An assault on American voters is underway

[China]

Former U.S. Rep. Tim Huelskamp connected to false text about Kansas abortion amendment

 

Former U.S. Rep. Tim Huelskamp is behind the false text message about the constitutional amendment that enraged Democrats on Monday, the Washington Post reports.

 

The newspaper traced the unsolicited text messages to a political tech firm called Alliance Forge and identified Huelskamp’s Do Right PAC as the client behind the campaign.

 

Huelskamp, a Republican who represented the state in Congress from 2011 to 2017, didn’t immediately respond to a phone call and voice message from Kansas Reflector seeking comment for this story.

 

State officials said the use of voter registration data to deliberately mislead voters doesn’t violate state law because lying is allowed in election advertisements, and unsolicited text messages about ballot questions don’t require senders to reveal their identities.

 

Twilio, the company whose services were used to send the message, says its fraud team was investigating and taking “appropriate actions” to stop the spread of misinformation.

 

Democrats were infuriated by the text message they received Monday, which inaccurately said that “voting YES on the amendment will give women a choice.” A yes vote would actually end the right to terminate a pregnancy in Kansas and give the Legislature the authority to pass a total ban on abortion. A no vote would preserve the status quo, in which abortion is heavily regulated and legal through 22 weeks of gestation.

 

“This is as dirty as you can get,” said Davis Hammet, a voting rights advocate, in a tweet. “The anti-abortion coalition is sending out a last minute mass text to Kansas pro-choice voters blatantly lying about the abortion amendment so they vote the wrong way.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[LadySkinsFan]

3 hours ago, China said:

Former U.S. Rep. Tim Huelskamp connected to false text about Kansas abortion amendment

 

Former U.S. Rep. Tim Huelskamp is behind the false text message about the constitutional amendment that enraged Democrats on Monday, the Washington Post reports.

 

The newspaper traced the unsolicited text messages to a political tech firm called Alliance Forge and identified Huelskamp’s Do Right PAC as the client behind the campaign.

 

Huelskamp, a Republican who represented the state in Congress from 2011 to 2017, didn’t immediately respond to a phone call and voice message from Kansas Reflector seeking comment for this story.

 

State officials said the use of voter registration data to deliberately mislead voters doesn’t violate state law because lying is allowed in election advertisements, and unsolicited text messages about ballot questions don’t require senders to reveal their identities.

 

Twilio, the company whose services were used to send the message, says its fraud team was investigating and taking “appropriate actions” to stop the spread of misinformation.

 

Democrats were infuriated by the text message they received Monday, which inaccurately said that “voting YES on the amendment will give women a choice.” A yes vote would actually end the right to terminate a pregnancy in Kansas and give the Legislature the authority to pass a total ban on abortion. A no vote would preserve the status quo, in which abortion is heavily regulated and legal through 22 weeks of gestation.

 

“This is as dirty as you can get,” said Davis Hammet, a voting rights advocate, in a tweet. “The anti-abortion coalition is sending out a last minute mass text to Kansas pro-choice voters blatantly lying about the abortion amendment so they vote the wrong way.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

Kansas citizens voted against fascist tyranny and for women's bodily autonomy. 

[Long n Left]

2 hours ago, LadySkinsFan said:

 

Kansas citizens voted against fascist tyranny and for women's bodily autonomy. 

I’m impressed. Wifey is from NE Oklahoma, very near Kansas, and I can tell you that area of the country is dead red.
 

Kudos to Kansas for stepping up for a woman’s autonomy, and basic human rights. I’m still in a state of mild disbelief.

[The Evil Genius]

I suspect that perhaps pro choice isn't an entirely blue platform and the GOP leaders overreached. Time will tell, but I do (or did) know a lot of conservatives who were also pro choice. 

 

 

[goskins10]

On 7/29/2022 at 2:44 PM, China said:

The independent state legislature doctrine could reverse 200 years of progress and take power away from the people

 

In a case to be heard in the coming months, the U.S. Supreme Court could decide that state legislatures have control over congressional elections, including the ability to draw voting districts for partisan political advantage, unconstrained by state law or state constitutions.

 

At issue is a legal theory called the “independent state legislature doctrine,” which is posed through the court’s consideration of a dispute over gerrymandered North Carolina congressional districts. In early 2022, North Carolina state courts found the legislature violated the state constitution when it drew gerrymandered congressional districts favoring Republicans. The legislature has claimed that the U.S. Constitution gives it authority, unfettered by state courts’ interpretation of the state constitution or laws, to regulate congressional elections, and is asking the Supreme Court to agree.

 

If the court agrees, it could free state legislatures to take power away from voters – “We the People” in constitutional parlance – and reverse a two-century trend toward expanding the power of the people in congressional elections.

 

Some election and constitutional law analysts have already suggested that state legislatures may have similar power over presidential elections. The U.S. Constitution allows state legislatures to determine how a state chooses its presidential electors, arguably leaving the legislature free to choose presidential electors on their own without a popular election.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

 

 The next step by the right to destroy democracy and institute a dictatorship. 

Edited August 3, 2022 by goskins10

[Long n Left]

30 minutes ago, goskins10 said:

 

 

 The next step by the right to destroy democracy and institute a dictatorship. 

This is a consequential case, to say the absolute least. It really has a chance to fracture this country more than anytime post Civil War. 
 

I’d like to think that sitting SC justices have enough common sense to see the perils this doctrine brings, but the convoluted reasoning, of at least 5 justices to date, gives little in the way of optimism.

Edited August 3, 2022 by Long n Left

[China]

Thread title even more appropriate as we've moved up to actual physical assault:

 

Poll workers report brawl, death threat, candidates trying to run over each other outside St. Louis County voting centers

 

Police were called Tuesday to reports of a brawl involving 40 people, candidates trying to run over each other, a death threat from one voter to a candidate and campaign supporters refusing to let voters in a polling place -- but say none of the incidents resulted in reports or arrests.

 

Poll workers and election judges reported the incidents to the St. Louis County Board of Election during the last two to three hours before polls closed at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

 

“This is unusual,” said Rick Stream, the Republican St. Louis County Board of Elections Director. “We don’t normally have stuff like this.”

 

Stream said all of the incidents took place outside of polling places and did not interfere with voting.

 

Voter turnout came in at 27%, which was also lower than the 30% that was expected.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Pa. Supreme Court upholds no-excuse mail voting ahead of midterms

 

The state Supreme Court has upheld Pennsylvania’s mail ballot law, preserving for the time being a popular voting method that passed the legislature with bipartisan support but was later challenged by Republican elected officials.

 

In a 5-2 decision released Tuesday, the justices rejected the GOP argument that the legislature did not have the power under the state constitution to allow Pennsylvanians to vote by mail without an excuse.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

 

[China]

Funny how election 'stealing' ceases when Kari Lake surges ahead

 

In a rational world, Primary Tuesday would put an end to 2020’s “Stop the Steal” nonsense. But few consider politics rational, especially here in Arizona.

 

As the votes rolled in Tuesday night, Karrin Taylor Robson dominated the GOP gubernatorial primary. With an estimated 40% of the votes counted, she led Kari Lake by more than 10 percentage points.

 

Two hours later and 60% of votes counted, Robson retained a commanding lead of 49% to 41%.

 

Then, in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, when “no one was watching,” everything had flipped. Once 80% of the votes were reported, Lake led Robson by 1.8%. That’s a swing of 12 percentage points in a few hours. 

 

Hmm ... curious. (OK, not really, but work with me here.)

 

If Lake's lead holds, she'll win much like Biden did

Consider if the names were reversed. Arizona would face another two years of conspiracy theories, spittle-flinging speeches and condemnations of state officials over a “stolen election.”

Press releases would be issued. Investigations launched. Cyber Ninjas activated.

 

The audit that wasn't:Cyber Ninjas' emails touch on irony, deceit

 

That still could be the case if Robson turns this around. But if Lake’s growing lead holds, she will have won the GOP nomination much like Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020.

 

The voting gods have a sense of humor.

 

Instead of calling for counts, recounts and audits, Lake saw enough by late Tuesday night, despite an estimated 20% of ballots were yet to be counted. “We won today 7 out of 10 election day votes,” she told her supporters on Tuesday night. “There is no path to victory for my opponent and we won this race. Period.”

 

Guess elections weren't as corrupt as they said?

After the 2020 election, pro-Trump protesters screamed “count the vote!”

 

How times change. 

 

Lake’s more fervent supporters won’t plunge into conspiracy rabbit holes this time, nor should they. “Stop the Steal” activists won’t allege hacked computers, sneaky software or ballots laced with communist Chinese bamboo.

 

If Lake does win, why challenge the result? But by accepting Tuesday’s results, they’re admitting that our election system isn’t corrupt as they claimed all this time.

 

Click on the link for the full piece

[China]

When Election Officials Refuse To Certify Complete Election Results

 

It’s been over two months since Pennsylvania held its primary elections, but three counties are still refusing to include certain ballots in their certification totals. On July 11, the Pennsylvania Department of State and secretary of the commonwealth sued the three county boards of elections over their obstruction.

 

This isn’t an isolated, small-scale issue: The counties — Berks, Fayette and Lancaster — have a combined population of over one million people. The skirmish also isn’t simply about Pennsylvania and a specific type of mail-in ballots; the implications of this kind of nuanced election subversion will be widespread in the years to come. 

 

A federal and state court both agreed that the ballots must be counted.

The three county boards of elections are refusing to include in their totals mail-in ballots that were received before Pennsylvania’s 8:00 p.m. deadline on Election Day, but were missing a date on the outside envelope. This might sound like an oddly specific category of ballots, known as  “undated mail-in ballots,” but we’ve seen plenty of litigation in the Keystone State itself around this very issue.

 

The question first arose in a local judicial election in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. Several voters in this judicial election who had their votes discarded because of a missing date sued under the Civil Rights Act’s Materiality Provision. The statute protects votes from being discarded for mistakes that are “not material” or unrelated to a voter’s eligibility. In that case, Migliori v. Lehigh County Board of Elections, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that voters should not be disenfranchised for failing to write a date, ruling that the ballots in questions should be counted. The Republican candidate in this judicial race then tried to get the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the 3rd Circuit’s decision, but the Court declined to do so, effectively ending this lawsuit and keeping the 3rd Circuit’s ruling as the controlling precedent.

 

Around a similar time, trailing U.S. Senate candidate David McCormick (R) filed a lawsuit to ensure that these undated mail-in ballots were counted in his close Senate primary race against Dr. Mehmet Oz. A state court granted McCormick’s request, ordering the ballots to be counted, though McCormick conceded soon after.

 

Within the span of a week, a federal circuit court and a state appellate court both concluded that not counting undated mail-in ballots would violate the Civil Rights Act. The precedent for local officials to follow, if there was any prior doubt, was now clear.

 

The three GOP-led counties are flouting the rule of law.
Three counties are holding up the final certification of a primary election from 11 weeks ago. And it’s not a simple misunderstanding — the county commissioners are adamantly fighting back and actively refusing to follow the court orders.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

Simple.  Immediately arrest the county commissioners refusing to comply with the court orders.  And tell their replacements that if they don't comply they will be jailed as well.

Edited August 5, 2022 by China

[China]

This is what we have to look forward to, every election result being challenged, no matter how conclusive the outcome.  It will just be a total waste of time, money and resources.  

 

Recount confirms that indicted Colorado clerk lost election

 

A recount has confirmed that an indicted Colorado county clerk who alleged voting fraud lost the primary election she ran in last month in her attempt to win the post of running the state's elections, officials announced Thursday.

 

The results barely changed, with Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters picking up 13 more votes in the recount of the votes cast in the June 28 election to determine the Republican candidate for secretary of state. Peters received about 29% of the vote, Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in a statement.

 

The winner of the GOP primary for the job of overseeing Colorado's elections, Pam Anderson, received 13 more votes during the recount and finished with 43%. A third candidate, Mike O'Donnell, got 11 more votes.

 

Peters’ voicemail was full and she did not immediately return a text message or emails seeking comment on the recount results.

 

She filed a lawsuit Wednesday against Griswold and the state’s county clerks alleging the recount was not conducted according to state law. The lawsuit claims that the accuracy of randomly selected machines used to count ballots should have been verified with a hand count before the recount began.

 

Griswold's office said in a statement that the lawsuit was meritless.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Minnesota Secretary Of State Candidate Questioned Non-English Speakers' Right To Vote

 

Kim Crockett, a leading candidate in Minnesota’s upcoming Republican secretary of state primary, questioned two years ago whether non-English speakers and people with disabilities should be allowed to vote in the state.

 

Crockett, who has repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election, won the Republican Party of Minnesota’s endorsement at its May convention. In Tuesday’s primary, she is likely to become the latest candidate who has spread the “big lie” (a claim that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump) to become a Republican nominee for secretary of state.

 

While discussing a ruling from the Minnesota Supreme Court that upheld a state law allowing people with disabilities or difficulty reading English to ask for help filling out their ballots, Crockett raised the issue of whether people in these groups should be allowed to vote.

 

“So, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that indeed you can help an unlimited number of people vote if they are disabled or can’t read or speak English, which raises the question, should they be voting?” she said during the September 2020 radio interview, which occurred less than a week after the ruling. “We can talk about that another time.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Larry]

 

[China]

This conservative group helped push a disputed election theory

 

A controversial legal theory that could radically reshape presidential and congressional elections has had a vocal supporter in filings to the U.S. Supreme Court.

 

Since 2020, a conservative group advocating for more restrictive voting laws has filed multiple friend-of-the-court briefs to try to influence the justices, including with the claim that the U.S. Constitution gives state legislatures the power to determine how federal elections are run without limits from state constitutions or state courts.

 

The group calls itself the Honest Elections Project, which since 2020, according to corporate records filed in Virginia, has been a registered business alias for The 85 Fund. That organization has federal tax-exempt status, millions of dollars in donations and spending that are hard to trace, and ties to Leonard Leo — the Federalist Society's co-chairman and former executive vice president who helped build the Supreme Court's majority of conservative justices.

 

Three of those justices have signaled they are likely to side with Republican state lawmakers in an upcoming North Carolina redistricting case that could result in a Supreme Court endorsement of what's known as the independent state legislature theory. The lawmakers would need the support of at least two other justices on the court, where conservatives enjoy a 6-3 supermajority.

 

Over the past two years, what many in the legal world considered a fringe theory has become an increasingly hot topic. The Honest Elections Project's court filings underscore how conservative groups have been urging the justices to weigh in on exactly how much power state legislatures have over rules for federal elections.

 

"This is a priority for us," says Jason Snead, the organization's executive director, about the North Carolina case Moore v. Harper, which the court is expected to hear in the coming months. "Obviously, a case that deals with this issue in the Supreme Court is an incredibly important inflection point. And so we will be devoting resources to this."

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Cooked Crack]

 

[Fan since a Fetus]

I feel like this Is the most threatening thing going on in this country. This is another major reason why I don’t feel Dems win much of anything. Add in the Supreme Court and we won’t have any Elections decided by the people anymore. 
 

This country is in a super dark place right now

[China]

School districts across America will do anything for more teachers

 

School districts nationwide are turning to extraordinary measures in a desperate effort to get enough teachers in their classrooms before the academic year kicks off.

Why it matters: The teacher shortage — driven by burnout, low pay and ever-increasing demands — is a slow-motion crisis that's happening everywhere, and there's no easy way to reverse it.

 

The wage gap between teachers and the rest of the comparably educated workforce was about 21% in 2018. That disparity was a much smaller 6% back in 1996, according to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, reports Axios' Erica Pandey.

State of play: As the school year approaches, everything from eye-popping financial incentives to suspensions of licensing requirements remains on the table, but there's no guarantee that they'll bring in the people needed — let alone provide a good environment for students.

 

Des Moines Public Schools is offering a $50,000 incentive to teachers, nurses and administrators who are nearing retirement to stay with the district through the 2022-2023 school year.

Recipients must be 60 years old by June 30, 2023 and have a minimum of 15 years at DMPS to be eligible for the incentive.

At least 58 have taken the offer so far, according to records obtained by Axios.

The Dallas Independent School District recently set aside $51 million for salary increases and $52 million for retention bonuses for 2022-2023. The district's starting pay for newly hired teachers is now $60,000 and the minimum wage for staff is $15.

 

That kicked off a recruiting arms race among school districts in North Texas, where a population boom and rising costs of living have made it difficult for some to keep up.

The Florida Department of Education announced it would issue a temporary teaching certificate to veterans "who have not yet earned their bachelor's degree" after a new law took effect July 1.

"I sure wouldn't want them to do something like this with my doctor," Barry Dubin, president of the Sarasota Classified/Teachers Association, told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. "Are we going to just waive the bar [exam] for five years for veterans to practice law and see how they do?”

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed a law in 2017 permitting people without formal training to teach in the classroom, as long as they have at least five years of experience in a field that's relevant to their classroom subject.

 

Ducey took things a step further this year with a law eliminating the requirement that teachers have a bachelor's degree, instead only requiring that they be enrolled in college.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

So with the exception of Dallas as noted in the article, they'd rather hire unqualified, uneducated people to teach rather than provide better pay and benefits to entice quality teachers.

 

Brilliant!

[China]

 

[China]

So a sitting congresswoman is advocating for voter fraud?

 

 

[Cooked Crack]

 

[China]

Tucker Carlson says people who can’t vote in-person don’t “have a right to participate in democracy”

 

Why is there any mail-in balloting? If you can't be bothered to get to the polls, why do you have a right to participate in democracy? I don't understand. It's an invitation to fraud because it allows fraud. Why are Republicans putting up with this?

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

So all those Americans working overseas for the military or US government don't have the right to participate in democracy?  Someone needs to aerate Tucker's cranium.

[China]

Supreme Court issues rare emergency order favoring voters challenging elections rules

 

The Supreme Court on Friday sided with Black voters who challenged Georgia's system of electing members to the state's Public Service Commission, which regulates public utilities in the state.

 

The move was a rare example of the conservative court siding with voters over state officials in disputes regarding election rules, especially when the court is asked to act on an emergency basis.

The Supreme Court restored a district court ruling requiring that this year's election for two of the commission seats be postponed so that the legislature could create a new system for electing commissioners.

The unsigned order from the Supreme Court left the door open for the state's Republican officials to try again to get Georgia's rules for electing the commission revived for November's election. However, later Friday, Georgia indicated in a court filing that it would not ask again for the appeals court to halt the trial judge's order before November's election while the appeal on the merits played out.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

This could be both in this thread and the racism thread:

 

Ignoring the Voters: Alabama commission dissolves judicial seat won by Black woman

 

The rain was coming down in sheets the day Tiara Young Hudson won the Democratic primary for circuit court judge in the Alabama county she has long served as a public defender. Voters were undeterred.

 

When the ballots were counted in Jefferson County, the most populous and most diverse in the state, they showed that more than 31,000 people had braved the storm to vote in the primary on that day in May. Fifty-four percent of them chose Hudson.

 

With no Republican challenger in the race, the outcome was tantamount to victory for Hudson in the general election in November. The attorney, wife, mother and dedicated churchgoer rejoiced, thanking her family and God in a public Facebook post.

 

Hudson was on track to be the first public defender to serve as a judge on the Jefferson County circuit court, and the first Black woman with a background as a public defender to serve on the bench anywhere in Alabama.

 

The celebration was short-lived.

 

Just over two weeks later a state commission, divided along racial lines, dissolved the judgeship Hudson had effectively won.

 

First, Circuit Judge Clyde Jones resigned from the seat, eight days after the May 24 primary and seven months before the end of his term. That gave the Judicial Resources Allocation Commission (JRAC) – created by Alabama’s Republican-dominated Legislature in 2017 – the opportunity to consider transferring his seat.

 

The next week, the commission voted to permanently relocate the seat from Jefferson County, where the crime rate is the highest in Alabama, to majority-white Madison County. All three Black members of the commission voted against transferring the judgeship. All eight white members voted in favor.

 

The chairman of JRAC called the move a simple matter of filling a need in Madison County. But the transfer of the judgeship, the first by the commission since it was created, has been met with overwhelming objections. At a JRAC meeting before the vote, members of the public testified that the move strips a county with a substantial Black population of a critical resource and gives that resource to a county where white people comprise nearly 70% of the population (as opposed to 48% in Jefferson County).

 

Last month, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama filed a lawsuit on behalf of Hudson to challenge the constitutionality of the transfer.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

At least 11 Republican nominees for state elections chief have disputed the legitimacy of the 2020 election

 

In at least 11 states, the Republican nominee for the job of overseeing future elections is someone who has questioned, rejected or tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

 

Secretaries of state will play a critical role in managing and certifying the presidential election in 2024. The distinct possibility that some of these secretaries will be people with a history of election denial is a major challenge for American democracy -- especially because former President Donald Trump, who is widely expected to run again in 2024, continues to pressure state officials to discard the will of voters.

 

Click on the link for the full article