Tag: Republicans have to cheat to win

Videos show closed-door sessions of leading conservative activists: ‘Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor’

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As the presidential campaign entered its final stages, a fresh-faced Republican activist named Charlie Kirk stepped into the spotlight at a closed-door gathering of leading conservatives and shared his delight about an impact of the coronaviruspandemic: the disruption of America’s universities. So many campuses had closed, he said, that up to a half-million left-leaning students probably would not vote.

“So, please keep the campuses closed,” Kirk, 26, said in August as the audience cheered, according to video of the event obtained by The Washington Post. “Like, it’s a great thing.”

The gathering in Northern Virginia was organized by the Council for National Policy, a little-known group that has served for decades as a hub for a nationwide network of conservative activists and the donors who support them. Members include Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and Leonard Leo, an outside adviser to President Trump who has helped raise hundreds of millions of dollars from undisclosed donors to support conservative causes and the nominations of conservative federal judges. Continue reading.

California Republicans Promoting Phony, Illegal Ballot Drop Boxes

California Republicans are so concerned about voter fraud that they’re flagrantly breaking election laws. They’re promoting “official ballot drop off boxes” that are not only not official, they’re illegal. Republicans are promoting the “official” drop boxes on social media, with the boxes reportedly located at churches, gun stores, and candidate campaign offices in at least three counties.

Republicans have claimed that the practice is legal under a 2016 California law that allows people to designate a person to drop off their ballots—a benefit to people who have disabilities or are elderly or otherwise might not be able to return their ballots in person. Republicans actually sued to overturn this law, but now they say it allows their unofficial drop boxes. Except it doesn’t. Leaving a ballot in an unsecured box does not equal giving it to a designated person.

“Operating unofficial ballot drop boxes—especially those misrepresented as official drop boxes—is not just misleading to voters, it’s a violation of state law,” California Secretary of State Alex Padilla told The Washington Post in an email. “My office is coordinating with local officials to address the multiple reports of unauthorized ballot drop boxes. Californians should only use official ballot drop boxes that have been deployed and secured by their county elections office.” Continue reading.

Republicans are engineering an electoral disaster this fall

Washington Post logoAFTER A shambolic election two years ago — and several examples of poorly run primaries leading up to this week — one might have imagined that Georgia would have prepared better for its Tuesday primary vote. Instead, polling places in and around Atlanta were swamped and lines stretched for hours as poll workers struggled with new voting machines and sanitation procedures. Georgia’s experience confirmed that the coronavirus pandemic, combined with the sort of Election Day incompetence that has for years been a sad fixture of American democracy, threatens the integrity of the November presidential election. There is hardly anything more important than getting voting procedures and technology right over the next five months.

Unfortunately, many Republican politicians continue to manipulate voting rules for partisan advantage, exploiting the pandemic as an opportunity to suppress voting. The latest example is in Iowa. The state held a notably successful primary last Tuesday that smashed turnout recordsdespite the closure of many polling places, in large part because the state’s Republican secretary of state sent every voter an absentee ballot application. That allowed local officials to consolidate in-person voting locations without causing the sorts of massive backups that marred primaries in Wisconsin, the District and Georgia. Continue reading “Republicans are engineering an electoral disaster this fall”

Georgia election disaster condemned as result of deliberate GOP voter suppression: ‘This is by design’

AlterNet logoPhotos of would-be Georgia voters standing—and, in some cases, sitting—in long lines after 11 pm to cast their ballots in the state’s primary on Tuesday encapsulated what rights groups and lawmakers decried as a disastrous day for democracy and an entirely predictable result of years of deliberate voter suppression efforts by Republican lawmakers and the U.S. Supreme Court.

The myriad issues that plagued Georgia’s primary Tuesday—malfunctioning new voting machines, an insufficient number of paper ballots, too-few poll workers, polling places opening late—are hardly unheard of in the state, given that similar problems threw the 2018 midterm contests into chaos, sparking calls for better preparation and stronger protections against disenfranchisement.

The coronavirus pandemic added another layer of hurdles, and provided Republicans with additional opportunities to limit ballot access. Continue reading.

Judge once again blocks Wisconsin GOP from purging over 200,000 from voter rolls

Republicans want to kick hundreds of thousands of registered voters off the rolls, mainly in Democratic areas.

A Wisconsin appeals court on Tuesday put on hold an order to immediately remove up to 209,000 names from the state’s voter registration rolls, handing Democrats who had fought the move a victory in the battleground state.

The appeals court sided with the bipartisan state elections commission in putting the brakes on removing any voters while the court fight continues. It also put on hold a ruling from Monday in which a judge found the commission and its three Democratic members in contempt for not proceeding with removing the voters.

The orders came as the commission was meeting in a closed session with attorneys from the state Department of Justice to discuss the case. Continue reading.