hobbsyoyo
Deity
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2012
- Messages
- 26,575
I'm going to break down the ways that Republicans are rewriting the rules of our elections and breaking laws nationwide to bring about one party rule.
---------------------
Exact Match
The Justice Department used to have overseeing authority (called Pre-Clearance) for election laws in states with a history of racial voter discrimination. With this authority the JD denied a Georgia law called 'exact match' which compared voter registration records against other random databases both within Georgia and other states. The names in all the databases have to match up exactly and if they don't then your vote won't be counted.
This law was seen by the Justice Department as racial discrimination as 70% of the voters flagged under the law were people of color. Then the Supreme Court took away the ability of the JD to have this oversight and Georgia re-passed the law in 2017.
Since then between 50 and 70,000 voters (mostly African Americans) in Georgia have had their voting rights infringed under this law. Florida and other states have similar laws as well so the ultimate numbers just for exact-match systems is likely in the hundreds of thousands to millions.
Use It Or Lose It
Further, Georgia passed another law which purges the voter roles of individuals who have not voted in previous elections. Guess which group is most affected by this? Well it's African Americans again who make up around 70% of the 107,000 people under use it or lose it laws. Again, this same type of law is used elsewhere. In Ohio, missing a single election begins the removal process.
Felon Disenfranchisement
@Velegon had an excellent write up of felon disenfranchisement policies in Florida. Rather than re-tryping everything he said, I'll just quote and attribute him here:
Voting Machine Problems & Record Destruction
In Georgia and Texas, voting machines have been alleged to have swapped votes for voters. Moreover, it is known that many of these voting machines are unsecure and vulnerable to attacks but Republicans have refused to act to ensure their electoral integratity. Going back once again to Georgia, just this year the Secretary of State destroyed voter records from these electronic voting machines that were under federal subpeona after a contested, tight election.
Guess who's running for Governor this year in Georgia? Brian Kemp - the Secretary of State that destroyed the voting records and went unpunished. He's in charge of running elections in Georgia and he's running for Governor against a black female candidate, Stacey Abrams. He has also expressed concern in donor meetings about African Americans exercising their right to vote.
Polling Station Closures
Across the board, Republican-controlled states have taken to shutting down polling stations that service minority neighborhoods and cities. For example, in Dodge City (population 27,000, 60% hispanic), all of the polling stations within the town were shut down and replaced by single one well outside of town in a wealthy White majority area. A total of 866 polling stations have been shut down by Republicans since the Supreme Court neutered the Voting Rights Act five years ago despite the population growing at a steady clip.
Aggression and Suppression
Most alarmingly, the county officials have stopped buses of elderly black voters and forced them to turn around and disperse while they were on their way to vote. Has Brian Kemp done anything to stop it or punish officials?
Gerrymandering and Court Stealing
Gerrymandering went so far in Pennsylvania that the state supreme court forced the state to change the districts. The response from the Republican-led legislature was to threaten the judges with impeachment. They also resubmitted gerrymandered districts in open defiance of the court ruling. The court will now have to create their own districts for the state. In Texas, Republican efforts to gerrymander went so far (and would have effectively ended the Texas Democratic party as an entity) that they left the state en masse to prevent a quorum on the vote.
The Supreme Court was stolen when Merrick Garaland was denied a hearing and it turned around and upheld gerrymandered districts in Texas and elsewhere. In Florida, Rick Scott mounted an attempt to appoint several outgoing judges to the Supreme Court on the final day in office as the Supreme Court term ends a few hours earlier. Luckily, the Supreme Court of Florida invalidated this power although I can't find a more recent article on that - I just heard it on NPR the other day. There are also reports that Donald Trump arranged for Justice Kennedy's son to get a very high power job in exchange for his retirement. He also hired 3 of Kennedy's favorite clerks to powerful positions all in an effort to get him to retire.
-------------------
Given all of the above and the fact that the 2020 census is going to start under the Trump administration, it is pretty clear to me this is the make or break election that could put us on the road to one-party rule. If Republicans are not stopped now across the board they will rewrite all of the election laws to de facto ban political opposition. This is the tipping point.
VOTE
---------------------
Exact Match
The Justice Department used to have overseeing authority (called Pre-Clearance) for election laws in states with a history of racial voter discrimination. With this authority the JD denied a Georgia law called 'exact match' which compared voter registration records against other random databases both within Georgia and other states. The names in all the databases have to match up exactly and if they don't then your vote won't be counted.
This law was seen by the Justice Department as racial discrimination as 70% of the voters flagged under the law were people of color. Then the Supreme Court took away the ability of the JD to have this oversight and Georgia re-passed the law in 2017.
Since then between 50 and 70,000 voters (mostly African Americans) in Georgia have had their voting rights infringed under this law. Florida and other states have similar laws as well so the ultimate numbers just for exact-match systems is likely in the hundreds of thousands to millions.
Use It Or Lose It
Further, Georgia passed another law which purges the voter roles of individuals who have not voted in previous elections. Guess which group is most affected by this? Well it's African Americans again who make up around 70% of the 107,000 people under use it or lose it laws. Again, this same type of law is used elsewhere. In Ohio, missing a single election begins the removal process.
Felon Disenfranchisement
@Velegon had an excellent write up of felon disenfranchisement policies in Florida. Rather than re-tryping everything he said, I'll just quote and attribute him here:
Other states have similar policies.
Voting Machine Problems & Record Destruction
In Georgia and Texas, voting machines have been alleged to have swapped votes for voters. Moreover, it is known that many of these voting machines are unsecure and vulnerable to attacks but Republicans have refused to act to ensure their electoral integratity. Going back once again to Georgia, just this year the Secretary of State destroyed voter records from these electronic voting machines that were under federal subpeona after a contested, tight election.
Guess who's running for Governor this year in Georgia? Brian Kemp - the Secretary of State that destroyed the voting records and went unpunished. He's in charge of running elections in Georgia and he's running for Governor against a black female candidate, Stacey Abrams. He has also expressed concern in donor meetings about African Americans exercising their right to vote.
Polling Station Closures
Across the board, Republican-controlled states have taken to shutting down polling stations that service minority neighborhoods and cities. For example, in Dodge City (population 27,000, 60% hispanic), all of the polling stations within the town were shut down and replaced by single one well outside of town in a wealthy White majority area. A total of 866 polling stations have been shut down by Republicans since the Supreme Court neutered the Voting Rights Act five years ago despite the population growing at a steady clip.
Aggression and Suppression
Most alarmingly, the county officials have stopped buses of elderly black voters and forced them to turn around and disperse while they were on their way to vote. Has Brian Kemp done anything to stop it or punish officials?
Gerrymandering and Court Stealing
Gerrymandering went so far in Pennsylvania that the state supreme court forced the state to change the districts. The response from the Republican-led legislature was to threaten the judges with impeachment. They also resubmitted gerrymandered districts in open defiance of the court ruling. The court will now have to create their own districts for the state. In Texas, Republican efforts to gerrymander went so far (and would have effectively ended the Texas Democratic party as an entity) that they left the state en masse to prevent a quorum on the vote.
The Supreme Court was stolen when Merrick Garaland was denied a hearing and it turned around and upheld gerrymandered districts in Texas and elsewhere. In Florida, Rick Scott mounted an attempt to appoint several outgoing judges to the Supreme Court on the final day in office as the Supreme Court term ends a few hours earlier. Luckily, the Supreme Court of Florida invalidated this power although I can't find a more recent article on that - I just heard it on NPR the other day. There are also reports that Donald Trump arranged for Justice Kennedy's son to get a very high power job in exchange for his retirement. He also hired 3 of Kennedy's favorite clerks to powerful positions all in an effort to get him to retire.
-------------------
Given all of the above and the fact that the 2020 census is going to start under the Trump administration, it is pretty clear to me this is the make or break election that could put us on the road to one-party rule. If Republicans are not stopped now across the board they will rewrite all of the election laws to de facto ban political opposition. This is the tipping point.
VOTE
Last edited:
