An assault on American voters is underway

[China]

North Carolina Republicans file 'citizens-only voting' bill. Here's what it says.

 

North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore, and other House Republicans, are sponsoring a newly filed bill about citizen voting laws called HB 1074 that would not change who can vote in elections but would alter the wording of the state constitution. 

 

The state constitution already only allows U.S. citizens to vote in elections. This bill, which, if passed, would be voted on by North Carolinians in November and eventually become an amendment to the constitution, would merely change the wording. 

 

In the fine print, the bill would change the constitution from saying “Every person born in the United States and every person who has been naturalized” can vote to “Only a citizen of the United States who is 18 years of age and possessing the qualifications set out in this Article, shall be entitled to vote at any election by the people of the State,” according to the bill.  

 

A naturalized citizen is someone who was not born in the United States but has gained U.S. citizenship. Naturalized citizens are U.S. citizens, can vote in elections and would still be able to if this bill became law.

 

Rep. Neal Jackson, R-Moore, Randolph, is a co-sponsor of the bill and believes the bill would restore the public’s trust in elections.  

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

What a waste of time.

[China]

The Supreme Court rules in favor of South Carolina Republicans in voting map case

 

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday made it far more difficult to challenge state redistricting plans as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. By a vote of 6-to-3, along ideological lines, the court upheld a redistricting map drawn by the South Carolina legislature, a map that a lower court found had resulted in “the bleaching of African American voters” from a district.

 

At issue in the case was the way the Republican-dominated South Carolina legislature drew new lines for congressional districts after the 2020 Census. The problem it faced was how to equalize the number of voters in each district. Specifically, the 1st Congressional District had 88,000 too many voters, and the adjoining 6th District, represented by the state’s only Black member of Congress, had lost almost the same number of voters. In the end, the legislature moved some 200,000 Black voters into new districts and chopped up Charleston County, stripping from CD1 much of the city of Charleston, and ending the city’s 120-year history as the anchor for the district.

 

Republicans denied exiling Black voters, maintaining that they were simply seeking to transform a marginal Republican district into a safe district for the GOP.

 

The South Carolina NAACP challenged the redistricting in court, and a three-judge federal district court, after a nine-day hearing, ruled that new map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. But on Thursday the Supreme Court did something highly unusual. It didn’t just overrule the lower court. It said the facts found by that court were “clearly erroneous” and the court majority then went on to themselves re-examine the facts, reaching diametrically different conclusions.

 

Writing for the court’s six conservatives, Justice Samuel Alito said that the South Carolina map was a partisan gerrymander, which is legal, not a racial gerrymander, which would be illegal under the Constitution. In short, he said that the map achieved the GOP’s political goals, nothing more.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

How DeSantis’ new voting law is wounding 'an already weakened Democratic Party': report

 

A law Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed after the 2020 election has caused a significant decrease in the amount of voters who can receive mail-in ballots ahead of the 2024 election, according to Politico.

 

Per Politico, "The plunge occurred after GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a wide-ranging election law in 2021 that required all standing vote-by-mail requests to be canceled after the 2022 elections. Both parties and election supervisors have tried over the last several months to build up awareness of the change, but it’s not clear if that message is sinking in with voters."

 

Although both GOP and Democratic voters are both experiencing the impact, the news outlet reports the the law "could prove devastating" especially for the latter, :who have embraced mail-in voting since 2020 as the Republican Party nationally has raced away from it."

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

The Kansas Supreme Court has ruled that voting is not a fundamental right. What’s next for voters?

 

A split Kansas Supreme Court ruling last week issued in a lawsuit over a 2021 election law found that voting is not a fundamental right listed in the state Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

 

The finding drew sharp criticism from three dissenting justices on the high court. The Associated Press looks at what the ruling might mean for Kansas residents and future elections.

 

The ruling itself is wide-reaching, combining different lawsuits at various stages of litigation that challenge three different segments of a 2021 election law passed by the Kansas Legislature. It was a lawsuit challenging a ballot signature verification measure in which a majority of the high court found there is no right to vote enshrined in the Kansas Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

 

The measure requires election officials to match the signatures on advance mail ballots to a person’s voter registration record. The high court reversed a lower court’s dismissal of that lawsuit and instructed the lower court to consider whether the measure violates the equal protection rights of voters. But four of the court’s seven justices rejected arguments that the measure violates voting rights under the state’s Bill of Rights.

 

The decision was written by Justice Caleb Stegall, who is seen as the most conservative of the court’s seven justices, five of whom were appointed by Democratic governors.

 

Stegall dismissed the strongly-worded objections of the dissenting justices, saying there is not a “fundamental right to vote” in Section 2 of the Bill of Rights, as the groups had argued.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Lara Trump is building an army of ‘100,000 poll watchers and over 500 lawyers’ to ‘deploy’ across America in November

 

Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump announced Friday from behind a podium in a Detroit suburb that she and the RNC are working to raise a veritable army of “over 100,000 poll watchers and over 500 lawyers” to “deploy” at election sites across the country in November. 
 

These volunteers will have three missions: Watch people vote, watch people count votes, and sue anybody who gets in the way.

 

“I believe if we have a free, fair and transparent election that there’s no question we’ll all be going to bed early on November 5,” she said. 
 

“And we’ll go to bed knowing Donald Trump is our next president.”

 

Lara Trump’s vision is to have people “in the room” whenever votes are being counted or cast. 
 

Click on the link for the full article 

[Commander20180]

On 5/8/2024 at 5:06 PM, Cooked Crack said:

 

Sounds like he is afraid of something. Weak sauce.

[BringMetheHeadofBruceAllen]

People have to wake up and realize there's something seriously wrong with a group that claims an election is illegitimate if their guy loses, but legitimate if he wins. The media doesn't talk about this enough.

 

Besides, if the GOP is so convinced there will be fraud during next election then why aren't they doing anything about it, other than threatening to have poll watchers...which by the way neither party has the right to do without the other party also participating.

Edited June 17 by BringMetheHeadofBruceAllen

[Bang]

Or, wake up to the fact that these people are wide awake and this is exactly what they want.

Here is what the GOP's propaganda wants.
They want to say they don't trust it as much as they can so that any election that does not go their way is rigged, because didn't you hear them warning us for months? How can it NOT be rigged? We are so MANY. GOD is on our side.
And they want another attempt to overthrow the government.
The ones captivated by this have had more than enough reason given to them to get them off of this train. But there they are, as many as ever. They aren't under a spell, they aren't fooled. They want it. (Nazis took over a country and attacked the world because as it turned out a whole ****ing lot of them were happy to be Nazis. This group is no different, and neither is the threat they represent.)

 

Even if they put their own people in every single room and every single one reports that every election is perfectly clean, if they lose they will STILL scream it was rigged, throw those people on the fire, and try to overthrow the country again.

And they will keep doing this until they succeed or they are destroyed in every literal sense of the word.

 

So wake up.

Be ready.

 

~Bang

[China]

How election conspiracy theories tore apart this remote Northern California county

 

To understand the forces tearing apart California’s Shasta County, consider what has happened to Cathy Darling Allen.

 

In five consecutive elections, voters in the rural county have selected her as their chief election official. That means that since 2004, she’s been responsible for voter registration, the administration of elections, and a host of related tasks. She’s consistently been the only Democrat in countywide office in the conservative county, where Donald Trump won more than 60% of the vote in 2020. In 2022, her most recent appearance on the ballot, she took in nearly 70% of the vote. By those indicators, she seems pretty popular. 

 

But she has received a steady stream of threats from a loud minority of Shasta County residents who falsely believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. She has been repeatedly accused in public meetings and on social media of engaging in both satanism and witchcraft. The most committed MAGA activists have circulated petitions accusing her of sedition and treason. She’s been followed walking to her car. Someone — she still isn’t certain who — installed a trail camera behind her office, where votes are counted. 

 

It’s taken a toll. Darling Allen, 55, had no history of heart problems. But in November, she was diagnosed with heart failure. Doctors say stress was a factor, and told her that in order to stay alive, she would have to reduce it. She went on medical leave in December and officially retired as the county’s registrar of voters in early May, two years before her latest term was scheduled to end. 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

In Georgia, conservatives seek to have voters removed from rolls without official challenges

 

Conservative activists in Georgia and some other states are quietly pushing a way to remove names from the voting rolls without filing a formal legal challenge.

 

They're asking election administrators to use their data to purge voter registrations, which means names could be removed in a less public process than a formal voter challenge. The strategy could mean electors won't be summoned in advance to defend their voting rights and the identities of those seeking to purge voters might not be routinely public.

 

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office insists any living voter stricken from the rolls must be notified. But because Georgia has 159 counties and no formal statewide rules governing these less formal inquiries, it's unclear how every county will react. People removed in error could vote a provisional ballot, but local officials might count those votes only in exceptional cases.

 

The strategy is expanding even as a new Georgia law takes effect Monday that could lead to counties removing a larger share of voters using formal voter challenges.

 

That law already has been met with alarm by Democrats and voting rights advocates. They view the hundreds of thousands of voter challenges filed since 2020 as part of Georgia's long history of blocking voting dating back to slavery. Now, as details of below-radar efforts surface, those advocates fear a double-barreled attack on voting.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Lawsuit says Pennsylvania county deliberately hid decisions to invalidate some mail-in ballots

 

A western Pennsylvania county's elected commissioners were sued Monday over a policy adopted for this year's primary in which people whose mail-in ballots were disqualified for technical violations say they were purposely not informed in time to fix errors.

 

Seven disqualified primary voters, the local NAACP branch and the Center for Coalfield Justice sued Washington County's election board over what they called “systematic and deliberate efforts” to conceal the policy by directing elections office staff not to tell voters who called that they had made errors that prevented their votes from being counted.

 

The lawsuit filed in county common pleas court said the policy resulted in 259 voters being disenfranchised and many of those voters still do not realize it. The seven voters who are suing, ages 45 to 85, all had their mail-in ballots invalidated because of incomplete or missing dates, the lawsuit stated. One also failed to sign the exterior envelope and another signed in the wrong place.

 

“Because of the board's actions, voters had no way of learning that their ballot would not be counted, and were deprived of the opportunity to protect their right to vote by taking advantage of an existing statutory process: voting by provisional ballot,” the lawsuit claimed.

 

The lawsuit seeks to have Washington County's current policy declared unconstitutional as a violation of due process rights and to prevent the elections board from concealing information from voters and misleading them. It was filed by lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, Public Interest Law Center and the Philadelphia-based law firm Dechert.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[BringMetheHeadofBruceAllen]

20 hours ago, China said:

In Georgia, conservatives seek to have voters removed from rolls without official challenges

 

Conservative activists in Georgia and some other states are quietly pushing a way to remove names from the voting rolls without filing a formal legal challenge.

 

They're asking election administrators to use their data to purge voter registrations, which means names could be removed in a less public process than a formal voter challenge. The strategy could mean electors won't be summoned in advance to defend their voting rights and the identities of those seeking to purge voters might not be routinely public.

 

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office insists any living voter stricken from the rolls must be notified. But because Georgia has 159 counties and no formal statewide rules governing these less formal inquiries, it's unclear how every county will react. People removed in error could vote a provisional ballot, but local officials might count those votes only in exceptional cases.

 

The strategy is expanding even as a new Georgia law takes effect Monday that could lead to counties removing a larger share of voters using formal voter challenges.

 

That law already has been met with alarm by Democrats and voting rights advocates. They view the hundreds of thousands of voter challenges filed since 2020 as part of Georgia's long history of blocking voting dating back to slavery. Now, as details of below-radar efforts surface, those advocates fear a double-barreled attack on voting.

 

Click on the link for the full article

Why are the Dems always behind the 8-ball on these things? They've had 3 years to anticipate crap like this.

[GhostofSparta]

2 hours ago, BringMetheHeadofBruceAllen said:

Why are the Dems always behind the 8-ball on these things? They've had 3 years to anticipate crap like this.

[Cooked Crack]

 

[The Evil Genius]

44 minutes ago, Cooked Crack said:

 

 

What's the MAGA problem with thse again? The one near my house is locked up like Fort Knox (it's also in front of the local Public Library). 

 

I get text notifications also when my ballot has been scanned in and recorded. 

[China]

'Just what the autocracy doctor ordered': Expert rips NY Times for running anti-voting op-ed

 

On the 4th of July, the New York Times opinion section chose to publish an op-ed from a Michigan resident making his case to not vote in the 2024 election. One democracy expert slammed the national paper of record for its decision to run the essay.

 

The column, which is titled, "Why I Don't Vote. And Why Maybe You Shouldn't Either," is by Matthew Walther, who is a contributing editor to The American Conservative. With a noticeable tone of considerable disgust, Walther describes the term "civic duty" — which voting rights advocates often use when making the case to participate in the electoral process — as "off-putting."

 

"If patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, civic duty is surely the first. Some version of the civic-duty line is trotted out by the sort of do-gooder who hands out voter registration forms to strangers — an activity I find as off-putting as I would an invitation to sit down and fill out a handgun permit," he wrote.

 

Journalist Stephen Wolf posted an excerpt of the essay to his X/Twitter account with the text: "This is what the New York Times chose to publish on Independence Day just one week after the Supreme Court ruled that Republican presidents are above the law."

 

While quote-tweeting Wolf's post, History professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat — an expert on democracy and authoritarian governments around the world — admonished the national paper of record for its decision to publish Walther's column.

 

"This is just very sad and frankly just what the Autocracy Doctor ordered," she tweeted. "Not voting is a vote to let others decide your fate, and we know that many elections are decided by relatively few votes. The goal of many autocracies is 'demobilization': people detaching from politics so they don't resist."

 

Click on the link for the full article

[The Evil Genius]

Even worse...NY Times changed the title afterwards to "Why I won't vote" because the internet quickly found out the author had voted the last 2 elections. 

 

Just part of the NY Times continued anti-Biden campaign. 

 

Fyi 

 

 

[The Evil Genius]

 

Fyi 

 

 

[Larry]

4 hours ago, The Evil Genius said:

 

What's the MAGA problem with thse again?

 

They tend to vote Dem. 

[The Evil Genius]

 

[China]

Wisconsin voters can once again return ballots by drop box, state high court rules

 

Voters in Wisconsin once again have the option to return absentee ballots via drop box, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled.

 

The 4-3 decision released Friday reverses a near-total ban on ballot drop boxes, which was handed down by the state's high court in 2022.

 

Friday's ruling comes just four months before November's presidential decision in a state where close elections are the norm. In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden won Wisconsin by just over 20,000 votes, which was a statewide margin of victory of less than 1 percentage point.

 

In 2022, the Wisconsin Supreme Court concluded in another 4-3 ruling that unsupervised ballot drop boxes outside of clerk's offices are illegal, because they're not specifically authorized in Wisconsin law.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Absentee Ballots Won’t Be Thrown Out for Witness Address Variations, Wisconsin Court of Appeals Rules

 

The Wisconsin Court of Appeals today largely affirmed a lower court’s decision that is expected to significantly reduce the rejection rate of absentee ballots in the state’s upcoming primary and general elections. 

 

The underlying January 2024 ruling at issue in today’s decision allows absentee ballots cast by Wisconsin voters to be counted so long as the accompanying witness certificate contains enough address information to identify a location where a witness can be reached. 

 

That ruling — which was quickly appealed by Wisconsin’s GOP Legislature — stemmed from a lawsuit filed in 2022 by a voter and a youth engagement organization known as Rise Inc.

 

Today’s unanimous court of appeals decision — which slightly modifies the circuit court’s ruling — concluded that an absentee ballot can be counted if the witness address contains adequate information based on the perspective of a Wisconsin election official known as a municipal clerk. 

 

This differs from the trial court’s standard, which deemed an address sufficient if it provides enough information for a “member of the community” — rather than a municipal clerk — to reasonably understand where a witness may be located. 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Jumbo]

https://apnews.com/article/georgia-state-election-board-0141f8011dc9e7c054ed73f63dbf5f58

[China]

These Swing State Election Officials Are Pro-Trump Election Deniers

 

WHEN ELECTION NIGHT comes in November, it will be up to thousands of local election officials to certify election results in their counties. Among those election officials are scores of Donald Trump supporters who believe his lies and conspiracies about stolen elections — and will be in prime position to act on those beliefs to try to aid his campaign in November.

 

In the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, Rolling Stone and American Doom identified at least 70 pro-Trump election conspiracists currently working as county election officials who have questioned the validity of elections or delayed or refused to certify results. At least 22 of these county election officials have refused or delayed certification in recent years.

 

Certification of election results is what legal experts consider a “ministerial task,” and one required by state and local law. But as Trump’s lies about the 2020 election have taken hold, Republicans nationwide have decided that certification provides them an opportunity to hear fraud allegations — and refuse to officially count their local votes. Republicans have refused to certify election results at least 25 times since Trump lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden. 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Cooked Crack]