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Tag: Voter Suppression

  • The Attack on Black Power: Missouri GOP Splits District of Veteran CBC Member and the CBC Vilifies Racism

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    The Missouri House on Tuesday approved a congressional map designed to weaken one of the state’s two Democratic incumbents, intensifying the partisan redistricting battles that are shaping the political landscape ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

    The measure, which passed in late August by a 90-to-65 vote, makes Missouri the second Republican-led state to adopt a plan targeting the seats of Black Democratic representatives. The Missouri Democrat most impacted, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), said that he will run for re-election. Earlier this summer, Texas Republicans pushed through a map that could put as many as five Democratic lawmakers at risk. Democrats in California have mounted a counteroffensive of their own: last month, the Legislature advanced a proposal to the ballot that would reshape five Republican-held districts.

    As the vote was taking place in Missouri, thirteen members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Rep. Cleaver, spoke emphatically about the state of play for Black elected officials targeted by redistricting. They spoke about what happened in Texas and how they knew that other states would follow. The group was strong in their statements on the current situation. “Texas has more African Americans than any other state in this country right now. Under the proposed maps, they want to make it so that Texas only has two districts in which African Americans have an opportunity to choose their representation. What does that mean for black voices in Texas? That means that it is approximately 1/5 the voting strength of their white Texan neighbors. That is what is going to be, not three-fifths, but we are going to be reduced to 1/5, so my colleagues have laid out a number of things that they believe are going on as to why it is that this is happening. But I’m going to start with number one, Trump himself. He’s racist,” said Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas).

    “We will not be silenced. They’ve tried to bury us before, not knowing that we were seeds. We will grow and we will be resilient, just as we have time and time before,” added Crockett. “We are about to experience something that we never thought we’d see in our lifetimes, especially after having experienced what happened at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which is probably the reason a good many of us in Congress are in Congress. It was at the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday that John Lewis and a host of other people of goodwill suffered grave, gross, and inhumane injustices… Bloody Sunday is the reason we have the Voting Rights Act of 1965. We would not but for Bloody Sunday,” said Rep. Al Green (D-Texas). “We are going to fight this. We are not going to back down. And I believe that the Voting Rights Act will be upheld and that these maps in Texas will be overturned. But again, Texas is just the beginning. This is a nationwide fight, and it’s bigger than who holds the majority in the House of Representatives. This is about maintaining our democracy and our republic,” Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas). When asked by Black Press USA whether or not there is an actual plan to combat what is happening to Black elected officials around the country, several members answered yes. Rep. Veasey added that perhaps there needed to be a special group to deal with the redistricting attacks against Black members at the DNC. The members also relayed that legal strategies are ongoing, and in some cases have been for years, on redistricting.

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    Lauren Victoria Burke and NNPA

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  • Trump’s Two-Prong Strategy to Ensure He Can’t Lose

    Trump’s Two-Prong Strategy to Ensure He Can’t Lose

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    People cheer at a Trump rally in Aurora, Colorado, on October 11, 2024.
    Photo: Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images

    It’s been clear for some time that Donald Trump is laying the groundwork to attempt to deny and challenge an election defeat. But Team Trump is also working to ensure that he won’t have to deny the results — and not just by convincing more voters that his policies are better for America. To put it very simply, the Trump campaign, the Republican Party, and its super-PAC allies are devoting a lot of resources to suppressing the Democratic vote in key states. These strategies include:

    1. Insisting on voter-roll purges to eliminate people who don’t respond quickly to official verification inquiries, whether or not they are appropriate. (In the past, overzealous purges have disqualified hundreds of thousands of eligible voters, most notably in Florida in 2000.)
    2. Promoting ridiculously strict rules for mail ballots that don’t have anything to do with their integrity (e.g., tossing them out due to extremely minor address or date errors without the possibility of curing them).
    3. Flooding the polling places with poll watchers trained to challenge individual ballots that might go to Kamala Harris on a variety of sketchy grounds.
    4. An inside-the-tent effort to place MAGA loyalists in key election-administration positions from the precinct to the county to the state level, where they can not only slow down vote counts but increase the odds of Democratic ballots being thrown out.

    In addition to reducing the Harris vote (via a combination of ballot-eligibility challenges or heavy-handed intimidation of voters), all these MAGA boots on the ground can help build the post-election case that a Harris win was tainted with fraud. This time, Team Trump’s legal team will be much more organized than Rudy Giuliani’s Keystone Cops ensemble, which tried to capitalize on scattered election-fraud rumors and social-media claims in 2020. With so many campaign operatives working as election administrators or observers, there will be plenty of election-fraud allegations to fuel Trump lawsuits, with or without merit.

    All this activity, along with years of Trump claims that Democrats cannot beat him without cheating, will predispose his MAGA base to accept whatever he chooses to claim about the “integrity” of the election. As the initial votes come in on Election Night, he may repeat his premature victory claim from 2020 and demand that vote counting stop with him slightly ahead (if indeed that “red mirage” reappears before it’s dispelled by the “blue shift” of mail ballots). If he does, we could see on-the-ground Trump operatives and volunteers demand that state- and county-election offices “stop the steal.” He will have another moment of truth if the Associated Press and other major media outlets call the race for Harris, which will be deemed conclusive by most people outside MAGA-land.

    Trump will ultimately have to decide whether to concede or remain defiant on December 11, the federal deadline for state certifications of the vote. The Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 was designed to minimize the odds of any challenge to the results after that date.

    But whether or not the 45th president has a workable strategy for turning defeat into victory after Election Day, there’s no question his minions are trying hard to twist the system to maximize the possibility that Trump will win without having to stage another insurrection. If Trump does wind up back in the White House, he may interrupt his cries of triumph and threats of vengeance long enough to utter pieties about wanting to be the president of all the people. That ought to include not just letting them, but encouraging them, to vote.


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    Ed Kilgore

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  • State GOP Officials Attempt To Limit Voter Registration Outreach

    State GOP Officials Attempt To Limit Voter Registration Outreach

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    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton continues to forge ahead on what voter and civil rights advocates describe as his “voter suppression” campaign after warning Harris and Bexar county officials to pause their respective efforts to increase voter registration.

    In a press release on Monday, Paxton rebuked the proposed plans to mail voter registration forms to unregistered voters in both counties, referring to them as “unlawful and reckless.” Despite Paxton’s threat to pursue legal action, Bexar County commissioners voted to approve the measure on Tuesday.

    The attorney general argued that these efforts could “induce ineligible people” — such as felons and noncitizens — to commit a crime by registering to vote. He added that Texas counties have “no statutory authority” to send out voter registration forms, making the proposals “fundamentally illegal.”

    According to Rice University political science professor Mark Jones, the Texas Election code does not say counties “should or must or can” send out mass mailings of voter registration forms to people they believe may not be registered to vote yet are eligible.

    However, he noted that by the same token, nowhere in legislation does it say that counties cannot.

    “The more recent interpretation by the Republican-controlled state legislature has been that if the statute does not explicitly say that counties have the ability, they can’t do it,” Jones said.

    Jones indicated that Paxton used this interpretation to back his argument that these efforts are illegal. As of Tuesday evening, Paxton had not responded to Bexar County officials’ decision to hire a private company to mail out voter registration forms to residents.

    “If the attorney general tells you not to do something, and you do it on a partisan vote, then you’re just looking for there to be a lawsuit or legislation changes as a result,” Senator Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston) said.

    Bettencourt reiterated concerns that these proposals could encourage those who “have green cards from various countries” or “people who cross the border illegally” to vote. He said claims that blocking these plans is a form of voter suppression was “nonsense and propaganda.”

    Paxton announced his intention to pursue litigation against both counties roughly a week after his office conducted raids related to an investigation into alleged voter fraud.

    Several members of Latino and Hispanic nonprofit organizations, including Manuel Medina, the chair of Tejano Democrats, and Lidia Martinez, a more than 35-year-long member of LULAC, were targeted in undercover operations. Medina is also a member of LULAC.

    The organization asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Paxton’s office for violations of the Voting Rights Act.

    “[Paxton] is misusing and abusing government power. Those on our side do not have that government power,” Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said. “It’s not a fair match when he is abusing his authority as attorney general, chief prosecutor in the state of Texas, to scare people.”

    Saenz noted the timing of Paxton’s actions indicates that he is attempting to suppress participation in November and, more specifically, attempting to curb the engagement of Latino and Hispanic voters.

    “It is clear he is trying to suppress votes in the Latino community, and that’s not particularly surprising because Texas has engaged in a decades-long campaign to suppress Latino participation,” Saenz said. “Paxton and others know that if there were a high-level participation by Latinos, then Texas politics would change permanently.”

    “There is no evidence of significant numbers, even insignificant numbers, of noncitizens voting,” he added. “It’s arguing about a non-issue and is designed to cloud everyone’s perception to believe his campaign is about ineligible voters when it’s all about deterring participation by completely eligible voters.

    Paxton’s actions follow Governor Greg Abbott’s announcement of the removal of over a million people from Texas’s voter rolls. In a statement, Abbott framed the purge of these once-registered voters as part of cracking down on illegal voting and protecting election integrity.

    “I think Abbott strategically used that rhetoric to fire up his base, especially the far-right conservatives,” Dr. Sergio Lira, president of the Houston-area LULAC, said. “To say it was done to eliminate the possibility of election fraud implies that there will be election fraud from those who are not citizens or legal residents. That is a sweeping statement across many folks that live in our city.”

    Political experts say that the removals were part of routine maintenance of voter rolls by the Texas Secretary of State and county voter registrars. Most were also a result of voters dying or moving out of state — not of voters being noncitizens.

    Rice University political science professor Bob Stein noted that of the more than 1.1 million voters removed, only about 6,500 were verified to be noncitizens.

    “It strikes me that what [Paxton] is doing, along with the governor, is responding to recent events. Event number one is polling, showing that Trump and Cruz are in much closer races than what might be hoped for or expected,” Stein said. “What I think is also problematic to them is a tremendous increase in voter registration.”

    According to Stein, Abbott is signaling to Republican voters that the party is taking action against election fraud. Paxton is doing the same by launching these investigations and seeing them through.

    “Why now and why these actions? I think they’re concerned that the attack on election integrity, which has been extensive, has affected Republican voter turnout,” he noted. “I think it’s about reassuring Republicans that they should show up in November.”

    Stein described the number of people voting as noncitizens or felons from the recently removed list — as an “infinitesimal” amount.

    “So, you can conclude that the state is doing a very good job of cleaning the list, and two, there are really very few people who shouldn’t be voting that are voting,” he said.

    During last week’s Commissioners Court meeting, Harris County Commissioner’s Court tabled a proposed plan similar to Bexar County’s. The commissioners have not indicated whether it would be put back on the agenda.

    Jones said if the commissioners reviewed a revised version of the proposal, they’d be on a time crunch to send out the voter registration forms to unregistered residents. The final day to register to vote is Monday, October 7.

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    Faith Bugenhagen

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