The Republican Attack on the Right to Vote

[b.c.]

Federal court slams Georgia for security failures and bans use of paperless voting machines for 2020

"On Thursday, federal District Court Judge Amy Totenberg ruled that the state of Georgia may no longer continue using paperless voting machines starting with the 2020 elections and excoriated Republican officials over significant election security flaws.

Totenberg declined to bar the use of the machines for this November's municipal elections, citing the short time that would have been available to replace them with another voting method. However, in 2020, her ruling will require the state to either use voting machines that print a paper ballot record or switch to paper ballots that are filled out with a pen and then fed into an optical scanner."


Hackers show how easy it is to infiltrate the voting systems Moscow Mitch won't allow to be secured

"White hat hackers converged on Las Vegas last weekend for the Def Con hacking convention, and, at a "voting village" event, demonstrated just how easy most of the voting machines and elections systems used in U.S. elections are to compromise, CNN reports. Yet Moscow Mitch McConnell remains steadfast in his refusal to even consider elections security legislation.

In just a few hours, "one hacker was essentially able to turn a voting machine into a jukebox, making it play music and display animations." Another dismantled the brain of a machine using only her hands—no tools—and was able to reset it and make herself the system administrator for it.

And it's not just the voting machines themselves. Russians gained access to voting databases in 2016 and used social media platforms to distribute disinformation. It's not an unjustified fear that they could conduct an information warfare campaign targeted directly at voters in specific states or counties.

The goal wouldn't even have to be disrupting the balloting process. An election could be undermined by attacking state election boards and using a coordinated campaign on social media to use the information hacked to spread confusion."

 

[b.c.]

VOTER FRAUD - GOP STYLE: Rigging the fucking VOTE (Continued)

21 reasons why the courts shouldn't let North Carolina Republicans draw new legislative maps
​

"Soon, a panel of state court judges in North Carolina will decide whether the maps that Republican lawmakers drew to elect members of both the state House and the Senate violate the rights of Democratic voters by unfairly entrenching GOP rule.

Ordinarily, in cases like these, state legislators would get the chance to craft remedial maps. ... But there’s one very obvious problem:

The Republican majority that controls the state’s legislature was elected under the very gerrymanders the GOP designed precisely in order to thwart the desires of the public.

And that ill-gotten majority has spent the last six years engaged in a never-ending battle to seize power from the people they’re supposed to represent.

During that time frame, Republicans have repeatedly passed laws to suppress voting rights, manipulate how judges are elected, discriminate against black voters, and, of course, gerrymander every manner of elective body."

 

[b.c.]

The CONTINUED Republican undermining and sabotage of our election process... courtesy of Moscow Mitch and Co.
https://www.motherjones.com/politic...n-commission-is-about-to-partially-shut-down/
The Federal Election Commission Is About to Partially Shut Down – Mother Jones
https://www.motherjones.com/politic...n-commission-is-about-to-partially-shut-down/

"For years, the Federal Election Commission has been barely functional.

But at the end of this month—as the 2020 campaign heats up and unprecedented amounts of money flow to candidates for national office—much of the agency’s work will shut down entirely.

There will be no new fundraising rules, no punishments for rule-breakers, no decisions about the outcomes of investigations, no advisory opinions issued to candidates who want to know if a specific campaign finance practice is illegal."

 

[b.c.]

North Carolina Judges Toss Out Gerrymandered Maps as Unconstitutional – Mother Jones

"On Tuesday, a panel of three judges ruled that legislative districts drawn by Republican lawmakers for state legislative races “do not permit voters to freely choose their representative” and therefore qualify as partisan gerrymandering.

The striking decision in Common Cause, et al v. Lewis found partisan gerrymandering “contrary to the fundamental right of North Carolina citizens to have elections conducted freely and honestly to ascertain, fairly and truthfully, the will of the people.”

According to the ruling, the maps were purposefully created in 2017 to maintain a Republican supermajority in the state legislature. North Carolina has a long history of voter suppression, but the judges deemed these maps “tainted by an unconstitutional deprivation of all citizens’ rights to equal protection of law, freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly.”


​

 

[kidfresh512]

The Secret Files of the Master of Modern Republican Gerrymandering

Thomas Hofeller preached secrecy as he remapped American politics from the shadows. The Republican Party operative, known as the master of the modern gerrymander, trained other G.O.P. operatives and legislators nationwide to secure their computer networks, guard access to their maps, and never send e-mails that they didn’t want to see published by the news media. In training sessions for state legislators and junior line drawers, he used a PowerPoint presentation that urged them to “avoid recklessness” and “always be discreet,” and warned that “emails are the tool of the devil.”

Hofeller did not follow his own advice. Before his death, in August, 2018, he saved at least seventy thousand files and several years of e-mails. A review of those records and e-mails—which were recently obtained first by The New Yorker—raises new questions about whether Hofeller unconstitutionally used race data to draw North Carolina’s congressional districts, in 2016. They also suggest that Hofeller was deeply involved in G.O.P. mapmaking nationwide, and include new trails for more potential lawsuits challenging Hofeller’s work, similar to the one on Wednesday which led to the overturning of his state legislative maps in North Carolina.
Hofeller’s files include dozens of intensely detailed studies of North Carolina college students, broken down by race and cross-referenced against the state driver’s-license files to determine whether these students likely possessed the proper I.D. to vote. The studies are dated 2014 and 2015, the years before Hofeller helped Republicans in the state redraw its congressional districts in ways that voting-rights groups said discriminated on the basis of race. North Carolina Republicans said that the maps discriminated based on partisanship but not race. Hofeller’s hard drive also retained a map of North Carolina’s 2017 state judicial gerrymander, with an overlay of the black voting-age population by district, suggesting that these maps—which are currently at the center of a protracted legal battle—might also be a racial gerrymander.

Other files provide new details about Hofeller’s work for Republicans across the country. Hofeller collected data on the citizen voting-age population in North Carolina, Texas, and Arizona, among other states, as far back as 2011. Hofeller was part of a Republican effort to add a citizenship question to the census, which would have allowed political parties to obtain more precise citizenship data ahead of the 2020 redistricting cycle. State legislative lines could then have been drawn based on the number of citizen voters, which Hofeller believed would make it easier to pack Democrats and minorities into fewer districts, giving an advantage to Republicans.

Other documents show that Hofeller was hired by a Massachusetts Republican who sought to use the Voting Rights Act provision for majority/minority seats to draw a single district containing all of Boston, so that Republicans could make inroads into an otherwise entirely Democratic congressional delegation. Hofeller drew several sets of maps, but the effort went nowhere. Additional files document his work in Mississippi, Alabama, and Virginia, among other states.
______________________________________________________________________________

The sheer scope and audacity of this effort to usurp the will of the people. I mean clear and obvious in his own words the designer and master manipulator hired and used by GOP all over the country to limit the fair and rightful votes and voices of minorities. To hoard power against the will of the voters and manipulate and force their views and policies down voters throats and keep them from having their voices heard by this clear manipulation is diabolical.

His own daughter had to turn in all the evidence before it could be hidden, wiped away, buried like the votes of the Americans across the country he fervently hoped to limit and lock away.

Instead of legitimately reaching out seeking to expand the GOP voter base. They decide minorities aren't worth their effort or our lives and goals are worth less than their ambitions and policies. Not to mention they have a rabid racist base that wants brown people kept in their place.

They can tout low levels of black unemployment as a "see we do stuff for you guys" as much as they want too. THIS is the real face of how they view minorities. Low unemployment numbers as an extension of the continued and prolonged economy bump started when Obama saved us from recession is window dressing. When they wave it around like they are actively trying to help minorities.

 

[b.c.]

More conspiracy to undermine and suppress the opposing vote, courtesy of the SNEAKY MATTER FACTORS:

Instead of Fixing Their Gerrymander, North Carolina Republicans Are Trolling the Court

"When a North Carolina court struck down the state’s legislative gerrymander on Sept. 3, it gave the General Assembly two weeks to draw new maps uninfected by partisanship.

Republican lawmakers decided not to appeal that decision to the liberal North Carolina Supreme Court. Instead, they appear determined to violate the court’s order and produce tainted maps that dilute Democratic votes.

The first indication that legislative leaders might not comply in good faith with the order came on Sept. 6. That day, GOP legislators filed a recommendation that the court appoint two “co-referees”: Art Pope and Gerry Cohen.

This suggestion is, to put it mildly, absurd. Pope is the conservative multimillionaire who masterminded North Carolina’s Republican gerrymander. He bankrolled REDMAP, the GOP’s gerrymandering program, and helped to draw the state’s Republican gerrymander.

After essentially flipping off the court, Republican legislators got to work drawing the new districts.

They quickly settled on a plan to get around the ban on partisan gerrymandering. Lawmakers announced that they would work off maps created by Jowei Chen, a political scientist who served as an expert for the plaintiffs in this case.

Chen’s maps were never intended to serve as a model for redistricting. Instead, they were created as evidence to gauge the severity of the existing gerrymander.

[GOP] Legislators [aka, the sneaky matter factors] claimed that Chen’s maps can serve as a baseline for redistricting because they have already been “accepted” by the court.

That is simply false. The court never “accepted” these plans as remedial maps, but as evidence of the current map’s infirmity.​

Unscrupulous b------------ds. MEANWHILE:

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

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - States across the American South have closed nearly 1,200 polling places since the Supreme Court weakened a landmark voting-discrimination law in 2013, according to a report released by a civil-rights group on Tuesday.

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights found that states with a history of racial discrimination have shuttered hundreds of voting locations since the court ruled that they did not need federal approval to change their laws.​

The report comes as Republican-led states impose a range of other restrictions, from shorter voting hours to photo-ID requirements. As turnout has surged in recent elections, voters in cities like Phoenix and Atlanta have endured hours-long waits to cast their ballots.

Seven counties in Georgia now only have one polling place, the report found." ​

 

[b.c.]

Like I SAID, sneaky MF's:

North Carolina Republicans Used an Insane Dirty Trick to Cut Corporate Taxes – Mother Jones

"Just nine Democratic members of North Carolina’s House of Representatives were present early Wednesday morning when Republicans called a surprise vote to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s (D) veto of the state budget.

With a little more than half of the 120 members in the chamber, the House voted 55-9 to force through the legislation. If the state Senate also overrides Cooper’s veto, the bill would cut corporate taxes while delivering less education spending than the governor had asked for.

Despite the fact that House Democrats say they were told there would be no votes on the budget until after 1:30 p.m., Republicans called for the vote at 8:30 a.m."​

North Carolina House GOP Overrides Governor's Veto By Bypassing Democrats | HuffPost
Fury and chaos after NC Republicans hold surprise budget vote while governor attends 9/11 ceremony

And after the b---------ds pulled their underhanded shit, and were rightfully CONDEMNED for their deception, this dopey fkr, North Carolina state Rep. Jason Saine, defended the cowardly act by telling reporters that if they hadn’t held a secretive vote this morning, on the anniversary of 9/11, "the terrorists would have won."

You sorry, lying, two-faced, hypocritical s---b.

NC Republican says vote to take away health care from 500,000 had to be today or 'terrorists win'

"Meet North Carolina state Rep. Jason Saine.

He’s one of the Republicans who perverted democracy in his state on Wednesday, holding a vote to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s state budget veto after Republicans had told Democrats there would be no votes scheduled in the state legislature until 1 p.m.

While the governor and some Democrats were reportedly attending 9/11 memorial services, Republicans snuck in the critical vote, which will overrule a Medicaid expansion and deny nearly 500,000 North Carolinians health care.


​

 

[deleted15807]

Ohhh but Justice Roberts told us racism is over when he gutted the Voting Rights Act.Yeah the fucker lied...shocking right? Why would a democracy actually shut down voting booths? Well perhaps it’s not so interested in it.

ATLANTA — Nearly 1,700 voting precincts in 13 states have been shut down since 2012, with many closures happening in black or Latino communities, following a landmark court decision that removed federal oversight of local voting practices, according to a new report.

Report: Supreme Court ruling caused mass polling place closures across the southern U.S.
​

 

[b.c.]

...sneaky mf's (continued):

North Carolina Just Came Storming Back in the Race to Be the Nation's Most Insane State - Esquire

Voting Rights Roundup: North Carolina GOP unveils new stealth gerrymanders to replace illegal ones

 

[b.c.]

A (temporary at least) rebuke against the SNEAKY MF'S CONTINUED ATTEMPT TO RIG THE FKNG VOTE.

A Big Legal Victory for Voting Rights in Florida, and a Rebuke Against its Republican Governor – Mother Jones

"A group of 20 people with felony convictions [sued] the state over a new law requiring them to repay any fines or fees they owed before they could register to vote. The federal judge’s ruling was a temporary injunction, and represented, according to the New York Times:

… a rebuke to the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, and its Republican-controlled Legislature.

Legislators had enacted a law requiring the fine and fee payments this year after voters resoundingly approved an amendment to the State Constitution that restored voting rights to as many as 1.5 million former felons.

The law was widely seen as an attempt to suppress voting by the former felons, many of them African-Americans or Hispanics who appeared likely to support Democrats.​

 

[Klingsor]

^^^ This is terrible! No one should be allowed to vote if they can't afford it!

 

[Draconis71]

Hmmm, so CRIMINALS step outside the boundaries of acceptable society, and, harm others...
... but, they want the FULL provisions of said society... after they've violated other's rights.
MAYBE when they've paid restitution... maybe...

 

[b.c.]

Hmmm, so CRIMINALS step outside the boundaries of acceptable society, and, harm others...
... but, they want the FULL provisions of said society... after they've violated other's rights.
MAYBE when they've paid restitution... maybe...

You mean like, TIME SERVED???????????

Florida: An Outlier in Denying Voting Rights | Brennan Center for Justice
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/florida-outlier-denying-voting-rights
Florida is one of only three states with a lifetime voting ban for people with felony convictions. The strict law disenfranchises 1.6 million citizens, including 21 percent of the state’s voting-age African Americans. This report traces the history of the provision back to America’s Jim Crow past and explains how its impact is felt in Florida’s democracy today.

 

[Klingsor]

Hmmm, so CRIMINALS step outside the boundaries of acceptable society, and, harm others...
... but, they want the FULL provisions of said society... after they've violated other's rights.
MAYBE when they've paid restitution... maybe...

So it's the *poor* criminals who should be disenfranchised.

 

[Draconis71]

You mean like, TIME SERVED???????????

Florida: An Outlier in Denying Voting Rights | Brennan Center for Justice
Florida is one of only three states with a lifetime voting ban for people with felony convictions. The strict law disenfranchises 1.6 million citizens, including 21 percent of the state’s voting-age African Americans. This report traces the history of the provision back to America’s Jim Crow past and explains how its impact is felt in Florida’s democracy today.

So it's the *poor* criminals who should be disenfranchised.

Time served, yes, but, I wouldn't be against complete ban, in some cases (Violent crimes, etc... victims NEVER fully recover)

 

[Draconis71]

So it's the *poor* criminals who should be disenfranchised.

TBH... should be all... but, well, time served, and, that crap.

 

[b.c.]

So it's the *poor* criminals who should be disenfranchised.

That's about what it amounts to, Klingsor. Because you see, law enforcement, the courts, sentencing, and the system of incarceration is stacked against minorities in the first place. Blacks and Latinos get stopped more disproportionately more than non-minorities, for more bullshit reasons, and undergo searches in and out of vehicles. They (we) are disproportionately more likely to have more serious charges pressed, more likely to go to trial, receive longer sentences and less opportunity for probation and parole.

While the rich and well to do (and more often non-minority), who do shit like commit fraud and bribery, and sometimes even murder, serve like eleven days of a 14 day stay at an upscale facility then go back home to their mansion and write a book. Just look at the complete DIFFERENCE between the "WAR on drugs" with minorities doing hard time for possession of something that's in storefront windows now in some states, and the "opioid CRISIS" that affects mostly rural and suburban whites.

I GUARANTEE you, if we were talking about mostly non-minority EX-felons, it wouldn't even BE an issue... the GOP would have absolutely NO PROBLEM with them having the right to vote.

 

[StormfrontFL]

That's about what it amounts to, Klingsor. Because you see, law enforcement, the courts, sentencing, and the system of incarceration is stacked against minorities in the first place. Blacks and Latinos get stopped more disproportionately more than non-minorities, for more bullshit reasons, and undergo searches in and out of vehicles. They (we) are disproportionately more likely to have more serious charges pressed, more likely to go to trial, receive longer sentences and less opportunity for probation and parole.

While the rich and well to do (and more often non-minority), who do shit like commit fraud and bribery, and sometimes even murder, serve like eleven days of a 14 day stay at an upscale facility then go back home to their mansion and write a book. Just look at the complete DIFFERENCE between the "WAR on drugs" with minorities doing hard time for possession of something that's in storefront windows now in some states, and the "opioid CRISIS" that affects mostly rural and suburban whites.

I GUARANTEE you, if we were talking about mostly non-minority EX-felons, it wouldn't even BE an issue... the GOP would have absolutely NO PROBLEM with them having the right to vote.

You might also mention how imbalanced it would be because the rich kid who drove drunk and killed four people would have the right to vote faster than the poor kid who drove drunk and just injured someone.

 

[deleted15807]

Those damn young people don't vote for us so let's make a law that makes it harder from them to vote. And thanks to Shelby vs. Holder states and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act that historically have tried to fuck over voters can now pretty much fuck them over again. The courts "may" offer some remedy but it may be too little too late.

MOBILE POLLING places that popped up on college campuses and other population-dense areas were “the most effective program we had,” Dana DeBeauvoir, the chief elections official in Travis County, Tex., told the New York Times. That would explain why Texas Republicans shut them down.

The Times reported last week that, as Texans head to the polls, it will be substantially harder for college students to vote. A new state law required all polling places to remain open for the state’s full 12-day early-voting period. Localities could not afford to keep the pop-up sites open that long, so colleges in Austin, Brownsville, Fort Worth and elsewhere have had to close them. That guarantees lower turnout among people whom Republicans do no want voting: Democratic-leaning students.

Early voting is meant to enable more people to vote: Shift workers, for example, who cannot wait in line at a polling place on a Tuesday can still have a voice. Texas’s law turns that vote-enabling system into a vote-suppressing weapon. Republicans throughout the country have embraced voter suppression as a strategy for party survival, and this is one more sad example.​

Republicans escalate their strategy of voter suppression​

 

[b.c.]

Those damn young people don't vote for us so let's make a law that makes it harder from them to vote. And thanks to Shelby vs. Holder states and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act that historically have tried to fuck over voters can now pretty much fuck them over again. The courts "may" offer some remedy but it may be too little too late.

MOBILE POLLING places that popped up on college campuses and other population-dense areas were “the most effective program we had,” Dana DeBeauvoir, the chief elections official in Travis County, Tex., told the New York Times. That would explain why Texas Republicans shut them down.

The Times reported last week that, as Texans head to the polls, it will be substantially harder for college students to vote. A new state law required all polling places to remain open for the state’s full 12-day early-voting period. Localities could not afford to keep the pop-up sites open that long, so colleges in Austin, Brownsville, Fort Worth and elsewhere have had to close them. That guarantees lower turnout among people whom Republicans do no want voting: Democratic-leaning students.

Early voting is meant to enable more people to vote: Shift workers, for example, who cannot wait in line at a polling place on a Tuesday can still have a voice. Texas’s law turns that vote-enabling system into a vote-suppressing weapon. Republicans throughout the country have embraced voter suppression as a strategy for party survival, and this is one more sad example.​

Republicans escalate their strategy of voter suppression​

Exactly. More of those "theoretical" people, as someone here once called them. And while these fkrs work TIRELESSLY TO DEPRIVE AMERICANS OF THEIR RIGHT TO VOTE, they continue with underhanded methods to SKEW THE VOTE, of those that DO, via DISCRIMINATORY GERRYMANDERING EFFORTS:

Judges Throw Out North Carolina Congressional Maps Ahead of 2020 Elections – Mother Jones

North Carolina’s congressional maps were likely designed as “extreme partisan gerrymanders” and must be redrawn before the 2020 election, a panel of three state judges ruled Monday.

The ruling comes in response to a lawsuit brought by Eric Holder’s group seeking to end gerrymandering. The group challenged maps the Republican state legislature had drawn in 2016, arguing that it was an illegal partisan gerrymander

There was ample evidence of a politically motivated gerrymander by North Carolina Republicans, the judges found. The papers of the late Thomas Hofeller—a leading GOP redistricting expert who helped draw North Carolina’s map—created a “detailed record of both the partisan intent and the intended partisan effects of the 2016 congressional districts.” (Hofeller’s estranged daughter provided the documents after his death.)