Tag: GOP Voter Supression Tactics

Tuesday Wake Up Call, Voter Fraud Edition – August 16, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Monsoon season, Sonoran Desert, Tucson, AZ –  August 2022 photo by Rene Martinez

The November mid-term election is 12 weeks away. Some Republicans who do not accept our country’s democratic tenets are focusing on getting elected in the battleground states in an effort to energize a future coup. From the WaPo:

“…in the six critical battlegrounds that ultimately decided the 2020 presidential contest, where Trump most fiercely contested the results…..Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, at least 54 winners out of 87 contests — more than 62% of nominees — have embraced the former president’s false claims.”

As an aside, reporters must stop using the term “election deniers”. It doesn’t convey what these Republicans believe. They know Trump lost, but they tried to steal the 2020 election anyway.

And they’re promising to steal the next one. These people call the government their “enemy”. Now, they’re calling for violence against the FBI. They say our elections can’t possibly be fair, yet they’re doing all they can to make them less fair.

There are many tools in the GOP tool kit to help a state create election-related chaos. They could decertify voting machines or block the electronic counting of ballots. They could empower their legislatures to determine how many of a presidential candidate’s votes are actually counted.

The GOP says that our local electoral processes and voting machines are highly suspect. In 2020 we saw Republican efforts to find voter fraud in several states, all of which failed. Still, in 2022, the GOP persists in saying there are voting machines that flipped votes in 2020 from Trump to Biden.

The gold standard for voting in America is hand-marked paper ballots. They leave a paper trail that is hard to challenge. Today states (including Connecticut where Wrongo votes) use digital scanners to read those hand-marked ballots. The machine tabulators can be checked before voting for accuracy and ballots can be re-scanned in random precincts afterwards to verify totals, along with hand counts.

Verified Voting a non-partisan firm that promotes the responsible use of technology in elections, rates the integrity of voting machines at the county level throughout the US. They have an interactive US map that allows anyone to check the quality of the voting machines in their county. Here’s a screenshot image of that interactive map:

You should go to the interactive map for greater detail. The green portion of the map represents the 69.2% of US registered voters that use highly reliable hand-marked paper ballots. The yellow portion of the map represents the 23.4% of our registered voters that use mostly reliable Ballot Marking Devices (BMD), with marked pre-printed ballots; some print summaries of voter selections, often with those selections encoded in barcodes or QR codes. Together, these account for 92.6% of America’s registered voters.

The red portion of the map represents the 7.4% of American voters who use a less-reliable direct recording electronic (DRE) voting system. DREs allow voters to record their selections directly into computer memory.

Despite what Republicans think, most of America can vote with total confidence that their voting machines are accurate, and that their votes will be counted accurately. So relax Republicans, election fraud just isn’t very possible in the US.

But there are plenty of other shenanigans that can be pulled at the local and state level. And that’s a concern given what the GOP is focusing on for the November mid-terms. They could take away voting rights by canceling voter registrations. They can close polling places or gerrymander more districts. The WaPo has a chart showing how close the GOP is to controlling the voting process in the six battleground states:

By weakening trust in our election system, Republicans are paving the way for America to become a one-party state led by an authoritarian strongman. They intend to take away the single and best power the people have, our vote. These Republicans aren’t election deniers, they’re anti-democracy. If they are elected, they will end democracy as we know it.

Time to wake up America! We can’t leave the vote-counting to people who won’t count all of our votes! America has a long tradition of subverting the voting process and denying millions of people the right to vote, and these Republicans want to take us right back to those days in our past. To stop that, they must be beaten in November’s mid-terms.

To help you wake up, watch, and listen to “Queen Bee” played by Taj Mahal and friends in this Playing For Change video, that features Ben Harper, Rosanne Cash, and many others from around the world.

The tune is from Taj Mahal’s 1997 album, “Señor Blues”, which won a Grammy. It’s an album that Wrongo highly recommends:

 

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Monday Wake Up Call – Remembering MLK, Jr.

The Daily Escape:

After an ice storm, Taos NM – January 2022 photo by Bob Benson

“Freedom without consequences is a myth. Our actions always have consequences. The question is: who will bear them?” – Seth Godin

The year 1968 was pivotal. In addition to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., it brought the Tet Offensive, student protests across the country, the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, the student and police riots at the Chicago Democratic Convention, Black Power salutes at the Olympics, and the triumph of Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy.

MLK, along with others in our churches and a few courageous politicians, came together to support the Big Idea that Separate was not Equal. MLK gave a voice to that Big Idea. His presence, power and persuasiveness drove our political process to an outcome in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that was completely unthinkable in 1954 when Brown vs. Board of Education was decided by the Supreme Court.

Wrongo participated in the Civil Rights movement from 1958 to 1962. He left active participation in the movement believing good ideas and a morally sound position would change our politics. He was wrong.

Legislation has recently passed in eight states that will restrict what students can be taught about our past. This is an effort to segregate certain subjects from our common history. These Republican states want to diminish or exclude the stories that speak to slavery, to Jim Crow, and to other moments in which America’s deepest shortcomings around the subject of race in America are told.

Wrongo wishes that this represented a minority of the Republican Party. But when Biden spoke in Atlanta, he said:

“I ask every elected official in America: How do you want to be remembered? Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?”

Dr. King had said that stripping the right to vote from Black southerners laid the groundwork for laws that further disadvantaged poor people, even across racial lines. Then as now, Southern legislatures justified limiting the franchise to vote with specious claims about electoral shenanigans.

Biden’s words set Republican teeth on edge. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that Biden:

“…called millions of Americans his domestic enemies…and that if you disagree with him, you’re George Wallace….If you don’t pass the laws he wants, you’re Bull Connor, and if you oppose giving Democrats untrammeled, one-party control of the country, well you’re Jefferson Davis.”

Fox News contributor Ari Fleischer tweeted:

“Now he says disagreeing w/him on voting laws means you’re a segregationist, like George Wallace or Bull Connor. How low can he go?”

The linkage between trying not to teach America’s true history with the censorious outrage shown by Republicans over Biden’s comments is clear. Biden said America needed to be on the side of voting rights.

That was Dr. King’s great struggle, and his great success.

But Republicans want to whitewash that history. They also condemn Biden’s efforts to tie today back to our undemocratic past. As Jelani Cobb says this week in the New Yorker:

“This holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., sees a nation embroiled in conflicts that would have looked numbingly familiar to him. As school curricula and online discourse threaten to narrow our understanding of both past and future, it’s more important than ever to take stock of our history and its consequences….

Time to wake up America! We are docile sheep heading back to the barn, the place where we will be shorn of our democracy, just as surely as wool is shorn from the sheep. The smoking guns are all around us, and yet, we seem hopelessly divided about what we should do to change course.

To help you wake up, let’s listen to Wrongo’s favorite MLK song, “Southern” by OMD from their 1986 album “The Pacific Age“. On April 3, 1968, in Memphis, King delivered his last speech, which we remember as his “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech. He was assassinated the next day. OMD samples some of the content of that speech in “Southern”:

Although everyone knows the “I’ve been to the mountaintop” part of the speech, Wrongo thinks our focus should be on the following:

I want young men and young women, who are not alive today
But who will come into this world, with new privileges
And new opportunities
I want them to know and see that these new privileges and opportunities
Did not come without somebody suffering and sacrificing
For freedom is never given to anybody

Why focus on that part of the speech? One day down the road, and it will not be long, young people will have forgotten what MLK meant to America, or how whatever remains of their civil rights, came to be.

Or, how the 13th Amendment ending slavery came about, and why, 100 years later in 1965, the Voting Rights Act was passed, or how 48 years later, in June, 2013, the Roberts Court eviscerated it.

So, take the time to teach a child about why MLK is so important.

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Freedom to Vote Act is Worth a Filibuster Exemption

The Daily Escape:

Indian Neck Beach, Wellfleet MA – October 2021 photo by Marilyn Cook

It’s been a little over a month since Wrongo wrote that the next 30 days would be make-or-break for the right to vote and for democracy itself. Well, times up. There haven’t been any votes on Sen. Manchin’s Freedom to Vote Act, or on Biden’s social policy and infrastructure bills that the Democrats continue to try to build consensus on.

Charles M. Blow in the NYT alerts us that the voting rights bill is supposed to be taken up today:

“Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, has indicated that he plans to schedule a vote for Wednesday to open debate on a new voting rights bill, the Freedom to Vote Act.”

Blow went on to say:

“This is a once in a generation moment, one pivotal to the very survival of the country as we know it.”

Indeed, without it, it’s unclear what the way forward will be for our democracy.

The bill is a compromise worked out by Sens. Manchin (D-WVA) and Klobachar (D-MN). It would set national standards for early voting, allow the use of more forms of voter identification, make Election Day a federal holiday and institute measures to counter voter suppression tactics.

In addition, it would force states to give voters the option to register on Election Day and offer safeguards against voter purges. It overhauls portions of the campaign finance system, prohibits partisan gerrymandering, and prevents the politicized removal of election officials.

The bill is unlikely to get the 60 votes needed to pass. Even assuming all 50 Democrats agree, it will need support from 10 Republicans to overcome a certain Republican filibuster. That seems unlikely to happen. BTW, the last time the voting rights act was up for renewal, it passed 98-0.

We’re probably looking a two failures: Sen. Manchin will probably fail to find the necessary 10 Republican votes, and then, the bill will fail to go to an up or down vote.

The real questions are whether Manchin and Schumer will then try to carve out an exception to the filibuster rules allowing for a simple majority to pass legislation that effects voting rights, and whether Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) will agree to support the exception. That’s what pro-democracy advocates are hoping to see.

Since it’s no secret that Democrats need Manchin’s and Sinema’s votes to get anything done, their frustration with both Senators is understandable. Wrongo gave money to Sinema’s Senatorial campaign, and he hopes that it wasn’t in vain.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has called the Dems voting reform effort “a solution in search of a problem,” driven by “coordinated lies about commonsense election laws that various states have passed.” But the Brennan Center notes that since January, “19 states have enacted 33 laws that will make it harder for Americans to vote.”

Does McConnell think these are examples of “commonsense election laws”?

When Trump runs again in 2024, unchecked voter suppression will give him a better chance of winning than he had last time. And Blow rightly points out that if the Republicans happened to be in the position the Democrats are in now, they wouldn’t bat an eye at eliminating the filibuster if it helped them further suppress voting on the federal level.

A final message from Blow:

“For Democrats, this voting rights bill is a top priority, but from now until something is passed, it should be the only priority…. But even if you have glistening infrastructure in a fascist state, you are still in a fascist state. If you get two years of community college free in a fascist state, you are still in a fascist state. If more people get broadband access, more people will be able to search for what it means to live in a fascist state.”

Without this bill, our democracy is in real peril. A few months ago, Schumer said he would pass voting rights by any means necessary, echoing Malcolm X.

Let’s see if he has what it takes to win in a divided Senate.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – May 2, 2021

Republicans are angry. Again. This time, they’ve just learned that the US Post Office was monitoring right-wing online threats to federal post office buildings and postal workers after January 6th.

Last week, Yahoo News revealed that the USPS’s Inspection Service have been tracking Americans’ social media posts as part of its Internet Covert Operations Program, known as iCOP. That prompted more than two dozen Republican lawmakers to demand hearings about the program. But in the hearing, the Chief Postal Inspector testified that the USPS had been given authority to monitor Americans in 2017 by Trump.

Apparently, the Trump administration used this power to monitor Black Lives Matter protesters after George Floyd’s death last summer. Naturally, they weren’t satisfied. From Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ):

“Their theory of the case is, they’ve got to protect their workers and properties….If you already have engagement with other agencies like FBI, Homeland Security, NSA, whatever, then why aren’t you asking them for help….Why not just call the agencies whose job it is, who are probably already surveilling American citizens?”

Imagine their silence when the chief postal inspector told lawmakers that those agencies:

“…would not cooperate…so the USPS [decided] to have iCOP patrol social media, searching for potential threats from upcoming protests.”

But they still love all the Trump they can get. On to cartoons.

What Biden’s first 100 days really is about:

We’re in a second Gilded Age. One where 50% of Americans with just 2% of the wealth pay 41% of the income taxes, while corporations only pay 6% of the federal government’s income.

Sen. Tim Scott gave the Republican speech response. Things didn’t go well:

Rudy’s efforts to shop Hunter Biden’s laptop computer at the DOJ comes back to bite him:

Arizona GOP starts yet another recount of Biden’s votes:

America hates it when we’re not first:

Some prefer Zooming:

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – March 21, 2021

Welcome to the first week of spring. Last week, 12 House Republicans voted against a resolution to award Congressional Gold Medals to the Capitol Police, the DC police and the Smithsonian Institution in recognition of those who protected the Capitol when it was attacked by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6.

They said they objected to the use of the term “insurrectionists” in the resolution. On to cartoons:

March brings on Republican madness:

They’re mad at a few other things too:

The fearmongering never ends:

The only caravan at the border:

Jim Crow lives in the Party of Lincoln:

Cuomo needs to go:

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – March 14, 2021

Most Republicans say the American Recovery Plan isn’t necessary, that the economy is on its way back without additional intervention. They should read this report from the Associated Press: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“In a stark sign of the economic inequality that has marked the pandemic recession and recovery, Americans as a whole are now earning the same amount in wages and salaries that they did before the virus struck — even with nearly 9 million fewer people working.”

AP says that Americans earned $9.66 trillion in wages and salaries in February 2020 but by April, that figure had shrunk by 10%. It recovered to $9.67 trillion in December, last year. That’s just wages and salaries; it doesn’t include unemployment payments, Social Security, or other benefit payments.

Of the nearly 9 million jobs that have been eliminated by the pandemic, 40% have been in restaurants, bars, hotels, arts, and entertainment. Retailers have lost nearly 400,000 jobs while many low-paying jobs, such as nursing home attendants and home health care aides, have also been laid off.

Another reason why job losses have had zero impact on the nation’s total pay is that so many of the affected employees work part time. The average work week in the industry that includes hotels, restaurants and bars is less than 26 hours. The average for all industries is nearly 35 hours. The New York Fed’s research shows how concentrated the job losses have been. For people making less than $30,000 a year, employment fell by 14% as of December. For those earning more than $85,000, it has actually risen slightly.

The wage and salary data also help explain the big stock market gains, which have been led by companies whose products are being purchased by higher-income Americans, such as Apple iPads, Peloton bikes, or Amazon’s online shopping.

So clearly, the bottom 30% need help. Too bad Republicans can’t see it. After not voting for the Recovery Plan, they introduced a bill to repeal the estate tax. If it passed, it would provide a $1.7 trillion tax break to millionaires and billionaires! On to cartoons.

Why they wouldn’t vote for it:

It’s no longer one America:

Still, some GOP’ers are touting a stimulus they didn’t vote for:

It’s a question of priorities:

Birds of a feather:

How the story has changed:

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – March 7, 2021

With the Senate’s passage of the Covid relief bill along Party lines, Wrongo is certain that given the chance, the GOP will do to Biden precisely what they did to Obama: Obstruct nearly everything in the hope that it will help them return to control of House and/or the Senate in 2022.

There may be agreement on an infrastructure bill, but if the filibuster remains in place, that will be the only other thing that Democrats achieve before the 2022 midterms.

It’s important to remember that a family of four that makes $13.25/hour is living at the poverty level if they are working a 40-hour week. Few of those workers receive retirement, health benefits, or paid vacations.

Yet America is willing to provide many school-age children in this socio-economic segment three meals a day, often when school isn’t in session.  It’s analogous to America failing to provide health care to the neediest, while letting the most critically ill into a local emergency room. The case for increasing the minimum wage is overwhelming.

Rome is burning. We should be willing to overpay for more fire extinguishers. That means end the filibuster. On to cartoons.

Opinions differ based on viewpoints:

Elephant plans to update Seuss:

People are starting to think we might get back to normal:

But not in Texas:

Two presidents compared:

Cuomo looks to the future:

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Monday Wake Up Call – 24 Hours to Go, November 2, 2020

(There will not be a column on Election Day or Wednesday unless something huge happens. Normal posting will resume on Thursday.)

The Daily Escape:

BREAKING! Investigation by the Wrongologist confirms Trump’s claims about voter fraud!

24 hours to go, fingers crossed. The next few days are going to have plenty of emotional ups and downs.

Even if the result is a Biden victory, waiting for it is going to be nearly unbearable. The alternative outcome? A disaster. Voters’ opinions always tighten in the last few days, so there isn’t a ton of reassurance to take from the last minute polls.

Wrongo wrote 25 posts in October, containing about 18,000 words, mostly about national politics. It seems like there shouldn’t be much more to say, but here goes.

With early voting nearly over, more than 91 million Americans have already cast their ballots. If the current rate holds, more than 100 million ballots will have been cast before Tuesday. That massive early turnout will equal about 72% of the 139 million votes cast in 2016, and for the first time in history, a majority of ballots will have been cast before Election Day.

Some slightly encouraging news. A new NYT/Sienna poll (November 1) shows Biden leading in several battleground states:

In Pennsylvania, Siena College says that only about 33% have voted early. Those who’ve already voted favor Biden 79%-16%. But among the two-thirds yet to vote, Trump has a 57%-34% lead. The math says that if those numbers hold, Biden will get 48.4% to Trump’s 42.9% of the vote, with ± 7% undecided. Trump would have to take all of the PA undecideds to come out on top, so Biden seems to have the advantage.

Again, this sounds good, but Republicans aren’t going to lay down in their efforts to steal the election.

For one piece of proof, the WaPo says that it reviewed an email in which Trump’s camp sought ballot security information from Cumberland County in Pennsylvania: They wanted the names of people who transport the ballots after the polls close, the names of people who have access to the ballots afterward, and precise information about where ballots are stored, including room numbers.

We know this because of an alarmed commissioner. You can bet this is going on across the US, and Trump is actively encouraging it. Here’s a 3am tweet:

“If Sleepy Joe Biden is actually elected President, the 4 Justices (plus1) that helped make such a ridiculous win possible would be relegated to sitting on not only a heavily PACKED COURT, but probably a REVOLVING COURT as well. At least the many new Justices will be Radical Left!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 30, 2020

Trump is making it clear not only that he is planning to contest the results of the election all the way to the Supreme Court, but that he fully expects the Court to hand him the win.

Think about this: Two years after Obama won in 2008, helped by an unprecedented small donor campaign, John Roberts writes the majority opinion in Citizens United which allows GOP donors to tip the scales going forward.

A year after Obama won in 2012 with record minority turnout, John Roberts wrote the majority opinion striking down key parts of the Voting Rights Act which immediately led GOP-run states to enact barriers to minority voting.

And now SCOTUS, with three Justices (including Roberts) that were part of the Republican team in 2000 in Florida that helped GW Bush win at the Supreme Court, is poised to disqualify millions of legitimate votes to keep the GOP in power.

Robert Kagan in the WaPo had a great article on Friday:

“We kept counting on others to save us — our institutions, our political leaders, our courts — but help never arrived…And as we waited for someone, anyone, to do the right thing, we moved closer to the end….Now all we have left is the people. The voters, for all their failings, may prove more trustworthy than their supposed guardians. They may deliver us by delivering an irrefutable landslide to Biden. Or, failing that, by going out into the streets in an American version of “people power” to foil the plot against their democracy.”

Will the system work? That we even have to ask the question is the answer.

It may come down to mass demonstrations, just like we’ve seen in dictatorships. Sometimes the guns are aimed at the people; sometimes they’re aimed at the despot.

Wake up America, it comes down to us. At the ballot box, or if necessary, in the streets. To help you wake up, listen to “I Wanna Be Sedated” from the Ramone’s 1978 album “Road to Ruin”. Being sedated for the next few days doesn’t sound so bad:

Chorus:

Twenty, twenty, twenty, four hours to go

I wanna be sedated

Nothing to do, nowhere to go,

Oh I wanna be sedated

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – 48 Hours to Go Edition, November 1, 2020

Just 48 hours to go.

Has anyone else noticed that since his impeachment, Trump has lost a step? He no longer speaks about fighting the system, or his accomplishments. It’s all about how he’s been ganged up on, and mistreated. Maybe impeaching him wasn’t a complete failure after all.

We’ll see in two days if the blame game was a winning strategy:

It may be hopeful news or maybe just a deep fake, but several outlets are reporting that Trump has canceled his election night party. The party was to be held at the Trump International Hotel in Washington DC, but instead, he’ll party at the White House.

But here’s a good reason to be nervous. Forbes reports that the Post Office is failing to deliver on time in key places:

“Battleground states in the presidential election are suffering from some of the worst ballot delivery delays in the country….and with state laws or court rulings requiring mail-in ballots to be received by Election Day, several states face a particularly high risk of voters having their ballots arrive too late to count, potentially impacting close races.”

Every Vote should be counted! Shouldn’t the Supreme Court support that?

Since January, the GOP has filed more than 230 lawsuits about voting:

Not all the gravestones are about Halloween:

The ghost of elections past:

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – October 18, 2020

If confirmed, Amy Coney Barrett’s first major case on the Supreme Court could be Trump’s plan to remove undocumented immigrants from the Census count. This will cost states like California, Illinois and New York multiple Congressional seats, and billions in federal funding:

“The Supreme Court announced Friday that it will review President Trump’s attempt to exclude undocumented immigrants when calculating how congressional seats are apportioned among the states.”

A three-judge panel in New York said that Trump’s July 21 memorandum on the matter was “an unlawful exercise of the authority granted to” him by Congress. It blocked the Commerce Department and the Census Bureau from including internally generated information about the number of undocumented immigrants in their reports to the president after this year’s census is completed.

The census does not ask a citizenship question, so how the Census Bureau would come up with the immigration status of people counted is as a practical matter, suspect.

The Supremes put the case on a fast-track, saying that they will hold a hearing Nov. 30. By then, it will likely again be a nine-member court, assuming Judge Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed. It’s unclear how the case will divide the court. But the Census is yet another issue that has been transformed from a largely bureaucratic exercise into a partisan battle.

The decision to hear the case follows the Supreme Court’s earlier decision that the Trump administration could stop the Census count of Americans immediately, instead of on October 31.

This newest controversy involves the Constitutional mandate that apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives be based on the “whole number of persons in each State.” That has been interpreted to mean every resident, regardless of immigration status. But this summer, Trump issued a memorandum that said: “It is the policy of the United States to exclude from the apportionment base aliens who are not in a lawful immigration status.”

Trump directed Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to provide him with two sets of numbers, one that includes unauthorized immigrants and one that does not, “to the maximum extent feasible and consistent with the discretion delegated to the executive branch.”

Thus, the need for a decision about the Constitutionality of counting every person. We’ll see what happens. On to cartoons:

Coney Barrett says she’s a neutral arbiter of the law. Tell that to the Elephant:

Amy Coney Barrett keeps her opinions close to the robe:

It’s a felony to intimidate voters or obstruct voting. Coney Barrett says she can’t say if that’s illegal. The Constitution states that Congress shall determine the date of the election. Coney Barrett says she can’t say whether or not a president could unilaterally postpone an election.

A competent judge should have acknowledged explicit text in federal statutes and the Constitution itself, while reserving the right to apply it to a specific set of facts that might be presented to her.

Our Election Day fear:

Voting no longer takes just a few minutes:

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