Politics, Voter Suppression, and Modern Killing Fields
This article is about the many forms of VOTER SUPPRESSION, starting with the most cruel and disgusting. Voter suppression is as American as apple pie, and claims of voter fraud are often used to justify it. Shortly after the civil war, many southern states introduced literacy and “good character” tests to prevent African Americans from exercising their newly won right to vote.
Modern Killing Fields
When the United States lost 56,000 soldiers in Vietnam over a ten-year period, averaging 5,600 per year, millions of people poured out into the streets to protest these lost lives. We had political anarchy for the last three years of the Vietnam war because of these deaths. And because of these deaths, God forgive us, we shot and killed American students at Kent State in Ohio, who were just exercising their First Amendment rights to free assembly and free speech. Yet no group is out marching to protest the killings by politicians and the medical profession.
Why is it that we get mad about some kinds of killing but not others? What about the killing caused by actions of elected officials, with the apparent objective of suppressing votes? When is that not okay? The term I use to describe that is Political Genocide.
HEALTHCARE: Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare are at least partially motivated by fear of losing political control amid changing demographics. It’s not just because of their racist hatred of Obama, our first black President. CBO analysis says the Republican Sabotage of Our Health Care System will deny healthcare to millions, add to the deficit, and increase overall healthcare costs, not lower them. And Harvard Medical School researchers have found a 25% higher risk of mortality for the uninsured compared with the insured, after adjusting for various factors. 45,000 deaths a year can be attributed to the lack of health insurance, but don’t worry; they’re mostly the low-income blacks and Hispanics who likely vote for Democrats (when they can vote at all).
UPDATE 8/15/20: And then there’s President Trump’s poor response to a novel coronavirus causing COVID-19. Over 165,000 Americans have died from the virus so far, and that number keeps growing. Trump’s sabotage of our healthcare system before the pandemic didn’t help, and some say his actions, or inactions, afterwards were intentional. They blame him personally for at least 80% of the deaths, most of which were preventable.
POLITICS: Might there be a nefarious motive behind deaths from public policy that denies access to affordable healthcare, since people die from the lack of care? After all, dead people don’t vote. They also don’t get Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, unemployment insurance, or other social benefits.
How can these deaths from lack of care be viewed as acceptable collateral damage for cutting taxes on the wealthy? Many policy decisions seem intentional and designed to keep political power when faced with shifting demographics, such as the white Christian majority turning into a minority.
UPDATE 8/15/20: Increasingly desperate to be re-elected and avoid criminal prosecution and jail time, Trump has now attacked the US Postal Service, appointing a new Postmaster General to intentionally slow the voting process just prior to the November 3rd Election. He says an election in which too many Americans vote by mail would be illegitimate, and he’s doing everything he can to make sure that the Postal Service can’t handle the huge numbers of ballots it will have to deliver. That includes removing automated mail sorting machines and eliminating overtime for postal workers. The media even reported the removal of postboxes as shown in the images below.
INCARCERATION: Convicted felons can’t vote either. Where President Johnson’s War on Poverty policies sought to foster equality and economic opportunity, things changed under the Nixon administration as policing and punishment largely replaced welfare programs. That turned America from a “land of the free” into the world’s largest for-profit prison system — a system disproportionately filled with people of color. There was likely both a profit and political motive behind that policy change.
POVERTY: A less obvious killing field comes from the 43M people who live in poverty, because there’s a very direct relationship between Poverty, Obesity and Longevity. According to HBO’s documentary, The Weight of the Nation, public health officials can accurately predict BMI obesity by zip code and differences in average longevity of 20 years or more between poor and affluent neighborhoods. One inner city example had an average lifespan of just 64 years versus 90 years for a wealthier suburb just 8 miles away. So pay close attention to the regressive policies our current Congress has been pushing through, many of them in secret, because they too can be labeled Political Genocide.
Common Voter Suppression Tactics:
- Campaign Finance has become so expensive that only wealthy candidates can run, or those willing to be indebted to wealthy contributors. A related problem caused by high costs of campaigning is that politicians must spend so much of their time fundraising, as opposed to crafting policy. People for decades have called for campaign finance reforms and term limits to help level the playing field in the political process, but the party in power tends to resist.
- Onerous candidate qualifications can make it intentionally difficult for opposition candidates to get on the ballot or be invited to public debates.
- 3rd Party Candidates, often funded by Republicans, run with the sole purpose of pulling votes away from Democrats. Jill Stein ran as the Green Party candidate in 2016 to pull votes away from Hillary Clinton. And Kanye West tried to run in 2020 to pull black votes from Joe Biden, but his campaign failed to get on the ballot in most states.
- Gerrymandering is a creative way of drawing voting districts to win more seats than otherwise suggested by population demographics. RIGGED is a new documentary that spotlights gerrymandering as a cornerstone of Texas voter suppression.
- Voter ID Laws can disenfranchise voters who don’t own a car or have a driver’s license, including college students, the poor, and the elderly. The Republican-controlled US Supreme Court in recent years overturned a law that long prohibited states with a history of voter suppression from making rule changes without first getting court approval. Since then, those abusive states have returned to their old practices, but a few lower courts have begun to declare their practices unconstitutional. Still, this remains a problem in many locations.
Starting 10/1/2020, REAL ID will be required for boarding an aircraft, and states will be required to link their motor vehicle databases with those of other states plus Canada and Mexico. - Government-issued Photo IDs become a problem when it’s too difficult for some people to get one.
- REAL ID sets minimum standards for the documents that must be provided before states issue a driver’s license or other official ID card, and for the features that must be on the card itself (e.g. star at top-right). The REAL ID Act, which passed under President Bush in 2005, essentially turns state IDs into a de facto national ID card. The excuse for passing REAL ID had to do with homeland security, illegal immigration, and voter fraud; but future voter suppression seems like another motive, because of the difficulty obtaining one. To get a new REAL ID, you’ll need a birth certificate (or passport), social security card, photo ID that includes full name and birth date, proof of residential address, and proof of legal status (you’re not an illegal alien).
- Voter Registration Records of predominantly blacks and minorities have been purged in the name of preventing voter fraud, even though reported cases of fraud are extremely rare (see second video). Besides purging 33 million Americans from the voter voter roles, there have also been many cases of states intentionally making it harder to even register to vote, especially for those who don’t drive and depend on public transportation. See how Brian Kemp stole the Georgia Governor election with this technique.This first video (9:47) focuses on just this one issue: voter registration.
- Misinformation can confuse voters so they show up at the wrong place to vote, or on the wrong date. Some of the most creative tricks include posting billboards or distributing flyers with intentionally wrong information in predominantly poor or minority neighborhoods. Another risk is Deceptive advertising, such as “Avoid The Line. Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925 and we’ll make history together.”
- Voter Fatigue, a result of having too many elections, including primaries, down-ballot, city, runoff, and special elections, has the effect of reducing turnout. That’s important because history shows us that elections with high voter turnout favor Democrats.
- Polling Locations & Times can be strategically selected to disadvantage voters who would predominantly vote for Progressive candidates. Related to that are changing or reducing the number of polling places and eliminating early voting days.
As Secretary of State running for GA Governor, he purged well over a million voter registration records, allowing him to win, but just barely. - Unequal voting day resources, and changing multi-lingual voter assistance, can intentionally cause long line and make it more difficult to vote.
- Polling place intimidation by paid or volunteer “election observers” is an effective way to keep opposition voters away. Even legal hispanics avoid places where they fear authorities will question their citizen status. So parking an ICE truck nearby can be a deterrent. Other voting threats have included “Phone Jamming” and large billboards in poor or hispanic neighborhoods that say “Voter Fraud is a Crime and WILL be Prosecuted.”
- Poll taxes and literacy tests are traditional ways to suppress votes, but courts have since deemed them illegal.
- Intentional Confusion — “I requested an absentee ballot as I will be out of state for work on Election Day. I received what I *thought* was my ballot this afternoon and to my surprise it was only an application for an absentee ballot (Red flag #1). In filling out said application, because I selected ‘Expected absence from county’ as my excuse, I have to have my ballot mailed to an address outside the county (Red flag #2). I work in an operating room in Orange County, CA, so it’s not like I have a desk to receive mail, I don’t want to have it sent to a hotel I’m not checked into, where the heck do I send this ballot to? Also, they didn’t print the mailing address on where to mail the application to (Red Flag #3) so is it county or state based? I’m so irritated with the great state of Texas making it harder and harder to vote each year!” (from a Facebook friend)
- More Confusion — Ironically, a few weeks ago, over 300 million lottery tickets were sold in 4 days. Within hours of the drawing, lottery officials knew how many winning tickets were sold and where the winning tickets were sold, down to the specific store locations. BUT… 4 days after 2018 midterm voting had closed, some voting officials still didn’t know how many people voted, how they voted, who they voted for, or what the accurate results were. We can only conclude that the US election system is broken on purpose.
- Outright Fraud — President Trump has often complained about widespread voter fraud (see next video). He even floated the idea that Democrats were voting multiple times and even going back to the car to put on a disguise so they could go vote again. There is no proof of any voter fraud until recently, and then from within the Republican party. On the other hand, there’s video proof of malfunctioning voting machines that automatically select Republican candidates instead of Democrat. Apparently the selections on the touch-screen device were too close, but that could have been intentional.
- Electoral College — Thanks to the Electoral College, two candidates in the last five elections were elected President even though their opponent won the popular vote. Progressives see the College as giving low-population states an outsized influence and have called for it to be abolished. The original premise of the College – that few people had the needed information and discernment to elect a President – no longer applies when we all have easy access to news media and the Internet. Abolishing the Electoral College would make everyone’s votes count equally. One person, One vote.
- Incarceration, the result of flipping President Johnson’s War on Poverty into a War on Drugs, may have been done for nefarious purpose, because felons aren’t allowed to vote. This is just one more form of voter suppression.
- Capitalism keeps lower-income people busy by making us struggle to meet our basic needs. When our focus is consumed by making sure the family can eat and live, we have little time or energy to be political, to organize, or to disrupt. Even if unintentional, capitalism has that effect.
Claims of Voter Fraud used as excuse to Restrict Voting
In this video (5:32), Reich speaks of the fraud behind Republican claims of voter fraud. Their objective is to further suppress votes, because elections with high voter turnout generally favor Democrats.
Voting has High Priority, at least among Democrats
After winning a substantial majority of seats in the US House of Representatives, Democrats have put election reform at the top of their legislative agenda, along with fixing Obamacare, reducing drug prices, and improving our nation’s decaying infrastructure. They clearly plan to legislate as well as investigate, but as described in the Dallas Morning News [America has a voting problem, but it’s not fraud], it’s unclear if any of their measures will pass the Republican controlled Senate or be signed into law or implemented under the current administration.
SINCE BIDEN WON IN 2020 AND TRUMP CLAIMED “THE BIG STEAL”
Nine Election Fraud Claims, None Credible (NYTimes, 12/11/20200) A list of bogus election fraud claims, cobbled together from dubious websites and failed lawsuits aimed at overturning President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, has spread widely online.
Why is there a big debate over the filibuster? Because it benefits one political party much more than the other. (NYTimes, 1/27/21) If you examine the history of the filibuster — a Senate rule requiring a supermajority vote on many bills, rather than a straight majority — you will quickly notice something: It has benefited the political right much more than the left.
In Statehouses, Stolen-Election Myth Fuels a G.O.P. Drive to Rewrite Rules (NYTimes, 2/27/21) Republican legislators want big changes to the laws for elections and other aspects of governance. TARGETS: Vote by Mail, eliminate drop boxes, automatic voter registration, citizen-led ballot initiatives, further gerrymandering, fewer voting days, fewer polling locations, shorter poll hours, absentee voting, voter role purges, and allowing state lawmakers to ignore election results and decide themselves which candidate would receive the state’s electoral votes.
Supreme Court Seems Ready to Sustain Arizona Voting Limits (NYTimes 3/2/21) The court also signaled that it could tighten the standards for using the Voting Rights Act to challenge all kinds of voting restrictions.
Targeting State Restrictions, House Passes Landmark Voting Rights Expansion (NYTimes, 3/2/21) The omnibus voting, ethics and campaign finance bill would roll back barriers to voting enacted by Republican statehouses, but it faces an uphill battle in the Senate.
Senate Democrats must choose Voting Rights or the Filibuster. (3/5/2021) MY SUMMARY:
According to the New York Times, we are witnessing the greatest roll back of voting rights in this country since the Jim Crow era.
Republican legislators in Texas and other states are trying to make voting more difficult, mostly because they believe lower voter turnout helps their party win elections. While they say it’s to stop voter fraud, widespread fraud doesn’t exist.
The Supreme Court, with six Republican appointees among the nine justices, has generally allowed those restrictions to stand.
If the U.S. Senate does not pass a voting-rights bill and reduce partisan gerrymandering, many Americans will find voting so difficult that they are effectively disenfranchised.
Democrats need a comprehensive response through federal legislation, like the voting-rights bill the House passed March 3rd.
Among other things, it would require states to register many eligible voters automatically; allow others to register on Election Day; hold at least 15 days of early voting; expand voting by mail; and allow people with completed criminal sentences to vote.
The bill also requires more disclosure of campaign donations and restricts partisan gerrymandering.
But the bill seems to have no chance of winning the 60 votes needed in the 50-50 Senate neeed to overcome a filibuster. Hence, the choice: Voting Rights or Filibuster.
8 Voting Rights Organizations To Know Before The 2020 Elections Roll Around (Feb.2019) See article for links and descriptions.
1. Let America Vote
2. Common Cause
3. League Of Women Voters
4. American Civil Liberties Union
5. Spread The Vote
6. Election Protection
7. Asian Americans Advancing Justice/Asian Law Caucus
8. Brennan Center For Justice
RELATED ARTICLES:
How GOP-backed voting measures could create hurdles for tens of millions of voters (Washington Post, 3/11/21) At least 250 new laws have been proposed in 43 states to limit mail, early in-person and Election Day voting.
Whatever Happened to the Voting Rights Act (6:28 min) Nsé Ufot, Executive Director of the New Georgia Project, explains the devastating consequences of the Supreme Court’s shameful 2013 decision to gut the Voting Rights Act.
The prospect of easier and fairer voting terrifies Republicans (Washington Post, 3/8/2019) Speaking of H.R.1, Mitch McConnell said, “If our voting system were more efficient, more open and more fair, then the inevitable result would be fewer Republicans winning elections.” In other words, Republican success depends on the system working in ways that restrict access to the ballot.
Conservatism’s Monstrous Endgame (12/17/2018 NYTimes editorial) NY TIMES COMMENTS ARE CLOSED, BUT THIS IS WHAT I WANTED TO SAY…
Election officials raise concerns over bill that would let Trump send Secret Service to polls (The Hill)
The Supreme Court Is About to Hear a Case That Could Unleash a New Wave of Voter Purges (Mother Jones)
Redistricting Will Be the Biggest Threat to America’s Next Election Cycle – VICE Impact
Why Humans Are Cruel (a psychologist explains why humans are so terrible to each other)
Less Than Human: The Psychology Of Cruelty (NPR) How dehumanizing people makes us capable of atrocious acts.
Public Opinion about the Future of the Affordable Care Act — This politically neutral article in the New England Journal of Medicine shows how public opinion differs between Democrats and Republicans based on differences in their core values. (interesting)
Trump told HHS to deny request to fix Iowa ObamaCare market (The Hill)
Texas voter ID law can go into effect, appeals court panel rules (CNN) In a 2-1 decision, the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that the Texas voter ID law can go into effect. Most accepted forms of ID in Texas are issued by DPS, so making it difficult to get to DPS is a serious voter disenfranchisement issue.That case may be appealed to the US Supreme Court, but the Court will likely be more conservative by then, and voter rights are just one of the important issues to be decided.
Some serious voter disenfranchisement is going on in some cities in Texas. Denton, for example, is the county seat of my County. And now, if you need to renew your license, you can no longer do so in the city of Denton. You have to travel to another city, that depending on where you live, can take 30+ minutes by car or even longer on public transportation.
So, you have to be eligible to renew online, go somewhere that has an Internet connection if you don’t have it at home, and have a credit card. If any of those don’t apply, you have to drive. And if you don’t have your own vehicle, then you have to take even more time off work (which sucks since you’re probably paid hourly) and spend most of the day, if not the entire day, just dealing with and traveling to and from the DMV.
Democratic aide arrested advocating for voting rights in Texas (story begins at about 5:30 of this video) — Rachel Maddow reviews the history of voting rights battles and zeros in on a new one at Prairie View A&M University in Waller County, Texas, and talks with Mike Siegel, Texas Democratic congressional candidate, and Jacob Aronowitz, Siegel’s campaign field director, about Aronowitz’s arrest after delivering a letter of support for voting rights at the school on Siegel’s behalf and confirming that his candidate was a Democrat.
Georgia Is Using Amateur Handwriting Analysis to Disenfranchise Minority Voters — Say you live in Georgia and want to vote in this year’s tight govenpetorial race between Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp, who currently serves as GA Secretary of State and controls election rules. Because you’ll be traveling, you send in an absentee ballot, but a few days or weeks AFTER the election, you get a notice in the mail. An election official working for Kemp decided that the signature on your absentee ballot looked different from the signature on your voter-registration card and threw out your ballot. There is nothing you can do. Your vote has been voided.
Black Voters Matter blocked from taking Georgia seniors to vote — Roughly 40 black seniors were told to get off a bus organized to take them to cast their votes.
Thousands of Black Votes in Georgia Disappeared (2/9/19)
A Rising Tide of Hate: Here Are 6 Ways White Nationalists Are Attacking, Bullying and Intimidating Americans in Recent Weeks — “According to Toni Pippins-Poole (election director in Dallas County, Texas), reports of voter intimidation at polling places in her area are the ‘worst in 30 years.’ The Texas Civil Rights Project is also reporting a sharp increase in incidents of voter harassment aimed at ‘women of color’ at polling places, and the incidents have ranged from wingnuts yelling insults at voters outside of polling places to non-white voters being aggressively questioned about their politics while waiting to vote.”
Democrats got millions more votes – so how did Republicans win the Senate?
The Counterattack Against Rigged Elections Begins as Reform Succeeds in Several States — “There were campaign and election reform initiatives on the ballot Tuesday in more than two dozen states and localities, and with a few notable exceptions, they won, sweeping aside defenders of a status quo system that consistently produces incivility, political extremism and government gridlock.”
Voter suppression is an all-American problem we can fight – and win (and MUST) — Ever since the Supreme Court struck down the Voting Rights Act in 2013, Republican legislators have unleashed a flood of new voter suppression initiatives, mostly in the southern states previously under federal supervision. But there were crucial victories in the fight against voter suppression during the primaries.
Texas’s Voter-Registration Laws Are Straight Out of the Jim Crow Playbook — Compare them to Oregon’s, which make voting incredibly easy.
Unusual pattern of signatures emerges as North Carolina probes allegations in House race (CNNPolitics)
Lame-duck Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signs bills weakening Democratic successor — In a purely partisan move, these bills are designed to limit the powers of the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general, and restrict early voting.
Donald Trump Is Trying to Kill You (Paul Krugman, NYTimes, 4/4/19) “Trust the pork producers; fear the wind turbines.”
The census is a sleeping giant of a potential Trump administration scandal (MSN 6/13/2019)
Republicans’ white supremacist problem is a threat to America (The Guardian, 8/6/2019) EXCELLENT! I find some of the best articles in this publication. Well done.
Texas has closed more polling places than any other state (Houston Chronicle, 9/19/2019) “Texas has a long and dark history of voter suppression. … Texas is at the forefront of inventing new ways to suppress the vote — ways that other states often imitate.”
House Passes Bill to Restore Key Parts of Voting Rights Act (TIME 12/6/19)
Why are millions of Americans dying over failing to afford healthcare? (World Economic Forum, 11/26/19) “People of colour, younger people and those with low incomes were far more likely to know someone who died under these circumstances.”
DEAD PEOPLE DON’T VOTE — 34 million likely Democrat voters — That seems like a disgusting (and effective) form of Voter Suppression, and if intentional, it’s POLITICAL GENOCIDE.
The Unconstitutional Census Power Grab (Robert Reich video, 2:53m 6/4/2018) From trying to add a citizenship question to claiming he’d pass an executive order that would exclude undocumented immigrants from the count, Trump has made it his mission to interfere with the Census. His most blatant efforts may have been foiled, but experts are still raising the alarm about the accuracy of the Census. Here’s why it’s crucial the Census is accurate, and why Trump is so determined to sabotage it.
DID CRUZ REALLY BEAT BETO, OR DID HE STEAL THE ELECTION? WE MAY NEVER KNOW.
We’ve all been reading about close and undecided races in Florida, Georgia, and other states with voter suppression issues. That caused me to think about an article I wrote before the election. The more I reflect on that, and the gut feeling I had as I cast my own vote, the more I’ve come to question the results and distrust the process. Let me explain.
I’ll start with election night as results came in, the evening progressed, and Beto’s lead grew. My confidence grew too, with just a few districts yet to report. Houston was running late and had only reported 50-60% of the votes. But Houston looked good for Beto, even though it’s Ted Cruz’s hometown, because urban areas tend to vote for Democrats while rural areas tend to vote for Republicans. That already was reflecting Houston, which seemed certain to cement Beto’s victory.
And then there was El Paso, Beto’s hometown. Located at the far left corner of the state, El Paso is on Mountain Time while the rest of Texas is on Central Time. El Paso would report late, and as expected, it voted largely Democratic.
So what happened? I watched intently as each news report came in, expecting to celebrate. But the next thing I knew came the announcement that Cruz had won. It was out of the blue and a total surprise. Where did all those extra votes come from?
I was confused but put that aside to relish in the victories we did have, such as taking control of the House. But later news reports of other tight races have caused me to reflect on my gut feelings and initial distrust. That’s why I post this.
VOTING MACHINE MALFUNCTION – Some precincts were using those old voting machines with the rotating dial to make selections, and several people had said they cast a straight-party vote for Democrats but then noticed the machine “flipped” their vote to Republican. So a warning to Democrats went out quickly, telling them to watch out and verify results before pressing VOTE.
PAPER BALLOTS – My district used paper ballots but in a way that made me just as nervous. After checking in with my ID, I was given a ballot corresponding to my school district, because only one district had bond proposals to approve. The problem I saw with the ballot was the lack of anything to tie the vote to me personally – no name, voter ID#, nothing. What would happen, I thought, if there were a recount or discrepancy? The completed ballots were scanned into a tabulating machine, but with no identifying mark, it seemed too easy for a ballot to be scanned more than once. And if it were rejected for some reason, there was no way to identify the voter.
DISCARDED VOTES – We’ve heard about tens of thousands of voter registrations in Georgia that were discarded because of signatures that didn’t seem to match. Those voters were never notified. Worse is the obvious conflict of interest with a Secretary of State responsible for voting rules also running for Governor and overseeing his own election.
NO AUDIT TRAIL – How would Texas voters be notified if there were problems like in Georgia? Would the scanner reject my ballot if I didn’t fill in the box fully enough or placed Check mark or X instead? And what if I marked a straight-party vote but then also checked individual Libertarians when there was no Democrat on the ballot? Or what if I also checked the box for Beto to be double sure that he got my vote? I’m now told that such ballots were likely discarded, but how can I know for sure? With nothing on the paper ballot to tie it to individual voters, voter fraud is too easy and difficult to prove.