Purple and Black
Taking Independent and Unofficial Back

Post-election, widespread, renewed assault on voting rights

barnswallow said:
Voting restrictions bill passes Georgia House over strong opposition (The AtlantaJournal-Constitution, 3.1.21)
Still has to pass in the Georgia Senate.
Click to expand...
LOL - "Legislative Republicans who supported Trump’s claims have not contested the results of their own General Assembly elections".

Georgia Senate has 34 Repubs and 22 Dems - the math is not looking good.

They are rabid for Georgia after losing the Senate races. One of the reasons Marjorie Taylor Greene is being propped up at any cost. She already has a Dem challenger in 2022. Purdue says he won't run against Warnock again, but Loeffler says she might.

ajc.com link -
 
www.alternet.org

Georgia Republicans push a draconian bill to criminalize giving food and water to people in voting lines

On Monday, the GOP-controlled Georgia House passed, by a 97-72 margin, a voter suppression bill that would greatly restrict absentee voting, early voting, weekend voting and ballot drop boxes in that state. And on top of that, North Carolina law professor Carissa Byrne Hessick notes in a Twitter...
www.alternet.org www.alternet.org

Georgia Republicans push a draconian bill to criminalize giving food and water to people in voting lines​

 
poppy said:
www.alternet.org

Georgia Republicans push a draconian bill to criminalize giving food and water to people in voting lines

On Monday, the GOP-controlled Georgia House passed, by a 97-72 margin, a voter suppression bill that would greatly restrict absentee voting, early voting, weekend voting and ballot drop boxes in that state. And on top of that, North Carolina law professor Carissa Byrne Hessick notes in a Twitter...
www.alternet.org www.alternet.org

Georgia Republicans push a draconian bill to criminalize giving food and water to people in voting lines​

Click to expand...
They are that desperate, ... Pathetic.

charlie chaplin GIF by Maudit
 
Last edited:
Now Iowa - where there was NO indication of voter fraud in 2020. Mail-in voters were mostly Repubs before Trump decided they weren't. Go 'head, dummies - this will backfire, the younger people (more Dems) will still stand in line.

www.kcrg.com

Gov. Reynolds signs election reform bill limiting length of absentee, election day voting

Changes to Iowa’s election laws will become law after Gov. Kim Reynolds signed the bill on Monday.
www.kcrg.com www.kcrg.com

DES MOINES, Iowa (KCRG) - Changes to Iowa’s election laws will become law after Gov. Kim Reynolds signed the bill on Monday.

Reynolds signed Senate File 413, according to a statement released by her office, which made changes to the absentee voting process, voter list maintenance activities, and limited the length of election day voting, among other changes. Some of the changes the bill brings include cutting down the early voting period by 9 days, requiring most mail-in ballots to be received by the time polls close on election day, as well as requiring polls in all elections to be closed by 8:00 p.m. instead of 9:00 p.m.
 
Have you heard of Kristen Clarke, "President Biden’s nominee to head the civil rights division of the Department of Justice"?

1618489188497.png

NY Times, 4.14.21:
As the president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Ms. Clarke filed or participated in more than a hundred lawsuits challenging efforts to make it more difficult to vote. During the 2020 presidential campaign, she seemed to be everywhere at once.
Click to expand...

Why Tucker Carlson Is Obsessed With Kristen Clarke
I pay more attention to the person who delivers the US mail on my street than to T----- C------ but I guess he has influence in gop circles.
More from the article:
This seems to happen any time a lawyer with a background in civil rights is nominated to lead the Justice Department’s civil rights division. In 2014, the same playbook sank the nomination of Debo Adegbile, another well-known civil rights lawyer. And at a recent confirmation hearing, Republicans attacked Vanita Gupta, President Biden’s nominee to be associate attorney general, for the harsh tone of her tweets during the Trump years.

There’s something absurd about Mr. Carlson going back the 1990s to dig up dirt on Kristen Clarke. You need to go back only to 2007 to hear him comparing women to dogs on a shock jock radio show. But when it comes to women of color with a record of fighting for voting rights, suddenly people care about the tone of a tweet.
Click to expand...
Ms. Clarke doesn’t fight just for Black voters. She fights for all voters to have greater access to the ballot box. That’s exactly what the head of the civil rights division ought to focus on. Ms. Clarke started her career in the voting rights section of Department of Justice, serving under both President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
Click to expand...
In South Carolina, she represented the League of Women Voters, which sued because state election officials were poised to throw out absentee ballots for minor issues, like the loop of a letter in a signature. In Tennessee, she fought a law that required first-time voters to show up in person during a pandemic. And in Georgia, more than 800 voters contacted her organization’s hotline for help on Election Day.
Click to expand...
 
NYTimes 5.1.21:
G.O.P. Seeks to Empower Poll Watchers, Raising Intimidation Worries
Republicans in several states are pushing bills to give poll watchers more autonomy. Alarmed election officials and voting rights activists say it’s a new attempt to target voters of color.
Click to expand...
But perhaps no other state had a conflict involving poll watchers erupt onto cable news as Michigan did. On Election Day and the day after in November, Republican poll watchers grew increasingly obstructive at the TCF Center in Detroit, where absentee ballots were counted as it became clear that Mr. Trump was losing in the state.
It began with a huddle of Republican observers around midday on Nov. 4, according to affidavits from Democratic poll watchers, nonpartisan observers and election officials.
Soon after, the Republicans “began to fan out around the room,” wrote Dan McKernan, an election worker.

Then they ramped up their objections, accusing workers of entering incorrect birth years or backdating ballots. In some cases, the poll watchers lodged blanket claims of wrongdoing.
“The behavior in the room changed dramatically in the afternoon: The rage in the room from Republican challengers was nothing like I had ever experienced in my life,” wrote Anjanette Davenport Hatter, another election worker.
Mr. McKernan wrote: “Republicans were challenging everything at the two tables I could see. When the ballot envelope was opened, they would say they couldn’t see it clearly. When the next envelope was opened, they made the same complaint. They were objecting to every single step down the line for no good reason.”
Click to expand...
I wonder how the shortened hours that the polls are open under new legislation in many gop-controlled states will interface with obstructive poll watchers on election day. How much can the disruption and delay impact the number of people who can cast their ballot?
 
Last edited:
barnswallow said:
NYTimes 5.1.21:
G.O.P. Seeks to Empower Poll Watchers, Raising Intimidation Worries


I wonder how the shortened hours that the polls are open under new legislation in many gop-controlled states will interface with obstructive poll watchers on election day. How much can the disruption and delay impact the number of people who can cast their ballot?
Click to expand...
They are clearly not taking into account that they are limiting access for GOP voters as well. Especially Texas where NO VOTER FRAUD took place - they elected GOP candidates so will this dumb action short-change them next time around?
 
Florida gov Ron DeSantis signed new voting (restriction) laws yesterday in a closed ceremony for Fox News cameras only. It wasn't even the actual bill, just a fake piece of paper.
 
From TPM today. MoJo Obtains Video of Heritage Activists Bragging About Writing GOP State Voting Laws
“In some cases, we actually draft them for them,” Heritage Action Executive Director Jessica Anderson said, “or we have a sentinel on our behalf give them the model legislation so it has that grassroots, from-the-bottom-up type of vibe.”
Click to expand...
She also described her surprise about how little attention Iowa’s restrictive voting bill attracted. As TPM reported, the legislation drastically shrank the return period for absentee ballots, limited third party delivery of absentee ballots and severely restricted the circumstances in which election officials can send voters mail ballot applications.

“We worked quietly with the Iowa state legislature. We got the best practices to them. We helped draft the bills. We made sure activists were calling the state legislators, getting support, showing up at their public hearings, giving testimony,” Anderson said, according to Mother Jones. “Little fanfare. Honestly, nobody even noticed. My team looked at each other and we’re like, ‘It can’t be that easy.’
Click to expand...
It's not all that surprising. The GOP, at every level, move in lock step on power/control issues that maintain/obtain party dominance.
Senator Angus King of Maine had a good rebuttal.
 
Last edited:
From the NY Times, 5.15.21:
Jail time and Big Fines: G.O.P. Seeks Harsh Penalties for Poll Workers: Republicans seeking to restrict voting are proposing strict punishment s for election officials and workers who make errors or violate the rules.
Anita Phillips has been an election judge in Texas for 17 years, responsible for managing a precinct in Waco, a city of roughly 135,000 people. But over the last four years, the civic duty she prized has become arduous. Harassment by partisan poll watchers has grown increasingly caustic, she has found, and helping voters is ever more treacherous amid a thicket of new rules.

Those regulations are likely to grow stricter: Republican lawmakers in Texas, following in the footsteps of their counterparts across the country, are pressing forward with a voting bill that could impose harsh penalties on election officials or poll workers who are thought to have committed errors or violations. And the nationwide effort may be pushing people like Ms. Phillips to reconsider serving their communities.

“It’s just so taxing,” Ms. Phillips said. “And if me — I’m in my 40s, and I’m having this much stress — imagine every election worker and election judge that is 65 and over with severe health issues. This is supposed to be a way for them to give back. And it’s supposed to be something that makes them feel good about what they’re doing, but now they’re starting to feel like, ‘Are we going to be safe?’”
Click to expand...
That attitude has seeped into new voting laws and bills put forward by Republican-controlled legislatures across the country. More than two dozen bills in nine states, either still making their way through legislatures or signed into law, have sought to establish a rash of harsh new penalties, elevated criminal classifications and five-figure fines for state and local election officials who are found to have made mistakes, errors, oversteps and other violations of election code, according to a review of voting legislation by The New York Times.

The infractions that could draw more severe punishment run the gamut from seemingly minor lapses in attention or innocent mistakes to more clearly willful actions in defiance of regulations.
Click to expand...
With the threat of felonies, jail time and fines as large as $25,000 hanging over their heads, election officials, as well as voting rights groups, are growing increasingly worried that the new penalties will not only limit the work of election administrators but also have a chilling effect on their willingness to do the job.
Click to expand...
Another example of the many actions undertaken by gop-dominated legislatures around the country, complicating the election process from multiple angles.
 
barnswallow said:
From the NY Times, 5.15.21:
Jail time and Big Fines: G.O.P. Seeks Harsh Penalties for Poll Workers: Republicans seeking to restrict voting are proposing strict punishment s for election officials and workers who make errors or violate the rules.



Another example of the many actions undertaken by gop-dominated legislatures around the country, complicating the election process from multiple angles.
Click to expand...
Since there wasn't an election fraud problem in the first place, what are they going to punish I wonder. They'll have to make up violations?
 
poppy said:
Since there wasn't an election fraud problem in the first place, what are they going to punish I wonder. They'll have to make up violations?
Click to expand...
It will apply to future elections. They are making the job more onerous through establishing...
... a rash of harsh new penalties, elevated criminal classifications and five-figure fines for state and local election officials who are found to have made mistakes, errors, oversteps and other violations of election code, according to a review of voting legislation by The New York Times.
Click to expand...
They've already made up the violations, I reckon. Now, they're in the business of making every part of the election process as difficult as possible, in the name of safeguarding future elections.
 
barnswallow said:
It will apply to future elections. They are making the job more onerous through establishing...

They've already made up the violations, I reckon. Now, they're in the business of making every part of the election process as difficult as possible, in the name of safeguarding future elections.
Click to expand...
Yes, I know. It was more a rhetorical question. We'll see how Repubs do with all this. A lot of knee jerk stuff may not be as effective as they hope and it will be contested in the courts. They want to fake pimp election "problems" everyday now because Biden won. They've got no real news and no platform.

Lots of politicians & news outlets want to keep us worrying about election cycles and keep elections in the news when there should be a break now. There has always been election suppression, it's not new even though this is upsetting and dirty.
 
Last edited:
And Texas... The bill had been 26 pages long. A newer version was released Friday night that was 226 pages long. And then, the gop tried to push it through the next day.

In the thread from the twitter account above, Jeremy Wallace, journalist, links to an article (5.29.21) in the Houston Chronicle that he co-authored:
Biden denounces Texas voting bill, now amended to make it easier to overturn elections
Yes, you read that right ... to overturn elections. Some paragraphs from the above article:
Despite no evidence of substantial voter fraud in Texas, Republicans are preparing to pass sweeping voting legislation with new provisions that make it easier to overturn an election in which fraudulent votes are suspected and to lower the standard for proving fraud in criminal court.

The burden of proof for voter fraud charges in Texas is “clear and convincing evidence.” The bill would change that standard to “preponderance of the evidence.”

A related measure would allow a judge to overturn an election if the total number of ballots found to be fraudulent exceeds the margin of victory. In such cases, a judge could “declare the election void without attempting to determine how individual voters voted.”
Click to expand...
The new provisions are last-minute additions to Senate Bill 7, legislation that has drawn the ire of Democratic and civil rights groups that have called it voter suppression since its first draft. The final version of the bill hadn’t been posted online as of early Friday evening — and was not made available to the public — but the Houston Chronicle obtained a copy.
Click to expand...

Late-night push draws complaint​

In a surprise maneuver, the Texas Senate voted along party lines Saturday night to scrap its usual rules and force a debate and vote on the bill after 10 p.m., over the objections of Democrats. The 13 Democrats in the Senate expected the bill to be debated and voted on Sunday until Hughes made the motion to push the bill through late Saturday instead.

State Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, questioned why Republicans pushed to debate such a major bill in the dead of night on a holiday weekend when most Texans wouldn’t be able to tune in.
Click to expand...
Elsewhere, one of the other impediments to voting is discussed:

Yesterday, Memorial Day, Democrats walked out of the chamber, breaking the quorum and preventing a vote.
The Governor retaliated (from TPM, 5.31.21):
Abbott Announces Retaliatory Veto After TX Dems Stage Walkout On Restrictive Voting Bill
Gov. Greg Abbott (R) announced that he will veto the part of the state budget that funds the legislature, seeming retaliation for Texas Democrats’ walkout late Sunday that let them at least temporarily kill Republicans’ voting overhaul.
Click to expand...
Some Democrats, including former HUD Secretary Julián Castro and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX), have used the temporary reprieve from the sweeping voting law overhaul — that would curtail early voting hours and add restrictions to voting by mail — to re-up calls for the U.S. Senate to eliminate the filibuster and pass voting rights safeguards.
Click to expand...
 
www.nbcnews.com

Texas Gov. Abbott says he’ll target legislators' pay after Democrats block restrictive voting bill

Texas Democrats used every tool at their disposal Sunday night to stop the bill's passage, ultimately walking out to prevent a vote before the midnight deadline.
www.nbcnews.com www.nbcnews.com
www.texasmonthly.com

Inside the Texas Democratic Walkout That Derailed Senate Bill 7

After weeks of debating how to best combat the voting-restriction legislation, Democrats find a rare, though likely temporary, victory.
www.texasmonthly.com www.texasmonthly.com

Inside the Texas Democratic Walkout That Derailed Senate Bill 7​

After weeks of debating how to best combat the voting-restriction legislation, Democrats find a rare, though likely temporary, victory.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Links to Folks we Support

  • Cranky Beads
    •

    Back
    Top