Voter suppresion/"stealing the election" megathread

[Virginiá]

Pretty sad what is going on, but there are some bright spots:

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/houston/article/Harris-County-OKs-17M-to-add-polls-voting-hours-15514804.php

Harris County voters this November will have more time and more than a hundred additional places to cast ballots in the presidential election, including drive-through locations and one day of 24-hour voting, under an expansive plan approved by Commissioners Court Tuesday.

With the additional polling locations, an extra week of early voting and up to 12,000 election workers, Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins is pledging a smooth November election.

In previous elections, Harris County operated about 40 early voting and 750 Election Day sites. The additional funding, Hollins said, will allow the county to operate 120 early voting and 808 Election Day locations.

Securing funding for polling locations and staff is one obstacle; finding sites to host them is another. Hollins said the county caught a break when Houston Independent School District decided to hold classes virtually, allowing the clerk’s office to reserve classrooms and gymnasiums.

[...]

The clerk’s office plans to open a massive voting center at NRG Arena, and also will move its vote-counting headquarters there. Hollins said the Toyota Center also has volunteered its cavernous facility for voting, a well-known location he hoped would prove popular.

Incredibly important in a state like Texas, which due to legal ambiguity and signals from statewide officials, has limited absentee voting opportunities... that is, if you want to take a chance on that with Trump's USPS scheme.

[Virginiá]

Eh, not commenting on the lawsuit, but if absentee/early voting is held up a week or two and begins over 35 days from election day, then I don't see the issue. PA's voting window with the reforms the GA passed a year or two ago was already unusually long.

[Virginiá]

Voter Suppression is a dem myth. Big city election fraud is the reality.

[...]

Unsurprisingly, the first video you posted tried to frame the entire debate on Republican voter suppression as voter ID, which has always been a policy that sounds sensible but can easily be harmful if crafted in a way to minimize participation.

This is the thing, ya'll make videos like this either because you have no idea about the other laws Republicans pass, or you do, but don't care, because you're trying to win an argument by redefining it around an issue you feel you can win on.

Here's what voter suppression actually looks like:

Absentee ballots that contain any errors whatsoever are thrown out, despite having the capability to fix and verify corrections

Massive voter purges, sometimes close to elections, and sometimes purging tens of thousands of valid, still living voters

Inter-state Crosscheck Program to identify voters registered in two different localities gets it wrong over 99% of the time (by design, by only matching very limited and common data), and Republican legislatures continued to support it nonetheless, because it removed lower income and non-white voters from rolls more disproportionately.

Corrupt Republicans (Kemp) abuse their executive authority and arrest politicians who dare to win elections

TN laws criminalize minor mistakes in voter registration drives in effort to depress the ability of activists to register voters.

Florida bans early voting centers on heavily Democratic university campuses, despite some campuses being larger than towns and cities that have their own early voting. Note that after a judge overturned this ban, the GOP once again tried to short-circuit early voting on campuses by mandating a certain level of parking spaces required that they knew universities would not have.

Onerous rules on voter registration in states like Texas make it very difficult to hold registration drives, such as by requiring training classes (that are held only once a month, county-specific), and by requiring canvassers to be deputized.

States propose fines for voter registration groups that submit incomplete forms to state, but often require all forms to be submitted as-is, penalizing workers for something they have no control over.

Kansas requires proof of citizenship (birth cert, passport, etc) to register to vote, leading to huge drop in voter registrations because many people, especially students, do not have those documents on hand

NC GOP requests data on voting by minorities, then passes bill to cut services and restrict IDs used disproportionately by minorities.

Where to even start with this one?

In particular, the court found that North Carolina lawmakers requested data on racial differences in voting behaviors in the state. "This data showed that African Americans disproportionately lacked the most common kind of photo ID, those issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV)," the judges wrote.

So the legislators made it so that the only acceptable forms of voter identification were the ones disproportionately used by white people. "With race data in hand, the legislature amended the bill to exclude many of the alternative photo IDs used by African Americans," the judges wrote. "The bill retained only the kinds of IDs that white North Carolinians were more likely to possess."

North Carolina Republicans also tried cut same-day voter registration and early voting.

Funny, Republicans were so strict on voter ID, but didn't mandate any ID for absentee ballots, which at the time were disproportionately used by older, more Republican-leaning white voters. Hmm!

Republicans take over Wisconsin and immediately go to work ending early voting on weekends and limiting to one voting center per municipality, even if they have many more people. Gee, I wonder what counties that was targeted at?

Ohio Republicans vote to end "golden week" where voters could register to vote and early vote at same time for a week. Surprise, surprise. It's almost like they wanted to depress turnout or something.

Southern U.S. states have closed 1,200 polling places in recent years: rights group

Alabama mandates voter ID, but then tries to close DMVs in majority black counties. If you're going to mandate voter ID, you can't make it difficult to get IDs at the same time and still claim to care about election integrity.

Florida cuts early voting days/hours prior to 2012 election, causes hours-long waits

Underfunded election services leads to long lines in minority-majority precincts

Republicans undermine Prop 3 approved by voters, weaken same-day registration by only allowing at one location per county, often not staffed nearly well enough to credibly offer service.

Prosecutions of voters for honest mistakes What a great way to inspire confidence in the system. IF a voter is not eligible to vote, the burden should be on the state to not let them register and/or not let them cast a ballot.


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I honestly don't have the time even to list all the instances of voter suppression over the past 10 years, let alone 5. It's so, sooo much more than voter ID. Modern day voter suppression is all about changing the rules, no matter how seemingly insignificant, to gain any little advantage you can. Voter ID is just a drop in the bucket, and it's hardly even the most important issue.

And further, to address that video, even if minorities vote at higher rates DESPITE increasing levels of restrictions and attempts to depress turnout, that does not bolster the conservative line. All that means is that people are pushing back against voting restrictions and organizing their people to vote in spite of it.

[Virginiá]

Ah, I love this time of the year. Mistakes by election workers immediately treated as a grand conspiracy by political operatives and activists (and POTUS now, I guess?) acting either out of stupidity and/or bad faith.

[Virginiá]

Not a single thing left anymore that the Republican Party will not corrupt or break completely in order to squeeze out even a tiny advantage in an upcoming election. Good job, folks. Really showing us how much you care about the 'integrity' of our elections, as you so often say in order to justify more restrictions on voting.

Also, lol:

Several states contacted by TIME were unaware of the change-of-address problem. Officials in Minnesota, for one, sent out their ballot applications by mail earlier in September based partly on information drawn from the faulty database in August, the state’s election officials say. Other states had to delay sending out their ballots as they scrambled to fix incorrect addresses. At least 43 states plus the District of Columbia use the USPS change of address database. Many, like Minnesota, face close presidential contests, including Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

okie doke

[Virginiá]

https://twitter.com/cucumbereyes/status/1319673310377054208?s=20

[Virginiá]

Districct is thicc

[Virginiá]

The real question is whether a jury anywhere would ever find him guilty. If there are any solid Trump supporters on it, I find it hard to believe they wouldn't be swayed by Trump's inevitable whining about political persecution.

[Virginiá]

IIRC, even one of the folks on the Manafort jury was a die-hard Trump supporter who nevertheless voted to convict him on 8 of the 18 felony counts. The legal system has by & large dodged the tarnish that has affected most other areas of our governance these past 4 years, & Trump has certainly provided the prosecution with ample amounts of dead-to-rights evidence. I could certainly be wrong, but I think a hypothetical jury would definitely convict.

The influence of Trump vs one of his underlings is like night and day, and I don't think we've had a bigger display of influence from a president than with Donald Trump. There could easily be a situation where a Trump supporter juror privately thinks he is guilty but still won't say as much, figuring he doesn't deserve to be punished.  Hard to look at the past 4 years and not see a big part of the story as being a modern day snake oil salesman conning half a country strongly primed to eat up the bullsh**t of someone they like.

I think it would come down to where this takes place, and exactly how deep their support for him runs should they draw one of his fans.