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vote-democrat-president-congress · 2 months

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UPI: "The reason in encouraging the changes to ensure election integrity, the Carter Center siad, is that recent U.S. politics have been "tinged with an aggressive anger and virulent rhetoric that threatens to unravel the fabric of our society."

The guidelines listed are:

Making elections a national priority. The center said the nation's election system is critical to American democracy, so it's critical that "election laws and regulations be guided by principles of fairness that preclude partisanship."

Election laws and should be transparent and simple for the public to understand. One way to ensure the health of the nation's election system, the report's authors say, is to be "fully transparent." Saying that states and localities already have made "great strides" in delivering basic election information to voters, the report's authors say, "this work should continue on all aspects of the process, from registration of voters through certification of election results."

Expand access to voter registration. The center and institute said voter registration rules "should be structured to maximize the likelihood that eligible voters can be added to the rolls without complicated rules or restrictions."

Allow ballot casting to be simple for urban and rural populations. The report's authors said policymakers and election officials "should commit to finding a way to treat voters equitably - eschewing both a 'one size fits all' approach ... in favor of one in which there is "attention to ensuring that voters are not disadvantaged in obtaining or casting a ballot relative to others just because of where they live."

Have technology serve as a boost to voters not an obstacle. Noting that voting machines have become increasingly easier to use, the report's authors urge a design approach that would cover all voting technology, "like electronic poll books and ballot-on-demand printers" so that every step of the election process is accessible and flexible for all voters.

Encourage states and local governments that allow early voting to prioritize counting votes before the election. Saying that offering voting options over several days or weeks makes voting more resilient against potential attacks, the center urged that "communities that allow such ballots should have policies ... that ensure that as many as possible of these ballots (if not all of them) will be returned to election officials in time to be processed and counted as soon as reasonably possible." The center said that, ideally, this should occur before ballots are cast in person.

Make sure oversees voters and military personnel are able to be counted quickly. The center and the institute said states and localities should try to avoid unnecessary restrictions on the use of documents, "like the Federal Postcard Application or the Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot."

Keep the process of vote counting transparent and orderly. "Policymakers and election officials must continue to prioritize accuracy even as they strive to complete counts sooner," the report's authors said.

Conduct regular audits of the election process on the municipal level. The center said election officials should use the most up-to-date and available "techniques and best practices" to validate elections' reliability.

Use recognized best practice standards for elections. The report's authors said states and localities also should be open to having "nonpartisan and independent" election observers.

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cogitoergofun · 10 months

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A host of hardline conservative activists who support Donald Trump’s election fraud lies were elected to top party leadership posts by the more than 2,000 delegates to this weekend’s Georgia GOP convention.

The new leaders of the state party, elected in a flurry of votes after Trump’s address on Saturday, include some of the more prominent conspiracy theorists in the state, as well as others who have joined pro-Trump lawsuits seeking to undermine President Joe Biden’s victory.

The party’s new first vice-chair, conservative talk show host Brian Pritchard, has claimed the 2020 election was “stolen” even as he faces allegations of voting illegally nine times while serving a felony sentence. He’s said he’s done nothing wrong.

The second vice-chairman, David Cross, has frequently promoted election fraud theories and is a close ally of Garland Favorito, whose lawsuit alleges counterfeit ballots tainted the 2020 election.

Caroline Jeffords, who won the party secretary role, and Suzi Voyles, the assistant secretary, are both involved in legal complaints claiming counterfeit ballots. Voyles is also a former U.S. House candidate whose campaign focused on her efforts to reverse Trump’s defeat.

The new party chair, former state Sen. Josh McKoon, didn’t make the issue a key part of his campaign. But he spoke last week in favor of tapping a Republican activist who has challenged the registrations of nearly 10,000 people to the elections board in heavily-Democratic Fulton County.

“You need the guy who fights back,” McKoon told delegates Saturday during his campaign speech, adding that he’ll “fight back with America’s best election integrity unit to stop them from cheating in 2024.”

The evidence leaves no doubt about Biden’s victory. Three separate tallies of the roughly 5 million ballots upheld Biden’s narrow victory in Georgia, legal challenges by Trump allies have been tossed, Republican election officials have vouched for the results and an audit of absentee ballot signatures in Cobb County found no cases of fraud.

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xox000xox · 11 days

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And here is,

just few of the Arizona Senate’s official results of the 2020 presidential election audit,

• 74, 243 MAIL IN BALLOTS that are TIED to individuals returned and cast with NO RECORD of ever being SENT OUT.

• 420,987 MAIL IN BALLOTS out of 1.9 million CONFIRMED to have NO signature match. Just in Maricopa County alone.

• deleted the official results of the 2020 election before the very same audit,

And Katie Hobbs and Adrian Fontes belong in prison in 1 cell with 1 bed.

https://twitter.com/Real_RobN/status/1776998766803038636?t=quHFVvWRGvSruQ2iueLk9A&s=19

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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Republican members of the Texas state legislature introduced a slate of bills Thursday designed to subvert election processes and curb voting rights in the state. One of them would even allow the Texas Secretary of State to overturn election results in the state’s largest Democratic-leaning county, with very little rationale for doing so.

On Thursday, Republican state senators introduced Senate Bill 1993, a bill targeting Harris County, a diverse region that includes Houston and is also the most populous county in Texas, to a Senate committee for debate.

SB 1993 would grant Secretary of State Jane Nelson (R) the authority to order a new election in Harris County “if the secretary has good cause to believe that at least 2% of the total number of polling places in the county did not receive supplemental ballots,” according to the bill text. Secretary Nelson would have the same authority granted to a district court.

The bill would “allow really low thresholds” for ordering a new election, Katya Ehresman, the voting rights program manager at Common Cause Texas, told TPM. “Anything from a machine malfunction, which can necessarily be the fault of the county or of an election administrator getting stuck in traffic—which in Houston is incredibly likely—and having a delay in providing election results to the central count station,” she said.

The bill was introduced alongside over a dozen other bills seeking to restrict voter access and overhaul the state’s elections process. Senate Bill 260, for example, would allow the Secretary to suspend election administrators without cause, and Senate Bill 1070 would enable Texas to withdraw from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a bipartisan program that maintains voter rolls across state lines that has recently been targeted by far-right propaganda.

State Republicans quietly introduced the bills in the State Affairs Committee on Thursday morning—without giving the mandatory 48-hour notice. “Every part of today’s hearing highlights the subversive attacks on elections in Texas,” Ehresman said, “and (SB) 1993 is a part of that.”

With a population of nearly 5 million, Harris County is the most populous county in Texas and the third most populous in the U.S. It became the subject of right-wing conspiracy theories back in 2020, when the county experienced some technical difficulties as election officials tried to change procedures to make voting safer during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Secretary of State’s office conducted an audit of the general election. They found that the county “had very serious issues in the handling of electronic media,” but none of those issues actually amounted to voter fraud.

Harris County saw issues again in 2022, however, as state and local Republicans went after the county’s election administrations by recruiting and deploying poll watchers throughout the county. This prompted local Democrats to request federal observers instead. On Election Day, the county did experience several issues that often take place in more urban counties, like polling sites opening late and some running out of paper ballots, among other things.

The Texas GOP, including Gov. Greg Abbott, seized the opportunity to accuse county officials of “election improprieties,” and 22 right-wing candidates used it as an excuse to challenge their losses. Still, there was no evidence of widespread fraud.

State Democrats argue that the introduction of a flood of anti-voting legislation targeting Harris County has all been a retaliation against the county turning blue back in 2018.

“A lot of what we see is Harris County as an example of a need to invest in election administration and not penalize or detract from it,” Ehresman said.

#us politics #news #voter disenfranchisement #texas #gop #conservatives #republicans #texas republicans #gov. greg abbott #2023 #Texas Secretary of State #Senate Bill 1993 #Harris County #Houston #Jane Nelson #talking points memo #Senate Bill 260 #Senate Bill 1070 #Electronic Registration Information Center

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simply-ivanka · 5 months

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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — In the northwest corner of Louisiana, a candidate for parish sheriff demanded a recount Wednesday after losing by a single vote in an election where more than 43,000 people cast ballots.

The tight race shines a spotlight on Louisiana’s recount process and its outdated voting machines, which do not produce an auditable paper trail that experts say is critical to ensuring election results are accurate. States’ recount abilities have proven to be exceedingly important, especially following the 2020 presidential election when multiple battleground states conducted recounts and reviews to confirm President Joe Biden’s victory.

“This extraordinarily narrow margin … absolutely requires a hand recount to protect the integrity of our democratic process, and to ensure we respect the will of the people,” John Nickelson, the Republican candidate who trailed by one vote in last week’s election for Caddo Parish Sheriff, posted on social media Wednesday.

Henry Whitehorn, the Democrat who won the sheriff runoff, did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

Caddo Clerk of Court Mike Spence said he has seen close races during his 46-years of experience, but none with such a sizeable number of voters. Spence said he hopes this will teach residents that every vote matters.

When the recount takes place Monday only absentee ballots will be tallied again and checked for errors. But they only account for about 17% of the total vote in the runoff race. Absentee ballots are mailed in and are the only auditable paper trail under Louisiana’s current voting system.

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homomenhommes · 4 months

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THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … December 29

Greek Lovers

570 B.C. – Polycrates, the Greek tyrant, was born on this date (d.522). By pirate raids and indiscriminate warfare, the tyrant of Samos dominated the East Aegean. He waged various wars and was, until the end of his life, victorious. His ruthlessness drove the philosopher Pythagorus from Samos, where Polycrates was generally despised. Eventually he was lured to Magnesia by one of his enemies, where he was crucified.

But even meanies can lose their hearts to the right guy, and Polycrates, tyrant though he was, was still a normal Greek. His special friend was Bathyllus, so beautiful that Polycrates dared to erect a statue in his honor in the temple of Hera, goddess of women. Polycrates may have thought it appropriate that beautiful Bathyllus have his place among women, but it was considered an act of arrogance nonetheless. Almost immediately thereafter he was crucified.

1879 – Died: Charley Parkhurst, born Charlotte Parkhurst (b.1812), also known as One-Eyed Charley or Six-Horse Charley, who was an American stagecoach driver, farmer and rancher in California. Born and reared as a girl in New England, mostly in an orphanage, Parkhurst ran away as a youth, taking the name Charley and living as a male. He started work as a stable hand and learned to handle horses, including to drive coaches drawn by multiple horses. He worked in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, traveling to Georgia for associated work.

In his late 30s, Parkhurst sailed to California following the Gold Rush in 1849; there he became a noted stagecoach driver. In 1868 he may have been the first female (though passing as a man) to vote in a presidential election in California. At his death, it was discovered that his gender assigned at birth was female.

After Parkhurst died in 1879, neighbors came to the cabin to lay out the body for burial and discovered that his body appeared to be female to them. Rheumatism and cancer of the tongue were listed as causes of death. In addition, the examining doctor established that Parkhurst had given birth at some time. A trunk in the house contained a baby's dress. "The discovery of her true gender became a local sensation." and was soon carried by national newspapers.

The fire station in Soquel, California, has a plaque reading:

"The first ballot by a woman in an American presidential election was cast on this site November 3, 1868, by Charlotte (Charlie) Parkhurst who masqueraded as a man for much of her life. She was a stagecoach driver in the mother lode country during the gold rush days and shot and killed at least one bandit. In her later years she drove a stagecoach in this area. She died in 1879. Not until then was she found to be a woman. She is buried in Watsonville at the pioneer cemetery."

1950 – Jon Polito (d.2016) was an American actor and voice artist. In a film and television career spanning 35 years, he amassed over 220 credits. Notable television roles included Detective Steve Crosetti in the first two seasons of Homicide: Life on the Street and as Phil Bartoli on the first season of Crime Story.

Polito was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is known for working with the Coen Brothers, most notably in the major supporting role of Italian gangster Johnny Caspar in Miller's Crossing. Polito won an OBIE award in 1980 for his theater performances off Broadway and for his lifetime of work in film and television he received the Maverick Spirit Event Award at Cinequest Film Festival in 2005.

When Homicide began pre-production, Polito was asked to audition, and was initially reluctant – he didn't want move to Baltimore for the series, because he had just relocated from New York to Los Angeles. The script he received featured a dialogue scene between two detectives, one Polish American and the other Irish-American. Polito decided that the part he wanted was that of the Irishman, but he was told that he could not read for it. After reading for the part of the Polish-American detective, Polito added a message on his audition tape, saying that if the producers wanted to call him back, he would only be interested if he could take the part of the Irish detective. Series co-creators Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana did call him back, and they rewrote the character as an Italian, and cast him in the role. The other character, the Polish-American detective, was also rewritten, becoming Det. Meldrick Lewis, played by African-American actor Clark Johnson.

Polito was openly gay. He married fellow actor Darryl Armbruster on October 16, 2015, fifteen years after they first met.

He died from multiple myeloma on September 1, 2016, at the City of Hope Hospital, where he was being treated. Polito was 65 years old.

Self-portrait

1960 – Sean Martin, born in Hereford, Texas (d.2020), was a Canadian cartoonist, illustrator, and graphic designer, best known for the Doc and Raider comic strip series which appeared in LGBT publications in the 1980s and 1990s.

Martin lived in New York and San Francisco before moving to Canada in 1986. He took Canadian citizenship in 1989, living in Vancouver, Toronto, and Calgary. He published the first Doc and Raider strips in a Vancouver gay publication in 1987. Although the issue featuring Doc and Raider turned out to be the final issue of the publication, the strip was quickly picked up by other LGBT publications, including the Xtra! newspapers in Canada.

The arrangement was a unique one in that Martin's fee for providing the panel was instead turned over to local charities and organizations, not necessarily LGBT ones; in its time, Doc and Raider underwrote everything from AIDS hospices in New Zealand to an arts festival in Scotland, resulting in total donations of close to a quarter million dollars (US). The characters have also been used to promote safer-sex practices and AIDS education, as well as rodeos, country dance conventions, and film festivals around the world.

Martin published two books of the comic: Doc and Raider: Caught on Tape in 1994 and Doc and Raider: Incredibly Lifelike in 1996. A third, to be presented as an eBook, is currently in the works. He has also written a manual for theatre designers, "Big Show Tiny Budget", based on his years as a scenic and costume designer, and a novella, "Triptych".

Martin retired the regular strip in 1997, although he drew two special five-page stories for the Little Sister's Defence Fund, anthologies What's Right and What's Wrong in 2002. He continued to work as an artist and graphic designer, and prior to his death explored projects to revive Doc and Raider in new formats, particularly with a more political satire slant, as well as short form animations. In addition to the CG reprise of Doc and Raider, which can be viewed at its website, http://docandraider.com, Martin also turned to illustrating such projects as Candide, Gilgamesh, and Aesop's Fables.

During his time in Calgary, Martin worked extensively with the Alberta Rockies Gay Rodeo, providing graphic design for the organization's posters and brochures. His work was honoured in 2001, with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Gay Rodeo Association. Martin's illustration work has also been celebrated: his series of images for Candide are part of the permanent Voltaire collection at the University of Wittenburg.

1966 – Jason Gould is an American actor, writer and director. Gould was born in New York City, the son of singer/actress Barbra Streisand and actor Elliott Gould, who divorced July 9, 1971. He spent his formative years around major Hollywood players in Los Angeles, California.

Gould has appeared in Say Anything... (1989) and the Streisand-directed film The Prince of Tides (1991), but has since rarely appeared in front of the camera. In 1997 he made his West End debut in the play The Twilight of the Golds at the Arts Theatre in which he played the part of David, an opera designer. In 1997 he also wrote, produced and directed the short film Inside Out, playing Aaron in the humorous story of the child of two celebrities who is outed by the tabloids. His real life father, Elliott Gould, also played his father in the short film. His real half-brother Sam Gould played the part of his brother. The short was later combined with other features for Boys Life 3 (2000).

Around 1988, at the age of 21, Gould came out to his parents about being a homosexual. Around 1991, tabloids outed Gould as being gay. In an interview with The Advocate published August 17, 1999, Barbra Streisand said

I would never wish for my son to be anything but what he is. He is bright, kind, sensitive, caring, and a very conscientious and good person. He is a very gifted actor and filmmaker. What more could a parent ask for in their child? I have been truly blessed. Most parents feel that their child is particularly special, and I am no different. I have a wonderful son. My only wish for my son, Jason, is that he continues to experience a rich life of love, happiness, joy, and fulfillment, both creatively and personally.

Nobody on this earth has the right to tell anyone that their love for another human being is morally wrong. I will never forget how it made me shudder to hear Pat Buchanan say that he stood "with George Bush against the immoral idea that gay and lesbian couples should have the same standing in law as married men and women." Who is Pat Buchanan to pronounce anyone's love invalid? How can he deny the profound love felt by one human being for another? ... Unfortunately, however, as long as people like Newt Gingrich and Pat Buchanan continue in public life, the fight to codify gay marriages will be a tough battle to win.

1971 – Wakefield Poole’s trend-setting Boys in the Sand premieres, prompting Variety to remark, “There are no more closets.” Shot on Fire Island, Poole’s slickly produced film marks a dramatic departure from the low-budget pornography previously available. Boys in the Sand had its theatrical debut on December 29, 1971, at the 55th Street Playhouse in New York City. It was the first gay porn film to include credits, to achieve crossover success, to be reviewed by Variety, and one of the earliest porn films, after 1969’s Blue Movie by Andy Warhol, to gain mainstream credibility, preceding 1972’s Deep Throat by nearly a year. It was promoted with an advertising campaign unprecedented for a pornographic feature, and was an immediate critical and commercial success. The film’s title is a parodic reference to the Mart Crowley play and film The Boys in the Band.

1993 – Dalton Harris is a Jamaican singer. In 2010, he won Digicel Rising Star, and subsequently signed with VP Records. In 2018, he won the fifteenth season of The X Factor in the United Kingdom.

Harris was born in Clarendon, Jamaica, before moving to Kingston to pursue his music career. Harris recalled living a difficult life growing up in Jamaica with a large family with 22 siblings, being poor, and living on his own since the age of 15. He also talked about being physically and mentally abused in his early life. Harris attended Kingston College, where he passed six CSEC subjects. In October 2020, Harris stated that he is pansexual*.

In 2010, Harris became the youngest winner of the Jamaican singing competition Digicel Rising Stars where he won a cash prize of $1.5 million JMD. After his win, he began releasing music in Jamaica. He then traveled across the States for five years to widen his scope. He released many tracks like "I'm Numb", "Watch Over Me" and "That Wonderful Sound" in 2015, "All I Need", "Whisper in the Wind", "Unfaithful Chronicles" and "Dem Kinda Woman" in 2016 and "Perilous Time" in 2017.

In 2018, Harris entered season 15 of The X Factor in the United Kingdom. He auditioned for the series with "Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word" by Elton John. He received four yeses from the four judges. Competing in the category of "Boys", he was coached by Louis Tomlinson. Owing the success and increasing popularity of the Jamaican act, the British X Factor was broadcast in Jamaica after the local Television Jamaica (TVJ) bought the rights of broadcasting the programme live in Jamaica.

He reached the final of the contest on 1 December 2018 alongside Anthony Russell and Scarlett Lee. In the final, he sang "A Song for You" from Leon Russell, and dueted "Beneath Your Beautiful" with Emeli Sande. His winner's single was "The Power of Love", performed as a duet with James Arthur, who won the ninth series of The X Factor in 2012.

*Pansexuality is sexual, romantic or emotional attraction towards people regardless of their sex or gender identity. Pansexual people may refer to themselves as gender-blind, asserting that gender and sex are not determining factors in their romantic or sexual attraction to others. Because pansexual people are open to relationships with people who do not identify as strictly men or women, it is often considered a more inclusive term than bisexual.

2012 – Same-sex marriage takes effect in Maine with a voter approval of 53%-47%. Maryland and Washington State are the other states to win marriage equality by popular vote.

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inthefallofasparrow · 1 year

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... Months earlier, Steinbart had been eating prison food and trying to red-pill other inmates. Now he was hobnobbing at a film premiere backstage with Republican Party officials. And while his speech at the premiere turned out to be unremarkable—he told me later that the event’s organizers told him not to mention QAnon—the fact that he was even able to make it onstage at all was unbelievable.

Steinbart’s compound had failed, but in a way, he had found something even better. Thanks to Republican leaders’ willingness to accommodate QAnon and treat it as a legitimate faction of the party, Steinbart, an obvious grifter and charlatan who specialized in sucking vulnerable people dry to support his own delusions, would be treated like a credible political figure. He had even managed to insinuate himself into the team handling the Arizona ballot recount, becoming one of the audit’s staffers shortly after his release from jail.

#qanon #cult #republican #gop

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saywhat-politics · 3 months

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Right Wing Watch reported Monday on MAGA activist Gina Swoboda’s selection as state chair of the Arizona GOP. One of her first acts as chair was to talk with MAGA operative and former Trump aide Steve Bannon about Republican efforts to change voting rules in Arizona.

“We have to win the presidency in Arizona and we have to win Kari Lake; we don’t take back the Senate unless Kari Lake wins,” Bannon said. Swoboda told Bannon that she took the job because Trump told her she had to.

Swoboda talked about AZ GOP litigation against a new state election manual and claimed that there is ongoing wrongdoing in Maricopa County, where Republican elected officials were the target of intense anger, conspiracy theories, and a bogus “audit” by Trump supporters after he lost the county in 2020. “They’re not even trying to hide it any more in Maricopa,” Swoboda told Bannon. “They’re just breaking the seals on the tabulators and running ballots through.”

Bannon was seemingly satisfied with Swoboda’s answers to his rapid-fire questions about how she and the state party were going to deal with a number of issues all while raising lots of money for the party. “Are you superwoman?” he asked.

“I’m fueled by God,” she said.

#arizona #republican #gina swoboda #steve bannon

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1americanconservative · 2 months

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They won’t release the J6 tapes

They won’t allow forensic election audits

They won’t allow signature match analysis

They won’t allow Georgia ballots to be examined in court

They deleted footage of dropboxes & ballot data

All for the same reason - it exposes the Marxist coup

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realtalkingpoints · 11 months

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From the piece:

The study found that there are "hundreds of thousands of illegally generated registrations in the official NYXBOE voter rolls. The exact number is unknown, but it is not less than about 338,000 for registrations active for the 2020 General Election (NYCA [New York Citizens Audit] 2022). If other elections are included, the number of apparently illegal registrations jumps to between 1.2 and 2.4 million."

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 1 year

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Rick McKee, Augusta Chronicle

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 5, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson

In yesterday’s election in Wisconsin, the two candidates represented very different futures for the country. One candidate for the state supreme court, Daniel Kelly, had helped politicians to gerrymander the state to give Republicans an iron lock on the state assembly and was backed by antiabortion Republicans. The other, Janet Protasiewicz, promised to stand behind fair voting maps and the protection of reproductive rights. Wisconsin voters elected Protasiewicz by an overwhelming eleven points in a state where elections are usually decided by a point or so. Kelly reacted with an angry, bitter speech. “I wish that in a circumstance like this I would be able to concede to a worthy opponent,” he said. “But I do not have a worthy opponent to which I can concede.” Yesterday’s vote in Wisconsin reinforces the polling numbers that show how overwhelmingly popular abortion rights and fair voting are, and it seems likely to throw the Republican push to suppress voting into hyperdrive before the 2024 election. Since the 1980s, Republicans have pushed the idea of “ballot integrity” or, later, “voter fraud” to justify voter suppression. That cry began in 1986, when Republican operatives, realizing that voters opposed Reagan’s tax cuts, launched a “ballot integrity” initiative that they privately noted “could keep the black vote down considerably.” That effort to restrict the vote is now a central part of Republican policy. Together with Documented, an investigative watchdog and journalism project, The Guardian today published the story of the attempt by three leading right-wing election denial groups to restrict voting rights in Republican-dominated states by continuing the lie that voting fraud is rampant. The Guardian’s story, by Ed Pilkington and Jamie Corey, explores a two-day February meeting in Washington organized by the right-wing Heritage Foundation and attended by officials from 13 states, including the chief election officials of Indiana, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. At the meeting, participants learned about auditing election results, litigation, and funding to challenge election results. Many of the attendees and speakers are associated with election denial. Since the 2020 election, Republican-dominated states have passed “election reform” measures that restrict the vote; those efforts are ongoing. On Thursday alone, the Texas Senate advanced a number of new restrictions. In the wake of high turnout among Generation Z Americans, who were born after 1996 and are more racially and ethnically diverse than their elders, care deeply about reproductive and LGBTQ rights, and want the government to do more to address society’s ills, Republican legislatures are singling out the youth vote to hamstring. That determination to silence younger Americans is playing out today in Tennessee, where a school shooting on March 28 in Nashville killed six people, including three 9-year-olds. The shooting has prompted protesters to demand that the legislature honor the will of the people by addressing gun safety, but instead, Republicans in the legislature have moved to expel three Democratic lawmakers who approached the podium without being recognized to speak—a breach of House rules—and led protesters in chants calling for gun reform. As Republicans decried the breach by Representatives Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones, and Justin Pearson, protestors in the galleries called out, “Fascists!” Republican efforts to gain control did not end there. On Twitter today, Johnson noted that she had “just had a visit from the head of HR and the House ethics lawyer,” who told her “that if I am expelled, I will lose my health benefits,” but the ethics lawyer went on to explain “that in one case, a member who was potentially up for expulsion decided to resign because if you resign, you maintain your health benefits.” The echoes of Reconstruction in that conversation are deafening. In that era, when the positions of the parties were reversed, southern Democrats used similar “persuasion” to chase Republican legislators out of office. When that didn’t work, of course, they also threatened the physical safety of those who stood in the way of their absolute control of politics. On Saturday night, someone fired shots into the home of the man who founded and runs the Tennessee Holler, a progressive news site. Justin Kanew was covering the gun safety struggle in Tennessee. He wrote: “This violence has no place in a civilized society and we are thankful no one was physically hurt. The authorities have not completed their investigation and right now we do not know for sure the reason for this attack. We urge the Williamson County Sheriff’s office to continue to investigate this crime and help shed light on Saturday’s unfortunate events and bring the perpetrators of this crime to justice. In the meantime, our family remains focused on keeping our children healthy and safe.” The anger coming from losing candidate Kelly last night, and his warning that “this does not end well….[a]nd I wish Wisconsin the best of luck because I think it's going to need it,” sure sounded like those lawmakers in the Reconstruction years who were convinced that only people like them should govern. The goal of voter suppression, control of statehouses, and violence—then and now—is minority rule. Today’s Republican Party has fallen under the sway of MAGA Republicans who advocate Christian nationalism despite its general unpopularity; on April 3, Hungarian president Viktor Orbán, who has destroyed true democracy in favor of “Christian democracy” in his own country, cheered Trump on and told him to “keep on fighting.” Like Orbán, today's Republicans reject the principles that underpin democracy, including the ideas of equality before the law and separation of church and state, and instead want to impose Christian rule on the American majority. Their conviction that American “tradition” focuses on patriarchy rather than equality is a dramatic rewriting of our history, and it has led to recent attacks on LGBTQ Americans. In Kansas today, the legislature overrode Democratic governor Laura Kelly’s veto of a bill banning transgender athletes who were assigned male at birth from participating in women’s sports. Kansas is the twentieth state to enact such a policy, and when it goes into effect, it will affect just one youth in the state. Yesterday, Idaho governor Brad Little signed a law banning gender-affirming care for people under 18, and today Indiana governor Eric Holcomb did the same. Meanwhile, Republican-dominated states are so determined to ignore the majority they are also trying to make it harder for voters to challenge state laws through ballot initiatives. Alice MIranda Ollstein and Megan Messerly of Politico recently wrote about how, after voters in a number of states overrode abortion bans through ballot initiatives, legislatures in Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, and Oklahoma are now debating ways to make it harder for voters to get measures on the ballot, sometimes even specifying that abortion-related measures are not eligible for ballot challenges. And yet, in the face of the open attempt of a minority to seize control, replacing our democracy with Christian nationalism, the majority is reasserting its power. In Michigan, after an independent redistricting commission redrew maps to end the same sort of gerrymandering that is currently in place in Wisconsin and Tennessee, Democrats in 2022 won a slim majority to control the state government. And today, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer signed into law a bill revoking a 1931 law that criminalized abortion without exception for rape or incest.

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Voting Rights #voter suppression laws #Wisconsin #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #minority rule #Rule of Law #gerrymandering #abortion rights #human rights #history #LBGTQ

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