Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

One way or another, he’s a liar.

This fight is for everything.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

In after Baud. Damn.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

The snowflake in chief appeared visibly frustrated when questioned by a reporter about egg prices.

You cannot shame the shameless.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

You are here: Home / Archives for Right to Vote / Voter Suppression

Voter Suppression

Newsworthy on this Wednesday Afternoon

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A few quick things from me, now back to work.

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Update: mistermix and I posted within 2 minutes of each other, so I pulled mine for awhile. I see that he covered the AZ 1864 bill, too, but I’m leaving that in anyway.

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Preaching to the Converted Open Thread: You Mean I Have to Vote *Every* Time?…

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Because there is always a fresh crop of twenty-something transanarchist Discordians (or bots emulating them) who wouldn’t have been paying attention in civics class if there ever was a civics class in their curriculum. (Also, several commentors requested Ms. Semrau’s argument be front-paged. Remember — sharing is caring!)

There is almost a profound disrespect here, particularly to Black citizens, who, even while oppressed & threatened with state-sanctioned violence, continued to fight until many, but not all, rights were won.

Now Black citizens’ already insufficient rights–gathered over the course of more than a century–are under threat & allies throw up their arms because apparently change is not happening quickly enough? Because we cannot see the immediate benefit of every vote we cast?

I think of this need for immediate gratification & how, on the left, we let it dissuade us from voting. I then think of the years of planning that went into the strategy of non-violence. That a decade passed btwn the Montgomery Bus Boycotts & the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

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Open Thread: #MoscowMitch Says the Quiet Part Out Loud

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Yeah, because #MinorityLeader ‘Speed Bump’ McConnell can’t even manage a ten-minute presser without stepping on his own… tongue:

Philip Bump, at the Washington Post — “Awkward phrasing isn’t the only problem with his argument”:

Shortly after the Senate voted down a proposed change to filibuster rules — thereby dooming a Democratic push to implement federal voting standards — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other top Republicans held a brief news conference…

A reporter raised the most extreme version of concerns about that change to McConnell, referring to the legislation that would no longer move forward.

“What’s your message for voters of color who are concerned that without the John L. Lewis Voting Rights Act they’re not going to be able to vote in the midterm?” he asked.

McConnell replied, “Well, the concern is misplaced, because if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans.”…

“A recent survey, 94 percent of Americans thought it was easier to vote,” he continued. “This is not a problem. Turnout is up, biggest turnout since 1900. It’s simply — they’re being sold a bill of goods.”

The point about turnout being up significantly in 2020 is true. This was the same point President Biden made during his news conference on Wednesday, that turnout had been so high even without new federal rules, which he presented as a reason for some optimism. But this ignores a crucial point: Turnout was that high because voting access was expanded in response to the coronavirus pandemic. With more states implementing the sorts of changes that the Democratic proposal would standardize — and, of course, with a hyperpolarizing incumbent on the ballot — turnout was up.

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‘Interesting’ Read: Goo-Goo Politics, But From the RIGHT!

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I’m surprised that there haven’t been news stories about these mostly well-meaning, entirely deluded ‘citizen investigators’ being greeted with shotguns, frankly. From Sarah Mimms at Buzzfeed, “The Pro-Trump Conspiracy Internet Is Moving From Facebook To Your Doorstep”:

The man at the door said he was just there to verify some publicly available information.

In the home security video, he seems nervous and out of breath as he waits at the doorway, glancing frequently at his phone. Strangers don’t knock on doors much in Waterville Valley, New Hampshire, a small ski town. For a decade, it had just 250 year-round residents, until the pandemic hit and a bunch of Massachusetts residents decided to cross state lines and turn their rural vacation spot into a home. But the man at the door wasn’t one of them. He said his name was Dean and he was with the New Hampshire Voter Integrity Group…

Around town that Saturday in early October, other people were knocking on doors — specific ones, the rare ones where people actually live year-round — asking about the 2020 election. They had information on the residents, their names, whether they voted and if they did so in-person or absentee. In response, two Waterville Valley residents called the cops, according to a police report.

Across the country, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory internet is manifesting itself into knocks at the door. Individual election deniers and grassroots groups are canvassing for election fraud in states lost or even won by former president Donald Trump in 2020, including New Hampshire, Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Utah, and Nebraska. Despite 60-plus court losses and countless official audits and recounts confirming the 2020 election results, many of Trump’s supporters are still so convinced of his lies that they’ve turned to this kind of vigilantism….

The New Hampshire Voter Integrity Group claims to be nonpartisan. Its founder, Marylyn Todd, a 37-year-old from Nashua, told BuzzFeed News in an interview that she is registered as an independent. Todd claimed in a Facebook message that “many” of their canvassers voted for President Joe Biden, but would not name them or connect them with BuzzFeed News. Todd also said that she has expanded canvassing across the state, focusing on towns where the group believes there is the most potential fraud, but she declined to name the towns they’ve visited. The group, she said, “is just trying to get to the bottom of the truth, nothing more, nothing less.”

Members of the group credit Dean, whose last name Todd declined to provide, with creating the app they use to track down voters. (Dean did not respond to questions messaged to his Telegram account nor to questions Todd said she shared with him via email.) The app is designed with a free site that Democrats have used in the past to canvass voters before an election. The app shows canvassers where to find nearby voters, as well as their addresses, whether they voted in 2020, if they voted in person or absentee, and whether they registered to vote same-day. The app asks canvassers to confirm that information and, if they find any discrepancies, to get voters to sign an affidavit and mail it to a P.O. box.

Todd said they are sharing those affidavits with members of the state legislature, “many” of whom are interested in their findings, but declined to provide names. She described affidavits the group collected from two households alleging election misconduct, but declined to share any names or details that could be fact-checked, citing the affiants’ privacy. The Trump campaign used affidavits as part of its failed legal strategy to challenge the 2020 election and held up the sworn statements to try to add some legitimacy to its bogus fraud claims, but, as the Washington Post noted at the time, many of those affidavits were never filed in court and the ones that were filed were often thrown out…

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This Is Effective Civic Action! The Texas Democratic State Legislators Head To DC To Stymie Governor Abbott’s Special Legislative Session and New Voter Suppression Legislation

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Back in May when I did my post on revolutionary warfare and the concept of counter-revolutionary warfare, I delineated that counter-revolutionary warfare (CRW) is counter-guerilla warfare (CGW) + counter-political action (CP) + civic action (CA). When the Democratic state senators and representatives in the Texas state legislature walked out of the legislature to deny the Republican majorities a quorum and proven the passage of the new voter suppression laws during the final evening session on 30 May, they took both effective counter-political action and civic action. The former in that their actions denied the Republicans the ability to pass the new voter suppression laws. The latter because their actions achieved what Fall described as civic action of trying to fight a militant doctrine with proposals of better policy outcomes, but through finding simple, but adequate appeals. Basically doing and saying things that cut through the noise, cut through the bullshit, and plainly and clearly convey to the citizenry that actions are actually being taken to prevent them from coming to further harm or to promote their interests.

While it had not been formally stated until earlier today, everyone pretty much assumed that the Texas Democratic state senators and representatives would do the same thing – deny the Republican majorities a quorum – by not appearing at all for the special session that Governor Abbott has called for this month. This is not unusual in state legislative fights. The Texas Democrats have done this before. So have Washington Oregon’s state level Republican legislators. Usually they make headlines, get their points across, and either negotiate a better legislative package in exchange for returning and not holding up the legislative session or the state governor sends state law enforcement to arrest them, bring them back, and force them to go back to work in the legislature. In one of the most recent examples of this from Oregon state, one of the Republican legislators threatened to kill any and all state law enforcement from Washington who came to bring him back, as well as any law enforcement from the state he had fled to.

My concern has always been that like the last time Texas’s Democratic state legislators fled the state to prevent legislative actions, they’d go to Oklahoma City because it is close. The problem with that is that Oklahoma has a Republican governor and a Republican majority legislature and a Republican attorney general. Which means that if they’d fled there, or any other state with that kind of political dynamic, the statewide Republican officials would order the state’s law enforcement to assist the Texas Rangers who wold be sent to bring them back in bringing them back. In order to prevent that, they needed to go to a state or a jurisdiction that functions sort of like a state with a Democratic governor and attorney general. I was hoping they’d pick Colorado or New Mexico, because they’re close, but they made a decision that exceeded my wildest expectations.

You can click through to Vice to read the details, but from a counter-political action + civic action perspective this is brilliant. Between DC Mayor Bowser, President Biden who controls the DC National Guard, and Speaker Pelosi who controls the Capitol Police, the Texas Democratic state legislators have just dared Governor Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Patrick who controls the legislature, and indicted and under additional Federal criminal investigation Attorney General Paxton to try to force them back. The counter-political action is denying the Texas Republican majorities a quorum so they can either vacate the special session, sit there during the special session and be able to accomplish nothing legislatively, or break the state legislature’s own rules to move the legislation without a quorum. My money is on option three as they broke the legislative rules to try to move it on the last evening of the session on 30 May.

The civic action component is having the Texas Republican leadership look impotent by not being able to have the Texas Rangers bring the Texas Democratic legislators back because the Texas Ranger can only get person they are after when that person is outside their jurisdiction if the jurisdiction that person is in cooperates and allows them to. The civic action component also includes very publicly lobbying their Federal Democratic counterparts to take even a little bit of the risks that the Texas Democratic state legislators are taking in fighting off Texas’s attempts at voter suppression.

Simple, but adequate appeals indeed!

Open thread!

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Open Thread: Play (Political) Ball!

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