Discussion: Voting Rights and Election Law

[Teelie]

More Georgia voter suppression. If we had a competent and capable federal government, they would have put them under audit and reviewed the shenanigans going on there.

 

[MaceB]

It's a flipping outrage. And worse that that... it's an outrage that happens in the open, and everyone has more or less settled that it's just a new reality. It reminds me of the people in Flint, MI. There's an obviously... gigantic... freaking problem. But everyone resigns themselves to just having to live with it. Why do I doubt the same thing would happen in a a white community with $300,000 homes?

 

[MagnarTheGreat]

NY Times - LeBron James and Other Stars Form a Voting Rights Group

 

[MagnarTheGreat]

 

[Teelie]

Exactly what Kemp and the Republicans feared.

 

[DJ Kornphlake]

 

[Holy Slapper]

Finnish IT security expert Harri Hursti was a voting supervisor in Georgia for a libertarian party and labeled the whole process a fiasco. The whole process is made incredibly convoluted. They were supposed to go to a paper voting but instead went to a system where first your voting eligibility is checked by a machine.. Then when you vote, you press a button and a machine prints out a QR code which is then read by a printer and the actual voting ticket printed. There were multiple locations where all three machines malfunctioned. The state official claimed the officials at locations did not follow instructions. Hursti witnessed an official follow the instructions to a tee and the machine still wouldn't work.

For more hilarity, his team has been testing the security of all electronic voting machines used in America, which are freely available for purchase by anyone. All machines have been hacked within an hour. When he's informed officials about it and what needs to be done, they ignore everything he says and act pissed off.

 

[Silvermoon]

DeseretNews :: A simple way to widen the Utah electorate

Getting people registered in the right voting district is a common problem in American Indian country. A lot of votes come in as absentee or mail-in ballots, and people aren’t sure if their votes are even counted.

“I’m not sure what happens when they vote in the wrong district,“ Redhorse said.

In fact, Redhorse is still unsure if her own vote has ever been correctly counted.

“I was pinned to reside near a sewer pond in Bluff, San Juan County — that would put me in the wrong district than where I actually live,” she said. “I don’t know what happened to my vote all those years.”

Coordinates that bring people out of the shadows

People on the Navajo reservation in Utah are trying to get ahead of this problem in time for the 2020 general election this fall. They may have found a solution with the help of Google.

“We’re giving all residents on the reservation — on the Utah side — physical addresses using plus codes,” Redhorse said.

The plus code is a shortened version of the satellite coordinates of every location on the planet. Google creates them, and they’ll work with any map app. This code can bring the police or emergency services, mail delivery, and other government services to people in remote areas.

In other words, it can help us see the people who were previously invisible, especially in modern life.

A developer at Google invented the plus code after learning that half the world’s population lives on unnamed roads.

Plus codes have been used to great effect in parts of India and Africa. With the code as an address, people can open bank accounts. They can register for services that people who live in a house with an address often take for granted.

Redhorse is a field organizer for a grassroots nonprofit that’s trying to register Navajos to vote through these plus codes, called the Rural Utah Project. Thousands of people on the reservation have been registered since the project began in 2018.

In the San Juan County government, Navajos votes are starting to make a difference. Since the 2018 election, a majority of the county commissioners are now Navajo.

“Navajos were underrepresented,” Redhorse said. “I decided to let Navajos know, we’re being walked on, we’re pushed aside.”

 

[MagnarTheGreat]

MarketWatch - Election Day now a state holiday in Illinois

Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Tuesday signed legislation to make Election Day a state holiday, affecting government offices, except election authorities; K-12 schools; and postsecondary institutions governed by the State Universities Civil Service Act. Virginia took a similar action earlier this year, swapping out a commonwealth holiday honoring Confederate generals. Congressional Democrats' proposal to make Election Day a holiday on the federal level was turned back last year by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who characterized it as a power grab by Democrats. The bill signed by Pritzker also calls for the provision of vote-by-mail applications to all recent voters in Illinois. "Sending vote-by-mail applications to residents who have participated in recent elections will allow more people to exercise that right from the safety of their own homes and help reduce the spread of COVID-19 in our communities," Pritzker said.

Vulture - Katy Perry, Black Eyed Peas Headline Rock the Vote Democracy Summer Concert

The two acts will be introduced by hosts Rosario Dawson and Logan Browning, and joined by a cadre of musical guests and speakers, including Chuck D, Big Freedia, Saweetie, Ne-Yo, and Eve, along with politicians like Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Julian Castro. You can livestream Democracy Summer Thursday, June 18 at 8 p.m. EST/5 p.m. PST., and register to vote anytime you can make the time.

 

[MagnarTheGreat]

Orlando Sentinel - [Republican] Gov. Ron DeSantis: Ex-felons voting despite fines, fees would ‘corrupt’ elections, asks for stay of ruling

Dallas News - Texas Democrats ask U.S. Supreme Court to expand mail voting

 

[MagnarTheGreat]

The Washington Post - Kentucky braces for possible voting problems in Tuesday’s primary amid signs of high turnout

 

[Lily Adler]

The Washington Post - Kentucky braces for possible voting problems in Tuesday’s primary amid signs of high turnout

We must keep Moscow Mitch in power.

 

[DJ Kornphlake]

 

[Teelie]

There will be one polling place for 616,000 registered voters in Louisville’s Jefferson County, where half state’s black voters live

Isn't that convienent?

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

Yeah... This is happening and if you are honest with yourselves as Republicans, you'd also admit that this is usually the actions of the GOP side of the coin.


And maybe, just maybe you realize that doing things like this is wrong.

And maybe, just maybe, you'll stop rewarding the Republicans with your vote.


Maybe.

But more likely you'll vote for the GOP again.

And then so many of you wonder...

 

[DJ Kornphlake]

 

[Teelie]

And all of them are frauds.

 

[MagnarTheGreat]

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

**** the Susan Collins disappointment routine and that goes beyond the DEMS.

Student groups, NAACP, Occupy, BLM, media... Somebody with influence and power please do the country a favor and stop this blatant and illegal voter suppression RIGHT ****ING NOW.

 

[Iceman]

Why are they allowed to cut so many polling stations?

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

Why are they allowed to cut so many polling stations?

Google the gutting of the Voting Rights Act.

 

[Iceman]

Google the gutting of the Voting Rights Act.

I had a good read. The US can’t really call itself a democracy with the aftermath of this and blatant cheating tactics by one side.

 

[Lily Adler]

I wonder if The Circle actually happens and Google/Facebook and federal government created a new voting system...

 

[MagnarTheGreat]

City councilman among 4 facing voter fraud charges in New Jersey - CNNPolitics

A city councilman and a councilman-elect are among the four people charged with voting fraud related to the May 12 municipal election, New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal announced Thursday.

Paterson City Councilman Michael Jackson, Councilman-Elect Alex Mendez, Shelim Khalique and Abu Razyen have been charged with criminal conduct involving mail-in ballots during the election.

Jackson, 48, is charged with fraud in casting a mail-in vote, unauthorized possession of ballots, tampering with public records and falsifying or tampering with records.

Mendez is similarly charged with election fraud, fraud in casting a mail-in vote, unauthorized possession of ballots, false registration or transfer, tampering with public records and falsifying or tampering with records, according to the release.

Razyen, 21, is charged with fraud in casting a mail-in vote and unauthorized possession of ballots. He was allegedly seen on video with more than three mail-in ballot envelopes that did not have the bearer portion completed, according to the release.

Khalique, 51, faces the same charges as Razyen along with tampering with public records and falsifying or tampering with records. He allegedly collected and submitted ballots that were not his and did not identify himself as the bearer when they were delivered to the Passaic County Board of Elections, the attorney general noted in the release.

 

[MagnarTheGreat]

Many Wisconsin Republicans oppose expanding voting by mail, but 80% of state GOP legislators used absentee ballots in April

President Trump's re-election campaign filing lawsuit over mail-in voting in Pennsylvania

The campaigned filed the federal lawsuit Monday, calling mail-in voting "the single greatest threat to free and fair elections."

Guess the primary results got him shook.

2020 primary
Biden 1,264,014 Votes
Trump 1,051,925 Votes

2016 primary
Clinton 935,107 Votes
Trump 902,593 Votes

2020 primary
Democrats 1,594,635 (58.28%)
Republicans 1,141,732 (41.72%)

2016 primary
Democrats 1,681,427 (51.33%)
Republicans 1,594,475 (48.67%)

Independents cannot vote in this primary.