Voter Suppression in 2018

[*Nately120*]

(10-22-2018, 03:00 PM)Dill Wrote: Er, aren't those "complainers" filing lawsuits and running voter registration drives?

Why would you think anyone was just "sitting"?

Chronic cynic simply joking, here.

[Dill]

(10-22-2018, 03:22 PM)Nately120 Wrote: Chronic cynic simply joking, here.

LOL I suspected, but wasn't sure.  Hard to tell nowdays.

[Dill]

Funny, but also not

Zeldin mailer uses wrong deadline for absentee ballots
https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/spin-cycle/zeldin-gershon-mailer-1.22304894

For the second consecutive election, a Rep. Lee Zeldin campaign mailer has the wrong deadline for voters to return absentee ballots.

The Shirley Republican’s mailer told voters to postmark their ballots by Nov. 6. The actual deadline is Nov. 5.

Zeldin’s Democratic opponent Perry Gershon’s campaign said the mailers targeted likely Democratic voters, such as college students.

Zeldin’s campaign said the incorrect date was a mistake and provided a statement from its printer, PDQ Print and Mail, taking responsibility. The campaign said it sent a follow-up mail piece with the correct date.

[Dill]

Let's add another one. I have never seen this tactic before.

“Blatant voter suppression”? Conservative group’s mailer touches off furor in Washington’s 19th District
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/conservative-political-group-mailer-called-blatant-voter-suppression-by-democratic-leaders/

A campaign mailer recently sent out in Washington’s 19th Legislative District has all the hallmarks of a Democratic pitch. It bears the emblems of unions and the left-leaning advocacy group Fuse Washington, and calls on voters to embrace the “progressive” candidate.

But the mailer, sent by a political action committee called Conscience of the Progressives, doesn’t urge voters to elect Erin Frasier, the Democrat running against Rep. Jim Walsh, R-Aberdeen.

Instead, it urges voters to write-in their support for Teresa Purcell — the Democrat who ran and lost against Walsh two years ago.

As it turns out, Conscience of the Progressives is run and funded by conservative advocates and donors. And the mailers drew a swift rebuke Friday from Democrats and some of those listed on the campaign flier.

[GMDino]

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/brian-kemp-leaked-audio-georgia-voting-745711/

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


An attendee of the “Georgia Professionals for Kemp” event says they recorded 21 minutes and 12 seconds of the evening, held last Friday at the Blind Pig Parlour Bar near Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood. As proof of their attendance, the source shared with Rolling Stone a receipt of their donation, which granted access to the gathering.



Not long after Kemp began his remarks, the candidate expressed worry about early voting and “the literally tens of millions of dollars that they [the Abrams camp] are putting behind the get-out-the-vote effort to their base.”
Kemp then asserted that much of that Abrams effort is focused on absentee ballot requests. “They have just an unprecedented number of that,” he said, “which is something that continues to concern us, especially if everybody uses and exercises their right to vote — which they absolutely can — and mail those ballots in, we gotta have heavy turnout to offset that.”

 
On Tuesday morning, a member of the Kemp campaign confirmed that the event took place, but the campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the specific remarks. On Monday evening, a Facebook page for the event was removed from public view. Candice Broce, the press secretary for the Georgia Secretary of State, told Rolling Stone that she does not respond to campaign-related inquiries because she represents the office.


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



Kemp’s recent decision to suspend more than 53,000 voter applications, 70 percent of which were filed by black residents, for violating the state’s “exact match” verification standard has drawn attention to his penchant for restrictive voter laws and purging of voter rolls. American Public Media reported last week that Kemp purged an estimated 107,000 voters last year simply because they didn’t vote in the prior election. He is also being sued for leaving more than 6 million Georgia voting records open to hacking.

Kemp, a staunch Trump supporter who has echoed the president’s language concerning Russia’s election interference, was also the only Secretary of State in the nation to refuse Homeland Security’s help prior to the 2016 election.


One other reason that Kemp’s “right to vote” line is potentially alarming is that he is facing another lawsuit after reports that an abnormal number of absentee ballots— 595, more than a third of the state’s total and 300 of which reportedly belong to black and Asian American voters — have been rejected in the state’s most racially diverse county, Gwinnett. The Georgia Muslim Voter Project and Asian-American Advancing Justice-Atlanta filed suit last Monday to request that three days be provided after the election for rejected voters to resolve the matter so that their ballots count.

All of these reports have led to charges that Kemp is suppressing votes; in his Friday remarks, he alleged that Abrams is doing the same. Urging attendees to reach out to people to help him gain support, Kemp said, “If they email back and say, ‘I’m a conservative, Republican female, and I’ve gotten 15 mailers talking about how bad Brian Kemp is,’ that’s somebody we need to talk to. [Be]cause they are doing that for a reason. They are doing that to suppress your vote.”

Reached for comment, Abigail Collazo, Director of Strategic Communications for the Abrams campaign, said, “Brian Kemp is barely trying to hide the shameful fact that his strategy is to win through voter suppression. The idea that he, as Secretary of State, would be ‘concerned’ that hardworking Georgians are exercising their right to vote is disgraceful and outrageous.”

Collazo echoed her campaign’s earlier calls for Kemp to step down.

“Brian Kemp should resign immediately so that Georgians can be sure the election will be administered in an impartial and competent manner,” she said.

[GMDino]

This can’t be retweeted enough. North Carolina publicly stated in court that the reason they stopped Sunday voting was that counties with Sunday voting were disproportionately black, and blacks disproportionately vote Democrat. https://t.co/5C3lCMSmix

— Sarah Damaske (@SarahDamaske) October 15, 2018

http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/nlj/7-29-16%204th%20Circuit%20NAACP%20v%20NC.pdf

[Dill]

(10-23-2018, 10:52 PM)GMDino Wrote: http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/nlj/7-29-16%204th%20Circuit%20NAACP%20v%20NC.pdf

11

In response to claims that intentional racial discrimination animated its action, the State offered only meager justifications. Although the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies for the problems assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist.

Thus the asserted justifications cannot and do not conceal the State’s true motivation. “In essence,” as in League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry (LULAC), 548 U.S. 399, 440(2006),“the State took away[minority voters’] opportunity because [they] were about to exercise it.” As in LULAC, “[t]his bears the mark of intentional discrimination.” Id.

LOL "Both sides do it."