TV ads.

[LFC]

I so f***ing hate this woman. I'm starting to think she'd actually prefer to be in a minority party where her votes don't really matter. That might serve her best politically rather than actually having to help the nation and her constituents.

Kyrsten Sinema supports the elections reform bill that Democrats are considering a year-end push to pass. She doesn't support a shortcut around the filibuster to get it done.

The Arizona moderate is making clear that she intends to keep protecting the Senate’s 60-vote requirement on most legislation and she isn’t ready to entertain changing rules to pass sweeping elections or voting legislation with a simple majority. Her Democratic colleagues have been discussing those revisions as they weigh dropping their focus on President Joe Biden’s $1.7 trillion climate and social spending bill and pivoting to voting rights, though it’s not clear that avenue will be any more successful.

In a statement to POLITICO, a spokesperson said that Sinema “continues to support the Senate's 60-vote threshold, to protect the country from repeated radical reversals in federal policy which would cement uncertainty, deepen divisions, and further erode Americans’ confidence in our government.” Since joining the Senate in 2019, Sinema’s been a fierce defender of the filibuster and warned that reversing it could lead to terrible outcomes for Democrats down the line.

[jackd]

Don't forget Manchin and the unnamed Deocratic senators who agree with Sinema and Manchin but let them do the heavy lifting.

[LFC]

And here comes Georgia. they have quickly, but more quietly, moved into the top/bottom tier of red states waging war on democracy. They recently passed laws that allowed them to take over local elections boards. Now they're moving in to make voting as difficult for blue areas as they can possibly get away with.

Lincoln County is trying to close all but one polling place for next year’s elections, a move opposed by voting and civil rights groups.

Relocating voters from the county’s seven precincts to a single location will make voting “easier and more accessible” and eliminate the need to transport voting equipment and staff the remaining sites, according to a news release. Community members disagreed.

“Lincoln County is a very rural county. Some people live as far as 23 miles from the city of Lincolnton,” said Denise Freeman, an activist and former Lincoln County school board member. “This is not about convenience for the citizens. This is about control. This is about the good old boys wanting to do what they’ve always done, which is power and control.”

The move was made possible after the Georgia General Assembly passed legislation earlier this year disbanding the Lincoln County Board of Elections. The chief sponsor of Senate bills 282 and 283 was Sen. Lee Anderson, R-Grovetown, whose district includes Lincoln County. The newly-appointed board agreed to move forward with the “consolidation” plan and was expected to vote on it last week, but appeared to lack a quorum, several said.

[LFC]

The fascists and their plaid shirts continue their all-out assault on American democracy by attacking free and fair elections with lies, lies, more lies, and The Big Lie. Democracy is doomed in our nation.

More than a year after Donald Trump lost the presidency, election officials across the country are facing a growing barrage of claims that the vote was not secure and demands to investigate or decertify the outcome, efforts that are eating up hundreds of hours of government time and spreading distrust in elections.

The ongoing attack on the vote is being driven in part by well-funded Trump associates, who have gained audiences with top state officials and are pushing to inspect protected machines and urging them to conduct audits or sign on to a lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 results. And the campaign is being bolstered by grass-roots energy, as local residents who have absorbed baseless allegations of ballot fraud are now forcing election administrators to address the false claims.

The fallout has spread from the six states where Trump sought to overturn the outcome in 2020 to deep-red places such as Idaho, where officials recently hand-recounted ballots in three counties to refute claims of vote-flipping, and Oklahoma, where state officials commissioned an investigation to counter allegations that voting machines were hacked.

State and local officials said no one has presented actual evidence that rampant fraud tainted the 2020 election, and numerous ballot reviews and legal proceedings have affirmed that the vote was secure. Yet they and their staffs have been forced into a high-stakes game of whack-a-mole, debunking a steady stream of false allegations only to see similar claims emerge again from other groups or in other states.

The onslaught is exhausting and troubling, officials said, as they launch preparations for the 2022 midterm elections — and is further eroding faith in the nation’s voting systems.

“If we want to continue to provide safe, secure and accessible elections, constantly running down absurd conspiracy theories is not sustainable,” said Patrick Gannon, a spokesman for the North Carolina State Board of Elections. “For many election workers, this has become a full-time job.”

[Bact PhD]

(bold mine)

“If we want to continue to provide safe, secure and accessible elections, constantly running down absurd conspiracy theories is not sustainable,” said Patrick Gannon, a spokesman for the North Carolina State Board of Elections. “For many election workers, this has become a full-time job.”

Is that truly the endgame, to muddy up the waters to the point where chasing SQUIRRELS will render it all but impossible to conduct an untainted election…and the gang of politicians screeching ”FRAUD!!!” are the very ones engaging in it (I know, “where every accusation is a confession”).

[LFC]

Dec 23, 2021 20:37:07 GMT Bact PhD said:

Is that truly the endgame, to muddy up the waters to the point where chasing SQUIRRELS will render it all but impossible to conduct an untainted election…and the gang of politicians screeching ”FRAUD!!!” are the very ones engaging in it (I know, “where every accusation is a confession”).

Welcome to the Banana Republicans. Their authoritarian ways are destroying democracy.

[pg]

Dec 16, 2021 13:49:57 GMT pnwguy said:

Dec 16, 2021 13:25:55 GMT AnBr said:

LBJ was once asked why he pushed for the Voting Rights Act so soon after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. He replied that civil rights were meaningless without voting rights.

It would be great if there was video footage, or even audio, of LBJ saying that. It would be powerful for DNC TV ads.

A bit of video and audio, some pictures and a whole HELL of a lot of pens at the LBJ museum here in the ATX. Yes. There is a real record of this. 

The first time I climbed those stairs? I skipped the "hokey"- some odd animated stuff- and went straight to the pen room. I was there for quite sometime, silently weeping over the sweeping change he and the administration did for our country. Really. A Texan did all that? Yep. I wish all could see that. If you really want to know the legacy of any President, go to their museum.

And as long as I'm rambling, Lady Bird left a complete, total and lasting gift to Texas. Late spring through summer, you can drive anywhere from Austin and see her work. The freeways and highways are absolutely LIT with her efforts- wildflowers that she intended to also support the small creatures that feed off of it all.

[pnwguy]

Dec 23, 2021 22:07:31 GMT pg said:

And as long as I'm rambling, Lady Bird left a complete, total and lasting gift to Texas. Late spring through summer, you can drive anywhere from Austin and see her work. The freeways and highways are absolutely LIT with her efforts- wildflowers that she intended to also support the small creatures that feed off of it all.

The parkways around Washington DC are similarly beautified from her efforts.  

[LFC]

Voting rights are dying before our eyes and the likes of Manchin seem to be just fine with it.

With assists from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ ongoing war against the Voting Rights Act and dark-money influence peddlers like the Heritage Foundation, GOP politicians slammed through a record 33 voting restriction laws last year. It is now harder to vote in 19 states than it was one year ago, despite a stirring Democratic 2020 campaign message about the crucial importance of protecting and expanding the right to vote.

Like a hydra, that antidemocratic abuse has many heads. It appears as a law cracking down on vote-by-mail, as Georgia’s bill does, or just shutting down as many polling places as possible in low-income and minority communities across Texas. And the GOP isn’t done: Republicans in five states including Florida and New Hampshire have already filed bills to choke the vote even more — and their legislative sessions haven’t even started yet. They’ll join over 200 returning voter suppression bills that Republicans didn’t have the time to pass last year.

And where the non-Republican votes can’t be suppressed away, they’ll be drawn into irrelevance by GOP efforts to draw congressional maps without even a nod towards true representation. North Carolina Republicans gifted themselves 10 of the state’s 14 congressional seats—71 percent—despite Joe Biden winning 48.6 percent of the vote there in 2020 and voters re-electing a Democratic governor. And nationwide “cracking” of Democratic cities into multiple GOP-favored districts puts Democrats at a nearly insurmountable long-term structural disadvantage.

Unfortunately, none of this has moved Democrats to acknowledge the urgency of our national moment—at least, not enough to overcome a fetishized loyalty to Senate ‘institutions’ like the filibuster. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer spent much of last year trying in turn to bring 10 Republicans into a bipartisan voting rights bill or persuade Manchin to bend on the filibuster, but both efforts did little more than burn precious time as Republicans organized their efforts solidly against the democratic process.

On Monday morning, Schumer issued an angry plea for filibuster holdouts Manchin and Sinema to carve out an exception that would allow Manchin’s Freedom to Vote Act to pass into law before the worst of the GOP’s voter suppression takes root. Too much time has already been lost. Too much damage has already been done. If Democrats can’t deliver on this basic defense of the democracy they’ve sworn an oath to protect, it will be regarded as a lost opportunity of staggering proportions.

[LFC]

The Villages is the national hotbed of voter fraud! Time to ensure they get extra oversight and that every single vote is audited, amiright?

A fourth retiree from The Villages has been arrested as part of an ongoing investigation into voter fraud at the well-known central Florida retirement community. Charles Franklin Barnes, 64, was taken to Sumter County Jail on Tuesday night, and faces a charge of fraud, according to a spokesperson for the county sheriff’s office. Three other residents of The Villages, all reportedly registered as Republicans, were arrested last year for allegedly casting ballots in both Florida and their home states. Soon after, Lake County officials said they’d handed another six potential cases of double voting over to prosecutors. Though records show Barnes is not registered with a political party in Florida, he allegedly voted there in the 2020 presidential election, as well as in Connecticut, where he is registered to vote. The Orlando Sentinel reports that Barnes was released from jail on a $2,000 bond.

[goldenvalley]

Jan 5, 2022 21:52:10 GMT LFC said:

The Villages is the national hotbed of voter fraud! Time to ensure they get extra oversight and that every single vote is audited, amiright?

A fourth retiree from The Villages has been arrested as part of an ongoing investigation into voter fraud at the well-known central Florida retirement community. Charles Franklin Barnes, 64, was taken to Sumter County Jail on Tuesday night, and faces a charge of fraud, according to a spokesperson for the county sheriff’s office. Three other residents of The Villages, all reportedly registered as Republicans, were arrested last year for allegedly casting ballots in both Florida and their home states. Soon after, Lake County officials said they’d handed another six potential cases of double voting over to prosecutors. Though records show Barnes is not registered with a political party in Florida, he allegedly voted there in the 2020 presidential election, as well as in Connecticut, where he is registered to vote. The Orlando Sentinel reports that Barnes was released from jail on a $2,000 bond.

That ain't fraud...they have addresses in 2 different states; they aren't brown; and they vote for the right candidates.  

[LFC]

Wisconsin Republicans lead the charge on continuing The Big Lie. Mr. Gableman referred to below sounds like a carbon copy of Joe McCarthy.

Republicans’ attacks on the democratic process didn’t end on Jan. 6 — they’ve just changed form. Throughout 2021 and now continuing into 2022, GOP leaders have pursued endless “audits,” “investigations” and “reviews” of the 2020 election results that stage hunts for non-existent evidence of widespread voter fraud and keep former president Trump’s lie of a stolen election alive.

Coincidentally, the reviews have largely been launched in battleground states with Republican elected officials eager to take on the task: Arizona, Pennsylvania, Texas, Michigan. But as the anniversary of the attack on Congress arrives, one state is at the head of the pack: Wisconsin.

Joe Biden won Wisconsin by around 21,000 votes in 2020, a slim margin that infuriated Republicans. Now, they’re pitching big changes to the state’s election system while furiously spinning up new efforts to undermine Wisconsin voters’ faith in the democratic process.

“This has gotten worse, not better,” said Michael Wagner, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication whose research focuses on the functioning of American democracy. “I think we had a moment a year ago to try to push the reset button on how we think about democratic elections, and instead, we kept playing.”

At the forefront of Wisconsin Republicans’ attacks on the 2020 results is Michael Gableman, the former state Supreme Court justice tasked by the GOP-controlled legislature with leading an investigation into various claims of voter fraud and misconduct by election administrators.

Gableman’s investigation has shifted gears a few times, but his underlying themes are clear: Something is fishy with the 2020 election results, and anyone who doesn’t want to take part in the latest investigation is hiding something.

“What are [the Wisconsin Elections Commission] and the recalcitrant city clerks hiding from the public and our legislature?” he wrote in November. Fears of widespread voter fraud, he added later, “may be well-grounded.”

[LFC]

Moscow Mitch and a few other Senate Republicans, like that loathsome lying creature Susan Collins, feint on voting rights. They're trying to get people's eyes off the states passing laws to outright steal elections.

Republican Senate leaders have suddenly expressed some openness to changing the law that Donald Trump tried to use to steal a second term in office, leading to two obvious questions: Huh? Why?

The Electoral Count Act, a 19th century law that governs the counting of Electoral College votes, has been the topic of discussion — at least among scholars and elected Democrats — for much of the past year, after Donald Trump tried to game its vague language by pressuring then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject certain states’ Electoral College votes for Joe Biden.

Elected Republicans have shown little interest in changing the law — until now. Still, without their support for any voting rights legislation (and it’s clear that’s not happening) some Democrats oppose reforming the ECA on its own. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), for example, called the prospect of a standalone ECA reform bill “a distraction” and “a cynical political maneuver by people who are trying to rig the elections in our country.”

The Senate’s first- and second-ranking Republicans, Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and John Thune (R-SD) broached the topic for the first time this week.

“It obviously has some flaws. And it is worth, I think, discussing,” McConnell told Politico of the 1887 law. Thune told Axios that, in contrast with Democrats’ other bills to reform election laws and add voting rights protections, “with the Electoral Count Act, as we saw last time around, there are some things there that, I think, could be corrected.”

They’re not alone: Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) told Politico the ECA was a “weak point,” and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) said “It is something worth evaluating, and looking for other ways to make sure there is not a way to corrupt the counting process.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) separately told reporters Wednesday that the law was “vague and ambiguous” and said it “contributed to some of the confusion on Jan. 6.”

“A change that I would like to see, personally, is to make very clear that the vice president does not have the power to overturn the electoral counts of the states,” she added. Then-Vice President Mike Pence didn’t give in to Trump’s pressure to overturn the election, Collins said, “but what if he had? Or what if a future vice president decided to play political games with the Electoral Count Act?”

Curiously, that seemed to be a switch from Collins’ statement Tuesday to Axios: “It seems to me we have a good system for the Electoral College to act and one of the important moments of January 6 was that we returned and finished our work under that law,” she said.

Nice flip-flop, Susan. And no mention that over 140 of your congressional colleagues acted to steal the election.

[pnwguy]

It's not stealing (GOP must always win) if it's rightfully yours. "We have to take back our country"

[goldenvalley]

Voting rights are not directly attacked.  People learned they can't get away with it for long.  So they do things to limit access to the exercise of votes...literacy tests, poll taxes, arcane rules on registration, limit polling places and their hours, demand that voting only occur within a certain small time span at a certain place, draw district lines so that disfavored voters never have a chance to vote for a winning candidate.  When that doesn't work, they go to changing the rules on who counts the ballots and who decids who got enough votes to win. So Mitch and company want to address one part of subversion...only at the presidential level. Whatever happened until the electoral votes are cast is just fine with them.

[Bact PhD]

Jan 5, 2022 21:52:10 GMT LFC said:

The Villages is the national hotbed of voter fraud! Time to ensure they get extra oversight and that every single vote is audited, amiright?

A fourth retiree from The Villages has been arrested as part of an ongoing investigation into voter fraud at the well-known central Florida retirement community. Charles Franklin Barnes, 64, was taken to Sumter County Jail on Tuesday night, and faces a charge of fraud, according to a spokesperson for the county sheriff’s office. Three other residents of The Villages, all reportedly registered as Republicans, were arrested last year for allegedly casting ballots in both Florida and their home states. Soon after, Lake County officials said they’d handed another six potential cases of double voting over to prosecutors. Though records show Barnes is not registered with a political party in Florida, he allegedly voted there in the 2020 presidential election, as well as in Connecticut, where he is registered to vote. The Orlando Sentinel reports that Barnes was released from jail on a $2,000 bond.

I guess they believed the one-time tagline from Flori-DUH's tourist bureau: The Rules Are Different Here
Nope.

[jackd]

Those Republican snowbirds; they're the real criminals!

[pnwguy]

Jan 6, 2022 23:42:58 GMT jackd said:

Those Republican snowbirds; they're the real criminals!

And geriatric sex fiends.  Rick Wilson, of the Lincoln Project, has mentioned that a Pfizer rep he knows that services the territory has reported that the #1 volume distributor of Viagra nationwide is the Publix pharmacy in The Villages.  

[andydp]

Jan 7, 2022 2:48:05 GMT pnwguy said:

Jan 6, 2022 23:42:58 GMT jackd said:

Those Republican snowbirds; they're the real criminals!

And geriatric sex fiends.  Rick Wilson, of the Lincoln Project, has mentioned that a Pfizer rep he knows that services the territory has reported that the #1 volume distributor of Viagra nationwide is the Publix pharmacy in The Villages.  

Those little devils also have a very high STD rate.

[jackd]

Highest in Florida!

[Bact PhD]

So true! And yet they snark about the promiscuous college kids!!