Gerrymandering and other voting rights issues

Is the Supreme Court finally ready to tackle partisan gerrymandering? Signs suggest yes

So far there has been no word on the Gill vs. Whitford (Wisconsin) case outcome from the court, which issues decisions in its hardest cases as late as the end of June. There was, however, a tantalizing development late last week when the court agreed to hear a gerrymandering case out of Maryland this term. Benisek vs. Lamone involves a single congressional district drawn by Democrats to make it harder for Republicans to elect a member of Congress.

Deciding Gill and Benisek together would allow the court, in announcing a new partisan-gerrymandering rule, to say that sometimes the rule favors one party and sometimes it favors the other.

Inside the gerrymandering data top Pa. Republicans fought to keep private

Pennsylvania’s map is considered one of the most extreme congressional gerrymanders in the country. Since the map’s creation in 2011, Republicans have consistently won 13 of 18 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, even as votes across the state have generally split evenly between Democrats and Republicans.

Republicans attempted to hide the data because it “undercuts their story in a big way,”said Michael Li, an expert on redistricting at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

I would like it if House Representatives were voted on state-wide and not locally (which might also carry the advantage of sanding the edges off of some of the more extreme and/or unqualified candidates), but I don't expect that to ever happen.

Given that this is unlikely, and I'm not sure of the constitutionality of this, I'd like it if states were required to define districts mathematically, generally minimizing the size of district borders in order to keep them as tight as possible (no "unwinding the baseball," so to speak, in order to help either side). Perhaps something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUS9uvYyn3A

Unfortunately, this is not the type of solution any politician is likely to endorse.

My favorite scheme is one where a score is defined that includes a large component for compactness (I'm sure there's a mathematical formula for it somewhere) but also gives bonuses for adhering to city and county boundaries. It might be possible to then program a computer to come up with the best score, but I don't think people would trust the result. So my plan would be to give out the census data and programs to analyze that data to whatever group wants it and allow each group to develop their own redistricting plan and submit it to the state. The state would then score each plan and adopt the one with the highest score.

That way the Democrats and the Republicans could come up with their plans to maximize their political power, ethnic groups could have their own plans to try to elect as many of their groups members, and maybe a farm group could develop their own plan to elect more rural representatives. But the final plan would be the one that creates the most compact districts that also groups communities as much as possible.

Justices Won’t Block Pennsylvania Gerrymandering Decision

The United States Supreme Court on Monday refused to stop Pennsylvania’s highest court from requiring lawmakers there to redraw the state’s congressional map, which the state court had found to be marred by partisan gerrymandering.

Fivethirtyeight has been writing about this issue.

The Gerrymandering Project

>7 cpg: Basically imagine a state with an even mixture, 60/40 of Whigs and Greens, where even neighborhoods are 60/40. If you want Greens to have 40% of the districts, your districts are going to be gerrymandered to hell and back. If the closer that matches American states, the more impossible getting all the nice features we want is going to be without doing things more massive than just redrawing districts. There are other ways to do things that would solve this problem; setting aside 6 seats for Whigs and 4 for Greens and letting people in a party vote on a particular party seat, for example.

Kris Kobach Just Got Humiliated in Federal Court

the trial devolved into a comedy of errors, with Kobach’s witnesses frequently contradicting his claims or getting humiliated by pointed questions they couldn’t answer.
...
Over and over, the claims of voter fraud offered by Kobach and his witnesses collapsed under scrutiny.
...
Kobach has often said that the evidence of fraud he’s uncovered in Kansas is only “the tip of the iceberg.” In his closing argument, ( ACLU lawyer Dale) Ho said, “The iceberg, on close inspection, Your Honor, it’s more of an ice cube.”

Mother Jones posts this story:

Top Republican Official Says Trump Won Wisconsin Because of Voter ID Law

In a University of Wisconsin study published in September 2017, 1 in 10 registered voters in Milwaukee County and Madison’s Dane County who did not cast a ballot in 2016 cited the voter ID law as a reason why. That meant that up to 23,000 voters in the two heavily Democratic counties—and as many as 45,000 voters statewide—didn’t vote because of the voter ID law. Trump won the state by 22,000 votes.

>10 2wonderY:

there's a simple and free Wisc. state photo-ID which anyone who is a legal resident and eligible voter may obtain by application.

See:

https://www.bringitwisconsin.com/how-do-i-get-free-state-id-card

Did no one explain this to the NY Times or Mother Jones Magazine?

"If you do not have a birth certificate or other documents, you can still obtain a document for voting that is valid for 180 days after one visit to the DMV using its petition process, known as IDPP. Download a one-page palm card explaining IDPP."

https://www.bringitwisconsin.com/files/idpp_handout_english_0.pdf

>11 proximity1: Free, if your life means nothing. One visit to the DMV in Sauk City?

https://trust.dot.state.wi.us/cscfinder/cityCountySearch.do?city=Sauk%20City

"Disability access: Limited

Hours

Monday: Closed
Tuesday: Closed
Wednesday: Special Rules - 5th Wednesday of the month 8:15 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Thursday: Closed
Friday: Closed
Saturday: Closed
Sunday: Closed
"

If you live in Sauk City, you can get a license for the November election on May 30, August 29, or October 31 (though the last one might be cutting it a bit close.) I don't know what the lines look like, but if you work a full day on Wednesdays, you can't get there without taking a day off of work. And nice job on the disability access.

https://trust.dot.state.wi.us/cscfinder/cityCountySearch.do?city=South%20Milwauk...

South Milwaukee is not as ludicrous, but it seems like it, like all the DMVs I saw are

"
Hours

Monday: 8:30 a.m. - 4:45 p.m.
Tuesday: 8:30 a.m. - 4:45 p.m.
Wednesday: 8:30 a.m. - 4:45 p.m.
Thursday: 8:30 a.m. - 4:45 p.m.
Friday: 8:30 a.m. - 4:45 p.m.
Saturday: Closed
Sunday: Closed
"

M-F 9-5 need not apply.

I don't know what average distances to DMVs Wisconsin are, but I live in Las Vegas, as the nearest DMV is a 40 minute bus ride or an Uber away for me. Double that for there and back.

Spend a 40 minute bus ride, say 40 minutes waiting (who ever has had to spend more time then that at the DMV?), and a 40 minute bus ride, and that's two hours of your life. You call that free? There's a joke that economists don't recognize each other in the polling lines, like Baptists don't recognize each other at the liquor store, because time spent voting is worth more than your impact on the vote and thus voting is an irrational economic decision. Economists will tell you right off the bat that you don't need much expense and trouble before people will stop voting.

>12 prosfilaes: (BTW: that is from the guy who wasn't aware (because he couldn't be bothered to find out first) that, in Florida, the rules of Florida criminal procedure provide that capital-murder defendants are not necessarily ineligible for bail pending trial.)

LOL!

Applicants can apply on-line.

http://wisconsindot.gov/Pages/online-srvcs/other-servs/where-is-dl-id.aspx

Got a networked telephone? "You" can apply via remote connection on-line. Is there a public library or a friend with a computer network connection that one knows? "You" can apply on-line.

There is apparently not necessarily any need to go personally to the office. Remember, a prospective voter is, by necessity, already a U.S. citizen by birth or naturalization.

" Economists will tell you right off the bat that you don't need much expense and trouble before people will stop voting.

LOL! "Economists will tell you..." really takes the cake. Yes, I know. Economists will tell you anything. They're famous for that.

Did you know, for example, that economists will tell you that "immigration is vital to the nation because of the fact that 'there are many jobs which U.S. citizens simply won't do' ?

Yep. Economists will tell you that and so many people have heard this repeated so often without challenge or reflection that they actually take it for granted as true.

The truth of the matter is VERY different: there are many jobs--and they're far from trivial or unimportant--for which the private-sector prefers to pay serf-wages and, thus, shall refuse to pay at any livable-wage rate--and those jobs, yes, many U.S. citizens simply cannot afford to take. Those that do take them are desperate refugees working on the U.S. employment black-market, paid illegally low wages, often in case as "casual day-laborers who enjoy no rights or benefits at all and are often treated viciously by the employer who knows damn well these people have no recourse but to take what they're given or quit --their job or even the country itself.

You crack my shit up!

>13 proximity1: Applicants can apply on-line.

>11 proximity1: "If you do not have a birth certificate or other documents, you can still obtain a document for voting that is valid for 180 days after one visit to the DMV

In other words, the page you originally linked to, and the words you quoted from it, are explicit in saying "one visit to the DMV". Your link contradicting your post doesn't actually say what you claim it does, and never mentions the IDPP. I've never seen anyone get a new photo ID without going to a DMV; if they go to the DMV, the DMV can take a fingerprint and a photograph, know they're both from the same person and there was at least no obvious masks or tricks going on.

LOL! "Economists will tell you..." really takes the cake.

Mockery isn't an argument, or really a response. Tossing new random shit out there is a debate tactic, but it's part of the reason a lot of scholars won't get in debates, because it just adds noise trying to hide the fact you can't answer an argument.

What's the value for someone voting? Monetarily, the probability I will shift an election and it will help me in the long run is incredibly low. Emotionally, how much time and money would people pay for one vote? Surely not enough that two hours of their life just to vote can be considered anywhere near free.

>14 prosfilaes:

"Applicants can apply on-line."

"If you do not have a birth certificate or other documents, you can still obtain a document for voting that is valid for 180 days after one visit to the DMV."
____________________

Both are true in certain cases. I see that, if an applicant cannot afford the usual ID fee, then, it's true, he has to appear at a DMV office in person with some documents to prove name, place of residence, age, citizenship --this is for voting purposes, after all-and his application is premised on the fees being waved from financial need. That's reasonable then--unless one wants to argue that everyone should be entitled to a state photo-ID without fee -- and one could make a case for that.

Now, you chose to notify us of the insanely limited office hours of the Sauk City DMV office. Horrors. However, there's a DMV office in Baraboo, (Distance from Sauk City, WI to Baraboo, WI
Distance 18 mi Time22 minutes) and its hours are Monday 7:00am - 5:00pm
Wednesday 7:00am - 5:00pm.

Really, to get a voter photo-ID does not appear to be the ordeal it's being made out to be.

"What's the value for someone voting? Monetarily, the probability I will shift an election and it will help me in the long run is incredibly low. Emotionally, how much time and money would people pay for one vote? Surely not enough that two hours of their life just to vote can be considered anywhere near free."

LOL! "just to vote"?

"Surely not enough that two hours of their life just to vote can be considered anywhere near free."?!?!?!

Okay. Now I get it: voting, in your view or that of your hypo(pa)thetical person here, is *really just not that important*. It might even cost two whole precious hours of one's life! The horror!

Okay then. Whatcha bitchin' about then? Nuthin'

Case closed, then.

>15 proximity1: Oh, and after >13 proximity1:, I'm going to officially come out and no longer read your posts. I'm doing this publically because people can point it out if I do reply to you, so I have external motivation to not read and not reply. Life's too short to spending time on stuff like >13 proximity1:.

>16 prosfilaes: Good for you.

You have nothing interesting to "contribute" here. You can't think straight, don't know the basic facts concerning the topics on which you venture opinions and, when challenged, you have only the rarest readiness to recognize your faults.

Don't read my posts and, certainly, don't reply to them. Good riddance.

>17 proximity1: Well played P1. Your constant incivility and negativity is driving people away. At this rate, you can declare Mission Accomplished and claim victory.

When we had this discussion, or something similar, before on LT, Tim Spalding said that the problem was people without proper ID, and to some extent I agree with him. I don't know how to deal with the problem of someone who has lost all form of ID to bootstrap from, but it's a real problem, and people need ID in our modern world. One of the problems with this Wisconsin voter ID, IMO, is that as far as I can tell, it's useless except for voting.

>19 prosfilaes: Apparently, by 2020 my NC Driver's license might not be enough to get me on an airplane:

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/traffic/article189301629.html

Federal Judge Holds Kansas Elections Official In Contempt Of Court

U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson says Kobach violated her preliminary injunction to allow some potentially ineligible voters to remain eligible to cast a ballot, pending the outcome of the lawsuit.

The judge found that the Kansas secretary of state, who has crusaded against voter fraud, failed to update his office's website informing some new voter applicants that they were still eligible to vote. She also found that Kobach's office did not send postcards to such voters, who had not shown proof-of-citizenship documents when they registered, as the judge required.

What a convenient little rule change by Mnuchin!

NRA and some other nonprofits will no longer need to identify their donors to the IRS
Critics say the rules could make it easier for politically active nonprofits to conceal foreign contributions, which are not allowed under election laws.

"The IRS is already a toothless watchdog when it comes to overseeing nonprofits," said Robert Maguire, political nonprofit investigator for the Center for Responsive Politics. "But it should have donor information that it can use to effectively oversee the political activity of these groups."

Maguire said this rule change allows "dark money" to flex its political muscle through anonymous donations.

"It's a boon to anyone who wants to spend large amounts of money on politics without any accountability," he said.

In my state (Michigan)...

Democracy on the Ballot
Eli Savit | July 17, 2018

Michigan voters want a chance to end partisan gerrymandering. Republican judges might not let them.

... A grassroots group called Voters Not Politicians collected almost 425,000 petition signatures—100,000 more than were needed—to get a proposal for an “independent redistricting commission” placed on the ballot this November. The initiative, which would amend the Michigan Constitution, calls for the state Legislature to be stripped of the power to draw districts, instead vesting that power in an independent, nonpartisan commission.

...A group called Citizens Protecting Michigan’s Constitution filed a lawsuit challenging the proposal’s place on the ballot, but that challenge was unanimously rejected by a three-judge panel. That rejection made sense, as constitutional amendments of this type are procedurally routine. In the past half-century, the Michigan Constitution has been amended 10 times via citizen-sponsored initiatives. What’s more, citizens in other states have used the exact same mechanism to break partisan gerrymandering’s stranglehold on their politics. Voters in California and Arizona, for example, have directly amended their state constitutions to provide for independent redistricting commissions.

Nevertheless, the Michigan Supreme Court stepped in earlier this month and announced it would hear an appeal in the case.

...the main legal argument against placing redistricting reform on Michigan’s ballot is highly dubious.

In light of the challenge’s legal infirmity, a Supreme Court decision to remove redistricting reform from the ballot would raise an unavoidable appearance of partisanship. In Michigan, gerrymandering strongly favors Republicans, with the state’s Republican lawmakers drawing some of the country’s most lopsided legislative maps. Unsurprisingly, Michigan’s Republican Party has publicly expressed its strong opposition to independent redistricting efforts. The kicker? Michigan is one of just 10 states that provide for partisan election of judges. Five of the seven justices on the Michigan Supreme Court are Republicans. Two of those Republicans are up for their party’s nomination in August, and for re-election this fall. If those justices vote to kick independent redistricting off the ballot—thereby protecting their party’s gerrymandered advantage—the scent of partisanship will be overwhelming.

It gets worse. Citizens Protecting Michigan’s Constitution, the shadowy group challenging the redistricting initiative, is heavily funded by the Michigan Chamber of Commerce. In recent years, the Chamber has spent lavishly to elect Republicans to the state Supreme Court. In 2016, it spent more to elect two Republican justices than those justices’ campaigns and the state Republican Party combined. Were the court’s Republican members to torpedo redistricting reform, it would create the inference that they acted at the behest not just of their party, but also of their biggest campaign contributor.

Those optics aren’t just bad—they’re unacceptable. As the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly admonished, “justice must satisfy the appearance of justice.” That’s why judges must recuse themselves from cases where the risk of bias appears intolerably high. Given the swirling morass of partisanship and money in this case, any decision by Republican justices to push redistricting reform off the ballot would appear unjust indeed. And that, in turn, would severely tarnish the Michigan Supreme Court’s reputation as an independent actor...

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/07/michigan-partisan-gerrymandering-vot...

Those pesky Russians again

https://www.npr.org/2018/07/13/628998843/maryland-investigates-russian-nationals...

Judge shuts down multi-million dollar loophole in election law.

https://www.npr.org/636143698

Might as well throw campaign finances into the mix here.

Stumbled across an Esquire article from May that applies.

Paul Ryan Just Made a Complete Mockery of Campaign Finance Rules

So Ryan (as a federally elected official) can't ask for $30 million, but he can make the entire case for it—and lend the scene a certain gravitas as perhaps the country's second most powerful elected official—then promptly leave the room so the sausage can get made.

Georgia county considering closing seven of nine polling places.

https://www.npr.org/641201292

https://www.npr.org/641556969

Georgia polling places to remain open after intense scrutiny.

The NYT has an in depth report on the Georgia story.

Georgia County Rejects Plan to Close 7 Polling Places in Majority-Black Area

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/23/us/randolph-county-georgia-voting.html

Federal Judges Say North Carolina Gerrymandering Is Unconstitutional

and

North Carolina's Gerrymandering Drama Is Only Going to Get Worse

Campaign finance watchdog site:

https://www.opensecrets.org/

Easy search function and summaries.

I looked up my Senators and Congressman.

Dark Money Groups Will Have To Disclose Their Donors In Time For The Midterms

The FEC will likely convene soon, according to Weintraub, to discuss and release guidelines for groups on how to comply with the new disclosure rules. The commission will not be able before the election to issue any regulation to replace the old one invalidated by the court, as it has to abide by federal laws allowing a long public comment period. “The timing’s not great,” Weintraub said.

Dark money groups will likely either stop spending money on the 2018 midterm elections to avoid having to disclose their donors or shift tactics.

The court ruling covered only independent expenditures — for ads or other efforts that call for the election or defeat of candidates. The ruling does not cover electioneering communications, better known as issue ads, which applies to spending by outside groups that stops short of calling for the election or defeat of a candidate. That could be an ad that names a candidate and says terrible things about the person but ends with a request for viewers to call the candidate’s office and say how they feel.

Still, this is a major disturbance for the 2018 campaign strategies of both political parties.

A new book is scheduled for release soon, by a professor of communications:

Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President—What We Don’t, Can’t, and Do Know, by Kathleen Hall Jamieson

How Russia Helped Swing the Election for Trump

Her case is based on a growing body of knowledge about the electronic warfare waged by Russian trolls and hackers—whom she terms “discourse saboteurs”—and on five decades’ worth of academic studies about what kinds of persuasion can influence voters, and under what circumstances.

"...it is not just plausible that Russia changed the outcome of the 2016 election—it is “likely that it did.”

Knock the Vote ~

Watch the video

https://knockthe.vote/

Another big Democratic loss. And yet more complaints about a ‘rigged’ system.
Aaron Blake | October 8, 2018

...Brett M. Kavanaugh...was an unpopular nominee confirmed by senators representing less than half of the total U.S. population (not to mention that he was appointed by a president who lost the popular vote). The Senate these days can reach a majority, in fact, with the votes of senators representing 17 percent of the population.

GovTrack has also done some good work noting that the Senate, as with Kavanaugh, is indeed increasingly relying upon the votes of senators who represent a minority of the country... (See charts at website!)

...(in the beginning) there were vast differences in the populations of states, with Virginia having 12 times as many people as Delaware. Both states were given two senators.

Today the gap between the biggest state and smallest state is closer to 70 times — California vs. Wyoming — but that difference is actually smaller than it has been for most of the past 150 years.

...Republicans have positioned themselves politically to take advantage of this; Democrats have done a decidedly poorer job.

...redistricting

...electoral college

....filibuster

... why the other side has been able to work that system in a way you haven’t.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/10/08/another-big-democratic-loss-y...

______________________________________________________________

Can't find the quote online, but I recall a Benjamin Franklin biography had him giving the Constitution 300 years at best(?)

What Franklin thought of the Constitution
September 17, 2010 by Hilary Parkinson

... I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other. I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the Builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another’s throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best...

https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2010/09/17/what-franklin-thought-of-the-cons...

>35 margd: Republicans have positioned themselves politically to take advantage of this; Democrats have done a decidedly poorer job.

I don't buy it. If the US is divided into two parties relatively equally, one of them is going to represent more strongly the desires of New York and California (the "coastal elites") and one of them is going to represent more strongly the desires of the South and the center (the "fly-over states") We're currently quite polarized (it was weird to go back to 1980 and earlier Presidential elections and see New York and California vote Republican or on different sides), but the way the country is split up, one party is going to suffer from this problem.

Think Trump and GOP minority rule is bad now? Here’s how it could get much worse.
Greg Sargent | October 9, 2018

...In the midterms, it is possible Democrats could win the national popular vote in the House by up to five or six percentage points, but still fall short of winning control of the lower chamber. That is, in part, because of the geographically inefficient sorting of Democratic voters, but it is also very much because of Republican gerrymandering of House districts.

The political theorist Jacob Levy points out that if all this were to happen, then the political aspirations and values of a minority of Americans will dominate or have gone a long way towards shaping the White House, the Supreme Court, and both houses of Congress. Levy posits that one can still fundamentally accept many countermajoritarian aspects of our system while also finding such an across-the-board outcome deeply troubling. As Levy notes: “It’s a problem for democratic government if a majority can’t gain entry anywhere.”...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/10/09/think-trump-and-gop...

Georgia Republican candidate blocks 53,000 voter registrations, mostly of black people
Igor Derysh | October 11, 2018

Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is also the Republican nominee for governor this year, is blocking 53,000 voter registrations ahead of his election.

According to records obtained by the Associated Press, 70 percent of the applications blocked were from African-Americans, even though the state's population is only 32 percent black.

The registration purge was the result of the controversial “exact match” program, which requires the voter registration application to have identical information as the person's information in the state's Department of Driver Services database or the Social Security Administration’s records. This means that any minor discrepancy, such as a missing hyphen or middle initial, could result in a rejection. The program has a long history of disproportionately affecting minority voters...

https://www.salon.com/2018/10/11/georgia-republican-candidate-blocks-53000-voter...

Texas:

Campaign Worker Arrested After IDing His Candidate As Democrat
Josh Marshall | October 10, 2018 11:04 pm

...Democrat Mike Siegel is running against Rep. Michael T. McCaul (R) in Texas’s 10th district. This evening I saw a tweet from Siegel which said: “Just learned that my field director was arrested while delivering our letter. He told police he was working for me and the officer asked, “what party is he?” Now Jacob is under 48 hour investigatory detention in Waller County.”

In the 10th district, there’s a historically black university called Prairie View A&M University. There’s a long history of the local county government (Waller County) trying to prevent the students there from voting. There was even a big Supreme Court case about it in 1979. This year local officials have put a new set of obstacles in the way of the students voting.

As Siegel explained to me, Siegel’s campaign wrote a letter proposing a solution to the problem and sent a campaign staffer, Jacob Aronowitz, to deliver it to the County Courthouse in Waller County. In Texas, the County Judge (in this case Waller County Judge Carbett “Trey” J. Duhon III) is actually the county executive, not a judge as we usually use the term. In any case, Aronowitz presented the letter to a member of the County Clerk’s staff and then took a picture of himself submitting the letter as a sort of proof of service. It’s not clear whether this was County Clerk Debbie Hollan or another member of the clerk’s office. Whoever it was got upset that he’d taken a picture and called over a bailiff – she apparently thought her privacy had been violated by taking the photograph...

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/campaign-worker-arrested-after-iding-his-ca...

Jim Crow 2.0
Republicans Have a Secret Weapon in the Midterms: Voter Suppression
Jay Michaelson | 10.12.18

After losing in 2012, the GOP enacted the harshest limits on voting since Jim Crow. It could make the difference this year from Florida to North Dakota.

...A review by The Daily Beast found at least five voter-suppression practices in active use today. All are led by Republicans, all have disproportionate effects on non-white populations, and all are rationalized by bogus claims of voter fraud. They include:

Closing polling places in communities of color
Purging eligible voters from the rolls without their knowledge
Barring felons from voting
Voter ID laws
Eliminating early voting

Each one of these alone is troubling. In the aggregate, though, they paint an unmistakable picture of Republican efforts to hold on to power in an increasingly non-white nation by making it harder for non-white people to vote...

...Ultimately, the Republican voter-suppression scam is just about math. There are too many black and brown people in the country for the Republican Party to retain power with a narrow base of white support. If there weren’t systemic voter suppression, the states of Texas, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia would likely be Democrat-led today or in the very near future. So what choice to Republicans have but to forestall the inevitable and prevent people of color from voting for as long as they can?...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/republicans-have-a-secret-weapon-in-the-midterms-v...

The Supreme Court Just Made It Harder for Native Americans to Vote in North Dakota
Natasha Bach | October 10th, 2018

The Supreme Court...decision Tuesday...refused to intervene in a challenge to a North Dakota voter ID law.

The law requires that North Dakota residents provide identification that includes a residential street address in order to vote. But the state is home to thousands of Native Americans and others who do not have standard addresses, which the challengers argued would effectively disenfranchise them.

http://amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2018/10/10/supreme-court-north-dakota-voter-id-la...

All of these attempts to dissuade/disable voters are totally pathetic. Can't win on merit? Then let's cheat!

A Group Of Black Senior Citizens Was Told To Get Off A Bus That Was Taking Them To Vote
Talal Ansari | October 17, 2018

...A group of black senior citizens was ordered off a bus that was taking them to vote after the county clerk called the senior (county-run) center from where they were departing, prompting claims of voter intimidation.

"Voter suppression is real, y'all, and it happened to us today in Louisville, Georgia, in Jefferson County," Black Voters Matter Fund, the nonprofit that organized the bus ride, wrote on Facebook on Monday.

Dozens of elderly black voters in Jefferson County boarded the bus, ready to go cast ballots during early voting, only to be told by the director of the senior center that they had to disembark.

...According to County Administrator Adam Brett, the event was a "political activity" because a Jefferson County Democratic Party member helped organize the event.

"Jefferson County administration felt uncomfortable with allowing senior center patrons to leave the facility in a bus with an unknown third party," Brett said in a statement to the paper. "No seniors at the Jefferson County senior center were denied their right to vote" ...

...The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the senior citizens were told they could still go vote in a van provided by the senior center, but the center's administration eventually concluded it was close to lunch time and the group could vote another day.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/talalansari/black-senior-citizens-voter-int...

>38 margd: (43, too) More voter suppression in Georgia:

GOP candidate improperly purged 340,000 from Georgia voter rolls, investigation claims
Erin Durkin | Fri 19 Oct 2018

...latest voting rights controversy in race pitting secretary of state Brian Kemp against (African American) Democrat Stacey Abrams (for Governor of Georgia)

...340,134 voters were removed from the rolls on the grounds that they had moved – but they actually still live at the address where they are registered.

...Under Georgia procedures, registered voters who have not cast ballots for three years are sent a notice asking them to confirm they still live at their address. If they don’t return it, they are marked inactive. If they don’t vote for two more general elections after that, they are removed from the rolls.

Georgia removed more than 534,000 voters that way in 2016 and 2017. Using databases employed by commercial mailing firms, analysts...found that 334,134 of those citizens actually still live at the address they registered.

Of the rest, 41,797 had in fact moved out of state, and 8,990 moved from one county to another within Georgia. More than 19,000 had died. Others could not be determined.

...Lawsuits have also charged that Kemp blocked the registrations of 50,000 would-be voters, 80% of them black, Latino or Asian, because of minor discrepancies in the spelling or spacing of their name. Another suit targeted the state’s most diverse county after it rejected an unusually large number of absentee ballots...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/19/georgia-governor-race-voter-supp...

All levels of government and Law Enforcement are watching carefully for VOTER FRAUD, including during EARLY VOTING. Cheat at your own peril. Violators will be subject to maximum penalties, both civil and criminal!
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump | 5:36 PM - 20 Oct 2018

Normally this stuff is printed on anonymous, deniable flyers and thrust under minority voters' doors in the dead of night
David Frum @davidfrum | 6:53 AM - 21 Oct 2018

Voter-Suppression Tactics in the Age of Trump
Jelani Cobb | October 29, 2018

The suppression of minority votes is the homegrown corollary of the Administration’s xenophobic rhetoric—an attempt to place a white thumb on the demographic scale

...According to the Brennan Center for Justice, ninety-nine bills designed to diminish voter access were introduced last year in thirty-one state legislatures. Many of the recent Republican-led efforts stem from the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby v. Holder. In an opinion that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that discrimination still exists, but not sufficiently to warrant the “extraordinary” remediation measures that the act imposed on the states of the former Confederacy. That argument is roughly equivalent to saying that a decline in the prevalence of an infectious disease means that we should stop vaccinating against it. Within hours of the decision, Texas announced a strict new voter-I.D. law. Mississippi and Alabama shortly afterward began enforcing similar laws that previously had been barred...

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/29/voter-suppression-tactics-in-the-a...

___________________________________________________

One Person, No Vote by historian Carol Anderson

White hats Lyft, Uber, Steve Madden, Johnnie Walker et al. helping voters get to polls after sole polling place moved outside city,
a MILE from nearest bus stop!!

Lyft Partners With Voto Latino to Help Get Dodge City Voters to the Polls
Natasha Bach | Oct 22, 2018

Less than a week after the sole polling place in Dodge City, Kansas was moved outside city limits, corporate sponsors are pledging to help voters get to the polls.

Since 2002, Dodge City had one polling place for its 27,000 residents: at the civic center. But ahead of next month’s election, officials moved it outside of the city, to a location that is more than a mile from the nearest bus stop.

The city is 60% Hispanic, a group which has historically low voter turnout rates, but is even lower in Dodge City. In a state where Hispanic voters, who tend to vote Democratic, could play a key role in the governor’s race, poor turnout could have wide implications.

...Latino activist group Voto Latino announced that it was partnering with Lyft to help bring Dodge City voters to their new polling place.

...Voto Latino said Steve Madden and Johnnie Walker were also sponsoring the rides, along with additional funds being raised through Act Blue.

This is not Lyft’s first foray into getting out the vote come November. Both Lyft and its competitor Uber are offering free and discounted rides to the polls on Election Day.

http://fortune.com/2018/10/05/uber-lyft-free-rides-polls-election-day/

Exclusive: In Leaked Audio, Brian Kemp Expresses Concern Over Georgians Exercising Their Right to Vote

Brian Kemp, Georgia Secretary of State and the Republican nominee for Georgia governor, expressed at a ticketed campaign event that his Democratic opponent Stacey Abrams’ voter turnout operation “continues to concern us, especially if everybody uses and exercises their right to vote,” according to audio obtained by Rolling Stone.

...
Kemp’s position as Georgia’s Secretary of State clouds his statements. While it is not uncommon for someone in such a position to be on a ballot during an election that he or she oversees — they do have to run for re-election, after all — the state’s top elections official speaking of “concern” about increased early and absentee voting raises further questions about a conflict of interest.

In Arkansas, Garland County leaves Susan Inman off election ballot

A voter intending to vote for Inman (a Democrat) noticed the omission at 8:15 a.m. today and notified officials, who immediately halted voting until the error could be fixed, Haley said. But 222 ballots were completed by then.

>47 margd: Dodge City, KS (Kobach's state) gets worse:

New voters get notices listing wrong Dodge City polling site
ROXANA HEGEMAN | 10/26/2018

...citing road construction, officials recently moved (polling place) for the November election to the Expo Center outside of town and more than a mile from the nearest bus stop.

“I didn’t know this could get worse, and it did: ‘Hey, let’s move the site and not tell new registrants where they are supposed to go,’” said Johnny Dunlap, chairman of the Ford County Democratic Party.

Local election officials are now scrambling to notify newly registered voters who might be confused by its official registration notice that listed only their regular polling site — not the temporary site for the November election. At the same time, voting rights activists are marshalling their resources to get Dodge City voters to the new polling place — an effort boosted by an outpouring of money and volunteers after widespread national coverage...

https://www.apnews.com/e1b4e441d4a448b98f129fcde0556a98

Voters report Texas voting machines changing straight-party selections

The problem reportedly exists for both Democratic and Republican voters, with some Democrats reporting machines erroneously selecting Sen. Ted Cruz (R) as their candidate of choice while Republicans attempting to vote for Cruz have reported the machines dropping their votes and selecting no candidate at all.

Might be legit, though some fear intent is to intimidate Dem voters:

Wisconsin National Guard troops activated for Election Day
NBC15 Staff / Associated Press | Nov 02, 2018

...Joy Staab, Deputy Director of Public Affairs for the Wisconsin Department of Military Affairs, said...the order is a "heads up" for the cybersecurity team. She said if the team is activated, it would be behind the scenes and not seen at the polls.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission spokesperson Reid Magney told NBC15 there no signs of a cyber threat...

https://www.nbc15.com/content/news/Walker-activates-National-Guard-troops-for-El...

Judge rules against Brian Kemp over Georgia voting restrictions days before gubernatorial election
Eli Rosenberg | November 2, 2018

Georgia must change its procedures to make it easier for some people flagged under the state’s restrictive “exact match” law to vote, a federal judge ruled Friday, dealing a blow to Republican gubernatorial candidate and Secretary of State Brian Kemp.

The “exact match” law flags voter registrations that are found to have discrepancies, such as a dropped hyphen, with other official identifications. Potential voters are allowed to settle the discrepancy by providing proof of identity.

But the state’s procedures under Kemp, whose office oversees elections, stipulated that those who had been flagged as potential noncitizens be cleared first by a deputy registrar when seeking to vote.

U.S. District Judge Eleanor L. Ross...required the state to change its procedures immediately to allow those flagged, some 3,100 individuals, to prove their citizenship more easily, with a U.S. passport or similar documentation, and only to a poll manager...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/11/03/judge-rules-against-brian-kem...

Well, is it blue ink or black ink required on absentee ballots in North Dakota?

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/31/18047922/north-dakota-voter-i...

According to map, Dems would likely win my district if they won 57% of national vote:

What It Takes to Win: Our Interactive Map Shows How Gerrymandering Will Skew the 2018 Election
October 18, 2018

The results won’t reflect what voters want. That underlines the urgent need for fair maps...

https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/mapping-how-gerrymandering-will-affect-20...

_____________________________________________________________

We Don’t Know Who Will Win the House. That’s Because the Maps Are Rigged
Tim Lau | November 4, 2018

Thanks to extreme gerrymandering, the midterms won’t reflect the voice of the people...

https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/we-dont-know-who-will-win-house-because-maps-...

In New York, non-functioning voting booths, polls not opening timely...

As historic election begins, scattered problems spread at city voting sites

- Multiple machines are broken at PS 705 Brooklyn Arts and Science Elementary School, for the second election in a row

- At PS 56 in the Clinton Hill section of Brooklyn, just one scanning machine was functioning, reported Zaheer Bowen, a City Limits reporter.

- At the Breukelen Houses community center in Canarsie, Brooklyn, the polling spot opened two hours late, the city Board of Elections acknowledged. The agency blamed key-card issues with NYCHA.

- At another polling site, ABC-7 reported that “The polling workers stated that they do not have the key to open the doors and now we have to wait til 7 to vote. The voting booth was supposed to be open at 6 a.m.” Firefighters had to open the doors of the polling place.

I'm sure this sort of thing happens during any election day. But now everyone is watching.

Voters turned away at Detroit polling site due to missing voting machines

Standing Rock Sioux @StandingRockST (https://twitter.com/StandingRockST) | 2:11 PM - 4 Nov 2018

Standing Rock will not let its vote be suppressed. In just 10 days we've issued 650 new free IDs, and our people have cast 350 absentee ballots (c.f. 77 in previous years). With help from our allies @4directionsvote and @lakotalaw we're on track to vote in higher numbers than ever. Wopila! #NativeVote2018
1:52 (video clip)

Norm Eisen @NormEisen (https://twitter.com/NormEisen) | Nov 5:

We outlined all the major threats to the election — and responses to the threats—here. Most important: if you are a candidate & suspect any anomalies, do not concede. Demand an audit or other available remedies.

All the potential threats to the 2018 midterm elections
Andrew Kenealy, Norman Eisen, and Darrell M. West, The Brookings Institution | Oct. 28, 2018
https://www.businessinsider.com/potential-threats-2018-midterm-elections-2018-10

Border Patrol cancels election morning "crowd control" demonstration in El Paso
Julián Aguilar | Nov. 6, 2018

Agents didn't give a reason for cancelling the "mobile field force demonstration" but said it will be re-scheduled.

...the U.S. Border Patrol abruptly cancelled its Election Day "crowd control exercise" without immediately stating a reason. Three agents who greeted about a dozen reporters near the Paso Del Norte Port of Entry Tuesday morning said it will be re-scheduled.

The agency had planned a "mobile field force demonstration" — the latest conspicuous show of force at the border by the federal government ahead of the midterm elections...

State Reps. Rafael Anchía, D-Dallas, and Mary Gonzalez, D-Clint, the chair and vice-chair of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, condemned the timing of the exercise Monday and called on the Border Patrol to cancel it.

“This administration continues to use immigration policy for political purposes," they said in a written statement. "The made-for-media ‘crowd control’ drill, conducted on Election Day, is a cynical effort to suppress the Latino vote in a region seeing record turnout.”

https://www.texastribune.org/2018/11/06/border-patrol-election-day-midterms-demo...

Lotsa brown voters in that photo of a Georgia waiting line...

...UPDATED: Technical issues create long lines at Gwinnett precincts
Tyler Estep Amanda C. Coyne, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution | 3 hours ago11/6/2018

In a contentious — and litigious — election season across the state, Gwinnett County has faced extra scrutiny. It was singled out in voting rights lawsuits due to its rejection of an inordinate amount of absentee ballots.

https://www.ajc.com/news/local-govt--politics/machines-down-hundreds-wait-one-gw...

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) @RepSwalwell | 10:02 AM - 6 Nov 2018

If you’re seeing screwy things at the polls/being denied your vote, do 3 things:

1) report it: (866)OUR-VOTE
2) don’t leave — insist on voting w/provisional ballot
3) DON’T panic tweet. Panic begets panic and can unintentionally suppress others (exactly what GOP wants)

#Vote

Texas election official resigns after video shows her screaming at black voter

Williamson County Elections Administrator Chris Davis also told the news station he believes the woman who Guzman was yelling at arrived at the polling site after she was turned away from another one.

"I regret that that incident happened with that poll worker because that voter was just trying to get answers that weren't being provided to her in a way that we train our poll workers to give," said Davis.

Voters Approve Major Changes To Redistricting And Other Voting Laws

In the ballot measures that passed Tuesday, voters in at least three states took the power to determine political boundaries away from state legislatures, while a similar proposition in Utah was too close to call. Voter registration deadlines could become a thing of the past in three states that are making it easier to take part in elections.

Several states approved initiatives adopting voter ID laws that are aimed at curbing voter fraud (which has proved close to nonexistent despite claims to the contrary).

In Florida, voters approved a measure that automatically restores voting rights to most felons who have completed their sentences.

eta some numbers:

Florida voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to restore voting rights to an estimated 1.5 million former felons, including roughly 500,000 African-Americans. Another article claims that last figure represents 40% of adult male Africa-Americans in Florida.

This article discusses broadly what the Democrats plan in the House.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/us/politics/trump-house-senate.html

In regards to this thread:

Democratic leaders have already said they plan to use their first month in the House majority to advance sweeping changes to future campaign and ethics laws, including outlawing the gerrymandering of congressional districts and restoring key enforcement provisions to the Voting Rights Act.

Daughter tells me she couldn't sit still yesterday, so continued to canvass in her neighborhood, asking if people had voted and if they needed any assistance to do so. Late in the day, one person said her mother was a newly minted citizen, but would need an interpreter to help her in the voting booth. Anne got on the phone and arranged the details and drove the woman to the polling location. Yay!

And then she helped another voter go through the process of submitting a provisional vote as he lacked the needed ID.

Remember the Nov. 2016 recount that was done in Wisconsin after Trump took the state by 23,000 votes?--the one that the Green Party initiated. I was reading an article from Business Insider and......

Well very soon to be former Gov. Scott Walker and friends were so angry about that that they changed the law in Wisconsin on recounts. They put a new threshold % of 0.25 for a loser to be able to demand a recount. That shit wasn't ever going to happen again. So anyway last night the very brand new lame duck Gov. Walker lost his re-election by 1.2% and first thing he did was to demand a recount--a look over of damaged and absentee ballots and other such nonsense and formerly he would have been within his rights but because of the law he and his friends put into place to stop all the recounting bullshit that's no longer the case and he's out of a job and out on his ass.

Just saying--that that much condemned and criticized so-called publicity stunt pulled off by Jill Stein and her cronies bit a complete fuckhead in the ass 2 years later.

>68 lriley: "They put a new threshold % of 0.25 for a loser to be able to demand a recount."

No, it's 1%.

Here's a NYT analysis of four gerrymandered states Ohio, North Carolina, Michigan and Texas ~

The ‘Blue Wave’ Wasn’t Enough to Overcome Republican Gerrymanders

In May, Ohioans voted overwhelmingly to put redistricting in the hands of a bipartisan commission rather than self-interested legislators, and, on Tuesday, voters also approved reform measures in Colorado, Michigan and Missouri. (Utahns voted on a measure, too, but as of Wednesday afternoon the vote was too close to call.)
…

The congressional district maps will next be redrawn in 2021. If voters continue to demand redistricting reform, those maps should be much fairer and better reflect their interests.

They may look similar to California and Arizona, two states where the maps were drawn by independent citizens commissions – the gold standard of redistricting.

(me: 2021! It can't wait that long!)

#69--you're right. The 0.25 is an automatic recount. Between 0.25 and 1% the candidate asking for the recount has to pay for it. After that there's no recourse or recount. Walker lost by 1.2 or shit out of luck.

>71 lriley: "The 0.25 is an automatic recount."

The official-looking Election Recount Procedures document I linked to says: "There is no automatic recount."

from Politico

Republicans used redistricting to build a wall around the House. Trump just tore it down.

“We won those House seats because of the unique factors that all came together in a once-in-a-generation election — driven by Trump — to bring that margin about,” said Kelly Ward, executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.

She noted that many of Democrats’ gains came in states with maps from courts or commissions, as opposed to seats created by Republican gerrymandering.

“These districts are still not fair," Ward said of the overall House map. "It’s like we just finished book four of Harry Potter, but the bad guys are still out there.”

Democrats Say Their First Bill Will Focus On Strengthening Democracy At Home

Party leaders say the first legislative vote in the House will come on H.R. 1, a magnum opus of provisions that Democrats believe will strengthen U.S. democratic institutions and traditions.

The bill would establish automatic voter registration and reinvigorate the Voting Rights Act, crippled by a Supreme Court decision in 2013. It would take away redistricting power from state legislatures and give it to independent commissions.

Other provisions would overturn the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, which declared political spending is First Amendment free speech; they would mandate more disclosure of outside money and establish a public financing match for small contributions.

Ethics language in the bill would strike closer to current controversies. When President Trump took office, he said — accurately — that the ban on conflicts of interest doesn't cover presidents. The bill would close that loophole, while expanding the anti-bribery law and requiring presidential candidates to make their tax returns public.

Much of what's proposed in the Sarbanes bill is controversial. "A lot of it looks to be unconstitutional," said David Keating, president of the Institute for Free Speech, a group that's opposed to many campaign finance regulations. "They say they want to amend the First Amendment," he said, referring to the language repealing Citizens United. "What gives government the right to regulate speech about the president and Congress?"

Democrats reject that analysis. "The path back to having the public trust government and politics is a long one, but we have to start someplace," Sarbanes said.

In Florida Recount, Sloppy Signatures May Disqualify Thousands of Votes
Glenn Thrush, Audra D. S. Burch and Frances Robles | Nov. 14, 2018

...her mail-in ballot in Florida was rejected because her signature did not match the one on record with elections officials...the culprit was a driver’s license signature, hastily squiggled on an electronic signature pad two years earlier.

...a pre-election study by the American Civil Liberties Union in Florida, which found that young voters were more likely to have their mail-in ballots rejected because, in part, they did not use their handwriting enough to develop a steady signature.

...In Georgia, the organization sued Brian Kemp, the secretary of state and a candidate for governor in another undecided race, for disqualifying nearly 600 absentee ballots as a result of alleged signature mismatches.

...In Florida, out of more than 2 million ballots cast by mail, lawyers in Mr. Nelson’s lawsuit said state officials had identified about 5,000 that were rejected over questions of signature validity and other ballot issues. However, Mr. Smith, who conducted the A.C.L.U.’s study on the signature issue, said he had obtained data from the Florida secretary of state showing that as of Nov. 12, at least 20,000 ballots had been thrown out during this election, about half of them because of signature mismatches and similar issues.

...Republicans, from President Trump on down, have blasted the legal effort as an attempt to hijack the election.

...Marc Elias, a lawyer representing the Democrats, said the solution was to do away with the signature crosscheck altogether and just require voters to sign a form attesting to their identity. “We don’t need untrained people making judgments about something they know nothing about,” he said...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/us/voting-signatures-matching-elections.html

If the credit card companies accept those squiggles on the electronic pads, the officials might, too.
I can't make my signature look right on those to save my life!

Ari Berman @AriBerman | 10:53 AM - 15 Nov 2018:
Democrats won 54% of votes for state assembly in Wisconsin but Republicans got 63% of seats.
This is stunning...

No contest: Dems sweep statewide offices in midterms but remain underrepresented in Assembly
Dylan Brogan | November 15, 2018

...Despite Democrats winning every statewide office on the ballot and receiving 200,000 more total votes, Republicans lost just one seat in Wisconsin’s lower house this cycle. And that victory was by a razor-thin 153 votes. Democrats netted 1.3 million votes for Assembly, 54 percent statewide. Even so, Vos will return to the Capitol in 2019 with Republicans holding 63 of 99 seats in the Assembly, a nearly two-thirds majority...

https://isthmus.com/news/news/dems-sweep-statewide-offices-in-midterms-but-remai...

I’ve Worked in Republican Politics. The Party’s Voter Suppression in the Midterms Has Been a Disgrace
Elise Jordan | November 15, 2018

...During my time in Republican politics, I overlooked plenty of unseemly partisan warfare. But the voter suppression of our citizens that we’ve seen this year is something that no American can ignore.

...it wasn’t easy to vote in Georgia, because of broken voting machines, or functional machines with missing power cords, or too few machines—and, at the very least, hours-long lines. (A U.S. District judge characterized of Kemp’s leadership in a ruling on Georgia’s readiness: “The Defendants and State election officials had buried their heads in the sand.”) If all this had occurred in Iraq or Afghanistan or Zimbabwe, American election monitors would protest the result.

...The needed reform isn’t that complex. People like Kemp—and his counterparts in Kansas and Ohio who did the same, plus Florida Governor Rick Scott—have no business refereeing an election in which they’re competing. Resign-to-run, or even recuse-to-run, laws should be universal. Additionally, former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson has rightly suggested election infrastructure be categorized as critical, like the electric grid. And though I lean libertarian, I would also like to see a new national commission on voting; too many local and state authorities have a proven track record of incompetency...

http://time.com/5455179/georgia-brian-kemp-voter-suppression-recount-republicans...

The Broward county voting ballot may have cost Nelson his Senate spot. Apparently the State of Florida doesn't standardize it's own ballot. The counties decide how they want to design them and in heavily Democratic Broward the Senate race was stuck away in a corner so that a lot of people not seeing it didn't vote and that hurt Nelson a lot more than Scott. So as far as Brenda Snipes--she is fucked up enough that she shouldn't be in the job. But really it shouldn't be on her or the people working for her to design the ballot. The State of Florida should be standardizing it so it look the same everywhere for statewide races. Former Gov. Scott benefits from it not being so to become Sen. Scott.

Mother Jones enumerates Georgia's voting rights sins under Brian Kemp's hand:

Brian Kemp’s Win In Georgia Is Tainted by Voter Suppression

When he was running for reelection as secretary of state in 2014, Kemp warned: “Democrats are working hard registering all these minority voters that are out there and others that are sitting on the sidelines. If they can do that, they can win these elections in November.” Kemp did everything in his power to make sure that didn’t happen in 2018—and that’s a big reason why he, and not Abrams, will be Georgia’s next governor.

What Do Republicans Have Against High-Turnout Elections? Everything
Lame-duck Governor Scott Walker is talking about rewriting Wisconsin election rules to thwart a future high-turnout election.
John Nichols | 11/19/2018

...as a lame-duck governor whose conservative project is tanking, Walker suddenly realizes that he “always” wanted to upend Wisconsin elections so that voters could be forced to cast ballots in a nonpartisan February primary for the court, a partisan March primary for the presidential nominations, and a nonpartisan April general election for the court—and then a partisan primary for state and federal posts in August and a partisan general election in November.

The move Walker and his wrecking crew are pondering would cost taxpayers millions of dollars. But it would also cut turnout for Wisconsin’s April 2020 Supreme Court race. And that, of course, is the point. High-turnout elections attract voters Walker and his cronies would prefer to keep away from the polling places...

https://www.thenation.com/article/voter-turnout-scott-walker/

Count all the votes!

Of course, "all" means including:

- The valid ones...and the invalid ones.

- Those of the living...and the dead.

- Those of the citizens...and non-citizens.

- Those of people who can correctly check a box...and those who need a Democratic party operation to "correct" their ballots after the fact.

The biannual sh!tshow that is the American electoral process tell us that:

- Voter education (perhaps focusing on such helpful learning objectives such as "how to use a writing implement," "how not to vote twice," "how to follow basic instructions," or "how not to wait until the last f*cking minute to sort out your personal sh!t") might be a good thing.

- Close looks at election processes and those in charge might be a good thing.

- Appointment of representatives of both parties to all election committees, boards, governing authorities of all kinds in order to prevent opportunity for the likes of Brenda Snipes or a Republican equivalent to run amok might be a good thing.

But blanket acceptance of every piece of paper that might be a "vote" after the fact is not a good thing.

>82 St._Troy: There's no real evidence of invalid voting, unlike voter suppression and gerrymandering.

Huh! North Carolina seems to have had some serious voter fraud going on in several locations, but they appear to be plots to steal the votes of the poor and uneducated.

Certification in limbo in N.C. House race as fraud investigation continues

The board is collecting sworn statements from voters in rural Bladen and Robeson counties, near the South Carolina border, who described people coming to their doors and urging them to hand over their absentee ballots, sometimes without filling them out. Others described receiving absentee ballots by mail that they had not requested. It is illegal to take someone else’s ballot and turn it in.

Investigators are also scrutinizing unusually high numbers of absentee ballots cast in Bladen County, in both the general election and the May 8 primary, in which Harris defeated incumbent Rep. Robert Pittenger (R) by 828 votes. In the primary, Harris won 96 percent of all absentee ballots in Bladen, a far higher percentage than his win in the county overall — a statistic that this week is prompting fresh accusations of fraud.

Another irregularity in both the primary and general elections is the high number of absentee ballots in some precincts that were requested but not turned in.

In one sworn statement, Bladen County voter Datesha Montgomery attested that, on Oct. 12, a young woman came to her door and asked for her ballot, stating that she was collecting people’s ballots in the area.

“I filled out two names on the ballot, Hakeem Brown for Sheriff and Vince Rozier for board of education,” Montgomery wrote in the affidavit. “She stated the others were not important. I gave her the ballot and she said she would finish it herself. I signed the ballot and she left. It was not sealed up at any time.”
…
Adding to the uncertainty is a political battle over control of the state board itself. State judges have thrown out two laws enacted by the GOP-controlled General Assembly intended to wrest control of the board from Gov. Roy Cooper (D); as a result, the current board is scheduled to dissolve early next week. That throws into doubt not only the fate of the fraud investigation in the 9th District, but the timing of certification of the Harris-McCready results.
…
Stone said county residents had reported that people were going door-to-door, telling voters that their registrations had been dropped and they needed to re-register. They were also asked to sign an absentee ballot request form, Stone said.

At least five affidavits submitted to the state board described various instances of fraud, including multiple occasions when people came to voters’ doors to collect ballots and offered to fill them out for them.

Emma Shipman, 87, submitted an affidavit saying she gave a woman a filled-out absentee ballot. She said in an interview that the woman had come to her neighborhood, a predominantly African American cluster of homes in the town of Tar Heel.

“She said she was there to get older people to vote,” Shipman said. “She was kind of pushing me to do it.”

The one place they can prove large-scale voter fraud...and it's perpetrated by Republicans.

I hadn't heard the term ballot harvesting before.

Ballot harvesting: A person requests a mail ballot for someone else or steals a mail ballot, then uses that ballot and forges the intended recipient's signature. Also refers to filling out a ballot for someone else who has requested assistance in filling out a ballot, rather than assisting them. In some states, ballot harvesting refers to the legal practice of third-party collection of multiple absentee ballots for submission.

Paul Ryan questions California's 'bizarre' vote-counting process

"Ballot harvesting" is when a third party collects completed ballots from voters and hands them over to election officials. The practice was legal for the first time in California this year.

It's not a simple yes or no issue.

Would You Give Your Ballot to a Stranger?

As more states and counties adopt vote-by-mail systems and absentee voting, there are more ballots outside the control of election officials, said Wendy Underhill, NCSL’s director of elections and redistricting. Measures like banning “ballot harvesting” are among the many that lawmakers now consider fine-tuning procedures, Underhill said. But the debate over such bans has grown heated.

In Montana - "For many of these would-be voters, simple things such as getting stamps, fixing a flat tire or filling up enough gas to make it across this reservation — which is larger than Delaware — may be difficult, since more than a third of Blackfeet live below the poverty line."

In California - Matthew Harper, a California Republican assemblyman who authored a proposed ban on ballot harvesting that died in committee earlier this year, said he’s not concerned about family members returning absentee ballots. He is, however, concerned that groups like labor unions might collect unsealed ballots or intimidate voters into voting a certain way.

“The way I see it, it turns all elections into a union card-check election,” Harper said. “They might go house to house, person to person, and there’s no secret ballot. They can see if you voted the right way.”

In Wisconsin ~

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/03/us/wisconsin-lawmakers-republicans-power.html

>88 2wonderY: Lame duckery / sore losery & foul play: from Merrick Garland to WI & MI...

Midwestern Republicans Try To Kneecap New Democratic Governors
In Wisconsin and Michigan, GOP legislatures aren’t taking the party’s losses well.
Kevin Robillard and Sam Levine | 12/03/2018

...The plan would move the date of (Wisconsin's) 2020 presidential primary from April to March, while keeping the election for the court seat in April. With a competitive Democratic presidential race and no real GOP challenge to President Donald Trump, liberal turnout is likely to be sky-high. By separating the presidential primary from the court contest,, Republicans hope a conservative judge will have a better shot at re-election. | Sixty of the 72 county clerks in Wisconsin oppose moving the primary date. On Monday, the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission voted unanimously to send written testimony to the Legislature saying that moving the primary date would be “extraordinarily difficult” and could cost the state between $6.4 and $6.8 million.

...The Democratic Governors’ Association, which spent heavily to help elect Evers and Whitmer (Wi and MI incoming governors) predicted the GOP attempts to curtail the new governors’ would prove self-defeating.

“These legislatures are the worst kind of sore losers. When your football team loses the game, you can’t change the rules to make a field goal worth 10 points instead,” said Jared Leopold, the group’s communications director. “But that’s exactly the dangerous game that Republican legislatures are playing. This amounts to political self-sabotage: These illegal actions will be thrown out in court, while damaging the states’ reputation and economies.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/midwestern-republicans-try-to-kneecap-new-d...

Thanks margd! I was going to fix and expand that story this morning. Can't do much from my iPhone.

>84 2wonderY: Woman says she was paid to collect absentee ballots in North Carolina House race

An absentee ballot witness said Monday that a Bladen County, N.C., electioneer paid her to collect absentee ballots from last month's midterm elections.

Ginger Eason told WSOCTV, a local news station in Charlotte, that Leslie McCrae Dowless, Jr. paid her between $75 and $100 to pick up completed absentee ballots for North Carolina's 9th District, the results of which are being officially investigated.
…
Eason added that she didn't see who people were voting for, but that she never mailed the ballots. Instead, she gave them to Dowless, adding that he did not mention to her that what she was doing was illegal.

#91--this Dowless guy apparently was working for something called the Red Dome Group--basically some conservative get out the vote thing but the Red Dome Group officially dissolved as a business/political entity in 2017. Still Mark Harris's campaign financial records has him paying the Red Dome Group for this year's election---$428,908---!??!? and what's more Dowless not only was paid as a contracted employee by the Harris campaign but if the Harris campaign was successful he was going to get a very nice $40,000 bonus. Might as well add that Dowless apparently has a criminal record for fraud and has served time in prison for it.

So the Preacher and the Jailbird. I'd say there's a decent chance that Harris was at least a little bit aware of what Dowless was up to and/or even a little bit aware of Dowless's criminal history and if so he'd be as culpable. If not aware of either though I would think he'd be disqualifiable just for gormlessness and stupidity. That's just a personal opinion though. It's not like it would be proof he's any dumber than the guy in the White House who I also think is unqualified.

More details on the NC story.

Red Dome Group is still active according to their website:
https://www.reddomegroup.com/

North Carolina election-fraud investigation centers on operative with criminal history who worked for GOP congressional candidate

On Monday, the board issued a subpoena to the Harris campaign, according to campaign attorney John Branch. The board is expected to issue one soon to Red Dome Group, a GOP consulting firm based in the suburbs of Charlotte that hired Dowless, according to two people familiar with the probe.

The elections board has collected information suggesting that high-level officials in the campaign may have been aware of Dowless’s activities, according to the two people.
…
Two officials close to the investigation said it remains unclear how many mail-in absentee ballots were allegedly diverted.

Investigators with the bipartisan state elections board — which last week voted unanimously to delay certifying the race — have identified hundreds of potential witnesses to interview, many of them voters whose absentee ballots were never turned in, according to the people familiar with the probe. That raises the possibility of a weeks-long investigation and an uncertain start date for the next congressman from the 9th District.
…
He (Dowless) first came under scrutiny from the state elections board in 2016, when officials began investigating similar ballot irregularities, leading to a public hearing.
…
Smith (landlord of the office space used) said Dowless bragged about his ability to deliver as many as 900 absentee ballots in Bladen County, and Smith said he talked excitedly of expanding his operation beyond Bladen in his work for Harris in the 9th District, which stretches more than 100 miles from Charlotte to the Fayetteville area in the east.

Smith said Dowless also spoke of running the absentee-ballot programs for multiple candidates. Campaign records show that he was paid this year by a failed Charlotte City Council candidate, Pete Givens (R), as well as McVicker.
…
Seven residents of Village Oak interviewed Sunday recounted seeing the operation in action. Jeneva Legions, 30, who works at the Family Dollar store down the road, said several women came to her apartment in October right after her absentee ballot had arrived in the mail.

Legions said one of the women urged her to fill out her name, Social Security number and signature. When that woman came back, “she just said, ‘I’ll take it,’ and I gave it to her.” The ballot wasn’t sealed, Legions said. Legions said she does not remember filling out the ballot but would have voted a straight Democratic ticket. State records show that her mail-in ballot was never returned to county elections officials.

Asked why she turned over the ballot, Legions said: “You know, I’m thinking, she’s with, you know, the voting people. So I’m thinking she’s coming by to get my ballot.”

Hoyer: Dems won’t seat Harris until North Carolina fraud allegations are resolved

#93--FWIW I got the information that the Red Dome Group had been dissolved from a local (as in NC-9th congressional district) newscast on the story. They were the ones who said the group had dissolved in 2017. Maybe they didn't do enough homework or maybe they got some conflicting information when they were doing their own investigation.

Beyond that though though this group and Dowless helped to primary the Republican incumbent Robert Pettinger for the Harris campaign earlier in the year and it was pretty much the same story back then. They seemingly got away with it the first time. Personally my take is that not only Dowless is crooked but Harris too. I also don't think this is going to certified. There's going to be another election.

http://www.wbtv.com/2018/12/04/notes-suggest-second-person-ran-absentee-ballot-o...

So there's a second guy now. An unhappy business owner--one Jeff Smith--who left a bunch of incriminating notes laying about. We see that for picking up 150 unsealed ballots a person could make $500 or $1000 for picking up 250---so somebody (Harris?) had their eyes on kind of a big operation of turning hundreds if not thousands of votes and there was a party planned at a restaurant the night after the election.
Anyway it's more than enough as far as I'm concerned to throw the entire thing out and not only the Nov. 7 result but the Republican primary as well as it looks to me that the Harris campaign cheated there too. This man of God (who by the way was recently interviewed and congratulated by Sarah Huckabee's dad) is a piece of shit and much more so than your typical piece of shit republican politician.

The only fair way to re-do this is to have another republican primary....and if Harris is in any way culpable in this vote stealing scheme he's out (and hopefully going to jail) and then to do another election with McCready as the Democratic candidate against whoever wins the Republican primary.

>95 lriley: Smith was the landlord interviewed at #93.

On Chris Hayes show he reports the number of ballots requested but not returned at 3400.

ETA: That number confirmed in a story by The Washington Post:

Republican officials had early warnings of voting irregularities in North Carolina

The GOP CAN"T be that rotten? Must be associated strategists of dirty tricks guys, surely?
Maybe after going undetected so long, these folks are beginning to bleed into party proper? The tar baby effect?

The extreme right's playbook? YIKES!

Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent’s Stealth Takeover of America
Lynn Parramore | May 30, 2018

...By the 1990s, Koch realized that (Nobel laureate James) Buchanan’s ideas — transmitted through stealth and deliberate deception, as (Duke historian Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains, a finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction) amply documents — could help take government down through incremental assaults that the media would hardly notice. The tycoon knew that the project was extremely radical, even a “revolution” in governance, but he talked like a conservative to make his plans sound more palatable.

...Most Americans haven’t seen what’s coming.

MacLean notes that when the Kochs’ control of the GOP kicked into high gear after the financial crisis of 2007-08, many were so stunned by the “shock-and-awe” tactics of shutting down government, destroying labor unions, and rolling back services that meet citizens’ basic necessities that few realized that many leading the charge had been trained in economics at Virginia institutions, especially George Mason University. Wasn’t it just a new, particularly vicious wave of partisan politics?

It wasn’t. MacLean convincingly illustrates that it was something far more disturbing.

...many liberals have missed the point of strategies like privatization. Efforts to “reform” public education and Social Security are not just about a preference for the private sector over the public sector, she argues. You can wrap your head around those, even if you don’t agree. Instead, MacLean contends, the goal of these strategies is to radically alter power relations, weakening pro-public forces and enhancing the lobbying power and commitment of the corporations that take over public services and resources, thus advancing the plans to dismantle democracy and make way for a return to oligarchy. The majority will be held captive so that the wealthy can finally be free to do as they please, no matter how destructive.

MacLean argues that despite the rhetoric of Virginia school acolytes, shrinking big government is not really the point. The oligarchs require a government with tremendous new powers so that they can bypass the will of the people. This, as MacLean points out, requires greatly expanding police powers “to control the resultant popular anger.” The spreading use of pre-emption by GOP-controlled state legislatures to suppress local progressive victories such as living wage ordinances is another example of the right’s aggressive use of state power.

Could these right-wing capitalists allow private companies to fill prisons with helpless citizens—or, more profitable still, right-less undocumented immigrants? They could, and have. Might they engineer a retirement crisis by moving Americans to inadequate 401(k)s? Done. Take away the rights of consumers and workers to bring grievances to court by making them sign forced arbitration agreements? Check. Gut public education to the point where ordinary people have such bleak prospects that they have no energy to fight back? Getting it done.

Would they even refuse children clean water? Actually, yes. (Flint, Michigan)

...a way of thinking that has deep roots in America. In Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative (2005), Buchanan considers the charge of heartlessness made against the kind of classic liberal that he took himself to be. MacLean interprets his discussion to mean that people who “failed to foresee and save money for their future needs” are to be treated, as Buchanan put it, “as subordinate members of the species, akin to…animals who are dependent.’”

Do you have your education, health care, and retirement personally funded against all possible exigencies? Then that means you.

...The rules of the game are now clear.

Research like MacLean’s provides hope that toxic ideas like Buchanan’s may finally begin to face public scrutiny. Yet at this very moment, the Kochs’ State Policy Network and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group that connects corporate agents to conservative lawmakers to produce legislation, are involved in projects that the Trump-obsessed media hardly notices, like pumping money into state judicial races. Their aim is to stack the legal deck against Americans in ways that MacLean argues may have even bigger effects than Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court ruling which unleashed unlimited corporate spending on American politics. The goal is to create a judiciary that will interpret the Constitution in favor of corporations and the wealthy in ways that Buchanan would have heartily approved.

“The United States is now at one of those historic forks in the road whose outcome will prove as fateful as those of the 1860s, the 1930s, and the 1960s,” writes MacLean. “To value liberty for the wealthy minority above all else and enshrine it in the nation’s governing rules, as Calhoun and Buchanan both called for and the Koch network is achieving, play by play, is to consent to an oligarchy in all but the outer husk of representative form.”

Nobody can say we weren’t warned.

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/meet-the-economist-behind-the-on...

#98---Trump has made the Koch brothers into almost sympathetic characters at least for some--simply because they've had differences and they're not him. An enemy of another enemy is not always a friend. Anyone watching what happened in Wisconsin a couple days ago got a good look at what the Koch agenda is all about. Scott Walker and the republician legislature there are paid and bought acolytes of the Koch brothers vision for subverting American democracy and turning it into a 100% oligarchy. They know they're not going to be able to win majorities by playing fair. That's why all the voter suppression, gerrymandering and underhanded legal maneuverings.

>98 margd: I guess I don't see how you can conclude that article is a warning. I would say the article is an announcement that we've had it - game over - we the people have lost and the end of this country and the promise it offered is a done deal.

I sure hope the electorate stays woken and it's not too late to turn things around. Must have felt as discouraging in Gilded Age?
Except that this time Mother Nature has put limits on time we have to fix, so now's a particularly perilous time...

Maybe knowing that there really is a method behind GOP's apparent madness will make it easier to address? Otherwise, whack-a-mole....

Thomas B. Edsall in the NYT:

When does the “appearance of influence or access” just become plain old corruption?

Edsall offers a summary of opinions from both sides and offers some concrete examples of how coordination between candidates and donors works in the real world. He asks whether Justice Kennedy has second thoughts. Apparently not.

He explains:
Sanford Levinson, a member of the law school faculty and the department of government at the University of Texas, argued in an email to me that:

Citizens United reveals the importance of having a Supreme Court completely devoid of a single individual who has ever participated in electoral politics. This helps to reinforce, I believe, the tendency of the Justices to think in terms of arid formalistic abstractions — including Kennedy’s views about corporations and the First Amendment — rather than address the actual realities of our political system.

Citizens United Is Still Doing the Dirty Work

Citizens United has turned campaign finance into a system universally disdained by the public, a system even more ethically unmoored than the one obtained before Watergate in the days when, to quote (Dan) Eggen again:

The money poured into Richard M. Nixon’s re-election campaign from all corners: Six-figure checks flown by corporate jet from Texas; bundles of payments handed over at an Illinois game preserve; a battered brown attaché case stuffed with $200,000 in cash from a New Jersey investor hoping to fend off a fraud investigation.

The difference now is that the checks are bigger.

How did this come about? Essentially, by legal fiat: a declaration by five Supreme Court justices that what looks, smells and feels like corruption is not in fact corruption.

Laurence Tribe has summed up the decision succinctly:

The Supreme Court’s sin in Citizens United is not that it has been wrong to recognize and embrace the libertarian values that inhere in the First Amendment. But the libertarian campaign finance law the Court has developed fails in the broader project vital to First Amendment jurisprudence: the sensitive accommodation of competing constitutional values. The Court has not only underemphasized the egalitarian strain in First Amendment law — it has rejected that strain outright. And it has failed to recognize the range of plainly legitimate conceptions of democracy that Americans hold, instead privileging one view, democracy-by-financial-contributions, above all others.

The likelihood that the current conservative majority would take into account the “egalitarian strain in First Amendment law,” as described by Tribe, is zero.

In Citizens United, the court pointedly overturned a 1990 ruling, Austin v Michigan Chamber of Commerce. In doing so, the court explicitly rejected the finding in Austin that regulation of corporate political spending is justified as a legitimate means of remedying the inequity that grows out of the fact that state-created advantages not only allow corporations to play a dominant role in the Nation’s economy, but also permit them to use “resources amassed in the economic marketplace” to obtain “an unfair advantage in the political marketplace.”

The American system of campaign finance, undergirded by a Supreme Court whose conservative members feign innocence, has become the enabler of corrosive processes of economic and political inequality. Surely the justices are not benighted enough to believe that Paul Ryan and his ilk have no idea what they are doing.

In this context, Tribe writes:

The Citizens United Court took the narrowest possible view of corruption, maintaining that the only legitimate government interest in this field is the prevention of quid pro quo corruption. But, as many have argued in response, quid pro quo corruption is far too narrow a governmental interest to identify as constitutionally relevant. It is an interest that does not begin to reflect the full stakes at issue in the campaign finance realm: the health of American democracy itself. Unless the notion of interests sufficiently compelling to count in the First Amendment calculus is strangely truncated to exclude interests this fundamental simply because they appear imprecise or diffuse, courts must recognize a compelling interest in combating corruption broadly defined as a distortion in the political process, understood to include a deviation from the ideal of equal representation embodied in Federalist 57.

Tribe’s view is shared by Martin Gilens, a political scientist at Princeton, who wrote in “Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America”:

As resources flow toward the already most advantaged Americans, their ability to use those resources to shape policy increases. Of course rich Americans hold diverse preferences, just as the poor and the middle class. But despite some prominent liberal counterexamples, rich Americans tend to support the economic policies from which they have so greatly benefited. This raises the disturbing prospect of a vicious cycle in which growing economic and political inequality are mutually reinforcing.

We are seeing that vicious cycle in operation today, with a Supreme Court incapable of applying either reason or common sense to stop the madness.

>101 margd: I hate to take the position of the extreme wet blanket but I must admit I don't see how an awakened electorate is going to matter much - just look at the nullification of the will of the electorate in Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina and, I'm sure,within a couple of years, most of the states in the U.S. Given the ability to steal power in that manner means all of the talk about declining numbers of Republican voters is irrelevant. Couple this with a rewording of the last sentence in >102 2wonderY: "a Supreme Court incapable of whose only interest applying either reason or common sense to stop is enforcing the madness." and what you have is the end of the road.

We should have a movement to outlaw lame duck sessions of legislatures. Once you've lost an election you shouldn't be allowed to legislate.

#104--I agree.

I was taught that the gap between elections and swearing-in was due to allowances for travel time from the states to the Capitol. Lame duck sessions only existed so that the country wouldn’t be without a legislature in case of emergency. That obviously no longer applies.

After Possible Data Leak, North Carolina Edges Closer to a New Election

In recent weeks, Democrats released an affidavit by Agnes Willis, an assistant who worked at the local elections board, who said that on Nov. 3, the last day of early voting, the tape showing election results “was run after the polls closed, and was viewed by officials” who were not election judges.

A lawyer for the Democrats later wrote to the state board, saying that Democrats had learned that Bladen County officials had illegally leaked absentee vote totals to Republicans, but withheld it from Democrats.

On Tuesday, Republicans said that if such a leak occurred it would violate their core principles.

“We are extremely concerned that early voting totals may have been leaked in Bladen County as reported by The Charlotte Observer,” Mr. Hayes said in his statement, referring to a story that appeared in that paper on Monday. “This action by election officials would be a fundamental violation of the sense of fair play, honesty, and integrity that the Republican Party stands for. We can never tolerate the state putting its thumb on the scale. The people involved in this must be held accountable and should it be true, this fact alone would likely require a new election.”

The Corruption of the Republican Party
George Packer | Dec 14, 2018

...The corruption of the Republican Party in the Trump era seemed to set in with breathtaking speed. In fact, it took more than a half century to reach the point where faced with a choice between democracy and power, the party chose the latter. Its leaders don’t see a dilemma—democratic principles turn out to be disposable tools, sometimes useful, sometimes inconvenient. The higher cause is conservatism, but the highest is power. After Wisconsin Democrats swept statewide offices last month, Robin Vos, speaker of the assembly, explained why Republicans would have to get rid of the old rules: “We are going to have a very liberal governor who is going to enact policies that are in direct contrast to what many of us believe in.”

As Bertolt Brecht wrote of East Germany’s ruling party:

Would it not be easier

In that case for the government

To dissolve the people

And elect another?

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/how-did-republican-party-get-s...

In Michigan, the lame duck, GOP-dominated Legislature is attempting to constrain citizen referendas, which most recently legalized recreational marijuana.

House Bill 6595 would require that no more than 15 percent of petition signatures come from any one of Michigan’s congressional districts. That targets more populated districts such as Dem-leaning Detroit (and Ann Arbor?) and is undemocratic. Little hope trhat Senate will vote it down, but perhaps Governor Snyder (R) will veto?

The Legislature has undercut other popular votes such as sick leave and minimum wage. The latter they pre-empted with a lesser action of their own which they just postponed to point of meaningless. Gov Snyder with his business background signed that one: "jobs".

>93 2wonderY: I live near "district 9" in North Carolina and actually donated a small amount of money to the Democratic candidate ,Dan McCready , just before the election. From the latest I have heard we may go all the way back to a primary for both parties if the feds call for a new election and only the original 3 Republican, Democratic and Independent candidates if the state requires another election. The details , as you mentioned, of the manipulation of the write in votes gets more bizarre as time goes on. The local TV stations have interviewed a lot voters who were conned by the organizer.
,

Another state that doesn't respect clear choice by the people? :-(

Florida lawmakers might not give voting rights back to felons, even though 64% of voters want them to
Mariana Alfaro | Dec. 13, 2018

Some Florida lawmakers are arguing the state needs more time before restoring felons' voting rights.

Nearly 65% of Floridians voted in favor of an amendment that would do just that.

Governor-elect Ron DeSantis said "implementing language" must be approved by the state legislature before being signed by him...

https://www.businessinsider.com/florida-lawmakers-might-not-restore-voting-right...

The Path to Give California 12 Senators, and Vermont Just One
Eric W. Orts | Jan 2, 2019

Maybe the two-senators-per-state rule isn’t as permanent as it seems.

...Let’s allocate one seat to each state automatically to preserve federalism, but apportion the rest based on population.

...Article V, in describing the amendment process, stipulates that “no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.”

This seems like a showstopper, and some scholars say it’s “unthinkable” that the one-state, two-senators rule can ever be changed. But, look, when conservative lawyers first argued that the Affordable Care Act violated the Commerce Clause, that seemed unthinkable, too. Our Constitution is more malleable than many imagine.

First, consider that Article V applies only to amendments. Congress would adopt the Rule of One Hundred scheme as a statute; let’s call it the Senate Reform Act. Because it’s legislation rather than an amendment, Article V would—arguably—not apply.

Second, the states, through the various voting-rights amendments—the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-Fourth, and Twenty-Sixth—have already given their “consent” by directing Congress to adopt legislation to protect equal voting rights, and this delegated power explicitly applies to “the United States” as well as the states. The Senate Reform Act would simply shift seats according to population. No state or its citizens would lose the franchise.

...a Senate Reform Act could make America a democracy again.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/heres-how-fix-senate/579172/

Democrats’ First Order of Business: Making It Easier to Vote and Harder to Buy Elections
Ari Berman | January 4, 2019 11:03 AM

..HR 1: The For the People Act, would make it easier to vote, crack down on gerrymandering, and reduce the influence of big money in congressional races. It would also institute new ethics rules, including one requiring sitting presidents and presidential candidates to release their tax returns.

The bill has three major parts, beginning with a slew of measures designed to expand voting rights, which would counteract Republican voter suppression efforts. These include nationwide automatic voter registration, Election Day registration, two weeks of early voting in every state, an end to aggressive voter purging, funding for states to adopt paper ballots, the restoration of voting rights for ex-felons, and declaring Election Day a federal holiday. While states control their voting laws, Congress has the power to set voting procedures for federal elections.

The bill would also target partisan gerrymandering by requiring independent commissions instead of state legislatures to draw congressional maps. Furthermore, the bill calls on Congress to restore the full strength of the Voting Rights Act at a future date, after the Supreme Court gutted it in 2013. House Democrats are planning to hold a vote to expand the Voting Rights Act and require the federal government to approve any voting changes in states with a well-documented history of recent voting discrimination, but first they’ll convene hearings on the prevalence of voter suppression in GOP-controlled states.

The second section of the bill tackles campaign finance reform to address the skyrocketing costs of congressional campaigns and increasing influence of corporate money. This includes a new small-donor matching system to encourage congressional candidates to rely on public financing instead of large donors, so that every $100 raised would trigger $600 in matching public funds. The bill also requires dark-money groups to disclose their donors.

The third section would enact ethics and lobbying reforms. Most notable is the requirement that sitting presidents and vice presidents, along with candidates for those offices, release their tax returns from the past 10 years. This is clearly aimed at President Donald Trump, who was the first major party nominee in 40 years not to release any of his tax returns...

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/01/democrats-first-order-of-business-m...

ETA___________________________________________________________________

House Hearings Begin for Historic Anti-Corruption Bill

It’s the first time in decades that either party has made comprehensive reform a central priority.
Tim Lau | January 30, 2019

...Tuesday...the House Judiciary Committee held its first hearing on H.R. 1, the For the People Act. House Democratic lawmakers introduced the voting, campaign finance, and gerrymandering reform bill on January 3, the first day of the 116th Congress.

...In testimony provided to the House Judiciary Committee’s chairman and ranking member, the Brennan Center provided insight on the specific provisions discussed in the hearing, urging Congress to prioritize:

Restoring and updating the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which ensures every citizen the equal right to vote regardless of race
Combating deceptive practices such as voting misinformation and intimidation
Voting rights restoration for citizens with past criminal convictions
Redistricting reform to counter the rise of extreme partisan gerrymandering
Combating Citizens United, a Supreme Court ruling that permitted corporations to spend unlimited money on elections
Strengthening government ethics, including applying a code of conduct to Supreme Court justices...

https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/house-hearings-begin-historic-anti-corruption...

North Carolina Election Official: Sure Looks Like Fraud to Us

Key witness testifies to tampering with absentee ballots in N.C, House race

(Lisa) Britt said some of the ballots she collected were unsealed and uncompleted and testified she filled out the options left blank for Republican candidates — an admission of vote tampering that violates North Carolina law.

The board looked into absentee ballot irregularities, the disclosure of early voting results and election security. They found that 595 people failed to return absentee ballots in Bladen County and another 1,493 people failed to do so in Robeson County, a significant number considering the narrow margin separating the two candidates.

>114 2wonderY: I live in NC and the local newspaper, The Charlotte Observer, has a special section that has the latest news on the voting issues. There have been numerous videos of a hearing? - some kind of court thing where they invited a lot of "those concerned" to be there. The top guy has lawyered up and is saying nothing. Weird in that people were convinced to illegally manipulate ballots for $300 or less!

Mark Harris backs down from his demand that the 2018 election results in NC 9 be certified.

GOP Candidate's Son Says He Warned Of Potential Illegal Activity In N.C. Election

Investigators say Dowless' efforts went beyond what is legal in North Carolina, but Harris has said publicly a number of times that he knew nothing about any illegal activity being done on behalf of his campaign. Testimony by his own son on Wednesday calls those assertions into question.
...
Harris' son, John Harris, is an assistant U.S. attorney in North Carolina. He said Wednesday that he reviewed the 2016 primary results after Harris was defeated by incumbent Robert Pittenger.

He noticed oddities in vote-by-mail results in Bladen County, where the third-place finisher, Todd Johnson, won a near sweep of those ballots in the county. Dowless worked on behalf of Johnson in 2016.

John Harris then looked at publicly available data on when ballots were received and noticed that the absentee ballots were returned in "batches."

That led him to believe that someone was collecting ballots and turning them in.

"Did you talk about those concerns with Mark Harris?" asked Kim Strach, the executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections.

"I did," said John Harris.

New Mexico passes bill allowing same-day voter registration
Owen Daugherty - 03/15/19

The New Mexico legislature passed a bill on Thursday that would allow same-day voter registration in the state.

The Associated Press reported Friday that the New Mexico House and Senate agreed to a final version of the measure that would also expand automated registration services to state agencies.

The legislation now heads to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s (D) desk for her signature.

Under New Mexico's current law, voter registration closes 28 days before Election Day...

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/434339-new-mexico-passes-bill-allowing-...

House Republicans Are Upset Democrats Are Investigating Voter Suppression Allegations
Sam Levine | 04/15/2019

...Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee voiced their objections Monday in a letter to Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the committee chairman, and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who chairs a subcommittee on civil rights and civil liberties. The two Democrats sent letters to officials in Georgia, Texas and Kansas earlier this year asking for documents related to controversial election decisions in 2018.

“We have serious concerns that your letters appear to be an attempt to insert the Committee into particular state election proceedings, for which we do not see a legitimate legislative purpose,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the ranking member on the committee, wrote in a letter signed by three other Republicans. “By seeking voluminous records relating to election administration of sovereign states, your investigation offends state-federal comity. In fact, the respective states are already working to resolve any issues with their election administration.”

The U.S. Constitution gives states the authority to determine the “Times, Places and Manner” of elections but also gives Congress the authority to make its own regulations or “alter” state election laws.

The Republicans also wrote directly to the officials in the three states the committee is focused on and suggested the inquiry was not legitimate. One of the state officials, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), told the committee last week he was rebuffing the request for information. GOP Reps. Chip Roy (Texas), Jody Hice (Ga.) and Michael Cloud (Texas) also signed Jordan’s letter...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/house-republicans-voter-suppression-probe_n_5cb4e...

After Democrats Surged In 2018, Republican-Run States Eye New Curbs On Voting
Ashley Lopez, Bret Jaspers, Sergio Martínez-Beltrán | April 22, 20195:00 AM ET

After high turnout in last year's midterm elections propelled Democrats to a new House majority and big gains in the states, several Republican-controlled state legislatures are attempting to change voting-related rules in ways that might reduce future voter turnout.

In Texas, state lawmakers are considering adding criminal penalties for people who improperly fill out voter registration forms. Arizona Republicans are proposing new voting rules that could make it more complicated to cast an early ballot. In Tennessee, GOP lawmakers are considering a bill that would fine groups involved in voter registration drives that submit incomplete forms.
Georgia Governor Signs Law Addressing Some Criticisms Of Contested 2018 Election
Politics
Georgia Governor Signs Law Addressing Some Criticisms Of Contested 2018 Election

Republican lawmakers in those states say new laws are needed to maintain the integrity of voter rolls and prevent fraud. Voting rights advocates and Democrats dismiss those claims and argue that the policies are designed to dampen turnout among younger, nonwhite and poorer voters, who are less likely to back Republicans.

If enacted, these proposals could have an impact on future elections, especially in Arizona and Texas, where demographic and political trends are making both states more competitive on the national level for the first time in decades...

https://www.npr.org/2019/04/22/714950127/after-democrats-surged-in-2018-republic...

Judges Rule Michigan Districts Are Unconstitutionally Gerrymandered
Lisa Hagen | April 26, 2019

A three-judge panel in Michigan ordered the state to redraw its congressional and legislative districts by (August 1 for) the 2020 election, but the implementation of that decision could ultimately hinge on how the Supreme Court rules on two similar cases this summer.

In a Thursday opinion penned by U.S. Circuit Judge Eric Clay, the panel of the U.S. District Court of Eastern Michigan ruled that the map approved in 2011 by the GOP-led legislature "was to subordinate the interests of Democratic voters and entrench Republicans in power," deeming it a "durable partisan gerrymander."

...If lawmakers don't meet the deadline, the court will oversee the drawing of new lines. The court ruled that nine of 14 U.S. House districts are unconstitutional as well as 25 districts in Michigan's state House and Senate.

...Republicans in the state have already vowed to appeal the case to the Supreme Court, which is set to decide on two other gerrymandering cases in North Carolina and Maryland by the end of June. The North Carolina case involves an alleged Republican gerrymander, while the Maryland case involves an alleged Democratic one.

...GOP attorneys may ask the high court to put the ruling on hold until decisions are made in the two pending Supreme Court gerrymandering cases. The Detroit News also reported that Republican state Senate Majority Leader Shirkey said the state Senate is "reviewing the details of the ruling and will file an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court" but "will prepare to comply with this most recent ruling while we await the outcome of the appeal."

During oral arguments for the other two cases at the high court in March, some justices expressed caution about the court weighing in on gerrymandering matters. But the opinion from the Michigan-based court called on the federal court system to take action to curb partisan gerrymandering.

...Even if a new map is created, the lines will be redrawn again by a recently approved independent citizens redistricting commission for the 2022 election after the 2020 census is conducted.

https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2019-04-26/judges-rule-michigan-di...

Federal Court Throws Out Ohio's Congressional Map
Gabe Rosenberg | May 3, 20192:19 PM ET

...In their ruling Friday, a three-judge panel from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio argue that the map was intentionally drawn "to disadvantage Democratic voters and entrench Republican representatives in power." The court argues the map violates voters' constitutional right to choose their representatives and exceeds the state's powers under Article I of the Constitution.

"Accordingly, we declare Ohio's 2012 map an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander, enjoin its use in the 2020 election, and order the enactment of a constitutionally viable replacement," the judges wrote in their decision.

The decision is likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is currently deliberating challenges to congressional maps from Maryland and North Carolina.

...You can view the complete ruling below or at this link.

Sixth District Court: Ohio ... by on Scribd...

https://www.npr.org/2019/05/03/720047669/federal-court-throws-out-ohios-congress...

The Texas legislature wants to make it illegal to give people a ride to the polls except under limited conditions.

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/05/texas-is-about-to-make-it-illegal-for-a-group-o...

Supreme Court dismisses challenge to findings of racial gerrymandering in Virginia districts
Robert Barnes and Laura Vozzella | June 17, 2019 2:20 PM

The Supreme Court dismissed the challenge to a lower court’s findings that some of Virginia’s legislative districts were racially gerrymandered, saying Monday that House Republicans did not have legal standing to challenge the decision.

The decision could give an advantage to the state’s Democrats. All 140 seats in the legislature are on the ballot this fall, and the GOP holds two-seat majorities in both the House (51 to 49) and the Senate (21 to 19)...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-dismisses-chall...

Supreme Court Says Constitution Does Not Bar Partisan Gerrymandering
Adam Liptak | June 27, 2019

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled against the challengers opposed to partisan gerrymandering, the practice in which the party that controls the state legislature draws voting maps to help elect its candidates.

The vote in two cases was 5 to 4, with the court’s more conservative members in the majority. The court appeared to close the door on such claims.

The drafters of the Constitution, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority, understood that politics would play a role in drawing election districts when they gave the task to state legislatures. Judges, the chief justice said, are not entitled to second-guess lawmakers’ judgments.

“We conclude that partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts,” the chief justice wrote.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/us/politics/supreme-court-gerrymandering.html

>124 margd:

“Of all times to abandon the Court’s duty to declare the law, this was not the one."

Justice Elena Kagan dissented for the court’s liberals. “For the first time ever, this court refuses to remedy a constitutional violation because it thinks the task beyond judicial capabilities,” she wrote.

Kagan underscored her disagreement by reading — at times, emotionally — a lengthy excerpt of her dissent from the bench.

“The gerrymanders here — and others like them — violated the constitutional rights of many hundreds of thousands of American citizens,” she said.

“The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government. Part of the court’s role in that system is to defend its foundations. None is more important than free and fair elections.” She closed by saying her dissent was “with respect, but deep sadness.”

Welcome to the world of the Supreme Republican Court of the Untied States- Extreme voter suppression and Evangelical Sharia law here we come.

Hang in there, Ruth. We're coming!

Gov. Bill Lee signs new Tennessee law that punishes voter signup missteps; lawsuit filed
Jonathan Mattise | May 3, 2019

The bill requires voter registration groups to undergo training.
But it also would impose civil fines for submitting more than 100 incomplete forms.
Violations are class A misdemeanors, which carry fines up to $2,500.
Gov. Bill Lee signed the bill Thursday; A federal lawsuit was immediately filed challenging the new law.

Tennessee's governor signed GOP-backed legislation Thursday that would likely make his state the first to fine voter registration groups for turning in too many incomplete signup forms, prompting a federal lawsuit and protests by critics who said it would suppress efforts to register minorities and other voters.

Tennessee's NAACP chapter and other groups immediately sued the state after Gov. Bill Lee signed the bill into law, which was backed by Republican Secretary of State Tre Hargett and is to take effect in October. Among other steps, the measure would allow criminal penalties for submitting registration forms too late and for shirking other new regulations.

The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonprofit, helped file the lawsuit, which alleges that the law would "violate the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and have a chilling effect on the exercise of fundamental First Amendment rights." The group called the law "one of the most restrictive voter suppression measures that we have seen this year."

The bill won passage in a legislature with a GOP supermajority despite vocal protests from Democrats and voting rights groups. Critics argued that threats of civil penalties and misdemeanors could discourage people from helping others become civically engaged in a state that ranks dismally low in voter participation...

https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2019/05/03/tennessee-voter-regist...

Bill Barr's nefarious plan isn't over: Why the "census question" was only the beginning
Don't be fooled by Team Trump backing away on the census: They're still committed to locking down Republican power

Heather Digby Parton | July 12, 2019

...As we have now learned from the documents retrieved from the computer of late Republican operative Thomas Hofeller, the whole point of this exercise was to exclude a large number of non-citizens from the census count used to determine the number and location of congressional districts in each state. That would give GOP-controlled state legislatures a chance to draw districts that would help Republicans gain more seats.

On Thursday, Trump said straight out that "some states may want to draw districts based on voter-eligible population,” so they aren't even trying to hide this anymore. But Barr said something even more troubling at the end of his remarks. This isn't just about redistricting:

"That information will be useful for countless purposes, as the President explained in his remarks today. For example, there is a current dispute over whether illegal aliens can be included for apportionment purposes. Depending on the resolution of that dispute, this data may possibly prove relevant. We will be studying the issue."

That "dispute" refers to a case just filed in Alabama in which the state argues that including undocumented immigrants when apportioning congressional seats deprives Alabama of its “rightful share of political representation,” on the premise that it's losing out to states with more non-citizens. Barr obviously sees this as the better vehicle to accomplish his goal: Fewer districts with likely Democratic majorities.

So the administration's decision to back off the census question may look like a surrender, but it wasn't the end of this drama by a long shot. It's only the beginning.

https://www.salon.com/2019/07/12/bill-barrs-nefarious-plan-isnt-over-why-the-cen...

Jon Ward @jonward11 | 7:11 AM · Aug 6, 2019:

Conservatives incline to believe voter fraud stories. Liberals lean toward voter suppression. How often do we really dig into the details of a case and follow the facts where they lead? That’s what we did in a big case in Georgia.

The leader of the Quitman 10+2, Nancy Dennard, is a lifelong educator. She faced 11 felonies & was then offered a plea deal if she would admit wrongdoing. She refused to do so. All her charges were dismissed. She is now mayor of Quitman. (1:45 video at link)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How a criminal investigation in Georgia set an ominous tone for African-American voters
Jon Ward • August 5, 2019

...Quitman, GA became a poster-child case among conservatives that voter fraud was a real and serious threat...

The Quitman case was the first major investigation under (then newly appointed Secretary of State, now Governor) Kemp during his time as secretary of state, and it set a tone for his tenure. It also provided fodder for Republicans around the country who argued that voter fraud is a significant problem, despite a lack of evidence of any widespread or large-scale examples. ..

But for (Nancy Dennard, who has a master’s degree in speech pathology, as well as an educational doctorate, and was a county school board member who had just turned 50 and recently helped elect a slate of new candidates) and the rest of the Quitman 10+2, the events of 2010 were far more than a talking point in a broader political battle. It created an impression in the African-American community that any attempts to aggressively claim the right to vote would be punished, and the punishments portrayed as an act of justice.

...The state government, operating under the authority of a newly appointed secretary of state named Brian Kemp, arrested Dennard and 11 of her political allies and charged them with 120 separate felonies (related to absentee ballots)...

...Kemp, who spent eight years as secretary of state, has seen his political future soar — in part, according to his critics, by suppressing the minority vote. In the 2018 gubernatorial election, Kemp ran as the Republican candidate while also overseeing the election as secretary of state. His Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, called him an “architect of voter suppression,” and her allies said Kemp erected an “obstacle course” of hurdles to voting for poor people and minorities in Georgia. Kemp and his defenders pointed to record-high participation rates in the 2018 election as evidence that he didn’t seek to suppress votes. Kemp won by 55,000 votes out of nearly 4 million cast...

...(Lula) Smart was the only one of the Quitman 10+2 to go to trial. Three months after her acquittal, after three trials, and almost exactly four years after they were arrested, all remaining charges were dropped against the Quitman 10+2 at the end of 2014.

...On June 15, 2016, Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens issued an official opinion advising, “It is not a violation of the law for a person other than the elector to whom the absentee ballot was issued to take possession of and mail absentee ballots for that elector or electors” and that “it is not a violation of the law for any person to simply possess any absentee ballot outside of a polling place.”...

https://news.yahoo.com/how-a-criminal-investigation-in-georgia-set-a-dark-tone-f...

After maps struck down in NC gerrymandering lawsuit, top Republican leader won’t appeal
Will Doran | September 03, 2019

...A panel of judges struck down (North Carolina’s political maps for the state legislature) Tuesday, in a 357-page ruling that focused on the level of political partisanship used to draw them. The maps were drawn in 2017 to replace previous maps, drawn in 2011, that had also been ruled unconstitutional. Both sets of maps were drawn by North Carolina’s Republican-led legislature. (must be redrawn before the 2020 elections)

...The panel consisted of two Democrats — Paul Ridgeway of Wake County and Alma Hinton of Halifax County — and one Republican, Joseph Crosswhite of Iredell County.

...Republicans won a similar case earlier this summer at the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld North Carolina’s congressional districts.

The state’s legislative leaders argued during this trial over the state-level maps that the state courts should follow that federal ruling. But after the loss Tuesday, Republican Senate leader Phil Berger said he wouldn’t appeal and would instead start drawing new maps.

...In Tuesday’s ruling, judges gave the legislature just two weeks, until Sept. 18, to draw new maps. Judges ruled the new lines can be drawn to protect incumbents from being pitted against one another but can’t use any other political data.

Judges also told lawmakers they might simply reschedule the elections in 2020 if the legislature can’t come up with new maps in time. “The Court retains jurisdiction to move the primary date for the General Assembly elections, or all of the State’s 2020 primaries, including for offices other than the General Assembly, should doing so become necessary to provide effective relief in this case,” the ruling says...

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article234668747.html

Doesn't really belong here, but it's not worthy of a new thread.

Some interesting graphs and discussion if you get past the NYT paywall. (Ah, these articles were from 2017 and 2016. I wonder why they popped up in my feed today.)

Your Rabbi? Probably a Democrat. Your Baptist Pastor? Probably a Republican. Your Priest? Who Knows.

The researchers, Eitan Hersh, formerly a political scientist at Yale, and Gabrielle Malina, a graduate student at Harvard, identified about 180,000 clergy and were able to match about 130,000 to their voter registration records.
...
Instead, religiosity – how often someone attends church, rather than which church a member is a part of – has been a better measure of party affiliation than denomination. (Frequent churchgoers tend to be Republicans.) But the data on pastors suggests denomination may matter more than previously thought.

Your Surgeon Is Probably a Republican, Your Psychiatrist Probably a Democrat

(Yale) Eitan Hersh, an assistant professor of political science, and Dr. Matthew Goldenberg, an assistant professor of psychiatry (guess his party!), shared their data with The Upshot.
…
It’s possible that the experience of being, say, an infectious disease physician, who treats a lot of drug addicts with hepatitis C, might make a young physician more likely to align herself with Democratic candidates who support a social safety net. But it’s also possible that the differences resulted from some initial sorting by medical students as they were choosing their fields.

Dr. Ron Ackermann, the director of the institute for public health and medicine at Northwestern University, says he remembers his experience rotating through the specialties when he was in medical school. “You’ll be on a team that’s psychiatry, and a month later you’re on general surgery, and the culture is extraordinarily different,” he said. “It’s just sort of a feeling of whether you’re comfortable or not. At the end, most students have a strong feeling of where they want to gravitate.”

Like the lame duck legislatures (MI? WI? __?) that sought to bind hands of election winners. No honor.

Eric Holder @EricHolder | 9/11/2019:
Gerrymandered Republicans in North Carolina call for a budget vote after saying there would be none. And they do this on 9/11 anniversary. Shameful. No raises for teachers. No Medicaid expansion. Heartless. NC deserves better than this. Vote them out.

A North Carolina Lawmaker Explains Why Republicans Held a Stealth Vote During a 9/11 Ceremony
Republican lawmakers waited until their colleagues were busy to push through a controversial budget.

Mark Joseph Stern | Sept 11, 2019

On Wednesday morning, while some lawmakers attended an event memorializing the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, North Carolina Republicans held a surprise vote to override Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of the budget bill. GOP legislators had reportedly told Democrats that the House of Representatives would hold no votes on the morning of Sept. 11. Then, with nearly half the lawmakers absent—and only a handful of Democrats in the chamber—Republican leaders held a vote anyway, overriding Cooper’s veto by the necessary three-fifths majority. At the time, Cooper was at the 9/11 commemorative event, as were some Democratic representatives.

Such brazen contempt for democracy has become a hallmark for the North Carolina GOP, which has long fought to entrench its own power through underhanded and illegitimate means. Republicans held a supermajority in the General Assembly during Cooper’s first two years due to an egregious racial gerrymander and routinely overrode the governor’s vetoes. In 2017, however, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down that gerrymander, requiring new maps that cost the GOP its supermajority after the 2018 election. Republicans now face a threat to their majority due to a state court ruling invalidating the current legislative districts as a partisan gerrymander. They appear to be resorting to whatever tactics they can to preserve their power...

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/09/north-carolina-republicans-chaz-beas...

>133 margd:

Complete, unutterable shits. But with all the precedent in NC, I do wonder that the Dems would trust anything the swine say. Just expect the worst and act accordingly, how many times need it be shown there's no bottom to how low the Repugnants will stoop?

From the clips I saw last night, the Republicans weren't buying his BS either.

Federal Judge Declares GOP ‘Poll Tax’ Unconstitutional, Says State Can’t Restrict Right to Vote Based on Ability to Pay
Colin Kalmbacher | October 19th, 2019

A federal court in Florida has ruled that it is unconstitutional to deny individuals with prior felony convictions the right to vote based on their inability to pay fees and fines. Friday’s decision restores the right to vote for plaintiffs who otherwise would be eligible to vote in Florida but who simply cannot afford to pay off their outstanding fines, fees and restitution.

The 55-page opinion by U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle is a victory for voting rights advocates and Civil Rights advocates who argued that Florida Republicans had essentially re-instituted a poll tax on the right to vote in the Sunshine State...

https://lawandcrime.com/civil-rights/federal-judge-declares-gop-poll-tax-unconst...

The Student Vote Is Surging. So Are Efforts to Suppress It.
Michael Wines | Oct. 24, 2019

The share of college students casting ballots doubled from 2014 to 2018, a potential boon to Democrats. But in Texas and elsewhere, Republicans are erecting roadblocks to the polls.

...After decades of treating elections as an afterthought, college students have begun voting in force.

Their turnout in the 2018 midterms — 40.3 percent of 10 million students tracked by Tufts University’s Institute for Democracy & Higher Education — was more than double the rate in the 2014 midterms, easily exceeding an already robust increase in national turnout. Energized by issues like climate change and the Trump presidency, students have suddenly emerged as a potentially crucial voting bloc in the 2020 general election.

And almost as suddenly, Republican politicians around the country are throwing up roadblocks between students and voting booths.

Not coincidentally, the barriers are rising fastest in political battlegrounds and places like Texas where one-party control is eroding. Students lean strongly Democratic: In a March poll by the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, 45 percent of college students ages 18-24 identified as Democrats, compared to 29 percent who called themselves independents and 24 percent Republicans.

Some states have wrestled with voting eligibility for out-of-state students in the past. And the politicians enacting the roadblocks often say they are raising barriers to election fraud, not ballots.

...New Hampshire...Florida...North Carolina...Tennessee...Texas

Tennessee ranks 50th in voter turnout among the states and the District of Columbia....Only Texas’ turnout is worse. And as in Tennessee, voting is particularly difficult for the young...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/us/voting-college-suppression.html

We know how this goes, always without error, yes?

Georgia plans to remove over 300,000 inactive voters from its rolls

The plan to remove the inactive voters was announced Monday, the paper reported.

Jones said the move is routine list maintenance but voters could also get off the inactive list by voting in Georgia's upcoming Nov. 5 election, returning the cancellation notice or registering with the state's department of driver services.

However, Fair Fight Action, a group founded by Abrams that is suing the state over its handling of elections, excoriated the move in a tweet on Monday.

“Voters should not lose their right to vote simply because they have decided not to express that right in recent elections,” the group said. “Anytime a voter purge is conducted, errors can be made, including active voters being wrongly included on the list.”

It never stops

Lawsuit could purge 234,000 names from Wisconsin voter rolls

A conservative law firm, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, alleges that the Wisconsin Elections Commission broke the law when it decided to wait up to two years to deactivate voters who may have moved. State law requires voters to respond within 30 days of receiving the October mailing or be deactivated, the lawsuit alleges.

The commission last month rejected a complaint from the group, also known as WILL, and said it was confident the commission was complying with the law. A spokesman for the commission, which is made up of an equal number of Republican and Democratic appointees, did not immediately reply to a message seeking comment Wednesday.

But Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, speaking with reporters after a bill signing in Wisconsin Dells, said he hoped the lawsuit would fail.

“We should spend our time in making it easier for people to vote rather than make it more difficult,” Evers said. “I’m hopeful that that lawsuit is thrown out.”

The commission in October mailed notices to about 234,000 voters identified as potentially having moved. They had been flagged based on a review of documents from sources such as the Post Office and Division of Motor Vehicles that indicated the person may have moved.

Voters who do not respond to the postcard asking them to confirm their address will be flagged as movers. But instead of being made unable to vote 30 days after the mailing, they will have up to two years to confirm their addresses, based on a June vote by the commission.

Elections commission staff said in a March memo that the commission had the authority to delay deactivating voters beyond 30 days because another state law gives it the ability to create rules maintaining the voter registration list. Staff said in the memo that since no voter would be removed until after the April 2021 election under its policy, there would be time to receive feedback from the Legislature about whether a legal change was necessary.

Under the commission's decision, voters flagged as movers will not be deactivated ahead of the February primary election for the state Supreme Court race and numerous local offices. It will also mean they will remain registered for the April presidential primary and spring general election in which a Supreme Court justice will be elected.

The lawsuit asks a judge to require the commission to deactivate any of the 234,000 voters who received notice in October that it appears they moved and did not respond within 30 days.

The concern from liberals is that younger and lower income voters who are more likely to vote Democratic are also more likely to be flagged as movers. The result, they fear, is that more Democrats would be required to re-register than Republicans, making it more difficult for them to vote.

Sam Levine srl | 4:38 PM · Nov 25, 2019
Breaking news: A federal judge declined a GOP request to stop the creation of an independent redistricting commission in Michigan:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UgD0qrAy0etabva-AWhaj4yyO2kslSpa/view

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
WESTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN
SOUTHERN DIVISION

ANTHONY DAUNT, et al., Plaintiffs,
v.
JOCELYN BENSON, et al., Defendants.

Case No. 1:19-cv-614
(Lead)

MICHIGAN REPUBLICAN PARTY, et al.,
Plaintiffs,
v.
JOCELYN BENSON, et al.,
Defendants.

Case No. 1:19-cv-669
(Member)

House Passes Voting Rights Bill Despite Near Unanimous Republican Opposition
Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Emily Cochrane | Dec. 6, 2019

The House voted on Friday to reinstate federal oversight of state election law, moving to bolster protections against racial discrimination enshrined in the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the landmark civil rights statute whose central provision was struck down by the Supreme Court.

...passed by a vote of 228 to 187 nearly along party lines, with all but one Republican opposed.

The bill has little chance of becoming law given opposition in the Republican-controlled Senate and by President Trump, whose aides issued a veto threat against it this week.

The measure is a direct response to the 2013 Supreme Court decision in the case of Shelby County v. Holder, in which the justices ...asserted that the federal oversight of elections was no longer necessary in nine states, mostly in the South, because of strides made in advancing voting rights since passage of the 1965 law.

The original Voting Rights Act, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson as a centerpiece of his civil rights agenda, was meant to bar states from imposing poll taxes, literacy tests and other methods to keep black people from voting...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/06/us/politics/house-voting-rights.html

Judge orders state to purge more than 200,000 Wisconsin voters from the rolls
Bruce Vielmetti and Patrick Marley | Dec. 13, 2019

...Circuit Judge Paul Malloy also denied the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin's petition to intervene.

Lawyers for the League and for the Wisconsin Elections Commission indicated they will appeal and asked Malloy to stay his ruling pending those appeals, but he declined.

At issue is a letter the state Elections Commission sent in October to about 234,000 voters who it believes may have moved. The letter asked the voters to update their voter registrations if they had moved or alert election officials if they were still at their same address.

The commission planned to remove the letter's recipients from the voter rolls in 2021 if it hadn't heard from them. But Malloy's decision would kick them off the rolls much sooner, and well before the 2020 presidential election.

...Three voters sued the commission last month with the help of the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. They argued election officials were required to remove voters from the rolls 30 days after sending the letters if they hadn't heard from them.

...Malloy, who was appointed to the bench in 2002 by Republican Gov. Scott McCallum and has been re-elected by voters.

...The letters went to about 7% of Wisconsin's registered voters, but were concentrated more heavily in some parts of the state than others.

Milwaukee and Madison — the state's Democratic strongholds — account for 14% of Wisconsin's registered voters but received 23% of the letters.

Across the state, 55% of the letters went to municipalities where Democrat Hillary Clinton out-polled Trump in 2016.

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2019/12/13/judge-orders-wisconsin-p...

It's official: Asheville, Buncombe won't be split by gerrymandered congressional districts
Joel Burgess, Asheville Citizen Times Published 4:13 p.m. ET Dec. 2, 2019

https://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2019/12/02/its-official-asheville...

______________________________________________________________________

Trump Ally....Representative Mark Meadows, a Republican from North Carolina, announced that he would not seek re-election at the end of his term.
Eileen Sullivan and Emily Cochrane | Dec. 19, 2019

WASHINGTON — One of President Trump’s most loyal supporters, Representative Mark Meadows, announced on Thursday that he would leave Congress at the end of his term in January 2021.

...Mr. Meadows is now the 25th House Republican to leave before the next Congress, citing retirement or ambitions for another political post, an exodus that has been fueled in part by frustration at being deprived of power in the minority and term limits on leadership positions.

First elected in 2012, Mr. Meadows co-founded the conservative House Freedom Caucus, and served as a consistent thorn in the sides of two successive Republican speakers, John A. Boehner and Paul D. Ryan. But he found his most powerful perch as one of Mr. Trump’s top allies on Capitol Hill — and last year was considered for the position of the president’s chief of staff.

...Mr. Meadows did not elaborate further on Thursday what his continued work with Mr. Trump might entail.

...Friday is the deadline to file for re-election in his heavily Republican congressional district — a short turnaround time for any potential candidate. (margd: fix is in?)

Mr. Meadows is the third Republican from North Carolina to announce his decision to leave Congress; he made no mention of the newly redrawn districts in his state in his statement. Mr. Meadows was still expected to keep his seat, despite what was expected to be a more challenging re-election campaign... *

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/19/us/politics/mark-meadows-reelection-trump.htm...

*********************************************************************

David Frum @davidfrum | 8:31 AM · Dec 19, 2019
Meadows is in Congress because the liberal city of Asheville was split between NC-10 and NC-11,
drowning its votes with GOP rural votes.
In 2020, all of Asheville will be in Meadows' NC-11,
meaning he's probably a goner in a year of anti-Trump revulsion

Ben Wikler @benwikler | 1:11 PM · Dec 21, 2019

BREAKING: A Trump advisor told the Wisconsin GOP that
“Traditionally it’s always been Republicans suppressing votes in places”—&
"It’s going to be a much bigger program, a much more aggressive program, a much better-funded program" in 2020.
..

One of Trump's Election Advisors Admitted That Republicans 'Traditionally' Engage in Voter Suppression
Gabrielle Bruney | Dec 21, 2019

In the six and a half years since Shelby County v. Holder gutted the Voting Rights Act, attacks on the ballot have flourished. More than 1000 polling stations in the South have closed, use-it-or-lose-it laws have purged voter rolls, and more states have enacted restrictive voter ID laws. Most of the time, Republicans—the party that tends to benefit when voter turnout is depressed among the poor, racial minorities, and young people—say that they’re trying to guard against the mythical threat of voter fraud. But according to the Associated Press, in a discussion with Wisconsin Republicans, one of President Trump’s senior reelection advisors admitted that the GOP has engaged in a campaign of voter suppression.

Justin Clark spoke to the Wisconsin Chapter of the Republican National Lawyers Association in November, and in a recording acquired by AP, he seemed to make the quiet part pretty loud and clear. "Traditionally it’s always been Republicans suppressing votes in places," said Clark. "Let’s start protecting our voters. We know where they are. ... Let’s start playing offense a little bit. That’s what you’re going to see in 2020. It’s going to be a much bigger program, a much more aggressive program, a much better-funded program."...

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a30303358/justin-clark-trump-republicans-v...

Daughter of gerrymandering guru Hofeller makes late father’s files public

“I think if the documents had moved from the late Thomas Hofeller to someone who was on the same wavelength as he was, about what should and shouldn’t be released, we would be in a much different situation than having it go from him to his estranged daughter, who is antagonistic to the things he believed in, and certainly does not mind that things that shouldn’t get out into the public do,” said Senior Political Analyst Mitch Kokai, of the Raleigh-based conservative think tank, the John Locke Foundation.

Major win for voting rights: Court blocks Florida GOP's poll tax on up to 1.1 million people
Stephen Wolf | February 19, 2020

...Republicans passed what's effectively a poll tax in 2019 after voters used a 2018 ballot initiative to amend Florida's constitution and end lifetime voter disenfranchisement for up to 1.4 million people who had served their sentences for all but the most serious crimes. But in large part because Florida levies onerous fines to fund its court system, a setup that opponents have derided as “cash register justice," an expert report for the plaintiffs analyzing 58 of 67 Florida counties found that roughly 80% of people who’ve served their felony sentences owe outstanding fees, which would be up to 1.1 million people overall. That includes 59% of them owing at least $500 and 38% owing at least $1,000.

Before voters passed the 2018 initiative, Florida disenfranchised 1 in 10 adults, including a staggering 1 in 5 black adults, which was five times the rate of every other state. This racial discrimination was no accident, either, since Florida’s lifetime voting ban was a product of the Jim Crow era.

This ruling is limited to just the plaintiffs who were party to the lawsuit, but it paves the way for a future decision expanding the scope of the ruling to everyone who is affected. Still, the lower court's ruling only applied to those who couldn’t afford to pay off their court costs, and it's unclear how it will be determined who is genuinely unable to pay if this ruling is expanded to everyone affected by the poll tax. Nevertheless, it still strikes a major blow against one of the most sweeping voter-suppression laws in decades...

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/2/19/1920354/-Major-win-for-voting-rights-...

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This circuit court ruling could prove crucial to this November’s elections.
It’s clearly correct and creates no circuit conflict, but that’s not a guarantee that SCOTUS will deny cert. If it grants cert, I’ll worry.
- Laurence Tribe tribelaw | 6:59 AM · Feb 23, 2020

Florida:

Meet the Trump Fan Accused of Registering Democrats as Republicans

Ms. (Cheryl) Hall, a 63-year-old and very ardent Republican whose ranch house in Clermont sports life-size cutouts of Donald and Melania Trump and a MAGA poster in the window, was charged last week with 10 felony counts of submitting false voter registration forms. On at least 10 forms traced to Ms. Hall, officials said, the party affiliations of already-registered Democrats and Independents had been switched to Republican. More than 100 others that may be tied to her contained missing or bogus data such as wrong birth dates.

Ms. Hall was a canvasser for Florida First Inc., a recently created nonprofit that is financed at least in part by a dark-money group formed by Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign manager, Brad Parscale, and other Trump associates.

The Florida nonprofit group, which has filed more than 30,000 new registrations according to the Florida secretary of state, is part of a $20 million bid by the group, America First Policies, to register Republicans in battleground states before November. State officials have said there is no evidence so far of widespread fraud in Florida First’s voter-registration efforts.

Virginia Makes Election Day A Holiday In Wave Of New Voting Rights Laws
Sanjana Karanth | 4/12/2020

The Election Day law replaces the current holiday honoring Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, so Virginia maintains the same number of state holidays. The day commemorating Lee and Jackson, both of whom owned slaves, had been established about 25 years after the Civil War ended.

...Several cities and states already treat Election Day as a holiday, including Delaware, Hawaii, Kentucky and New York. Advocates of the measure say it could improve voter turnout in a country where many residents can’t make it to the polls because of school and/or work.

Democrats proposed a sweeping voting rights bill in January 2019 that would make Election Day a paid federal holiday. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called the measure a “power grab” by Democrats that would enable government workers to “hang out at the polls” to campaign for candidates while getting paid for the day. He bottled up the bill in his chamber.

Under the new Virginia laws, voters will no longer have to show photo identification before casting their ballot ― a requirement that has effectively disenfranchised some low-income people who don’t have driver’s licenses because they can’t afford to have a car.

...Virginia also will now allow people to cast a ballot 45 days before an election without a stated excuse; previously, the state required voters wanting an absentee ballot to provide a reason from an approved list as to why they were unable to vote on Election Day. The new laws also expand the timelines for applying for absentee ballots and extends in-person polling hours...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/virginia-election-day-holiday-voting-rights-laws_...

Democrats fear for November after Wisconsin voting spectacle
The party is scrambling to adapt for a fight over ballot access that has make-or-break implications for the general election.
NATASHA KORECKI and CHRISTOPHER CADELAGO | 04/13/2020

Democrats looked on in horror last week as thousands of voters in Wisconsin trekked to polling places and waited in lines for hours to cast ballots in the midst of a pandemic.

Now national Democratic Party leaders are scrambling to head off a similar spectacle in November, in what promises to be the most consequential partisan struggle between now and Election Day. They are seeking billions of federal dollars to prepare for an election in which voters can’t safely go to the polls in person. The party is combing through voting rules, state by state, with an eye toward expanding early voting and vote-by-mail. The Democratic National Committee has deployed “voter protection directors” in 17 states to defend against what they view as moves to block access to the polls.

And the DNC is partnering with state Democratic parties to help voters navigate the process of obtaining mail-in ballots and combating what the DNC characterizes as “misinformation” from President Donald Trump.

...States fall on a wide spectrum when it comes to ballot access laws, and the battle lines between the parties vary. Roughly half of the 17 states that require an excuse to vote by mail have relaxed them for primary elections.

In contrast to Trump’s stance, Republican officials from West Virginia to Kentucky to Iowa have moved to ease access to mail-in ballots over health concerns from the pandemic. Nebraska Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts last week urged voters to vote by mail in the state's May 12 election. And voting rights advocates are encouraged that if the virus continues to wreak havoc in the fall, Republicans will do the same then.

In battleground states, however, it’s a different story. Underscoring the trench warfare playing out, court fights are underway in nearly every battleground state...

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/13/democrats-fear-november-wisconsin-votin...

A Federal Judge Has a Plan to Let Politicians Manipulate Elections With Impunity
The Supreme Court’s partisan gerrymandering decision could soon harm democracy even more.
Mark Joseph Stern | April 30, 2020

The Supreme Court’s 5–4 decision in Rucho v. Common Cause opened the floodgates for lawmakers to draw egregious partisan gerrymanders without fear of federal lawsuits. By declaring that gerrymandering presents “a political question beyond the competence of the federal courts,” SCOTUS ensured that the 2020 redistricting process will be infected with extreme partisan bias in most states. That ruling was harmful enough on its own terms. On Wednesday, however, an influential federal judge suggested that Rucho’s rule should be expanded to prevent judges from intervening when lawmakers manipulate the outcome of elections through voting laws. If more courts adopt that theory, it will become harder than ever to challenge partisan prejudice in the administration of elections.

Wednesday’s decision in Jacobson v. Lee involves a Florida law that dictates that candidates who share a party with the current governor are listed first in every race on every ballot. Because Republicans have long held the Florida governorship, this law grants a huge benefit to GOP candidates. As U.S. District Judge Mark Walker explained when he blocked the measure in November, the first candidate listed on a ballot benefits from the “primacy effect”—voters’ tendency to favor the first choice at the top of a list. Political scientists calculate that in Florida the primacy effect gives Republican candidates a 5-percentage-point advantage over their competitors. This windfall is called the “donkey vote,” and it will give President Donald Trump a significant advantage in the must-win state come November.

Walker found Florida’s system to be “a discriminatory burden” on citizens’ constitutional right to cast an equal vote in a “free and fair election.” The law, he concluded, “systematically advantages candidates of one party,” putting an illicit “thumb on the scale in favor of the party in power.” Walker ordered the state to adopt a neutral scheme for ballot placement, like alphabetical order or a random lottery (as some other states do).

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed on Wednesday in an opinion by Judge William Pryor, a George W. Bush appointee who was one of the most conservative judges in the country before Trump infused the judiciary with underqualified reactionaries. Pryor’s majority decision did not address the merits, instead holding that the plaintiffs—voters and Democratic organizations—lacked standing to bring the suit. No plaintiff, Pryor wrote, had proved “injury in fact,” or a concrete harm inflicted by the law. As a result, federal courts have no authority to address their claims. Under that holding, a different plaintiff could still contest the law—including, perhaps, a candidate whom it handicaps.

In a strange move, though, Pryor went much further in a separate opinion concurring with his own majority opinion. Rucho, he asserted, was about more than gerrymandering: It stood for the broad principle that federal courts cannot resolve a “complaint of partisan advantage” in election law. When a law benefits one party but does not directly burden a citizen’s ability to cast a ballot, Pryor wrote, it does not implicate any constitutional rights. Instead, it asks courts to determine a “standard of fairness,” presenting a question that is “political, not legal.” Moreover, courts lack the ability “to answer the determinative question: How much partisan advantage from ballot order is too much?” When courts have to decide “basic questions” of fairness and figure out “how much partisanship is too much” in election administration, they’ve entered the political thicket and must butt out.

...this sweeping interpretation of Rucho could let lawmakers inject even more partisanship into each election. Legislatures could insist that candidates of one party are always listed first. They could concoct a formula that ensures candidates of the minority party are buried beneath third-party candidates. They could keep straight-ticket voting for one major party but not the other. None of these laws would impose a direct burden on a citizen’s ability to cast a ballot; they would merely affect the “fairness” of the election. According to Pryor, that’s not enough to justify a federal lawsuit.

Depending on Pryor’s understanding of what constitutes a “burden” on “individual voting rights,” states could go further. A Republican-controlled legislature could allow more early voting days in GOP-heavy counties. It could place ballot drop boxes in predominantly Republican neighborhoods. It could require voter ID, then permit IDs more likely to be held by Republicans than Democrats (like a gun permit). A governor could even cancel a special election if she feared her preferred candidate might lose. All these cases would turn on the constitutionality of state efforts to benefit candidates from one party without denying the ballot to voters from the opposite party. And Pryor’s theory suggests that, under Rucho, federal courts could not decide them.

It’s notable that Pryor raised Rucho in a separate concurrence rather than his majority opinion. One judge, Jill Pryor (a Barack Obama appointee, no relation to her colleague), rebuked him in a partial dissent, insisting that Rucho’s “reasoning was specific to the gerrymandering context.” The other judge on the panel, Robert Luck (a Trump appointee), simply signed on to the majority. Pryor’s theory, then, has not yet gained support on his courts.

But Trump has appointed plenty of judges, including at least one on the 11th Circuit, who are clearly gunning for voting rights. The Supreme Court, meanwhile, has totally abdicated its responsibility to protect the franchise. Whenever a new theory hostile to equal suffrage floats up from the lower courts, it’s a trial balloon that may well catch the justices’ attention. Rucho was a terrible decision by itself. But it will be so much worse if conservative judges use it to shield countless partisan election laws from judicial scrutiny.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/04/11th-circuit-judges-election-law-pol...