Author Topic: Voter suppression  (Read 6412 times)

90sRetroFan

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Re: Voter suppression
« on: July 09, 2020, 03:03:36 am »
OLD CONTENT contd.

Abrams on the case:

news.yahoo.com/im-not-convinced-fair-elections-110109125.html

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“We are in a different era of voter suppression,” Abrams says. “But unfortunately it is a continued lineage of voter suppression that began with the inception of our country.”
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We first meet on a bright and humid summer’s afternoon in an upmarket Atlanta suburb a few blocks from the headquarters of her new national voting rights campaign, Fair Fight 2020.

The campaign is now in its infancy, but aims to create a vast voter protection drive across the country, supporting teams in 20 battleground states to aid with registration and boost turnout among minority groups next year.

In September she appeared on stage at a concert with the pop artist Lizzo in New York, delivering a rousing speech urging young attendees to become part of the campaign. This was part of a broader goal of engaging younger communities of color by pushing the voting rights struggle into popular culture.

“Every one of you is responsible for finding a rule that is wrong,” she told the crowd. “I want you to break that rule and write a new one.”

fairfight.com/fair-fight-2020/

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www.courthousenews.com/trial-begins-in-alabama-over-claims-of-racially-gerrymandered-election-districts/

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Under questioning by Perkins Coie attorney Bruce Spiva, Cooper said the state’s 2011 congressional redistricting map placed about a third of the black population of the state in the 7th District, and three districts – districts one, two and three – had black voting-age populations ranging between 24% to 28% of the districts’ overall populations.

The populations in those three districts, Cooper said, was a “clear example” of cracking – or breaking up – pockets of voters in order to break up their voting power.

Altogether, the black populations in districts one, two and three totaled more than 575,000 – which could almost make up an entire congressional district.

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Abrams interviewed:

www.politico.com/news/2019/11/20/stacey-abrams-voter-suppression-2020-obama-072235

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Talk about what steps you'll take beyond this initial phone banking to address these voters, and how else you're fighting this purge?

So voter purges, when they happen, the most important part of the process is ensuring that the people who are likely to be purged know what's coming and know what their rights are. We have been combing through the list since it was released a few weeks ago...verifying names, doing our initial vet of who should have been purged and who should not. There were [some] people whose names were [put] on the list improperly because they've recently voted.

And so what we will be doing is an initial texting and phone banking and that's what's happening on Thursday. That's a massive event where we're taking advantage of the attention that's being paid in the state and the capacity to reach people because they are going to be more alert to this. We're working with other organizations, we're working with the state party and we're working with anyone who has an interest in this across the aisle because voter purges are not [partisan] — in Georgia you don't register by party and so we don't know who's being purged. But our mission is to make certain that no one is taken off of the rolls improperly.

Has voter suppression gotten enough attention this cycle?

On their own I think almost every one of the top-tier candidates has made a statement about voter suppression. [But] we have not heard enough of it on the national stage, and that's why I've been trying to bring the debate to Georgia, and more importantly making certain that this is a [national] conversation. It's hard to come to Georgia and not have a conversation about voter suppression.

What do you hope to hear from candidates?

I hope to hear, one, an acknowledgment from the moderators that this is a national scourge and deserves the same degree of attention as any other topic. Because all of the progress we speak of as Democrats rests on the ability of voters to be heard and to participate in our process. You cannot have an effective health care system or laws that move our health care system forward, you cannot pass laws to address climate change if we do not have the right to vote. So I want the moderators, because they control the tenor of the debate, to put that forward. And then I want thoughtful answers from those men and women standing on stage. Because because it's how they've gotten their jobs if they've been elected to office. And it's how they will get this job.

At least our enemies have made Abrams famous:

www.yahoo.com/entertainment/stacey-abrams-building-kind-political-130008042.html

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us.yahoo.com/news/black-woman-faces-prison-because-110019317.html

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Lanisha Bratcher was finishing breakfast at home one morning at the end of July when there was a knock on her door. She had been discharged from the hospital the night before following a miscarriage that left her mourning the loss of her child.

Her partner opened the door – it was the police. They burst into their North Carolina home “like the Dukes of Hazzard”, Bratcher said. There was a warrant out for her arrest, they told her. Bratcher had no idea what for.

Her crime? Voting in the 2016 presidential election.

Bratcher faces up to 19 months in prison because she did not realize she had actually been stripped of the right to vote. Her lawyer says she’s being punished based on a Jim Crow-era law that was intended to disenfranchise African Americans.

Bratcher was on probation after being convicted of assault and North Carolina law mandates that people convicted of felonies can only vote once they complete their criminal sentences, including probation and parole, entirely.
...
The state’s policy of banning people convicted of felonies from voting is rooted in a late 19th century effort by North Carolina Democrats to limit voting power of newly-enfranchised African Americans as whole. In 1898, the North Carolina Democratic party spoke of the need “to rescue the white people of the east from the curse of negro domination”.

Since then, North Carolina lawmakers have tweaked the law, but its core – stripping felons of their voting rights while they serve criminal sentences – remains in place.

John Carella, Bratcher’s lawyer, noted the vast majority of the people caught up in the law are African American. “A law that is intended to racially discriminate against a group is unconstitutional,” he said. “We also know it continues to work that way in its modern application to the 2016 election.”

Carella argues that the goal is to dissuade black voters from going to the polls. That could make a big difference in North Carolina, a fiercely politically competitive state expected to play a key role in the 2020 election.

In Bratcher’s case, it seems to have worked. She’s not sure if she’ll ever vote again, even once she’s legally allowed to.

“It seems really dangerous,” she said.
...
Torris Jones, Bratcher’s husband, said he understands her new apprehension about voting, but sees it differently.

“If you don’t vote again, then the law would have done exactly what it was supposed to do, which is to suppress your vote,” he said. “If they’ve got you afraid, then the law did what it’s supposed to do.”

Also:



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www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/31/voter-purges-republicans-2020-elections-trump

one of Trump’s reelection advisers was caught on tape telling a Wisconsin Republicans that the party has “traditionally” relied on voter suppression. “Traditionally it’s always been Republicans suppressing votes in places. Let’s start protecting our voters. We know where they are,” the adviser, Justin Clark, said in audio obtained by the Associated Press. “Let’s start playing offense a little bit. That’s what you’re going to see in 2020. It’s going to be a much bigger program, a much more aggressive program, a much better-funded program.”

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More and more skeletons fall out of the closet:

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/27/arizona-republicans-intentionally-discriminated-against-minority-voters-court-rules

A federal court has ruled Arizona Republicans’ ban on mail-in ballots is illegal and unconstitutional, calling it intentionally discriminatory toward people of color, who already face increased barriers to voting.

The ruling is a major victory for the Democratic party, which filed the suit, and will likely make it easier for minorities to get their ballots counted in the largely red state.

Four years ago, Arizona Republicans made it a felony, punishable by prison time, for third-party groups to collect mail-in ballots during elections – a process often called “ballot harvesting.”

Marginalized communities in the state may rely more on ballot harvesting, the court noted. Native Americans, for example, benefit significantly from third-party ballot collection efforts because just 18% of registered voters have mail service at home, and reservations can be far from polling stations. Some minority communities also have widespread distrust in the mailing system: in San Luis, a city that is 98% Hispanic, a major highway separates 13,000 residents from the nearest post office.

“The adverse impact on minority communities is substantial. Without ‘access to reliable and secure mail services,’ and without reliable transportation, many minority voters ‘prefer instead to give their ballots to a volunteer’,” the court said. And Hispanics and Native Americans make up nearly 37% of the state’s population – promising to be a key demographic in this year’s presidential election.

The ruling noted that the Republican effort to restrict third-party ballot collection appeared to be part of a longstanding effort to suppress black, Hispanic and Native American votes. Republicans passed a similar law in 2011, but abandoned the effort after a state election official admitted that the measure was designed to target voting activity in Hispanic areas.

The court also struck down a separate state policy that required election officials to throw out ballots if someone voted in the wrong precinct. But voters faced some egregious challenges. At times they were directed to the wrong precinct, without being told their vote wouldn’t count, the court noted. And Arizona changes its polling locations with unusual frequency and rejected 38,355 ballots from people who voted in the wrong place between 2008 to 2016. (Minority voters were more than twice as likely than their white counterparts to cast a ballot out of their precinct.)

This is why it is so important to have fair judges in the courts. Unfortunately:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/news/court-packing/

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Not all bad news, though: