An assault on American voters is underway

[China]

Arizona Republicans wanted to hand-count ballots. Then they saw the price tag — and the errors.

 

Election workers spent three days counting 850 ballots in Mohave County. They made errors in 46 races.
 

An Arizona county has decided not to hand-count its ballots in next year’s elections, after discovering that it would cost more than a million dollars and leave it with inaccurate results.

The all-Republican Board of Supervisors in Mohave County voted 3-2 against forgoing ballot counting machines in favor of hand-counting in 2024, after months of debate, questions on the legality, and a three-day test run.

 

“I’m willing to have further conversations about this, but the first thing that we have to do in Mohave County in good conscious is to balance the budget. You can’t talk about any other spending when you have 18 — 20 million dollar deficit,” said Supervisor Travis Lingenfelter, a Republican, before voting against a proposal to hand count all the ballots in 2024. “That’s irresponsible.”

 

Some conservatives, including allies of former President Donald Trump, have pushed hand-counting ballots as a way to ensure the accuracy of election results. But Mohave County's experience punctures that talking point, showing that hand-counting is typically expensive, inaccurate and impractical.

 

In short, hand-counting ballots isn’t as easy as it sounds.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Larry]

Show me somebody who wants to mandate hand counting all the ballots, and I'll show you somebody who wants it because it makes it vastly easier to alter the results. 

[Bang]

And to threaten those doing the counting.

 

~Bang

[China]

Boosters of Ohio's controversial Issue 1 are increasingly connected to election denial: analysis

 

Critics of Issue 1 have long said it’s an anti-democratic measure because it saps voters’ power over the Ohio Constitution compared to that of the state’s highly gerrymandered legislature. They say it would make it all but impossible to force an unrepresentative state government to enact policies supported by majorities of Ohioans.
 

Seeming to bolster that argument is the growing number of top supporters of Issue 1 who lie about election outcomes they don’t like — or who support politicians who do.

 

After all, it’s hard to do something more undemocratic than reject an election just because your favored candidate didn’t win. It’s like saying a football game doesn’t count just because your team lost.

 

Issue 1 is increasingly associated with people who take that approach to elections.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

What’s happening with Trump’s ‘fake electors’ in 7 states he lost

 

Former President Trump was arraigned Thursday on four charges alleging that he attempted to orchestrate a scheme of fraudulent electoral college votes to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

 

In seven states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — so-called “fake electors” signed paperwork attempting to cast electoral college ballots for Trump instead of their states’ actual winner, President Biden. 

 

The groups hoped that former Vice President Pence would count the fake electors’ certifications instead of the legitimate ones when the electoral college vote was certified on Jan. 6, 2021, changing the result of the election, the indictment alleged. None were successful.

 

Here’s what each state is, and isn’t, doing to investigate and prosecute them.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Texas man who threatened poll workers and Arizona officials is sentenced to 3 1/2 years

 

A Texas man who advocated for a mass shooting of poll workers and threatened two Arizona officials and their children has been sentenced to 3 1/2 years in federal prison, prosecutors said Friday.

 

Frederick Francis Goltz, 52, of Lubbock, pleaded guilty earlier this year to interstate threatening communications. Goltz was sentenced Thursday by U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, who also ordered three years of supervised release following the prison term.

 

The U.S. saw a proliferation of threats against elections officials after former President Donald Trump falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Such threats contributed to an exodus of election officials across the country, and made recruiting poll workers difficult.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[The Evil Genius]

 

Then, the GOP will propose only landowners with penises can vote.

Edited August 6, 2023 by The Evil Genius

[JCB]

Could they be more obviously terrified of the youth vote? I'd be more likely to support a civics test for Boomers.

[China]

40 minutes ago, JCB said:

Could they be more obviously terrified of the youth vote? I'd be more likely to support a civics test for Boomers.

 

We should have a civics test to be eligible to serve in Congress.

[China]

To preserve gerrymandering, Wisconsin GOP threatens to impeach justice who critiqued gerrymandering

 

Wisconsin is so absurdly gerrymandered, a roughly 50-50 split between the state’s Republican and Democratic voters—Donald Trump edged out Hillary Clinton in 2016, President Joe Biden squeaked by Trump in 2020, and Badger Staters narrowly reelected Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in 2022—has somehow produced gaudy Republican supermajorities in both the state Assembly and Senate. The party currently holds a 64-35 advantage in the Assembly and a 21-11 edge in the Senate.

 

Of course, if Wisconsin Republicans had their druthers, they’d draw little circles around every Chick-fil-A in the state and make those congressional districts. And previous state supreme courts might have let them get away with it.

 

But when liberal Judge Janet Protasiewicz trounced her conservative opponent in the state Supreme Court election in April, it was a big win—not just for those who care about reestablishing their reproductive rights, but for anyone who genuinely cares about representative democracy.

 

In other words, fair legislative maps looked achievable for the first time in more than a decade. Which meant it was now past time for the GOP to squeal.

 

On Friday, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos hinted that impeachment could be on the table if Protasiewicz votes to disrupt the GOP’s plans for a permanent white minority rule over our country—or, worse, if Sen. Ron Johnson is ever forced to fill out his ballot next to a Black person. Why? Because she will have “prejudged” the case.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[The Evil Genius]

Gov, Lt. Gov, AG, Treasurer, and SOS are all D in Wisconsin.

Edited August 13, 2023 by The Evil Genius

[Larry]

 

[China]

Travis Co. judge blocks law that eliminates Harris County elections administrator

 

A Travis County judge has sided with Harris County, blocking a bill that would eliminate the elections administrator position. 

 

Senate Bill 1750, which was passed this year during the legislative session, abolishes the Harris County Elections Administrator's Office. It’s set to take effect Sept. 1, but a judge has put a hold on it. 

 

Harris County Attorney Chris Menefee calls it a win for the county, though he said it's not over as the State of Texas has already filed an appeal. 

 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Virginia in talks with Ohio, Florida, Texas in new voter fraud initiative

 

Elections officials in Virginia have been communicating with a bipartisan group of around two dozen other states since March to develop new voter data sharing agreements. Their discussions began as a steady stream of Republican-led states have quit a multistate partnership that until early 2022 was considered a widely trusted, bipartisan effort.

 

The emails also hint that Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration was directly involved in Virginia's abrupt exit from that partnership, the Electronic Registration Information Center, commonly known as ERIC.

 

Many of the complaints cited by Virginia Commissioner of Elections Susan Beals in a May 11 letter announcing the state’s departure are also contradicted by talking points staff prepared for Beals several weeks before Virginia formally exited ERIC Aug. 10.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

2 men plead guilty in separate election threat cases

 

Two men pleaded guilty to threatening elections officials in separate criminal cases, the Justice Department announced Thursday – the latest in a department effort to crack down on election threats nationwide.

 

Chad Christopher Stark of Texas pleaded guilty to making threats against public officials in Georgia following the 2020 election, while Joshua Russell of Ohio pleaded guilty to threatening an Arizona election worker during the 2022 midterm election season, the department said in separate news releases.

 

The cases are part of the DOJ’s Election Threats Task Force, which was launched in June 2021 to address the rise in threats against election officials across the country. The task force has charged 14 threat-related cases and secured nine convictions, according to the department.

 

Stark, 55, faces a maximum penalty of two years in prison after pleading guilty to one count of sending a threat using a telecommunications device, according to the Justice Department.

 

Prosecutors said he posted a threatening message on Craigslist toward an unnamed election official on or around January 5, 2021, a day before supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress’ certification of the 2020 election.

 

The message, according to court documents, said in part: “It’s time to invoke our Second Amendment right it’s time to put a bullet in the treasonous Chinese [Official A]. Then we work our way down to [Official B] the local and federal corrupt judges.”

 

“It’s our duty as American Patriots to put an end to the lives of these traitors and take back our country by force we can no longer wait on the corrupt law enforcement in the corrupt courts. If we want our country back we have to exterminate these people,” he wrote, according to an indictment.

 

A sentencing date has not yet been set for Stark, who had been indicted in January 2022.

 

Russell, meanwhile, pleaded guilty to one count of making a threatening interstate communication and faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison. The 44-year-old is set to be sentenced on November 13.

 

According to court documents, Russell repeatedly called an Arizona election official a “traitor,” and claimed the employee didn’t stop election fraud in 2020 when baseless claims of fraud were widespread, adding that he believed the official wasn’t doing enough to protect elections.

 

Prosecutors said in court documents that in an August 2, 2022, voicemail Russell told the election worker, “You’re the enemy of the United States, you’re a traitor to this country,” as well as said the worker’s days were “extremely numbered.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Florida redistricting lawsuit overturns DeSantis map, empowers Black voters

 

A state judge struck down North Florida’s congressional districts Saturday, rebuffing Gov. Ron DeSantis’ open defiance of anti-gerrymandering protections, finding the governor’s map illegally reduced Black voters’ electoral power.

 

DeSantis had wagered the state’s Fair Districts Amendment against the U.S. Constitution, arguing mandatory protections for Black voters violated the Equal Protection Clause; Second Judicial Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh flatly rejected that gamble, rendering a decision that could reverberate from the halls of Tallahassee to the streets of Jacksonville, paving the way for a new, Democratic district where Jacksonville’s Black voters have more influence.

 

Marsh refused to bite on DeSantis’ claim that the state’s Fair Districts Amendment violated the U.S. Constitution, saying DeSantis’ secretary of state and the Legislature didn’t even have standing to make such an argument.

 

“The Secretary can point to no case finding the non-diminishment language of the Fair Districts Amendment, nor the comparable Section 5 language of the Voting Rights Act, to violate the Equal Protection provision of the 14th Amendment,” Marsh wrote.

 

Later, he continued, “The judicial branch alone has the power to declare what the law is, including whether the Florida Constitution’s provisions are themselves unconstitutional.”

 

Marsh’s ruling was limited to North Florida after plaintiffs abandoned claims that other districts also violated the state constitution.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Cooked Crack]

 

[Cooked Crack]

Quote

A state judiciary disciplinary panel has rejected several complaints lodged against Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz that alleged she violated the judicial code of ethics for comments she made during the campaign. It’s a setback to Republicans who argued those remarks could warrant impeachment.

 

Protasiewicz on Tuesday released a letter from the Wisconsin Judicial Commission informing her that “several complaints” regarding comments she had made during the campaign had been dismissed without action.

Republicans mad they'll have to compete under fair maps

[China]

Federal Court Again Strikes Down Alabama’s Congressional Map

 

A panel of federal judges rejected Alabama’s latest congressional map on Tuesday, ruling that a new map needed to be drawn because Republican lawmakers had failed to comply with orders to create a second majority-Black district or something “close to it.”

 

In a sharp rebuke, the judges ordered that the new map be independently drawn, taking the responsibility away from the Republican-controlled legislature while chastising state officials who “ultimately did not even nurture the ambition to provide the required remedy.”

 

The legislature had hastily pushed through a revised map in July after a surprise Supreme Court ruling found that Alabama’s existing map violated a landmark civil rights law by undercutting the power of the state’s Black voters. The revised map, approved over the objections of Democrats, increased the percentage of Black voters in one of the state’s six majority-white congressional districts to about 40 percent, from about 30 percent.

 

In its new ruling, the three-judge panel in Alabama found that the legislature had flouted its mandate under the court’s ruling.

 

“The law requires the creation of an additional district that affords Black Alabamians, like everyone else, a fair and reasonable opportunity to elect candidates of their choice,” the judges wrote. “The 2023 plan plainly fails to do so.”

 

Responsibility for a new map now falls to a special master, Richard Allen, a longtime Alabama lawyer who has worked under several Republican attorneys general, and a cartographer, David Ely, a demographer based in California. Both were appointed by the court.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[tshile]

I like the civics test idea, but no age stipulation, everyone. 
Also I’m with it required to work in government. 
 

im ok with decent understanding of how government works to be required to vote for people to run the government.

In fact if you want to run for or work in any position of influence, your civics test results should be published. 

Edited September 5, 2023 by tshile

[China]

DeSantis eyes revoking constitutional safeguard for Florida’s Black voters

 

In mid-August, lawyers representing Florida Republicans made a startling admission. The state’s new congressional map, drawn by governor Ron DeSantis, made it harder for Black voters in north Florida to elect the candidate of their choosing. On Sunday, a judge in Florida ruled the map was unlawful.

 

From 2016 until last year, Florida’s fifth congressional district had stretched more than 150 miles across the northern part of the state, from Jacksonville to just west of Tallahassee. It was a portion of the state once home to the Ku Klux Klan and lynchings. In 2022, it was represented by Al Lawson, a Black Democrat, and 46% of eligible voters were Black.

 

That year, DeSantis went out of his way to chop the district up into four majority-white ones, all of which elected a Republican last fall.

 

“It limits their voice. It limits their representation in Congress. It limits the goods and services that they are expected to receive,” said Jasmine Burney-Clark, the founder of Equal Ground, a voter engagement non-profit that challenged the maps. “The needs from north Florida are different from south Florida. The representation should match those needs as well.”

 

It was the kind of concession that politicians, wary of doing anything that could be perceived as motivated by racial animus, rarely make. And it was particularly striking in Florida, where a provision in the state’s constitution specifically outlaws diminishing the influence of Black voters in that way. Voters overwhelmingly approved that provision as part of a set of anti-gerrymandering reforms, called the fair districts amendment, in 2010.

 

So it was no surprise that circuit judge J Lee Marsh struck down the map. “Under the stipulated facts [in the lawsuit], plaintiffs have shown that the enacted plan results in the diminishment of Black voters’ ability to elect their candidate of choice in violation of the Florida constitution,” he wrote in his ruling.

 

“It’s more like common sense,” said Brenda Holt, a Democratic county commissioner in Gadsden county, which was on the western edge of Lawson’s old district and is the only majority-Black county in Florida.

 

DeSantis is already appealing the ruling and the case is likely to be decided by the Florida supreme court, where he has appointed five of the seven justices.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

On 9/5/2023 at 4:49 PM, China said:

Federal Court Again Strikes Down Alabama’s Congressional Map

 

A panel of federal judges rejected Alabama’s latest congressional map on Tuesday, ruling that a new map needed to be drawn because Republican lawmakers had failed to comply with orders to create a second majority-Black district or something “close to it.”

 

In a sharp rebuke, the judges ordered that the new map be independently drawn, taking the responsibility away from the Republican-controlled legislature while chastising state officials who “ultimately did not even nurture the ambition to provide the required remedy.”

 

The legislature had hastily pushed through a revised map in July after a surprise Supreme Court ruling found that Alabama’s existing map violated a landmark civil rights law by undercutting the power of the state’s Black voters. The revised map, approved over the objections of Democrats, increased the percentage of Black voters in one of the state’s six majority-white congressional districts to about 40 percent, from about 30 percent.

 

In its new ruling, the three-judge panel in Alabama found that the legislature had flouted its mandate under the court’s ruling.

 

“The law requires the creation of an additional district that affords Black Alabamians, like everyone else, a fair and reasonable opportunity to elect candidates of their choice,” the judges wrote. “The 2023 plan plainly fails to do so.”

 

Responsibility for a new map now falls to a special master, Richard Allen, a longtime Alabama lawyer who has worked under several Republican attorneys general, and a cartographer, David Ely, a demographer based in California. Both were appointed by the court.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

 

Alabama asks Supreme Court to halt lower court order blocking GOP-drawn congressional lines

 

Alabama on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to let it keep Republican-drawn congressional lines in place as the state continues to fight a court order to create a second district where Black voters constitute a majority or close to it.

 

Despite losing at the Supreme Court earlier this year in the long-running redistricting case, Alabama is pursuing another appeal, hoping for a different result with the most recent GOP version of the map. Alabama asked the justices to stay a ruling issued last week by a three-judge panel that that blocked the use of the latest GOP-drawn districts in upcoming elections and directed a court-appointed special master to propose new lines for the state.

 

The judges, in their ruling, said Alabama lawmakers deliberately defied their directive to create a second majority-Black district or something close to it and they were "deeply troubled" that the state enacted a map that "does not provide the remedy we said federal law requires."

 

The Alabama attorney general's office asked justices to put the order on hold while the state appeals "so that millions of Alabama voters are not soon districted into that court-ordered racial gerrymander." 

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

They have a lot of nerve appealing to the Supreme Court who's order they directly defied.

[Cooked Crack]

 

[China]

The State Where Republicans Are Breaking Their Own Rules to Stay in Power

 

Ari Berman has been to Wisconsin so many times that he “can attest to the quality of the cheese curds at this point.” Berman reports for Mother Jones. He’s an expert in voting rights, and he is not just in Wisconsin for the cheese curds. He’s there because he calls it a “laboratory for dismantling democracy.” And he wants to peek inside.

 

What he sees is not pretty, at least not for Democrats. Despite the fact that Wisconsin is a swing state, the GOP has cemented control over the statehouse. They’ve done that using aggressively gerrymandered maps. Just one example: In 2018, even though Dems secured 54 percent of the vote statewide, that translated to a measly third of the seats in the state assembly.

 

“The only way to explain the gap between the huge Republican majorities in the Legislature and the fact that Wisconsin is voting for Democrats in all these statewide elections is gerrymandering,” Berman said. “In the elections that Republicans can’t gerrymander, they’re losing. But in the elections that they can gerrymander, they’re winning over and over and over again, not because their policies are popular—because if you look at the polling, what they’re doing is actually incredibly unpopular. It’s because they have rigged the maps to such an extent that they basically can’t lose.”

 

But earlier this year, Democrats got a chance to flip the narrative. A state Supreme Court seat came up for grabs. And a candidate named Janet Protasiewicz entered the race. Because of this court’s history of ruling on everything from reproductive rights to voting rights, many called this election one of the most important of 2023.

 

Technically, it was nonpartisan, but everyone knew where Janet Protasiewicz stood. She called the Republican political maps “rigged.” She talked about the right to abortion. And Janet Protasiewicz? She won. But the Legislature is still controlled by Republicans. And Berman says, “They’re not just going to sit back and let Democrats and progressives take away all of the things that they did.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

In some states, more than half of the local election officials have left since 2020

 

Josh Daniels got into running elections by accident.

 

A Marine veteran and registered Republican, Daniels was recruited in 2019 by a friend who'd been elected clerk in Utah County, Utah, to be her deputy.

 

Eventually Daniels became clerk himself and grew to love the complex minutiae that went into running an election, and finding creative ways to help vulnerable populations access the ballot.

 

"It was really rewarding to help improve some really important functions in local government," Daniels said.

 

But when the time came to decide whether to run for reelection in 2022, Daniels decided against it. Voting conspiracies had become too much to take.

 

He estimated that he spent hundreds of hours over two years tracking down election concerns that voters got online and brought to his office.

 

"It was just exhausting," Daniels said. "It really was like The Twilight Zone of government service. Groundhog Day ... every day you wake up and it's the same thing over and over again. It doesn't matter how much information and data you share, it doesn't matter how many concerns you answer. There will just be a new group of critics to again dish out the new conspiracy of the day."

 

Daniels is part of a large group of voting officials who have decided to leave the profession since 2020 and the tension and pressure that followed Donald Trump's loss in that election.

In some battleground states, more than half of the local election administrators will be new since the last presidential race, according to a new report from the democracy-focused advocacy group Issue One shared exclusively with NPR before its release.

 

Click on the link for the full article