|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 13, 2020 8:56:37 GMT
Ga. conservatives are rigging the voting maps along racial lines
Published on Mar 10, 2017
House Bill 515, a proposed map rigging law sponsored by disgraced former judge Johnnie Caldwell (R-Thomaston) has passed through the Georgia House. Among other changes, the bill would shift district lines to prop up vulnerable incumbent state representatives Rich Golick (R-Smyrna) and Brian Strickland (R-McDonough). Both lawmakers barely won narrow victories in blue-trending districts easily won by Hillary Clinton.
The redrawn maps, which were not made available to the public before the bill’s committee hearing, show that the Georgia GOP is carving out African-American and minority voters to prop up Republican candidates who they know can’t win a fair election.
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 13, 2020 8:56:59 GMT
The bad map we see every presidential election
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 13, 2020 8:57:24 GMT
How the Russian political allies of the GOP helped them in just one of many ways:
Russian Bots Retweeted Donald Trump 500,000 Times Before Election Mary Papenfuss, HuffPost •January 27, 2018
Russian bots retweeted Donald Trump messages close to half-a-million times in the weeks leading up to the presidential election, Twitter officials revealed to the Senate Judiciary Committee, CNN reports.
Some 50,000 of the automated accounts linked to Russia retweeted Trump 10 times more often than they retweeted messages from his rival, Hillary Clinton, Twitter detailed in a written statement this month expanding on testimony to the committee last fall.
The bots tweeted a total of some 2 million messages related to the election beginning in September 2016 to Nov. 15, according to Twitter.
The bots also retweeted and helped amplify other content seen as harmful to the Democrats — including information about hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee exposed on Wikileaks. When the hashtag #PodestaEmails was launched after Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails were hacked, the Russian bots were responsible for a stunning 5 percent of all the tweets on the hashtag, according to data provided by Twitter.
Twitter revealed the information as Senate and House committees continue to probe the extent of Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election. American intelligence officials have concluded that bots under the control of the Kremlin were mobilized in a bid to sway the election toward a Trump victory.
More recently, Russian bots have artificially amplified the traffic of the hashtag #SchumerShutdown, which blames the Democratic Party for the recent government closure that was resolved early last week.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 13, 2020 8:57:55 GMT
It would be a great idea for Hillary to set up some kind of third party non partisan commission to ensure election integrity. Or even partisan lol to get out the vote and educate people what to watch out for because the GOOPS already have things set up to steal the next one again.Hillary Clinton Showed Up To Watch 'Hello, Dolly!' And Bette Midler Couldn't Cope Lee Moran,HuffPost•July 28, 2018
Hillary Clinton received a rapturous reception when she showed up to watch Broadway musical “Hello, Dolly!” in New York City on Thursday.
Audience members at Manhattan’s Shubert Theatre “stood, clapped and chanted” the former secretary of state’s name “until the lights went down,” the show’s star, actress and singer-songwriter Bette Midler revealed on Twitter.
Midler was also pretty excited, describing Clinton’s visit as “a thrill” that “made us all unbelievably happy.”
Bette Midler ✔ @bettemidler #HILLARYCLINTON CAME TO #“HELLODOLLY TONIGHT!! What a thrill! The crowd stood, clapped and chanted her name until the lights went down😂. It made us all unbelievably happy to see her...
7:47 PM - Jul 26, 2018 47.9K 8,384 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy Clinton later met with the show’s cast and ended up giving them a backstage pep talk about registering to vote.
“Tell your friends to tell their families and friends in every state to register,” said Clinton, per an Instagram post from Midler. “And make sure they have not been purged from the rolls before they get there to cast their ballot.”
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 13, 2020 8:58:27 GMT
The promo advertised that Matthew Dunlap said the reason the Trump Voter Fraud Commission was disbanded is because they are trying to hide what they (GOP) are doing. In my opinion to steal the mid-term election AND it would prove there was NO voter fraud of any consequence, if any at all. The four Democrats on the commission were "walled off" from the conservatives that were running the show. These people are desperate to stay in power and will stop at nothing. Member Of Disbanded Trump Voter Fraud Commission Speaks OutAudio ondemand.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/atc/2018/08/20180804_atc_member_of_disbanded_trump_voter_fraud_commission_speaks_out.mp3?orgId=1&topicId=1014&d=353&p=2&story=635668304&siteplayer=true&dl=1
August 4, 20185:33 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered A member of the President's now-defunct voter fraud commission is speaking out. NPR's Don Gonyea talks to Matthew Dunlap about the panel, which he says was set up to validate the president's claims.in a related article: Report: Trump commission did not find widespread voter fraudAssociated Press MARINA VILLENEUVE,Associated Press Fri, Aug 3 3:26 PM MST .
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach answers questions from reporters during a news conference, Thursday, Aug. 2, 2018, in Topeka, Kan. Kobach faces scrutiny for his work as an attorney representing cities with ordinances against illegal immigration that cost them millions of dollars in legal fees. (AP Photo/John Hanna)
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The now-disbanded voting integrity commission launched by the Trump administration uncovered no evidence to support claims of widespread voter fraud, according to an analysis of administration documents released Friday.
In a letter to Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who are both Republicans and led the commission, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap said the documents show there was a "pre-ordained outcome" and that drafts of a commission report included a section on evidence of voter fraud that was "glaringly empty."
"It's calling into the darkness, looking for voter fraud," Dunlap, a Democrat, told The Associated Press. "There's no real evidence of it anywhere."
Republican President Donald Trump convened the commission to investigate the 2016 presidential election after making unsubstantiated claims that between 3 million and 5 million ballots were illegally cast. Critics, including Dunlap, reject his claims of widespread voter fraud.
The Trump administration last month complied with a court order to turn over documents from the voting integrity commission to Dunlap. The commission met just twice and has not issued a report.
Dunlap's findings received immediate pushback Friday from Kobach, who acted as vice chair of the commission while Pence served as chair.
"For some people, no matter how many cases of voter fraud you show them, there will never be enough for them to admit that there's a problem," said Kobach, who is running for Kansas governor and has a good chance of unseating the incumbent, Jeff Colyer, in the Republican primary Tuesday.
"It appears that Secretary Dunlap is willfully blind to the voter fraud in front of his nose," Kobach said in a statement released by his spokesman.
Kobach said there have been more than 1,000 convictions for voter fraud since 2000, and that the commission presented 8,400 instances of double voting in the 2016 election in 20 states.
"Had the commission done the same analysis of all 50 states, the number would have been exponentially higher," Kobach said.
In response, Dunlap said those figures were never brought before the commission, and that Kobach hasn't presented any evidence for his claims of double voting. He said the commission was presented with a report claiming over 1,000 convictions for various forms of voter misconduct since 1948.
"The plural of anecdote is not data," Dunlap said in his Friday letter to the shuttered commission's leaders.
Pence's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
Dunlap said he is unsure whether the administration has released all relevant documents, and said the matter is in litigation. He said he was repeatedly rebuffed when he sought access to commission records including meeting materials, witness invitations and correspondence.
Dunlap released his findings on a website .
Emails released by Dunlap and promoted by the nonprofit American Oversight, which represented Dunlap, include examples of Republican voting integrity commissioners emailing each other as they worked on information requests without including Democrats.
"Indeed, a very few commissioners worked to buttress their pre-ordained conclusions shielded from dissent or dialogue from those commissioners not included in the discussions," Dunlap said in his Friday letter.
In a June 2017 email, commissioner Christy McCormick unsuccessfully tried to suggest that the commission hire a statistician she knew. "When I was at DOJ, we had numerous discussions that made me pretty confident that he is conservative (and Christian, too)," said McCormick, in reference to the U.S. Department of Justice.
The emails also show some commission members had planned to ask for an interstate database used to identify duplicate voter registrations, as well as lists of individuals deemed ineligible for federal jury service due to death, relocation, convictions or lack of citizenship. It wasn't clear in the emails whether or not such requests ended up being fulfilled, Dunlap said.
In two November 2017 emails, Republican commission member and election lawyer J. Christian Adams emailed all members and said there hadn't been any prosecutions for double voting or any non-citizen voting in years. "Understanding the extent of un-prosecuted and known election crimes can inform the commission's recommendations," Adams said.
Adams also called for U.S. Customs and Immigration Services to obtain metadata from citizenship applications as well as a list of individuals removed from the U.S. due to their unlawful participation in elections.
"Many applicants note they have been registered to vote and are voting," Adams said.
___
Associated Press writer John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 13, 2020 8:58:54 GMT
Securing Election Infrastructure Against Foreign Interference5:21 August 4, 20185:33 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered
LISTEN: ondemand.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/atc/2018/08/20180804_atc_securing_election_infrastructure_against_foreign_interference.mp3?orgId=1&topicId=1122&d=322&p=2&story=635668314&siteplayer=true&dl=1
National security officials have said Russia is trying to interfere in the midterms. NPR's Don Gonyea speaks to Center for Election Innovation & Research founder David Becker about prevention efforts.
DON GONYEA, HOST:
National security officials came out in force this week saying definitively that Russia has tried to interfere in the 2018 midterms. Here's Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KIRSTJEN NIELSEN: Our democracy itself is in the crosshairs. Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of our democracy, and it has become clear that they are the target of our adversaries.
GONYEA: So what can be done about it? We've called on David Becker, executive director and founder of The Center for Election Innovation & Research. He joins us now from New Orleans.
David Becker, welcome.
DAVID BECKER: Thanks, Don.
GONYEA: What are the threats to the upcoming midterm elections? What makes them vulnerable?
BECKER: Well, whenever you use technology as we do in almost everything in our daily lives, including elections, there are vulnerabilities that go along with that. And the Russians in particular have been working to exploit those vulnerabilities. We know, in 2016, they sought to intrude upon the infrastructure in several states and localities - in the election infrastructure. We also know they were only successful in one instance. In Illinois, they got into the statewide voter registration database. They didn't alter any records. It didn't impact the election. But certainly, it had an impact on voters' perception of the security.
And so it appears, based on what the national security officials are saying, Russia is certainly ramping up its efforts to do something similar again, probably with the goal of doing what they were successful with in 2016, which is to delegitimize democracy in general and get voters here in the United States to doubt the machinery of their democracy.
GONYEA: You mentioned statewide voter databases, but are we also talking just basic things like voting machines?
BECKER: So voting machines are technology. Whether you're voting on paper or you're voting on a touchscreen, there's technology involved to count those ballots. And so we have to be very careful about that. Now the good news is the response to this threat has been unprecedented. Federal officials from DHS and other agencies have been partnering with the state and local election officials to secure our elections as never before.
And so we've got to remain very vigilant, but the systems generally are not connected to the Internet. There are a lot of security protocols in place. And we're just going to have to make sure that we continue to build on that security over time. But even voting machines - we have to be careful about it. That's why voting on paper and having audits of elections is very, very important to confirm that the counts were accurate.
GONYEA: Can you give us some specific examples of how the U.S. is already responding to some of these threats?
BECKER: Sure. So so far, what's happened - many know that the federal government authorized $380 million to go to the states to help them with security. That money is a very good down payment on security, but they're going to need a more regular stream of funding long term because there's no finish line in cybersecurity. As you get better, the bad guys get better, too. Election officials from all 50 states and about a thousand local jurisdictions are now sharing information on threats as never before. The entity through which they're sharing this information didn't even exist a year ago. And that's now in existence, and they're sharing information, so they can see if the similar things that they're seeing in their jurisdiction are affecting other jurisdictions, and it helps us to connect the dots.
Election officials have really undertaken a lot of effort to make sure that they're training their staff, hiring better staff, so that they're not going to fall victim to things like spear phishing attempts - using better passwords, things along those lines. So a lot of very specific things have been done. The 2018 election will be more secure than any election we've ever held. But that being said, the 2020 election is going to have to be more secure than the 2018 election.
GONYEA: You mentioned the $380 million going to the states. Now that Trump officials are coming out and confirming foreign interference, do you think there'll be more federal support on top of that for making elections more secure?
BECKER: It's really hard to predict what's going to happen. Unfortunately, this has become somewhat of a partisan issue. And one thing I know for sure is this issue is too important for it to devolve into partisan politics. Republicans and Democrats who are working in the states and localities to secure elections are not looking at it as a partisan issue. I think I'm very hopeful that Congress will act accordingly and make sure that the funding that's necessary to secure these systems - not just in 2018 but going forward in 2020 and beyond - is available to the states.
GONYEA: Well, on the topic of partisanship, on Thursday, President Trump returned to an old line he's used before, calling Russian interference a hoax. Does that hurt these efforts?
BECKER: Well, it certainly doesn't help. The professionals in the national security apparatus of the federal government are clearly making very clear statements about the threat and what we need to do to combat it. And there's simply no doubt that it exists. Leadership coming from the White House would be very, very helpful here because we don't only need to secure our systems as targets. We also need to deter those who might otherwise interfere, and that's probably the point that's lacking right now - is there is no real effort for there to be a price to pay if someone interferes in our elections. And we need that to be there.
GONYEA: That was David Becker, the executive director and founder of The Center for Election Innovation & Research.
David, thanks for joining us.
BECKER: Thank you, Don.
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 13, 2020 8:59:22 GMT
If they are successful maybe this will wake people up. It won't do much for the pre-election theft that goes on but it's a start.Hackers at convention to ferret out election system bugsReuters By Christopher Bing,Reuters 4 hours ago .
FILE PHOTO: Hackers try to access and alter data from an electronic poll books in a Voting Machine Hacking Village during the Def Con hacker convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., July 29, 2017. REUTERS/Steve Marcus/File Photo
By Christopher Bing
LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Def Con, one of the world's largest hacker conventions, will serve as a laboratory for breaking into voting machines this week, extending its efforts to identify potential security flaws in technology that may be used in the November U.S. elections.
The three-day "Voting Village," which opens in Las Vegas on Friday, also aims to expose vulnerabilities in devices such as digital poll books and memory-card readers.
Def Con held its first voting village last year after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded the Russian government used hacking in its attempt to support Donald Trump's 2016 candidacy for president. Moscow has denied the allegations.
Organizers have returned ahead of the November elections, in which Democrats hope to take control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Trump's national security team last week warned that Russia had launched "pervasive" efforts to interfere in the elections.
"These vulnerabilities that will be identified over the course of the next three days would, in an actual election, cause mass chaos," said Jake Braun, one of the village's organizers. "They need to be identified and addressed, regardless of the environment in which they are found."
Participants will have a chance to hack into more than five types of voting machines from manufacturers including Elections Systems & Software and Dominion Voting.
Last year a Danish researcher figured out how to take control of a touch-screen voting system used through 2014 in a remote hack that organizers said could work from up to 1,000 feet away.
A group representing U.S. secretaries of state lauded the goal of bolstering election security, but warned that the findings might be skewed.
"It utilizes a pseudo environment which in no way replicates state election systems, networks or physical security," the National Association of Secretaries of State said in a statement.
"Providing conference attendees with unlimited physical access to voting machines, most of which are no longer in use, does not replicate accurate physical and cyber protections established by state and local governments before and on Election Day," the group said.
Verified Voting, an advocacy group that helped organize the hacking village, said that some of the voting machine models being tested are still used to tally votes across the United States.
One system, the Dominion Premier/Diebold AccuVote TSx system, is used in 20 states and 23,784 precincts, according to Verified Voting.
(Reporting by Christopher Bing in Las Vegas; Editing by Jim Finkle and Richard Chang)
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 13, 2020 8:59:51 GMT
The CROOKED AND DESPERATE GOP is back at it (actually they never let up) suppressing the vote and rigging elections to maintain power as the minority party.Between the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision to gut the Voting Rights Act and its recent ruling effectively endorsing Ohio’s voter purge tactics, Republican-controlled legislatures have been given the green light to suppress the vote in state after state.
According to a report by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, states with a history of racial discrimination -- that previously had to clear changes to voting laws with the Department of Justice under the Voting Rights Act -- are now purging voters at a rate far above other states. Potentially because the voter protection provided by that pre-clearance process is now gone, two million Americans have fallen victim to voter purges between 2012 and 2016 -- many of them living in Southern states.
Through gerrymandering and controversial voter purge tactics, Republicans are getting the outcome they’ve been hoping for: rigged majorities in Congress and in state legislatures across the country.
Voter purge frenzy after federal protections lifted, new report says
Nine states with a history of racial discrimination are aggressively removing voters from the rolls, the Brennan Center for Justice says.
by Jane C. Timm / Jul.20.2018 / 4:54 AM ET / Updated Jul.20.2018 / 5:23 AM ET
In Georgia, 156 of the state's 159 counties reported an increase in registered-voter removal rates, a new report found.Erik S. Lesser / EPA file
Nine states with a history of racial discrimination are more aggressively removing registered voters from their rolls than other states, according to a report released Friday.
After reviewing voter purges nationally from 2012 to 2016, the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice found that the mostly Southern jurisdictions that had once been required to get changes to voting policies pre-approved by the Justice Department had higher rates of purging than jurisdictions that were not previously subject to pre-clearance.
A key section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was designed to protect minority voters from state disenfranchisement, was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013, allowing states to begin making changes affecting voting without first getting federal approval.
"Two million fewer voters would have been purged over those four years if jurisdictions previously subject to federal pre-clearance had purged at the same rate" as other jurisdictions, the Brennan Center estimated.
In Georgia, for example, 156 of the state's 159 counties reported an increase in removal rates after the Voting Rights Act was changed. In 2016, advocates sued Georgia for making voter registration harder. In 2017, the American Civil Liberties Union sued a Georgia county and the state Secretary of State for its purge practices, too.
"There's cause for concern when the purge rate goes up this much at the same time we're seeing controversial, sometimes illegal voter purge practice, in addition to changes to other voting laws that make it more difficult to participate," said Jonathan Brater, counsel for the Brennan Center's Democracy Program and one of the report's authors.
The Brennan Center's analysis found that election officials were purging voter rolls more aggressively nationwide, too, with some using imprecise or possibly illegal methods to do so.
Voter purges — cleaning up and pruning voter rolls down to remove inaccurate information — are a normal part of all election roll maintenance. But if purges are done too aggressively or with bad information, advocates warn, they can disenfranchise eligible voters, who may not know they've been purged until they go to the polls on Election Day and are unable to vote.
Brater said that under the Trump administration, "the Department of Justice has abdicated its responsibility to protect against bad voter purges."
"They've actually been encouraging jurisdictions to purge more aggressively," he said.
In 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court recently approved Ohio's method for purging voters from the rolls. The Obama Justice Department had supported the challengers in the early stages of the court fight, but the Trump administration switched sides and supported the state.
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 13, 2020 9:00:20 GMT
The Red Confederate States are still benefiting from slavery. Abolish the electoral college now!
The flaws of the Electoral College are in its origin August 16, 2018 Re “Suit targets Electoral College” (Page A1, Aug. 10): Maybe a more effective way to get state legislatures and Congress to consider changing the Electoral College system is by mounting an information campaign to remind voters and their elected representatives how and why the Electoral College system of electing our presidents came into being. When the US Constitution was being written and the system for allocating the number of each state’s seats in the House of Representatives was being worked out, states with large slave populations lobbied to have those slaves count toward their allocation of seats in the House, even though these slaves would never cast a vote. A compromise was reached whereby, when it came to the assignment of political power, a slave counted as three-fifths of a free man or woman. This required the creation of the Electoral College as a way around the odious arithmetic, since it separated the power of a state’s votes from the number of people actually casting them. Maybe the time has come for a top-to-bottom review of the Electoral College system, starting with its premise.
Richard McIntosh
Boxford
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 13, 2020 9:00:51 GMT
Georgia Elections Board To Close 75% Of Black County's Polling Places By Frances Langum 8/18/18 5:00am
To the Members of the Randolph County Board of Elections and Registration, The ACLU of Georgia writes to express grave concern about your discriminatory proposal to eliminate over 75% of polling places (7 out of 9) on the eve of the November elections. These polling place closures will virtually guarantee lower voter turnout in a Black Belt county that is predominantly African-American (60%), and will completely prevent rural voters without transportation (again, disproportionately African-American) from voting in person on Election Day.
The timing of your proposal is also suspicious and calls to question your true motives behind this proposal. These are the exact same polling places used in the primary and primary run-off earlier this year. It makes no sense to suddenly reduce the number of polling places for this November’s election, which will see far higher voter turnout than in the primaries or the primary run-off. Your proposal has also been plagued by procedural irregularities that cast further doubt about the real motivation behind these proposals.
Making it disproportionately harder for African American voters to cast a ballot— especially when done so deliberately—is a violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, 52 U.S.C. § 10301, and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.
We demand that you reject this proposal or you will face potential legal liability.
Joyce Alene Verified account
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 13, 2020 9:01:24 GMT
SYMPOSIUM | WINNING THE VOTING WARSThe Missing Right: A Constitutional Right to VoteBY JONATHAN SOROS MARK SCHMITT FROM SPRING 2013, NO. 28 – 10 MIN READ
In order to become a naturalized citizen of the United States, until recently you had to answer this question: “What is the most important right granted to U.S. citizens?” The correct answer, according to the United States government, was, “The right to vote.” But that “right” has always been on shaky ground. Just as the Constitution once countenanced slavery, it also allowed voting to be restricted to property-holding white men. The Thirteenth Amendment expunged the stain of slavery from our basic law, but the Constitution has never fulfilled the democratic promise we associate with it. Put simply—and this is surprising to many people—there is no constitutional guarantee of the right to vote. Qualifications to vote in House and Senate elections are decided by each state, and the Supreme Court affirmed in Bush v. Gore that “[t]he individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States.”
Amendments to the Constitution have required “equal protection,” eliminated the poll tax, and made it unconstitutional to restrict voting based on race, sex, and age for those over 18. For years the Supreme Court relied on these amendments to expand the franchise, and the broadening of voting rights, which was associated with the civil-rights movement, was widely accepted as a marker of progress toward a just society until about 2000. More recently, in an environment of increasingly rigid partisan loyalties, controlling who votes offers more leverage than persuading voters to change their minds, and thus access to the ballot itself has become an arena of intense political conflict. These conflicts constitute what the election scholar Richard Hasen calls “the voting wars.”Most of these wars end up in the courts, where the rules of engagement—defined by our Constitution—do not sufficiently protect voters’ rights to exercise their franchise. In the absence of an explicit right to vote, the Court has found no issue with a variety of regulations that unnecessarily interfere with voting.
The result has been a steady descent into chaos and confusion that threatens the integrity of our institutions at home and our credibility in promoting democratic governance abroad. People wait hours in line to cast a ballot; voting hours and locations change at the last minute; there’s uncertainty about who can vote, whether voters need to show identification, and what counts as identification. Armies of lawyers fight over these rules before elections, and when the results are close, they fight again over which votes should and shouldn’t be counted. Hasen reported recently that cases challenging election rules have more than doubled in the decade since Bush v. Gore. Finally enshrining the right to vote in the Constitution would help resolve most of these cases in favor of voters. It would not make every limitation unconstitutional—it is the essential nature of voting, for instance, that there be a date certain by which votes must be cast in order to be counted—but it would ensure that these limitations are judged under the standard known as “strict scrutiny,” meaning that governments would have to show that the restrictions were carefully designed to address a compelling interest of the state. We would come to find that many familiar aspects of our current voting system would not meet this standard and access to the ballot could be extended to millions who are now actively or effectively disenfranchised.
The Varieties of Disenfranchisement
One of the most suspect voting restrictions is the requirement that voters register up to one month prior to Election Day in order to be allowed to cast a ballot. In 2008, around six million eligible voters did not vote because of difficulties associated with registration requirements, according to the Census Bureau. From their origins in the mid-nineteenth century, registration requirements have made it more difficult for poor, less-educated, and transient people to vote, but the Court has accepted the claims by states that registration in advance is needed for orderly elections and to prove that a voter is a real resident. Eight states allow voters to register on Election Day, two more are implementing same-day registration, and one (North Dakota) doesn’t require voter registration at all, proving that prior registration is simply unnecessary to meet either of these goals.
Like voter-registration requirements, more recent laws requiring that voters show photo identification to vote have the effect of preventing large numbers of people—particularly poor people and minorities—from voting. There’s ample evidence that that result, with consequent political effects, is exactly their purpose. Note the claim by Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai that voter ID “is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.” Since 2008, when the Supreme Court approved Indiana’s voter-ID law based on the state’s interest in protecting the integrity of elections, 14 states have enacted and strengthened voter-ID laws, and only in states where there is a guaranteed right to vote in the state constitution were courts able to weigh the burden on voters against the claims of voter fraud. (The Pennsylvania law was blocked, for 2012, by a state court relying on the state constitution; Republican nominee Mitt Romney did not win Pennsylvania.) The Supreme Court was right to recognize the state’s interest in election integrity, but without evidence of in-person voter fraud, which is extremely rare, it should have given greater consideration to the burden on individual voters. A constitutional affirmation of the right to vote would have required the Court to weigh these interests differently.
An affirmative right to vote could also test our anachronistic practice of voting on Tuesdays. In an agrarian society, having elections on Tuesdays allowed a day of travel to the county seat to vote without interfering with Sunday worship or Wednesday market days. Today, it’s just a burden for anyone who doesn’t have the luxury of rearranging her work schedule. Thirty-two states now allow in-person early voting without an excuse, but the remainder do not, and some of 2012’s fiercest battles centered around efforts to roll back early voting where it existed. The eight-hour lines that some voters experienced this year should be recognized as a breach of a state’s constitutional obligations to an individual’s right to vote.
Importantly, a Right to Vote Amendment would change the constitutional calculus regarding felon disenfranchisement laws, which currently limit the rights of nearly six million Americans, including four million who are no longer incarcerated. As with other voting limitations, these laws disproportionately affect African Americans; in several states, more than one in five African Americans is prohibited from voting. NYU Law Professor Bryan Stevenson predicts that in ten years, the level of disenfranchisement in Alabama will be higher than before passage of the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court has refused to apply strict scrutiny to felon disenfranchisement except where discriminatory intent can be proven. While a state might succeed in defending a policy to keep currently incarcerated prisoners from voting, the continued disenfranchisement of the four million people who are otherwise integrated into the fabric of society would be much harder to defend. The fight to restore these voting rights is often marginalized; grounding it in a broader movement can help it advance. Similarly, the uncategorical disenfranchisement of millions of Americans who live in the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and other territories finds little organized objection outside of the affected communities.
Beyond the Amendment, a Movement
While there is a vibrant “democracy movement” of Americans devoted to improving the functioning of our democracy and our policy-making apparatus, it is pulled in dozens of different directions. There are organizations and individuals devoted to fighting to change registration requirements, eliminate voter-ID laws, expand early voting, as well as dozens of other useful, democracy-enhancing reforms. To most of these advocates, the absence of an affirmative right to vote is no secret, but few have openly embraced the call to amend the Constitution. Some believe that acknowledging this constitutional deficiency is confusing and weakens their reliance on an implicit “right to vote” in legal or public advocacy. Many others think that the cause is simply not worth the time and money required to mount the fight. We disagree.
The Twenty-sixth Amendment, extending the vote to 18 year olds, was ratified four months after it first passed the Senate. Despite the similarly wholesome appeal of a broader Right to Vote Amendment, we have no illusions regarding its rapid ratification under current political circumstances. With 26 state legislatures, including all but one in the South, under complete control by conservatives after the 2012 election, reaching the 38 states necessary would be almost impossible. But even if the odds of passage are daunting, a push to enshrine the right to vote in the Constitution would still have tremendous movement-building value.
A good example of an amendment campaign that built a movement is the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which fell short of being ratified in the late 1970s, but gave the emerging women’s movement a clear goal, provided it with a guiding mission, and prompted a significant national conversation about equality and the rights of all people. Through state and federal laws, the creation of state commissions on the status of women, and, above all, cultural changes in the family, schools, and corporate America, women have achieved many of the original goals of the ERA.
A Right to Vote Amendment would not supersede the many causes of the democracy movement, but it would give them a similar overarching mission, with the principle of full participation and universal suffrage at the forefront. Unlike other proposed amendments, such as the various versions of an amendment to reverse Citizens United or declare that corporations aren’t people, which provide no other opportunities for success short of final ratification, the Right to Vote Amendment would be a “Yes We Can” amendment like the ERA. Nothing would have to wait for the amendment to be ratified; all the steps toward a real universal right to vote could be pursued and enacted through legislation alongside the fight for the amendment.
A Basic Covenant
The language of such an amendment could take several forms, such as one proposed by Heather Gerken of Yale Law School: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State.” This same text could be narrowed to exclude primaries and apply only to general elections, or broadened to cover state elections.
One would expect the reforms needed to fix the problems with registration, voter ID, and early voting to be non-controversial were they not so entangled with partisan battles for political power. By embedding those fights into an argument for a right that most Americans believe is a cornerstone of our national identity, the prospects for legislative success on these issues are only strengthened.
Moreover, by showing Americans how far we fall short of a basic right that most of us assume is in the Constitution, it will help clarify and expand the coalition for other reforms that are equally important but more politically challenging. By putting participation and political equality at the heart of the Constitution, a Right to Vote Amendment would also extend its benefits beyond issues of suffrage to the influence of money in politics. Under the Supreme Court’s current jurisprudence, the ability of individuals and corporations to spend unlimited sums to affect elections cannot be constrained. This theory has helped unleash the greatest threat of corporate capture of our democracy since the first Progressive movement rose to face similar challenges a century ago. The answer to this threat is a robust system of citizen funding to enhance the value of small contributions from ordinary voters. [See also “Mismatching Funds,” Issue #4.] The arguments for this policy resonate clearly with the spirit of a Right to Vote Amendment.
In the era of the voting wars, the right to vote is itself a subject of continued partisan, regional, and racial conflict. It’s time to resolve the fights, and fulfill the promise of American democracy, by joining together in an effort to make the right to vote, at last, a part of our basic covenant as a nation.
democracyjournal.org/magazine/28/the-missing-right-a-constitutional-right-to-vote/
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 13, 2020 9:01:53 GMT
Is anyone else besides me tired of this REPUBLICONSERVATIVE BULLSHIT TO STEAL ELECTIONS??? Reagan says she can't possibly comply until AFTER the mid term election because it would confuse people. Really Michelle? You were NOTIFIED 9 MONTHS AGO about this problem. Putting some 500,000 voters on provisional ballots that never get counted or denying them from voting in the first place is less confusing?ACLU Sues Arizona Secretary of State Over Voter RollsAugust 20, 2018 BRAD POOLE FacebookTwitterGoogle+Email TUCSON, Ariz. (CN) – Arizona’s secretary of state is systematically disenfranchising thousands of primarily low-income Hispanic voters by not using state driver’s license records to update voter registration rolls, according to a federal lawsuit filed Monday by three nonprofits.
The groups warned the state in a November 2017 letter that the lawsuit could follow, and Secretary Michelle Reagan agreed in a June memorandum to start updating the registration records. That hasn’t happened, according to the lawsuit filed by the League of Women Voters, Mi Familia Vota Education Fund, and Promise Arizona.
“Secretary Reagan apparently has no difficulty using (Arizona Department of Transportation) records to keep people off the voter rolls when they haven’t provided documentary proof of citizenship,” said Stuart Naifeh, senior counsel at Demos, who along with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law is representing the nonprofits.
“The secretary of state should use that same information to keep lawfully registered voters from falling off the rolls when they move, as the law demands,” Naifeh said.
In Arizona, proof of citizenship is required to vote. Having a driver’s license would normally take care of this, because the National Voter Registration Act requires states to use driver’s license information to update voter rolls, and you have to show proof of citizenship to get a driver’s license.
If a voter’s address doesn’t match the registration information, which happens frequently when voters move, the entire ballot is thrown out, even though proof of citizenship is not required for federal elections that might appear on the ballot.
The problem is widespread, because between 2000 and 2010, 70 percent of Arizonans moved. More than 900,000 moved in 2016 alone and more than 14,000 qualified voters were rejected because of incorrect addresses, according to the lawsuit.
The groups signaled the lawsuit in a 15-page letter in November 2017, a required precursor under the National Voter Registration Act.
They cited an ACLU analysis of voter registration and public assistance data, policies, practices and interviews with public assistance employees and recipients that showed that state agencies are violating the Voter Registration Act by not providing information or not updating records.
“It has been nearly 10 months since we sent a notice letter to Secretary Reagan, notifying her office of numerous NVRA violations,” Petra Falcon, executive director of Promise Arizona said in a statement.
“Secretary Reagan’s failure to remediate the ongoing violations demonstrates that she is unwilling to take action to protect the right to vote in upcoming elections,” Falcon said. “Problems with voter registration are a primary reason that people are unable to vote.”
The groups are asking the court to order Reagan to count the federal election votes cast by the impacted registered voters, regardless of where they cast ballots, and to notify impacted registered voters of the problem and options for correcting their voter registration addresses.
“The secretary of state should aim to make voting more inclusive and accessible for all, and should never be dismissive of calls to protect the right to vote,” Ben Monterroso, executive director of Mi Familia Vota said in a news release.
“Our community is eager to participate in elections and, because of Secretary Reagan’s actions, they now have to seek out voter registration materials and opportunities to make sure their voices are being counted, when those resources should have been provided by the Secretary of State,” Monterroso said.
The Secretary of State’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday afternoon.
www.courthousenews.com/aclu-sues-arizona-secretary-of-state-over-voter-rolls/ This witch has a pattern of deception and fraud:Judge wants Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan to explain her voter statementsBob Christie, Associated Press Published 12:04 p.m. MT Oct. 31, 2016 | Updated 2:24 p.m. MT Oct. 31, 2016
Here's what you need to know about voting in the November election in Arizona.
Michele Reagan (Photo: Tom Tingle/The Republic)
PHOENIX - A federal judge on Monday ordered Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan to explain comments she made in a news release that appear to contradict her official position on a voter registration lawsuit.
U.S. District Judge Steven Logan is considering a request from the state Democratic Party to force Reagan to allow more than 2,000 people who missed a Columbus Day registration deadline to vote next week.
The Democrats say comments Reagan made in a Friday statement updating registration figures show she does not oppose adding the voters to the rolls. The release said Reagan hopes “to add an additional 2,069 potential voters if the court allows those who registered after the statutory deadline to be added to the rolls.”
What's on the ballot? Who's running? Get the lowdown, including side-by-side comparisons of the candidates and their stances on key issues -- in their own words. And generate a sample ballot of your voting district.
azvotes.azcentral.com
Reagan still believes state law does not allow the move but she can add them if Logan orders it, spokesman Matt Roberts said Monday. Such an order will create problems, however, because electronic voting records are already finalized. That means any new voters would have to cast a provisional ballot that will need to be confirmed before the ballot is counted.
Arizona Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Perkins filed a response to the judge’s order for explanation, saying the Democrats are mischaracterizing Reagan’s comments and her position has not changed.
The Democrats allege that Reagan violated federal law by failing to extend registration by a day, to Oct. 11. They noted that there was no mail service on Columbus Day and the motor vehicle offices were closed, methods used by about 40 percent of Arizonans who register.
At hearing this month, the Democratic Party’s lawyer, Kevin Hamilton, urged Logan to ensure that thousands of Arizonans aren’t denied their constitutional right to cast a ballot.
The attorney general’s office said the Democrats waited too long to bring the challenge.
AZCENTRALSURVEY: Take our survey about the 2016 election
www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/10/31/judge-wants-explanation-arizona-secretary-state-michele-reagan/93073538/
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 13, 2020 9:02:24 GMT
The Trouble with the Electoral College
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 13, 2020 9:02:56 GMT
We need to put this "old GOP chestnut" to bed about JFK stealing the 1960 election with the help of Mayor Daley of Chicago. This has been perpetuated by the GOP and talking media heads including George Noory from Coasttocoastam. After you read this article and understand that with or without Illinois Kennedy would have won the presidency please consider this: Jim Crow laws were very much in effect against blacks and minorities. Millions were prevented from voting. Do you think they were going to vote for Richard Nixon? Think again. On the contrary, there is plenty of proof and undeniable evidence that the 2000, 2004 and 2016 presidential elections were ALL stolen by the GOP. (just read this thread for the evidence) Sad to think the GOP is still pulling this shiite today in the 2000s.Fake news alert: JFK did not steal 1960 election by fixing IllinoisNiall O'Dowd @niallodowd August 09, 2017 03:51 AM
President John F Kennedy give his inauguration speech in 1960, flanked by Lydon B Johnson and Richard Nixon.President John F Kennedy give his inauguration speech in 1960, flanked by Lydon B Johnson and Richard Nixon.JOHN F. KENNEDY PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM.
As Donald Trump continues to search for answers a 57-year mystery has finally been cleared up John F Kennedy and Chicago mayor Richard Daley did not steal the 1960 election as has long been claimed and reported. It turns out that even if Kennedy had lost Illinois he would still have won the electoral college.
There was a brilliant piece of analysis by Paul von Hippel, a University of Texas professor, writing in the Washington Post on Tuesday that shoots down the fiction which has become fact for millions.
It reveals that the idea, strongly embedded in American political culture, that Daley, the last of the big city Irish bosses, stole the election for JFK is fake news, false, an illusion.
Donald Trump’s Commission on Election Integrity Yet the fiction persists. When President Trump recently created a Commission on Election Integrity to investigate claims of illegal votes the 1960 Illinois vote was one of the reasons given.
It has long been an article of faith among millions that JFK stole the election because Richard Daley held back the Cook County vote until he could see how many were needed to give the state to Kennedy.
As von Hippel writes “the story of the stolen 1960 election rests on several myths. When myths are replaced with evidence, it’s not clear that the election was stolen at all.”
The most popular myth is that Illinois gave Kennedy the presidency, retold just recently, in a recent Washington Times op-ed by Virginia State Sen. Richard Black (R) who claimed that “Mayor Daley’s corrupt machine delivered huge tallies for Democrats, changing the election outcome.”
Lies! Fake news – Kennedy won But Kennedy would have won anyway. Even if he had lost the popular vote (which he won narrowly) his victory in the electoral college was inevitable with or without Illinois
As von Hippel writes, “Kennedy’s margin in the electoral college was more than large enough to survive the loss of Illinois.”
John F Kennedy among the crowds on his 1960 campaign trail.
This was a time, remember, when the south was solidly Democratic and Kennedy took states like Texas, which would be remarkable today, and Republicans won California. Kennedy actually won 303 electoral votes; his Republican opponent Richard Nixon won 219. 15 electors cast their votes for segregationist Democrat Harry Byrd.
As the Post points out even if Illinois’s 27 electoral votes had gone to Nixon, Kennedy would have won, with 276 votes to Nixon’s 246 (only 269 electoral votes were needed to win in 1960 vs. 270 today).
Yes, it was a squeaker on the popular vote, but Kennedy won Illinois by just short of 9,000 votes and Texas by 46,627. And there were seven other states Kennedy won more narrowly than Texas but won legitimately.
Chicago Mayor Daley It is also fake news to allege that Daley held votes back too. Kennedy won Cook County, which is Chicago and suburbs, by 318,000 votes. The reason why is that thirty-nine percent of Cook County residents were Catholic, and overwhelmingly in favor of the first Catholic president and 20 percent were black at a time when Kennedy was making strong overtures to them.
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley meeting with Richard Nixon.
Von Hippel watched NBC’s 1960 coverage and discovered an irrefutable fact. NBC reported most of Cook County votes were in before downstate and Republican Illinois was counted.
In other words, there was no way that Daley could have thrown the election to Kennedy late at night. It was Nixon who actually closed the gap as the night went on.
It is also fake news to say there were appeals for recounts which were not granted. In fact, von Hippel points out there were two recounts for Illinois which both confirmed the result.
It is always sobering to encounter real truth after decades of fake news about Illinois costing Nixon the 1960 election and the Kennedy family stealing it. Didn’t happen, not even close.
www.irishcentral.com/news/politics/fake-news-alert-jfk-did-not-steal-1960-election-by-fixing-illinois
ELECTION NIGHT 1960 (NBC-TV COVERAGE)
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 13, 2020 9:03:38 GMT
S. 2261: Secure Elections Act 🗽17😄11👏11 ···
Follow GovTrack on social media for more updates: Visit us on Facebook Visit us on Twitter Visit us on Medium Visit us on Github
On GovTrack Insider: This constitutional amendment would lower the voting age for president to 16 The voting age for president is 18, but should it be 16 instead? Aug 22, 2018
Local Control of School Lunch Act would repeal Obama-era nutrition requirements for school meals What should your child be able to eat in their school lunch? If this bill passes, it will be saltier, fattier and lower in fiber. Aug 20, 2018
Protect Medical Innovation Act would permanently end the tax on medical devices Should medical devices be taxed to help pay for Obamacare? Aug 16, 2018
Overview Summary Details Text GovTrack's Summary Library of Congress
COMPUTER HACKERS HAVE BEEN ABLE TO HACK SOME AMERICAN VOTING MACHINES IN ONLY SEVEN MINUTES.
A new bill could eliminate paperless voting machines, which experts say are the most vulnerable to hacking and tampering. It would also expand the use of post-election audits, which are currently rare and usually only used in event of a recount.
Context About one out of four Americans currently vote on touchscreen voting machines which produce no paper trail, like a receipt.
This worries many, because such electronic systems are much more susceptible to hacking or other malpractice. And without a non-electronic confirmation that a person voted, any evidence of potential tampering could disappear — and do so without anyone even knowing until it was too late.
What the bill does The Secure Elections Act has three major aims:
Get rid of all paperless voting machines. Although many states are already moving away from paperless, budget restrictions for cash-strapped states prevent many other states from following suit. So the bill provides federal grants to states to switch their voting systems in an amount to be determined by an independent panel of cybersecurity experts appointed by the Secretary of Homeland Security. States applying for the money would have to submit a list of all paperless voting machines in their jurisdiction, and would only receive the amount of money necessary to replace them with versions that read paper ballots.
Incentivize states to perform post-election audits for most or even _all_elections. No longer would it primarily occur for extremely close results or recounts, as is currently the case.
Expand information sharing regarding voting systems. The Department of Homeland Security determined that 21 states had their election systems targeted by Russian hackers in 2016 — but it took almost a year for the department to notify those states. The legislation was Introduced December 21 by Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), and labelled S. 2261 in the Senate.
What supporters say Supporters argue the bill would help protect one of the core American democratic ideals from dispute or damage.
“Safe and free elections run by individual states are at the core of our national identity,” Sen. Lankford said in a press release. “We were born as a nation because patriots stood up against foreign tyranny.”
“It is imperative that we strengthen our election systems and give the states the tools they need to protect themselves and the integrity of voters against the possibility of foreign interference,” Lankford continued. “In this new digital age, we should ensure the states have the resources they need to protect our election infrastructure.”
The bill also stops short of what some see as the potential danger of a federal power grab on what has traditionally been a state-run issue. “It does not command states to act in specific ways, it does not hijack election administration from counties, states, or municipalities, and it limits the federal government’s role to advising and empowering state and local jurisdictions to run their proverbial railroads,” writes Lawfare.
Concerns Although supportive of the overall bill in general, Harvard Kennedy School Cyber Security Project Director Michael Sulmeyer writes of several potential issues.
For one, the bill puts nearly all of the onus for the federal government’s role on the Department of Homeland Security.
“DHS is not the only federal agency that handles threat intelligence: The intelligence community and the FBI need to be committed to this cause as well,” Sulmeyer says. “If they don’t share relevant information with DHS or are slow to do so, there’s little DHS or the states can do.”
Another issue is that many states which arguably should apply for the grants may still not.
“For all the bill offers to states and local jurisdictions, they still need to take the initiative to receive the shared information, to apply for grants, and to participate in bug bounties,” Sulmeyer writes.
Odds of passage The bill has attracted a bipartisan mix of five cosponsors: three Democrats and two Republicans.
They span the gamut ideologically, from conservatives like Lankford, to moderates like Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), to progressives like Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA).
However, some other similar election-related measures introduced this Congress have not attracted the level of urgency that advocates hoped for. This is likely at least in part because President Trump has refused to accept the 2016 Russian election as having occurred.
This bill awaits a possible vote in the Senate Rules and Administration Committee.
www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/115/s2261/summary
|
|