Early voting in Ohio’s late-summer primary election began this week, with a major question on amending the state constitution included on the ballot. This has deep implications on how residents can shape their government in the future. Voters were allowed to submit mail-in ballots or vote in-person starting at 8 a.m. this past Tuesday. Such primary elections are generally low-turnout affairs — the…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
On June 26, the United States Supreme Court sent a redistricting challenge to Louisiana’s congressional maps back to a lower court, which had ruled the maps likely dilute the Black communities’ voting power. The decision paves the way for a second minority-majority district in Louisiana, something for which plaintiffs have advocated for months. The decision — hailed by voting rights advocates in…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Chief Justice John Roberts has historically not decided cases in a way that protects voting rights. In 2013, he authored Shelby v. Holder, which drove a stake through the heart of the Voting Rights Act. And in 2021, he voted to further weaken the Act in Brnovich v. DNC. But this past month, Roberts surprisingly authored two new Supreme Court opinions that support the right to vote. On June 8…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The Supreme Court this week allowed Louisiana to redraw its congressional districts to fairly represent Black voters. This action comes on the heels of the court’s decision earlier this month in Allen v. Milligan, in which one of us was a key plaintiff, finding that Alabama’s new congressional maps dilute the power of Black voters in the state. These developments deliver a much-needed victory for…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
After leading the charge for years to eviscerate the Voting Rights Act (VRA), Chief Justice John Roberts did a stunning about-face and spearheaded its preservation in Allen v. Milligan. The 5-4 majority opinion, written by Roberts, held that Alabama’s congressional map likely violates the Voting Rights Act’s prohibition against discriminatory voting practices. The court refused Alabama’s request…
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Despite the predictable howling of certain Republicans, the 2022 midterm elections largely went off without a hitch, a much-needed reprieve from the chaos that erupted in 2020 as former President Donald Trump and his allies lied to voters about a stolen election in a brazen attempt to cling to power. But a new report from nonpartisan legal experts shows we’re not out of the woods yet…
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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) signed a bill on Friday that grants formerly incarcerated residents in the state the right to vote immediately upon their release from prison. Currently, residents who are released from prison after being convicted of a felony are forced to wait until the conditions of their probation expire before being able to vote again. The legislation, which will go into effect on…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
This week, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) declared that Republican and Democratic states in the U.S. need “a divorce,” prompting many to wonder whether she was calling for Republican-leaning states to secede. Later, Greene claimed that she wasn’t calling for secession but for the federal government to have less influence, allowing states to determine how to govern for themselves…
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“Selma is sacred ground. It is, in a very real sense, the delivery room where the possibility of a true democracy was born. It is no place to play or to be for political pretense. Either you’re serious or not. If you’re coming, come on Sunday, the actual day of remembrance. If you’re coming, come with a commitment to fight for what these people were willing to give their lives for.”
That’s the message that faith and rights leaders sent in a Monday letter to U.S. President Joe Biden and members of Congress ahead of the anniversary of Bloody Sunday—when white police officers violently assaulted civil rights advocates, including future Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.), as they marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama on March 7, 1965.
The sign-on letter is led by the co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival—Bishop William Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis—along with former Democratic Alabama state Sen. Hank Sanders, Faya Rose Touré, Rev. Mark Thompson, Rebecca Marion, and Rev. Carolyn Foster. It is open for signature on the Repairers of the Breach website.
“#SelmaIsSacredGround, not a place for political pretense.”
“This is a critical year in the life of our country,” the seven initial signatories wrote. “On the one hand, the president and progressive members of Congress have fought to pass policies that have lifted up Americans in many ways. From Covid relief measures to infrastructure investments to child tax credits that lifted millions of children out of poverty (for a brief moment) to the appointment of the first Black woman Supreme Court Justice, we can celebrate some real progress.”
“But, on the other hand, with a Democratic president and control of the House and Senate for two years, Democratic leadership was unable to raise the federal minimum wage,” they continued, also noting that a few obstructionist Democrats repeatedly helped Senate Republicans block efforts to restore the Voting Rights Act by supporting the filibuster.
That obstruction, they explained, enabled “regressive legislative bodies across the nation to pass more voter suppression bills than any time since Jim Crow and to go through another round of dangerous redistricting, which nullifies the potential power of progressive voting coalitions by stacking and packing votes in certain districts to predetermine outcomes before any vote is cast.”
\u201cAhead of the 58th anniv. of Bloody Sunday, @brepairers is joined in this call by Rev. Liz Theoharis @liztheo, Hank Sanders, Faya Rose Toure, Rev. Mark Thompson @ministter, Rebecca Marion, Board Chair, Bridge Crossing Jubilee, Rev. Carolyn Foster of the @AlabamaPPC, and others.\u201d— Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II (@Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II) 1676925038
Highlighting research that shows tens of millions of Americans face some form of voter suppression, the letter leaders argue that if Biden and other politicians plan to visit Selma—which was recently devastated by a tornado—for the Bloody Sunday anniversary, they should “declare that the fight for voting rights and the restoration of what they marched across that bridge for is not over.”
The letter also demands urgent action on living wages and investments in rural areas, stressing that millions of people—particularly in Southern states—live “in poverty and low-wealth conditions” and remain “uninsured or underinsured at a time when we have more people on healthcare than ever before,” three years into the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Those of us who are planning to be in Selma to honor the struggle for voting rights and economic justice should be willing to protest and engage nonviolently if politicians attempt to do moral harm to the memory and the sacredness of what happened on Bloody Sunday,” declares the letter. “This is no time for foolishness, photo-ops, and flaky commitments.”
“Let us be clear: To honor the memory of Bloody Sunday is to work for the full restoration of the Voting Rights Act, the passage of the original For the People Act that John Lewis helped to write, not the bill that was watered down by Joe Manchin,” the letter continues, calling out the pro-filibuster West Virginia Democrat infamous for thwarting his own party’s agenda.
“To commemorate Bloody Sunday,” the letter adds, “is to commit to raising of the minimum wage to a living wage, to ensuring that every American has adequate healthcare, and to enacting economic development that touches poor and low-wealth communities.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
This article was produced by Sludge, an independent, ad-free investigative news site covering money in politics. Click here to support Sludge. The day after the Jan. 6, 2021 riots at the Capitol in D.C., Minnesota legislators in the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party introduced legislation to address a host of election issues, from expanding voter registration to reforming campaign finance laws.
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Civil rights advocates on Friday condemned the Republican-led Florida Legislature for passing another voter suppression bill that far-right Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely GOP presidential candidate for 2024, is expected to sign into law.
The Florida House passed Senate Bill 4B by a margin of 77-33 on Friday, two days after state senators approved the bill in a 27-12 party-line vote. The legislation seeks to expand the authority of the Office of Statewide Prosecution (OSP) to pursue charges for alleged election-related crimes. The OSP reports to Republican Attorney General Ashley Moody, a close ally of DeSantis.
A coalition of voting rights groups—including NAACP Florida, ACLU of Florida, Common Cause Florida, and the Brennan Center for Justice—submitted joint testimony opposing S.B. 4B on Thursday. In a joint statement issued after its passage on Friday, the coalition warned that the legislation “risks impacting people with past convictions who will continue to be arrested and prosecuted in the criminal legal system for honest mistakes about their voter eligibility.”
“The office made arrests, claimed jurisdiction, and is now seeking to change the law after the courts said no.”
“This proposal is a solution in search of a problem,” the coalition said. “There is no legitimate need to waste taxpayer dollars and state resources by expanding the Office of Statewide Prosecution for these purposes. This bill is being heard and swiftly passed only because the governor desires to expand his prosecutorial authority over Floridians who are lawfully trying to exercise their right to vote.”
S.B. 4B comes as DeSantis faces rebuke for using Florida’s newly established Office of Election Crimes and Security to arrest 20 formerly incarcerated individuals who believed they were eligible to vote—thanks to Amendment 4, a voter-approved 2018 referendum re-enfranchising 1.4 million people with past felony convictions—for alleged “voter fraud” last year.
Most of the people who were arrested for improperly casting ballots had been approved by the Florida Department of Elections, which mailed them voter registration cards prior to the 2020 election. Despite this, all of them have been slapped with felony charges carrying prison terms of up to five years and fines of up to $5,000. The arrests, unsurprisingly, have reportedly scared away many potential voters.
“While one of the cases has been settled, judges have in many cases dismissed charges and some local state attorneys have been reluctant to pursue charges,” Florida Politics reported Friday. “Democrats have questioned if the proposed legislation will allow the statewide prosecutor to take over cases that local state attorneys won’t try.”
\u201cBREAKING: Florida’s state House passed SB4B. Rather than giving unchecked power to prosecutors to criminalize people with past felony convictions for making honest mistakes, state officials should find ways to fix the complex voting system. https://t.co/EFGlWj04Rk\u201d— Brennan Center (@Brennan Center)
1676051089
Florida Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-47) alluded to body cam footage showing that many of those arrested—and some of the police officers—were confused about the nature of the charges.
“We had folks in Orange County that, after that amendment passed, they called the Supervisor of Elections, they called the Division of Elections, and were told they could vote,” she told Florida Politics. “There’s a reason why these cases are being tossed out.”
According to the news outlet, many critics of S.B. 4B view it as “an intimidation tactic to discourage many former felons from registering regardless, even if they are now eligible to do so.”
Florida Rep. Yvonne Hinson (D-20) said that after “citizens served their time, they should be able to have their civil rights restored.” She called the bill “an intentional act by the Legislature to manipulate the judicial process to fit a political position.”
“This bill will create more confusion and disenfranchise eligible voters as part of what’s been a continued effort to intimidate voters—especially returning citizens—from participating in our democracy.”
The coalition of voting rights groups opposed to S.B. 4B shared the Democratic lawmakers’ assessments.
By increasing the OSP’s power, this legislation “would remove cases from local prosecutors and prosecute minor occurrences of mistaken voters rather than having to prove a widespread voter conspiracy,” the groups lamented. “It would also seek to circumvent three Florida courts’ decisions which have rejected the OSP’s argument for more expansive jurisdiction.”
“The office made arrests, claimed jurisdiction, and is now seeking to change the law after the courts said no,” the coalition continued. “We have grave concerns about the potential for this office targeting returning citizens for honest mistakes about their eligibility to vote in an effort to intimidate communities of color.”
“All voters should have equal, meaningful, and non-burdensome access to the ballot box,” said the coalition. “To date, Florida has failed to effectively and efficiently verify people’s eligibility under the current system, and the state’s failure has disproportionately harmed Black Floridians.”
According to the rights advocates, the state has refused for years “to provide sufficient guidance to those looking to determine whether they can vote. At the same time, government officials have allowed and, in some instances, outright encouraged people with past felony convictions to register to vote without verifying their eligibility to do so.”
“This bill will create more confusion and disenfranchise eligible voters as part of what’s been a continued effort to intimidate voters—especially returning citizens—from participating in our democracy,” the groups warned. “Rather than trying to give unchecked power to prosecutors who report to the governor and his political appointees, state officials should instead find ways to fix the complex and unnavigable system for returning citizens to determine their eligibility and invest resources to solve current known problems.”
The fundamental right to vote has been a core value of Black politics since the colonial era — and so has the effort to suppress that vote right up to the present moment. In fact, the history of the suppression of Black voters is a first-rate horror story that as yet shows no sign of ending. While Democrats and progressives justifiably celebrated the humbling defeat of some of the most notorious…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Under new legislation proposed in Texas, the state’s Republican attorney general could send prosecutors from neighboring counties to investigate suspected cases of voter fraud in the state’s large Democratic counties. The bill is one of at least nine filed in Texas since the November midterm elections that would increase criminal penalties for voting-related infractions or extend law enforcement’s…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Under new legislation proposed in Texas, the state’s Republican attorney general could send prosecutors from neighboring counties to investigate suspected cases of voter fraud in the state’s large Democratic counties.
The bill is one of at least nine filed in Texas since the November midterm elections that would increase criminal penalties for voting-related infractions or extend law enforcement’s ability to investigate voters, signaling an intensification of what is already one of the most threatening waves of voter suppression in decades.
Another proposal would allow the attorney general to remove from office a district attorney who chooses not to prosecute election crimes, effectively stripping local prosecutors of discretion over how they use their office’s resources.
The two bills targeting district attorneys, introduced by Reps. Keith Bell and Bryan Slaton, respectively, would set the stage for Republican interference in the state’s Democratic urban centers, as top GOP officials continue to push the myth that widespread voter fraud is undermining elections.
The bills were proposed about a week after Harris County, home of Houston and one of the state’s main Democratic strongholds, experienced ballot shortages and late polling site openings. Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, a Democrat, has launched an investigation, but the state’s top Republicans – including Gov. Greg Abbott – immediately seized on the confusion and used the problems as pretext to contest a number of elections, even ones Democrats won by wide margins.
“The allegations of election improprieties in our state’s largest county may result from anything ranging from malfeasance to blatant criminal conduct,” Abbott said.
Bell and Slaton are both Republicans who represent districts adjacent to Dallas County, another center of Democratic power.
Slaton’s bill, which would allow the attorney general to remove elected prosecutors whose policies he disagrees with, would give legislative cover to executive branch efforts to interfere with prosecutorial discretion on a local level – something that has happened elsewhere in the country. In August, for example, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, suspended an elected state prosecutor who said he would decline to prosecute those seeking and providing abortions in the state. The Texas bill outlines a process for the attorney general to initiate civil court proceedings against a local prosecutor, whose fate would ultimately be decided by a jury.
Neither Slaton, Bell nor Attorney General Ken Paxton’s offices responded to requests for comment.
Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting’s review of legislative records found at least seven more bills in Texas that would increase law enforcement involvement in the election process. Several bills would increase the penalty for illegal voting. Another would make it a crime for a voter to cast a ballot in a party’s primary election if the voter is not a member of that party.
Republicans were the authors of each of these bills.
The bills are part of a wave of legislation that has followed former President Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen by fraud. An ongoing Reveal investigation found that lawmakers across the country have introduced and passed bills that would dramatically increase law enforcement involvement in elections. In the two years since the 2020 election, legislators in 42 states introduced bills that would establish new election investigation agencies, create new election-related crimes or give law enforcement officials more power to investigate these crimes. Such laws passed in 20 states.
Dozens of lawsuits and audits have disproven the claim that the 2020 election was tainted by fraud, while multiple studies have shown widespread voter fraud does not exist.
In 2021, for example, Texas lawmakers passed Senate Bill 1, which created new election crimes, including making it a felony for any election official to provide a mail-in ballot to someone who didn’t request it. Paxton also created an election integrity team, which has been unsuccessfully targeting election workers, according to ProPublica.
The proposed bills in Texas target phantom problems.
“District attorneys are appropriately investigating fraud, as far as we know,” said Matt Simpson, interim policy director at the ACLU of Texas. “There’s not cases where election fraud is happening and district attorneys just refuse to move forward. There’s just not evidence of these things being problems.”
Moves by the Legislature and statewide officials to undermine local elected officials’ power can also chill the vote.
“When you de-legitimize local or elected officials, you also undermine confidence in democracy,” said civil rights attorney Tom Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “People lose faith that their votes matter.”
Saenz said the true intent of these efforts is to suppress the vote, particularly in marginalized communities.
Threatening people with criminal prosecution is “the most extreme deterrent you can imagine,” he said. “Even if someone has every right to vote, they may hesitate. Or if someone has every right to facilitate participation by their own family members, by their own neighbors, that causes a hesitation.”
“That’s the whole purpose of it,” Saenz said. It’s no coincidence that, in Texas, these efforts come alongside demographic changes that could weaken Republicans’ grip on power, he added.
Another Texas bill would require the secretary of state to designate select state law enforcement as “election marshals” with the power to investigate voting crimes. It was first introduced in 2021 and passed out of the state Senate but floundered in the House.
When the bill’s sponsor, Houston-area Republican Sen. Paul Bettencourt, reintroduced it in November, he said he wants to introduce more “voter integrity legislation” in the coming session. He’s also described the 2022 midterm election in Harris County as a “3rd world” contest.
Meanwhile, Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the Senate’s president, has signaled that adopting stricter penalties for election crimes will be a legislative priority in this year’s session.
“We need to restore voter fraud to a felony,” Patrick said at a press conference in late November. “Unfortunately, it was dropped to a misdemeanor last time. It’s a serious crime – you steal someone’s vote.”
SB 1 downgraded illegal voting from a felony to a misdemeanor. Under that law, illegal voting is punishable with a maximum $4,000 fine, a one-year jail term or both.
Ahead of the new legislative session, lawmakers in both legislative chambers filed four separate bills that would make illegal voting punishable by a felony charge.
One of those bills came from Slaton, a former pastor and co-author of SB 1. His bill would make illegal voting a second-degree felony, punishable by prison sentences of two to 20 years, plus a possible $10,000 fine.
Another bill would increase the criminal penalty for election fraud, or tampering with someone else’s vote.
State lawmakers are seeking to make changes to elections in other ways, too. For example, one bill would allow select poll workers, known as election judges, to carry guns at polling places during early voting and at polling places on Election Day.
The ACLU’s Simpson said Texas has a host of pressing issues that its Legislature could be addressing now in its once-every-two-years session.
“Texas, famously, has an electric grid that is different from the rest of the country, that is not that reliable,” he said. “There’s some real issues in Texas, and I think that when we get into these conversations and these policy discussions about district attorney authority and how we’re gonna, in great detail, push different agendas with different local officials – these conversations waste time that should be spent on real issues.”
This story was edited by Maryam Saleh and Andrew Donohue and copy edited by Nikki Frick.
Ese Olumhense can be reached at eolumhense@revealnews.org. Follow her on Twitter: @essayolumhense.
Texas Republicans Look to Usurp Power of Local Prosecutors Who Don’t Pursue Their Voter Fraud Agenda is a story from Reveal. Reveal is a registered trademark of The Center for Investigative Reporting and is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization.
This post was originally published on Reveal.
Minority rule is a major obstacle to ensuring abortion rights.
This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.
Progressive Democrats of America on Monday announced plans to hold rallies across the nation on Friday, the second anniversary of the January 6, 2021 insurrection, to call on lawmakers to do everything in their power to protect the U.S. from attacks on democracy, including the gutting of voting rights protections and threats to election officials.
The rallies are set to be held two weeks after the U.S. House select committee on the January 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol released its final report on an 18-month investigation into the insurrection and former President Donald Trump’s role in planning and orchestrating the attempt to stop lawmakers from certifying the 2020 presidential election.
The report showed that Trump was the driving force behind the insurrection, and the committee recommended that the former Republican president—who announced his 2024 presidential candidacy in November—be barred from ever holding public office again.
Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) said Monday that Americans must speak out about ongoing threats posed by the Republican Party and Trump supporters, regardless of whether Trump runs for office again.
\u201cFRIDAY: Jan 6th Justice/Our Freedoms Our Vote rallies. You in?\n\nVIsit our website to join or host a January 6th event, and/or make a donation to help with organizing.\n\nhttps://t.co/ioaLhTgyTk\n\n#jan6justice #jan6 #insurrection\u201d— PDAmerica (@PDAmerica) 1672687633
Republicans “are working to sabotage future elections by changing state laws, threatening election officials, and packing election administration offices so that they can have the final say over election results—even when they lose,” said PDA. “We cannot be complacent; we are calling for an end to the ongoing violent and criminal attacks on our freedoms. We must stand up for our elections by protecting voters, election officials, and a free and fair process for all Americans.“
At the rallies planned for Friday, organizers plan to express support for the ongoing investigations into the former president, including the U.S. Justice Department’s probe into his retention of classified documents after he left office and a criminal investigation into election interference by Trump’s allies in Georgia.
They will also “call upon local, state, and federal legislators to defend our freedom to vote by passing legislation to take down barriers to voting and protect election officials and voters.”
More than 170 Republicans who deny President Joe Biden won the 2020 election are returning to or taking public office on Tuesday, and at least seven states passed at least 10 laws last year making it more difficult to vote.
As the federal government continues to investigate Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection, said PDA, “it’s our time to stand strong for justice and democracy.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
A year ago I wrote that we were “in a great fight for the future of American democracy. Nothing less.” As 2023 starts there is reason for hope.
2021 had begun with an insurrection. One-third of Americans rejected, without evidence, the results of the presidential election. Legislatures in several states were engaging in deliberate sabotage of future elections. Threats of violence chased election officials from their jobs and, in some cases, their homes.
Congress failed to act. Voting rights legislation passed the House and was supported by a majority in the Senate. It would have been the most important civil rights bill in years. But two senators refused to change the filibuster, and the bill failed.
If 2021 was a year American democracy stumbled, in 2022 it regained its footing.
But that was not the end of the story. In 2022, the forces of American democracy rallied.
Election officials, working with law enforcement and groups including the Brennan Center for Justice, were ready for disruption. But the midterm elections were smooth, fair, and calm—dare I say it, normal.
Election deniers were running to seize control of the machinery and set the terms of the 2024 election, running in battleground states for secretary of state or governor. Every one of them lost. Many ran behind other members of their ticket. An example: thousands of Nevadans supported the Republican candidate for governor who won but voted against the secretary of state candidate who said he would “fix” the 2024 election for Donald Trump.
In some states, voters backed innovative ballot measures. Connecticut adopted early voting. Michigan expanded early and absentee voting while improving identification requirements. Voters in Arizona by more than 70% backed curbs on dark money while rejecting a measure to impose harsher voter ID rules.
Last week, Congress voted to reform the fuzzily written 19th century Electoral Count Act with bipartisan support. The same bill included funding to upgrade election infrastructure and protect election officials. It’s not enough, but it will make a difference.
And throughout the year the January 6 committee showed that Donald Trump’s Big Lie was a knowing lie.
If 2021 was a year American democracy stumbled, in 2022 it regained its footing. Yes, there’s a terrifying election denial movement. But there’s a democracy movement, too, diverse and strong and growing.
Our democracy continues to face extraordinary pressure.
The U.S. Supreme Court is deciding whether to undermine traditional checks and balances in American elections. Moore v. Harper will say whether state legislatures can gerrymander, suppress votes, and engage in election sabotage free from the constraints of their governors, courts, and state constitutions.
Since the court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, the racial turnout gap has widened in many states. In Georgia, while white voter turnout increased between 2018 and 2022, nonwhite voter turnout went down. This year the overall gap in turnout between white and nonwhite voters was 8.6 percentage points, 50% higher than in the last two midterms. We can’t say definitively why, but Georgia Senate Bill 202, which raised barriers to voting, is a prime suspect.
Big money plays a growing corrosive role. It threatens to overwhelm the encouraging rise of small donors. In the 2022 congressional races, the 100 largest donors collectively spent 60% more than every single small donor (those giving $200 or less) combined.
So, in 2023 and 2024, we have much to do.
Congress cannot relent in the drive to set national baseline standards and restore the Voting Rights Act. The measure failed last year, but it will prevail. Reformers must hold the flag high.
States can move forward with the next generation of reforms. As the New York Times reported yesterday, there are renewed efforts for automatic voter registration—a reform first proposed by the Brennan Center—and other positive ways to bolster participation.
We can do more to take on the role of big money. A ray of hope: New York just implemented its statewide small donor public financing system, the most important response to Citizens United anywhere in the country.
And there’s a growing drive for accountability of the U.S. Supreme Court itself. An 18-year term limit for justices is an idea with surprisingly wide bipartisan support. And the need for a binding ethics code for the court is more evident every day.
I’m optimistic. Voters care—especially the small but critical bloc of swing voters. An October poll showed that 70% of Americans considered the future of our democracy an important factor for their vote.
Throughout most of the country’s history, candidates and causes have debated these very issues of power and voice. In the age of Trump those who want to tear down our democracy have been on the march. Now citizens of all parties who want to defend our democracy and make it work for all are on the march, too.
The fight for democracy is at the center of American politics, where it belongs. In 2023 let’s keep it there.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Congress has approved a budget that includes essential reforms to the Electoral Count Act. The updates, which have broad bipartisan support, eliminate ambiguities in the electoral count process that former President Trump and his allies seized on as they tried to overturn the 2020 election. Anyone looking to undermine future election results will have fewer options, and that is a victory for our democracy.
The passage comes on the heels of the January 6 committee’s release of its full report. The panel made news by making four criminal referrals for the former president. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, of all people, put it well in response: “The entire nation knows who is responsible for that day.”
In the wake of the committee’s extraordinary work, an important remaining question is not who caused the insurrection but rather what caused the insurrection.
First, let’s take a moment to appreciate the panel’s achievement. It made clear through riveting hearings and careful leaks that this was not just a rally that got out of control but a vigorously pursued plot to overthrow American democracy. The committee documented extraordinary crimes. We thought we knew it all, but it was gripping.
Such congressional investigations once regularly commanded headlines. The most famously effective was the Senate Watergate committee in 1973. That — together with the Church Committee, which exposed wrongdoing by the FBI and CIA — dominated the news but also led to reforms, from the federal campaign finance laws to the establishment of the joint congressional intelligence committee.
Reform sometimes follows scandal. And there has been no greater scandal than Donald Trump’s effort to block the peaceful transfer of power.
But putting the blame squarely and exclusively on Donald Trump is not enough to protect our democracy. Trump did not start the myth of voter fraud — that has been a partisan staple for two decades now. His attempt to subvert the 2020 election exposed vulnerabilities in our legal and electoral systems. Most of them remain, waiting for a second Donald Trump to come along and exploit them again. Those weaknesses are what caused the January 6 insurrection. The committee’s work could have even longer-lasting benefits if its revelations help spur reform.
It starts with fixing the Electoral Count Act. Trump’s loony reading of the creaky and outdated 19th-century law provided the foundation for his pressure campaign against Vice President Mike Pence. The newly passed reform makes clear that vice presidents have a merely ministerial role and makes it harder for members of Congress to object to duly cast electoral votes. These changes cement that the reading of the electoral votes is a ceremony, nothing more. They and other important fixes to the Electoral Count Act are included in the budget bill.
That bill also includes federal funding to upgrade election infrastructure and keep election officials safe, though not nearly enough. We should never forget that Trump’s pressure campaign did not stop with Pence. Trump personally called state election officials, urging them — without any cogent rationale — to overturn his defeat. Trump’s counsel, Rudy Giuliani, falsely accused local election workers of fraud. As a result of Trump’s campaign against these public servants, election workers in several states were harassed, threatened, and chased from their homes. Going forward, Congress must act decisively to protect election officials in their homes and in their offices, providing a reliable source of funding for much-needed security.
Other changes will require sustained pressure from the American people. National baseline standards for federal elections should be high on that list. For example, Trump’s team argued for the invalidation of Pennsylvania’s slate of electors, on the theory that state officials should not have complied with a state supreme court ruling requiring them to count mail votes received several days after the election but postmarked by Election Day. A spurious argument, but the silence of federal law on when and how mail ballots should be counted gave it unnecessary fuel. With 50 states conducting the election with almost 50 different procedures, close elections will lead to similar claims in the future.
The Constitution unquestionably gives Congress the power to fix this problem. With every state playing by the same rules, there would be less room for allegations of impropriety.
These are just the beginning of the necessary reforms. There should be guaranteed funding for states to conduct reliable post-election audits. Congress should fund state efforts to combat election-related disinformation and restore the protections of the Voting Rights Act to prevent racial discrimination in voting — Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election primarily targeted voters of color. The list goes on.
The January 6 committee performed a vital service. It left us with indelible images. But now that its work is over, focusing solely on Trump himself would be a major mistake. Mending weak points in our election system should be a bipartisan priority. It starts with the Electoral Count Act, but I hope it will not end there.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
On Wednesday, the January 6 committee releases its full report. Already, the panel made news by making four criminal referrals for the former president. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, of all people, put it well in response: “The entire nation knows who is responsible for that day.”
These are just the beginning of the necessary reforms. There should be guaranteed funding for states to conduct reliable postelection audits.
In the wake of the committee’s extraordinary work, an important remaining question is not who caused the insurrection but rather what caused the insurrection.
First, let’s take a moment to appreciate the panel’s achievement. It made clear through riveting hearings and careful leaks that this was not just a rally that got out of control but a vigorously pursued plot to overthrow American democracy. The committee documented extraordinary crimes. We thought we knew it all, but it was gripping.
Such congressional investigations once regularly commanded headlines. The most famously effective was the Senate Watergate committee in 1973. That–together with the Church Committee, which exposed wrongdoing by the FBI and CIA–dominated the news but also led to reforms, from the federal campaign finance laws to the establishment of the joint congressional intelligence committee.
Reform sometimes follows scandal. And there has been no greater scandal than Donald Trump’s effort to block the peaceful transfer of power.
But putting the blame squarely and exclusively on Donald Trump is not enough to protect our democracy. Trump did not start the myth of voter fraud–that has been a partisan staple for two decades now. His attempt to subvert the 2020 election exposed vulnerabilities in our legal and electoral systems. Most of them remain, waiting for a second Donald Trump to come along and exploit them again. Those weaknesses are what caused the January 6 insurrection. The committee’s work could have even longer-lasting benefits if its revelations help spur reform.
It starts with fixing the Electoral Count Act. Trump’s loony reading of the creaky and outdated 19th-century law provided the foundation for his pressure campaign against Vice President Mike Pence. The proposed reform makes clear that vice presidents have a merely ministerial role and makes it harder for members of Congress to object to duly cast electoral votes. These changes cement that the reading of the electoral votes is a ceremony, nothing more. They and other important fixes to the Electoral Count Act are included in this week’s budget bill.
That bill also includes federal funding to upgrade election infrastructure and keep election officials safe, though not nearly enough. We should never forget that Trump’s pressure campaign did not stop with Pence. Trump personally called state election officials, urging them–without any cogent rationale–to overturn his defeat. Trump’s counsel, Rudy Giuliani, falsely accused local election workers of fraud. As a result of Trump’s campaign against these public servants, election workers in several states were harassed, threatened, and chased from their homes. Going forward, Congress must act decisively to protect election officials in their homes and in their offices, providing a reliable source of funding for much-needed security.
Other changes will require sustained pressure from the American people. National baseline standards for federal elections should be high on that list. For example, Trump’s team argued for the invalidation of Pennsylvania’s slate of electors, on the theory that state officials should not have complied with a state supreme court ruling requiring them to count mail votes received several days after the election but postmarked by Election Day. A spurious argument, but the silence of federal law on when and how mail ballots should be counted gave it unnecessary fuel. With 50 states conducting the election with almost 50 different procedures, close elections will lead to similar claims in the future.
The Constitution unquestionably gives Congress the power to fix this problem. With every state playing by the same rules, there would be less room for allegations of impropriety.
These are just the beginning of the necessary reforms. There should be guaranteed funding for states to conduct reliable postelection audits. Congress should fund state efforts to combat election-related disinformation and restore the protections of the Voting Rights Act to prevent racial discrimination in voting–Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election primarily targeted voters of color. The list goes on.
The January 6 committee performed a vital service. It left us with indelible images. But now that its work is over, focusing solely on Trump himself would be a major mistake. Mending weak points in our election system should be a bipartisan priority. It will start with the Electoral Count Act, but I hope it will not end there.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
We look at “Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power,” a remarkable new documentary that shows how a small rural community in Alabama organized during the civil rights movement to challenge white supremacy and systematic disenfranchisement of Black residents, and would become, in some ways, the first iteration of the Black Panther Party. Lowndes County went from having no registered Black voters…
On December 7, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that could deliver control of elections to partisan state legislatures and spell the end of state court oversight of voting rules – a form of judicial review that has been in place for more than two centuries. As a result, protections for the right to vote that are enshrined in nearly every state constitution will be in jeopardy.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Reveal host Al Letson talks with leading academics and journalists to take the temperature of American democracy: What did we expect from the midterms, what did we get, and what does that mean for 2024?
Reveal’s Ese Olumhense and Mother Jones senior reporter Ari Berman discuss how gerrymandering, abortion rights, election denial and fear of voting crimes played out in contentious states like Arizona, Wisconsin and Florida.
Next, Andrea Bernstein and Ilya Marritz, who report on threats to democracy for ProPublica and are hosts of the podcast WIll Be Wild, join Letson to discuss how the violence and disinformation that sparked the Jan. 6 insurrection continues to shape the country’s political landscape. The reporters tell the story of how the Department of Homeland Security backed off efforts to identify and combat false information after Republican pundits and politicians accused the Biden administration of stomping on the free speech rights of anyone who disagrees with them.
Then, reporter Jessica Pishko delves into the world of a group called the constitutional sheriffs. This association of rogue sheriffs claims to be the highest law in the land and has increasingly come to see themselves as election police. Pishko attends a meeting in Arizona where Richard Mack, a leader of the movement who has also been involved with the far-right Oath Keepers, extols the rights of sheriffs to get involved in monitoring elections. In recent years, this right-wing group has grown from a fringe organization to one with national power and prominence. Pishko discusses the chilling effect these sheriffs have on voting.
In his time as president, Donald Trump bucked the norms and mixed presidential duties with personal business, refused to release his tax returns and pardoned his political allies.This week, he announced he’s running for president again in 2024. Letson speaks with two lawyers who have spent the past two years identifying how to rein in presidential power and close loopholes Trump exposed: Bob Bauer, former White House counsel for President Barack Obama, and Jack Goldsmith, former assistant attorney general in President George W. Bush’s Office of Legal Counsel. They’re also co-authors of the 2020 book “After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency.”
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Many political pundits have spent recent weeks reading polls and speculating about the potential outcomes of the midterm elections. The 24-hour news cycle has been geared up for months, spinning all eventualities and their impact on the balance of power in Washington and how down-ballot races fueled by conspiracy theories will impact local politics. For us, grounded in the demands of our people who keep chanting that our lives matter, this political moment is important. But equally important is our vision for a future in which our rights are not determined by the ballot, but enshrined in just laws that are not up for debate each election season.
As students of liberatory social movements, stewards of the fight for Black liberation and members of communities whose self-determination and dignity are central to power relations in this country and globally, we have learned many lessons.
The first is that in the wake of every political uprising for social justice comes a strong and swift backlash. In the 1960s, when civil rights leaders organized and won significant legislative and judicial victories toward racial and economic justice, conservative factions implemented a vast and stealthy neoliberal agenda that promoted individualism, weakened unions and strengthened divisions between working-class people along racial lines. Similarly, today’s Black liberation movement has ushered in momentous political projects that have shaped the contours of modern U.S. democracy, including the 2020 insurgency of global proportions that contributed to the defeat of Donald Trump, propelling a new administration into power.
Though it is challenging to hold strong to our vision and the demands from the streets — especially when our communities are used as political scapegoats — that is the only solution. In fact, the backlash is a sign that we have shaken the foundations of white supremacy with our Black feminist, abolitionist demands. It is a sign that we are changing the terrain, when power has no choice but to respond. This country’s anti-Black and racist systems make it difficult for our communities to assert our power. We face barriers to organizing, protesting, voting and holding elected office. But these long-standing barriers also mean we have generations of practice coming together to fight for our collective freedom.
The second lesson is that all tools for justice have a place in our toolbox, including voting. Time and again, Black communities have led the fight for the rights of Black people, expanding what’s possible for everyone, from voting rights to immigration to ending police terror. We do this by organizing our communities, asserting transformative policy demands, and refusing to concede the ballot box because of long-standing political terror and campaigns of misinformation.
For example, according to the U.S. Commission for Civil Rights, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 increased Black voter registration rates in Mississippi from 6.7 percent in 1964 to 59.8 percent in 1967. In the wake of constant brutality at the hands of the police, the number of African Americans eligible to vote for president hit a record 30 million in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center. We have always taken our demands to the streets and to the ballot box. Now, we are calling for all those who can to assert their power this Black November. We are calling on each one of us to recommit to fulfilling the work we started in 2020 by accessing our right to show up and vote.
The stakes are high.
During these midterm elections, certain members of the Senate and all the members of the House of Representatives are running for election or reelection. We know that the results will affect the balance of power in Congress, which will impact what pieces of legislation get voted on and become law. During his administration, Donald Trump rolled back climate policy and allowed corporate polluters to run the show. He made racist and hateful immigration policy the cornerstone of his political agenda. He worked hard to sabotage the Affordable Care Act by making it so much harder for people to enroll and access health care. These are a few parts of the Trump legacy, and Trump Republicans have embraced Trumpian politics, vowing to pick up right where Trump left off.
There are also elections for state and local officials, ranging from governors to county judges, and ballot measures in certain states. Local elections and legislative efforts are the beating heart of our flailing democracy, as several states face a wave of anti-LGBTQIA+, anti-Black and anti-voter legislative proposals.
Many states are passing abortion bans that would criminalize abortion, and potentially even miscarriage. Trans youth are under attack, and at risk of being separated from their families. And conservative legislators are committed to defunding schools and pouring our tax money into bloated police budgets. Meanwhile, voters in five states — Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, Oregon and Vermont — have an opportunity to abolish slavery in prisons, ending decades of involuntary servitude. These kinds of policies impact Black people first and worst. Our folks are under attack, and voting in state and local elections is an important tool. We leave no tools in the toolbox.
In fact, we know that democracy itself is on the ballot this November, as it always is. This is the third lesson we are holding close. Many of our folks have been disenfranchised due to the carceral state, which reaches into every aspect of our lives, including our ability to choose the policies that impact us and the politicians who govern in our name. It is essential for those who can vote to do so and to advocate that incarcerated people’s voting rights be restored.
We are demanding an expansion of voting rights through nationwide automatic voter registration; this would ensure that every citizen is added to the voter rolls without ever having to jump through hoops to register. We demand electoral justice by ending disenfranchisement of those charged with a felony, due to the over-policing and over-sentencing of the Black community in the U.S. One in sixteen Black people of voting age is disenfranchised. No one should ever be stripped of the right to vote. As we have always done, we are fighting for the integrity of U.S. democracy.
And finally, we know that parties and politicians who move to the center — sacrificing the ideals that they shout during election season and compromise away once they are in office — need to be held accountable. Black people in the U.S. deserve a government that specifically creates policies to meet the needs of Black families and communities. We deserve real pathways to healing and stability, not more concessions and excuses.
The current administration hasn’t done enough for Black people. And elections are opportunities to recalibrate power.
Organizers and advocates have fought hard for economic justice and relief, and the Student Loan Debt Relief Program, which admittedly does not go far enough for Black students and former students, is being held up in the Supreme Court by justices put in office by the Trump administration.
Black students are often forced to borrow at higher rates and hold disproportionate debt, reinforcing the racial wealth gap. Additionally, when Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, a bill which aims to curb inflation by reducing the deficit and investing in clean energy, they sacrificed Black lives. Decades of racist disinvestment and dereliction in Black communities led to environmental catastrophes like the Jackson water infrastructure crisis, which has left 150,000 people without clean drinking water. Although the Inflation Reduction Act included resources for water infrastructure upgrades, none of these investments have reached vulnerable communities.
This administration has yet to fully realize the promises it made to voters on the campaign trail in 2020. We want to see more and better in these next two years. In this midterm election, advocates for racial justice plan to turn out to flex the same political power that helped these leaders get into office.
We refuse to accept anything less than the policies that create and sustain the best conditions for our communities. We refuse the politics of the lowest common denominator, because that kind of calculation always cuts us out. We can imagine a world in which every Black person is safe and thriving, and we demand policies that will help us make that world a reality.
In this midterm election, we’re mobilizing voters to the polls to hold elected officials accountable by voting for the policies that imagine the best conditions for Black people. But the struggle doesn’t end on Election Day — we also need everyone who backs the ongoing movement for Black liberation to join a local organization and organize. Together, we are powerful beyond measure.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Indigenous voters in Arizona who played a key role in catapulting Joe Biden to victory in 2020 are facing a sweeping rollback of their voting rights that may swing the state back to Republicans in Tuesday’s midterms. “In 2020, Native voters understood that the election of Donald Trump was an existential problem,” says New Yorker staff writer Sue Halpern, whose latest piece explores how voters on Arizona’s Navajo, Apache and Hopi reservations are navigating the 2021 Supreme Court ruling that banned a common method of voting collection used by Indigenous voters. We also speak with Lydia Dosela, who is running efforts to get out the vote on Indigenous reservations in Arizona to make sure “all Native American voices are heard loud and clear.”
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
We look now at how Indigenous voters played a key role in Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 when they helped him win Arizona, but now face a sweeping rollback of their voting rights. This comes as the top Republican candidates in close races in Arizona are 2020 election deniers, including the gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Blake Masters, who’s running for U.S. Senate against Senator Mark Kelly.
Last year, a Supreme Court ruling in the case Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, which came out of Arizona, allowed the state to ban ballot collection from outside set precincts, which is a method that’s widely used by Native voters in Arizona. The move is expected to suppress their vote.
For more, we’re joined by The New Yorker magazine staff writer Sue Halpern, who spoke to voters on Arizona’s Navajo, Apache and Hopi reservations for The New Yorker in a new piece headlined “The Political Attack on the Native American Vote.” She’s also a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College, and she’s joining us from Exeter, New Hampshire, where there is a key Senate contest going on between Maggie Hassan and General Bolduc. Also with us, in Fort Apache, Arizona, is Lydia Dosela, the matriarch coordinator for the White Mountain Apache Tribe and the Northeast Arizona Native Democrats. Lydia’s effort to get out the vote was featured in the New Yorker article.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Sue Halpern, let’s begin with you. Give us the broad picture of what’s happening on Native reservations across this country when it comes to today’s vote. I was very struck by one of the Native American leaders you quoted, who said, “We used to talk about why participate in the colonizer’s elections,” who then changed his mind dramatically.
SUE HALPERN: Yeah, I think that what happened was that in 2020, Native voters understood that the election of Donald Trump was an existential problem for them. Trump was talking about opening up uranium mining again. He was talking about coal mining again. He was talking about taking sacred lands and turning them over to private industry. And so, we saw this remarkable increase in Native voting, even though in the past it was seen as a kind of attempt, I think, to coopt Native voters and Native people on sovereign lands.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Sue Halpern, how does the voting process work on the Native reservations? Because there is supposedly a sovereignty that exists, a certain limited sovereignty, among the Native peoples in terms of their own laws and regulations within their territories. So, how does that work in terms of voter participation?
SUE HALPERN: So, Native Americans are citizens of the United States. They have every right accorded to the United States citizens, which they are. The problem is that the government has been very lax in making it easier and, in fact, just easy for Native Americans to vote. So, things like post offices, which many of us just take for granted, don’t exist for many, many people. A lot of people have to use post boxes, which cost money, can cost money, which they don’t have. And so, when you vote on a reservation, ideally what you would be doing would be giving your ballot to someone — a friend, a neighbor, a family member — who can go to a dropbox, who can go to a polling place, and drop off your ballot. But the Brnovich decision made that illegal. And that is really something that will impact Native American voters this time around.
AMY GOODMAN: Lydia Dosela, you’re the matriarch coordinator for the White Mountain Apache Tribe and the Northeast Arizona Native Democrats, featured in Sue Halpern’s piece. So, play this out for us. Explain the issues you face on reservations and what these changing laws have meant. I mean, many say it’s the Native vote in 2020 that took Biden over the top in Arizona.
LYDIA DOSELA: The Native Americans, particularly the Apache Tribe, we have made our strong, powerful matriarchs, that we have talked to and basically addressed some of the issues, such as the one that Sue Halpern had mentioned earlier. And they began to — as they began to have their discussion, and in their discussion with me, it was a “how can we overcome that?”
Our people are known to look for solutions versus dwelling on the problems. So the solution that they came up with is that, OK, instead of having to go using the ballot box, we will now make every attempt to go to the early voting or voting on Election Day, because a lot of the issues that are facing our Native American reservation are the same thing as our neighboring towns and cities within the state. It is no difference with our tribal elections. We have pretty much the same type of election process as the state and the federal processes.
So, understanding that, we began to form a society of sorts, which is actually the matriarchs, because they understand their role as matriarchs, and they are very powerful women and educators. They have taken upon themselves to start talking to family members, recruiting family members that have not yet registered to vote to start registering to vote, and also making it understood that they are expected to vote, to turn this whole process back around to where all Native American voices are heard loud and clear, which becomes more stronger as more votes are cast.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Lydia Dosela, you ran for political office at one point yourself. You were once a deputy director for elderly services. What are the issues that you’re hearing in terms of your particular people, the White Mountain Apache Tribe? What are the main issues that they are concerned about in this election?
LYDIA DOSELA: Their main concern is that — that’s been reiterated as I talk to people, all walks of life, has basically been education, education for the children and then also for the unborn, and also Social Security and also the rollout system for healthcare. And also the rising crime is also their concern, what they feel in their opinion should be done together with the state and the federal programs to bring that back down, and how it all goes back to the community. If the community becomes more active in their tribal homelands as it is off reservation, then together we can build a strong arm to where we can say, “OK, we’ve had enough of these issues. Let’s do something about our crime rate.”
Perhaps we need to go back to our tribal teaching to also instill in the youngsters why it’s so very important to go back to who they are, their identity as Native Americans, and understanding our relationship to other people, and then having respect for our lands and everything that God has created.
From that understanding, I began to talk more about — in depth about, OK, now, Social Security, what is it about that? They have heard through the news that the Republicans have thought about, OK, perhaps we need to get that invested in Wall Street and see if it can start making revenue on its own terms. And then, they didn’t like that, because they had worked very hard in depositing their retirement funds into the Social Security.
And then they also talked about the health system, you know, the healthcare. We had, with all the — what happened with the pandemic is where the Native Americans have thought very deep and hard about health insurance, what needs to be done.
And then, the other one is the education. In order for our children to have the same opportunity as those off reservation, they began to understand that education is very important. And they want to have the same type of education that’s offered elsewhere in the state in the reservation. On our reservation, we have shortages of teachers. We have substitute teachers for well into the school year. And the children do come home and then explain that we had a substitute teacher that was different from last week, and next week we have another one that’s probably going to be different. And there is no continuity in their teachings. And our children feel that they are not learning or being taught as are their counterparts.
And that’s where the grandparents and the parents and other members of the community have all said, “OK, what do we need to do?” And that’s where, in visiting the matriarchs, we have all begun to understand why it’s so very important that we need to come together. When we cast our votes, it becomes loud and clear that these are some of the issues that people that are elected, that will be in these offices, will no longer ignore us, but yet they will remember how loud and strong we came out by elections result — how many votes were cast on Native American reservations.
And time and time again, the elders have stressed that the times have changed. We also need to educate ourselves and to meet the changes of a new world. People always say that we can’t — you know, we’re not living in wickiups anymore. We have houses here. We also have a housing shortage. But all of that is no different from the rest of the world. We also need to meet the demands of unemployment, healthcare and education, and even a need for other programs.
And also very important, in talking to these elders, was the preservation of our civil rights, which is voting. And having that understood, a lot of our elders have — or, matriarchs, in my particular case, having made every effort to get their family members that are not registered, to have them registered. And we were able to get the voter registration applications to them. We also helped them get it and have them mailed back. And we also — in some cases, some have driven them back to the county office in Holbrook.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Lydia Dosela, we want to thank you for being with us, matriarch coordinator for the White Mountain Apache Tribe and the Northeast Arizona Native Democrats, featured in Sue Halpern’s New Yorker piece, “The Political Attack on the Native American Vote.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Millions of Americans are facing voter suppression during this election season, with consequences ranging from disenfranchisement to prison time. New and old tactics to make it harder to vote disproportionately target many groups, including people with felony convictions as well as Black, Latino, Native American and working-class communities.
On top of the pre-existing barriers to voting, the 2022 election cycle has seen a number of new laws and tactics designed to make it more difficult to vote. According to The Guardian, “the proliferation of election crime legislation represents the most intense voter suppression threat in decades and comes in direct response to former president Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was fraudulent.”
Forty-two state legislatures have considered at least 130 bills collectively that would make law enforcement more involved in the voting process, and 28 have passed. One law in Utah stipulates that election officials must check if voters vote twice and tell police or prosecutors about suspected voter fraud.
Voting restrictions disproportionately affect Black and Latino communities. Strict voter ID laws, long wait times, difficulty voting by mail and polling place closures can make it difficult to vote. A study published in the academic journal Politics, Groups, and Identities found that between 2012 and 2016, “the gap in turnout between more racially diverse and less racially diverse counties grew more” in states that enacted photo ID laws.
Historically, Black and Indigenous voters have faced many of the same obstacles. In Arizona, a proposition would eliminate the possibility of voting without a photo ID. Under current law, a person can provide two forms of identification that do not have photos. This disproportionately affects Indigenous voters, who often use tribal ID cards to vote, which sometimes do not have photos. The proposition would also add stricter requirements for mail-in voting, such as demands for date of birth and voter identification number.
There are only four offices where a person can get an ID in Navajo Nation, which is over 27,000 square miles — greater than the size of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont combined. Many people living there do not have access to a vehicle. Older Indigenous voters may not even know their government birthday, or can have conflicting information from different government agencies, creating yet another barrier to receiving identification.
Arizona Democratic Party Deputy Political Director Rachel Hood told The Arizona Republic that the proposition “places an undue burden on voters, especially those who already have a hard time voting. For Native voters, anything that requires address-displaying forms of ID are harder to access because they typically do not live in areas with traditional street addresses.”
Last month in Montana, a state court overturned three laws that would have targeted the ability for Native Americans to vote. The laws would have prevented ballot collectors from being paid, prevented people from registering on the same day that they vote and challenged use of a student ID.
In 1948, Native Americans in Arizona won the right to vote when the state Supreme Court overturned a case where Native Americans had sued for their rights but lost. Other states recognized Native Americans’ voting rights in the years after. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act guaranteed all Americans accessibility to vote and banned discrimination against people who did not speak English. In the 1970s, the U.S. outlawed literacy tests for Native Americans that discouraged non-English speakers.
The working class faces obstacles to voting as well. Many states mandate paid time off to vote, but they may not allow enough time to wait in line. Twenty-one states do not mandate any time off from work to vote, making it difficult to reach the polls. In 2020, the Brennan Center for Justice found that voters of color self-reported longer wait times compared to white voters. Georgia even banned handing out food and water to voters waiting in line. Absentee voting is a possibility, but voters still face many challenges.
People with felony convictions, who are disproportionately Black men, face significant obstacles to voting. According to the decarceration advocacy group the Sentencing Project, approximately 4.6 million people are barred from voting due to prior convictions; this translates to 1 out of every 50 American adults.
In Washington, D.C., Maine, and Vermont, incarcerated people and those with a felony conviction are not stripped of the right to vote. In addition, people who have served their sentence do often regain the right to vote. However, many are not made aware of this change, and states frequently require people to pay all their court fees before they are eligible to vote.
Crucially, an error can send someone back to prison. In August, 19 people were arrested in Florida for alleged voter fraud. At least 13 were Black, according to the Tampa Bay Times. Many of the people arrested had received confusing or bad information about their eligibility to vote.
“They’re going to pay the price,” said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis during a press conference. The individuals were identified by DeSantis’s new Office of Election Crimes and Security.
Brad Ashwell, the Florida director for the nonprofit group All Voting is Local, told the Marshall Project: “These actions are really about striking fear in a voter’s minds and intimidating them.”
In 2021, Oregon began counting incarcerated people where they are incarcerated instead of where they lived previously, even though people in prison cannot vote. This gave more power to many majority-white districts where prisons are located.
Legislation to allow incarcerated people to vote will be reintroduced in Oregon, according to Zach Winston, director of policy and outreach at the Oregon Justice Resource Center. This would also make it easier for people who are incarcerated while awaiting trial to vote.
“When you start picking and choosing who can and can’t vote, you create all sorts of problems,” Winston told the Center for Public Integrity. “If we can re-enfranchise those in prison, we can build out some structure for corrections as a whole.”
In addition to dealing with law enforcement, voters may encounter illegal vigilante intimidation. On November 1, a federal judge issued a restraining order against Clean Elections USA, a right-wing voter-intimidation group, barring them from “visibly wear[ing] body armor,” carrying weapons openly or yelling at voters. The group had been stationed at ballot drop boxes in Arizona, taking photos of voters. Influenced by former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election, the group has also been banned from making inaccurate claims about voting rules in the future.
In some cases, vigilantism has been legalized and encouraged by state governments. In Georgia, conservatives have taken advantage of a 2021 law that allows voters to challenge other people’s voter registrations in the state. According to the voter rights group New Georgia Project, more than 64,000 registrations have been challenged and at least 1,800 people have had their registrations taken away since the law was passed.
“The intensity around election administration has not subsided since 2020,” Jonathan Diaz, senior legal counsel for voting rights at the watchdog group Campaign Legal Center, told CNN. “It’s not just voters, but state and local election administrators are really feeling the pressure from these organized outside groups who have organized these challenges or … taken it on themselves to monitor drop boxes.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
It was 100 years ago that Alexander Terrell, a former Confederate officer and Texas representative, claimed that “Mexicans are induced on election day to swim across the Rio Grande and are voted before their hair is dry.”
The Terrell Election Law of 1903, fueled by false claims that non-citizens from Mexico were voting in Texas elections, restricted primaries in Texas to white voters only.
Following the Civil War, the 15th Amendment of the Constitution in 1870 had banned states from restricting the right to vote on “account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Political parties still had wide leeway in nominating candidates for office, however, and this was a workaround that was quickly adopted throughout the South to take the right to vote away from recently freed Black men and other people of color.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled white primaries unconstitutional in 1944. Terrell’s rhetoric and unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud and immigrants coming across the border illegally became a permanent tactic.
Anti-immigrant rhetoric has featured prominently in Republican candidates’ campaign ads and speeches ahead of the Nov. 8 midterm elections. But watchdogs say this election cycle is different because of how much the GOP has embraced and promoted a more sinister mix of fringed conspiracy theories rooted in xenophobia and white supremacy.
Experts and voting rights advocates worry history is repeating itself as red herrings about noncitizens voting and claims of an invasion at the border are used while lawmakers curtail voting rights and ballot access across most of the country. Immigration advocates worry the lies and hateful rhetoric brewing this election cycle could spur some to violence.
That became apparent when a 21-year-old man walked into a Walmart on Aug. 3, 2019, in the border city of El Paso and used an AK-47 to kill 22 people. The fear of a “Hispanic invasion of Texas” drove him more than 650 miles from his home. His mission: to kill Mexicans.
This and other racist massacres committed across the country in recent years have been inspired by a fringe conspiracy theory, widely known as the “Great Replacement Theory” — the claim that Western elites, often injected with anti-Semitic rhetoric about Jewish powerbrokers, want to replace and disempower white Americans.
Once confined to the dark fringes of the internet including white nationalist sites, aspects of replacement theory have gone mainstream on primetime Fox News shows and is front and center for many GOP candidates, according to Zachary Mueller, political director of America’s Voice, an immigrant advocacy group that’s been tracking GOP messaging in political ads since 2018.
The group has tracked more than 600 messages about an invasion at the border from more than 100 GOP candidates, political action committees and right-wing media outlets this election season. More than 130 messages tracked by the group falsely claim Democrats are purposely allowing immigrants to enter the country illegally to gain voters.
There is no statistically meaningful evidence of non-citizens voting in U.S. elections. And far from the border being “open,” record breaking numbers of migrants have been stopped by border patrol this year.
“Democrats are actively ignoring laws on the book and allowing millions of migrants to come into our country illegally. Why? Because the thinking goes that if they’re given enough handouts, these migrants will eventually be Democrat voters,” an election campaign email sent by Monica De La Cruz in September reads. De La Cruz is a Trump-backed GOP candidate running for Congress in Texas’ 15th District.
The replacement and invasion rhetoric was mainly on the fringes of the Republican party in 2018, Mueller said, but this year the number of messages is about five times higher and it’s coming from the leadership all the way down.
“That’s dangerous because some segments of those folks that believe that racist lies are going to take it upon themselves to act as vigilantes to try to stop it,” Mueller said.
In the wake of a mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket last fall, U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the third-highest ranking House Republican, faced criticism for a series of Facebook ads that warned of a “permanent election insurrection,” arguing that Democrats want to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants and “overthrow our current electorate.”
In an interview rebutting the allegations that her ads echoed the conspiracy theory that inspired the Buffalo shooter, Stefanik said there’s nothing racist about wanting a secure border or opposing mass amnesty.
Stefanik’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Democrats and immigration rights advocates have also condemned Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and state Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, both Republicans, for describing immigrants crossing the border as an invasion.
“We are being invaded,” Patrick said at a press conference this past year. “That term has been used in the past, but it has never been more true.”
Abbott said at the same presser that “homes are being invaded” as he announced the state would be spending an initial $250 million to construct a barrier at the state’s southern border with Mexico to fill in gaps that have remained since the border wall was first constructed nearly 30 years ago.
U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat from El Paso, condemned Abbott’s and Patrick’s remarks in a tweet after the press conference.
“If people die again, blood will be on your hands,” Escobar wrote.
Abbott took it a step further: He issued an executive order in July that invoked the U.S. Constitution’s “Invasion Clause” and directed state law enforcement to arrest migrants and drop them off at ports of entry. Article IV Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution says the federal government “shall guarantee every state in this Union a republican form of government and shall protect each of them against invasion…”
(The term “republican” refers to a republic of representatives, not the Republican party.)
After years of former President Donald Trump demonizing undocumented immigrants and using the word invasion on a regular basis, more than half of Americans say there’s an “invasion” at the southern border, according to an August poll by NPR and Ipsos,
But experts say, “the current increase in apprehensions fits a predictable pattern of seasonal changes in undocumented immigration combined with a backlog of demand because of 2020’s coronavirus border closure,” according to a recent analysis by the Washington Post.
As Texas politicians continue to attack immigrants and sound the alarm on border security, they have also ramped up efforts to restrict access to the ballot box.
Last year, Abbott signed into law one of the nation’s strictest voting bills. The bill rolled back extended voting hours and drive-through voting, restricted voting by mail, added new voter ID requirements, banned some forms of organizing voter turnout and increased criminal penalties for violating election laws.
Abbott and Patrick did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The reality is that Texas is not alone: Access to the ballot box has gotten worse in 26 states, and this has been particularly bad for people of color, according to a Center for Public Integrity report looking at voting inequalities in all 50 states and Washington D.C.
False claims that non-citizens are voting and influencing elections have been used to justify some of those new restrictions. In Arizona, Republican legislators passed a new law requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. It could have the most significant impact on the state’s elderly Indigenous population, who are less likely to have birth certificates or other documents proving citizenship.
“It’s not politically popular to say, ‘Hey, I just don’t want non-whites to vote, so we’re going to create these arbitrary barriers so that only more middle-class white folks and affluent whites can vote,’ that’s not going to win you an election that’s pretty on face,” Mueller said. “So they create these other kinds of boogeyman to do that sort of thing.”
This article first appeared on Center for Public Integrity and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Law enforcement analysts and voting rights experts are warning local officials of decentralized efforts by conspiracy believers and right-wing extremists to disrupt and sway the midterm elections on Tuesday, raising fears that the results could be marred by voter intimidation, a deluge of frivolous lawsuits and even violence fueled by former President Trump’s baseless election fraud claims.
From Florida to Pennsylvania and Michigan, far right groups and pundits are calling on their followers to surveil ballot drop boxes and volunteer as poll workers, observers and vote challengers, efforts that already sparked legal battles over election observation rules and allegations of voter intimidation. The armed vigilantes who staked out a drop boxes across Arizona’s Maricopa County last week heightened fears that precincts serving high concentrations of Black and Brown voters will be targeted in cities such as Phoenix and Detroit, which were at the center of baseless internet conspiracy theories after Trump spread lies about the 2020 election. After hearing from voting rights groups, a federal judge placed a temporary restraining order on the far right group in Arizona this week.
Law enforcement agencies recently distributed intelligence bulletins warning of a “heightened threat” of “domestic violent extremism” fueled by conspiracy theories and election denialism, with potential targets including “candidates … elected officials, election workers, political rallies, political party representatives, racial and religious minorities, or perceived ideological opponents,” according to CBS News.
Mary McCord, executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, told the U.S. Conference of Mayors this week to prepare local election officials and police departments for right-wing disruption efforts. This could include a potential deluge of phone 911 calls claiming to report “voter fraud,” according to reports. With far right groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers focusing on local precincts and communities, officials must make firm public statements asserting that voter intimidation and armed militia activity around polling locations will not be tolerated, McCord said.
“All of these efforts are really part of this strategy to not only threaten and intimidate, but also to really gum up the works, which will lead to the ability to file lawsuits” challenging the election results, McCord said on MSNBC this week. “They might be frivolous, they might be baseless, but they are trying to set up a rational to allow for filing of those suits.”
News outlets first reported the intelligence bulletins warning of extremist violence on Friday, the same day that a man broke into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home in California and brutally attacked her husband with a hammer in an attempt to hunt down the Democratic leader. Analysts say the suspected assailant, David DePape, left a trail online suggesting a “standard case of online right-wing radicalization.”
However, the right-wing media quickly dismissed the attack with a bizarre and homophobic conspiracy theory with help from Trump and other figures who were quick to share debunked claims and hearsay online. Thanks to the insular nature of right-wing and pro-Trump media ecosystem, the baseless conspiracy theory was likely accepted as reality by a sizable chunk of the GOP base, according to Matt Gertz, a researcher at Media Matters for America.
The right-wing media bubble has pushed election denialism since 2020 and is currently spreading misinformation about the midterm elections and “voter fraud” as Republican operatives organize an “army” of poll watchers to contest the vote, according to Truthout’s analysis of content on conservative social media sites. Gertz argues that right-wing media consumers exist in a sort of “parallel universe” where they are “uniquely vulnerable” to conspiracy theories that frame political opponents as evil, Satanic enemies, fueling violence and extremism in the process:
The right-wing press spent decades spinning out these politically convenient narratives about the diabolical nature of their perceived enemies until the audience came to demand them. Few on the right — and none with any real degree of influence — are interested in debunking the rampant lies once they get going. Instead, powerful figures at Fox News and elsewhere end up pushing the likes of QAnon talking points and scoffing at its extremism. And decades of right-wing attacks on the mainstream press have created a bubble in which the audience is unlikely to receive or credit contradictory information from those outlets.
It’s within this media bubble that intelligence analysts, journalists and voting rights groups are looking for evidence that extremists are plotting to sow chaos on Election Day. While law enforcement cautions that violence could arise from any end of the political spectrum, the intelligence bulletin obtained by news outlets this week included grievances about Trump’s loss to President Joe Biden in 2020.
Madeline Peltz, a researcher at Media Matters for America who covers former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, said the far right agitator’s “War Room” podcast is a central hub for radicalizing people with election conspiracy theories and pulling together right-wing efforts to disrupt and subvert the vote.
“Over past few weeks and months, Bannon is using his platform as an organizing hub for dozens of election denial groups that are recruiting volunteers to participate in the election process, both externally and also has through government positions such as poll workers and watchers,” Peltz said in an interview with Truthout.
Bannon’s fans and other right-wing audiences are explicitly being called to challenge the vote in Democratic strongholds, Peltz added. Voting rights groups and nonpartisan observers will be on the ground to assist voters and document any abuses, if they occur. Voting rights groups are currently distributing resources to help voters identify and report illegal voter intimidation, including militia activity near the polls that is banned in several states.
Various state laws govern what designated “poll watchers” are allowed to do inside the polls, including challenge a voter’s ballot. Even if your qualification to vote is challenged by a “watcher” or observer at the polls on Election Day, voting rights groups say you still have the right to cast a regular ballot unless that challenge is sustained and, at minimum, you have the right to cast a provisional ballot before leaving the site.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
In the last two years, former President Donald Trump has led a movement to crack down on what’s known as ballot collection. This is when another person or group helps a voter deliver their absentee ballot. Trump and others, such as those behind the film “2000 Mules,” falsely claim it’s behind widespread voter fraud.
The practice has been legal in many states, but the rules have changed in a lot of places. Six states – Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Georgia, Texas and Kentucky – have added criminal penalties to ballot collection since the 2020 general election, as an investigation from Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.
Election attorneys and voting rights experts worry these laws will scare people away from voting. Indeed, the rules can be confusing and vary vastly from state to state.
So we’ve created this guide to make sure you know the rules where you live, listed alphabetically by state.
ALABAMA: Only you can deliver your ballot.
ALASKA: This state does not specify who can deliver a ballot on your behalf, unless you have a disability. It’s best to consult your local election official. If you have a disability, you can authorize anyone to deliver your ballot through special needs voting. The person delivering your ballot cannot be your employer, an agent of your employer, someone from your union or a candidate.
ARIZONA: Only a family member, household member or caregiver can deliver a ballot on your behalf.
ARKANSAS: You can authorize anyone to deliver your ballot, as long as the person shows their ID to the county clerk and signs an oath. A designee can deliver ballots for no more than two voters per election.
CALIFORNIA: You can designate anyone to deliver your ballot, as long as the person does so no later than three days after receiving it and does not receive compensation for doing so.
COLORADO: You can choose anyone to deliver your ballot, but only election officials can return more than 10 ballots.
CONNECTICUT: Only an immediate family member can deliver a ballot on your behalf. If you cannot physically vote due to illness or disability, you can designate a family member, caregiver (including a doctor or nurse), police officer or election official to deliver your ballot.
DELAWARE: This state does not specify who can deliver a ballot on your behalf. It’s best to consult your local election official.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: The district does not specify who can deliver a ballot on your behalf. It’s best to consult your local election official.
FLORIDA: You can designate anyone to deliver your ballot, but a designee may not deliver more than two ballots on behalf of anyone outside of their family. If you need assistance voting due to disability, blindness or inability to read and write, you can designate anyone to deliver your ballot, as long as the person is not your employer, an agent of your employer or someone representing your union.
GEORGIA: Only a family member or household member can deliver a ballot on your behalf. If you have a disability, an adult family member, household member or caregiver can deliver your ballot. For voters in custody, a detention facility employee can deliver their ballots as well.
HAWAII: This state does not specify who can deliver a ballot on your behalf. It’s best to consult your local election official.
IDAHO: This state does not specify who can deliver a ballot on your behalf. It’s best to consult your local election official.
ILLINOIS: You can authorize anyone to deliver your ballot. If you’re physically incapacitated or hospitalized, a worker from the facility at which you’re residing can deliver on your behalf as well.
INDIANA: Only a member of your household or your attorney can deliver a ballot on your behalf.
IOWA: Only an immediate family member or household member can deliver a ballot on your behalf. If you have a disability, you can designate someone else to deliver your ballot. That person must be a registered voter and cannot be your employer, an agent of your employer or registered in your union.
KANSAS: You can designate anyone in writing to deliver a ballot on your behalf.
KENTUCKY: Only a family member, household member or caregiver can deliver a ballot on your behalf.
LOUISIANA: You can designate anyone to deliver your ballot, as long as the person signs a statement prepared by the secretary of state confirming the voter’s consent. Only an immediate family member may deliver more than one ballot.
MAINE: You can designate anyone to deliver your ballot. A designee is required to deliver the ballot no later than two days after receiving it. If a designee is not your immediate family member, your ballot must be notarized or signed by two witnesses before return.
MARYLAND: You can designate anyone in writing to deliver a ballot on your behalf, as long as the person is at least 18 and is not a candidate.
MASSACHUSETTS: Only a family member can deliver a ballot on your behalf.
MICHIGAN: Only an immediate family member or household member can deliver a ballot on your behalf. If none of those options are available, an election official can provide assistance delivering your ballot.
MINNESOTA: You can designate anyone to return your ballot. A designee can deliver no more than three ballots.
MISSISSIPPI: This state does not specify who can deliver a ballot on your behalf. It’s best to consult your local election official.
MISSOURI: Only a relative “within the second degree of consanguinity or affinity” can deliver a ballot on your behalf.
MONTANA: Anyone can deliver your ballot. Montana had passed a stricter ballot collection law, but its provisions are not in effect, as a state court ruled this month that it was unconstitutional.
NEBRASKA: This state does not specify who can deliver a ballot on your behalf. It’s best to consult your local election official.
NEVADA: You can authorize anyone to deliver a ballot on your behalf.
NEW HAMPSHIRE: Only a family member can deliver a ballot on your behalf, unless you live in a residential care facility. In that case, an administrator or staff member of the facility may also deliver your ballot. If you are blind or disabled, the person who assisted you with your ballot may also deliver it, as long as that person signs a statement acknowledging the assistance. In all cases, the person delivering your ballot must complete a form and present their ID upon return.
NEW JERSEY: You can authorize anyone to deliver your ballot, but the person cannot be a candidate and must provide proof of identity when submitting your ballot. A designee can deliver no more than three ballots or no more than five for immediate family members living in the same household.
NEW MEXICO: Only a caregiver or immediate family member can deliver a ballot on your behalf.
NEW YORK: This state does not specify who can deliver a ballot on your behalf. It’s best to consult your local election official.
NORTH CAROLINA: Only a “near relative or verifiable legal guardian” can deliver a ballot on your behalf.
NORTH DAKOTA: You can designate anyone to deliver your ballot, as long as the person is not a candidate. No designee may receive compensation or deliver more than four ballots.
OHIO: Only a family member can deliver a ballot on your behalf.
OKLAHOMA: Only your spouse can deliver a ballot on your behalf.
OREGON: You can designate anyone to deliver your ballot, but the person must do so within two days of receiving it.
PENNSYLVANIA: Only you can deliver your ballot, unless you have a disability. In that case, you may designate an agent on a government-issued form to deliver a ballot on your behalf. The designee must also complete the form.
RHODE ISLAND: This state does not specify who can deliver a ballot on your behalf. It’s best to consult your local election official.
SOUTH CAROLINA: You can designate anyone in writing to deliver your ballot, but the person cannot be a candidate or paid campaign worker, unless the person is a member of your immediate family.
SOUTH DAKOTA: This state does not specify who can deliver a ballot on your behalf, only that an “authorized messenger” may do so in the case of sickness or disability. If an authorized messenger is delivering ballots on behalf of more than one voter, the person will need to notify a local election official.
TENNESSEE: This state does not specify who can deliver a ballot on your behalf. It’s best to consult your local election official.
TEXAS: Only a household member or a relative “within the second degree by affinity or the third degree by consanguinity” can deliver a ballot on your behalf.
UTAH: Only a household member can deliver a ballot on your behalf. If you need assistance with voting due to age, illness or disability, you may designate anyone to deliver your ballot, as long as the person is not your employer, an agent of your employer or union, or a candidate.
VERMONT: This state does not specify who can deliver a ballot on your behalf. It’s best to consult your local election official.
VIRGINIA: Only you can deliver your ballot in person. Virginia does not specify who can deliver a ballot on your behalf via mail or drop box.
WASHINGTON: This state does not specify who can deliver a ballot on your behalf. It’s best to consult your local election official.
WEST VIRGINIA: This state does not specify who can deliver a ballot on your behalf, though state law prohibits anyone from hand-delivering more than two ballots. It’s best to consult your local election official.
WISCONSIN: Only you can deliver your ballot, unless you have a disability. In that case, you may designate anyone to deliver your ballot, as long as the person is not your employer or an agent of your employer or union.
WYOMING: This state does not specify who can deliver a ballot on your behalf. It’s best to consult your local election official.
For up-to-date information regarding where your state currently stands on ballot collecting, check the National Conference of State Legislatures or the Movement Advancement Project and consult your local election official.
This story was edited by Andrew Donohue and Maryam Saleh and copy edited by Nikki Frick.
Farah Eltohamy is Reveal’s 2022-23 Roy W. Howard investigative reporting fellow and can be reached at feltohamy@revealnews.org. Follow her on Twitter: @farahelto.
Ballot Collection Rules Have Changed in Many Places. Here’s How to Make Sure Your Vote Counts. is a story from Reveal. Reveal is a registered trademark of The Center for Investigative Reporting and is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization.
This post was originally published on Reveal.
We speak with Florida voting rights activist Desmond Meade about how Republicans like Governor Ron DeSantis are attempting to scare formerly incarcerated people with felony convictions from voting. DeSantis launched an election police force to arrest people on trumped-up voter fraud charges. The arrests overwhelmingly targeted Black people and demonstrate “the state’s failure to have a system in place that can assure any American citizen that lives in the state of Florida whether or not they’re eligible to vote,” says Meade, who spearheaded an initiative to re-enfranchise 1.4 million people with prior felony convictions, before it was overturned by Republicans. While several charges of alleged voter fraud in past elections have been dismissed, Meade says the arrests still intimidate qualified voters from casting a ballot.
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We look now at how Republicans are still trying to scare former felons away from voting even as trumped-up charges of voter fraud in past elections have been dismissed in the lead-up to the November 8th midterm elections. It was March 2020, Super Tuesday, when Hervis Rogers was interviewed by CNN’s Ed Lavandera as he stood in line with other voters in Houston, Texas.
ED LAVANDERA: Why did you wait this long to vote?
HERVIS ROGERS: Because I wanted—I figured like it was my duty to vote. I wanted to get my vote int, to voice my opinion, and I wasn’t going to let nothing stop me, so I waited it out. We waited for about—six hours?
PERSON: Yes.
HERVIS ROGERS: About six hours. A little bit over six hours.
AMY GOODMAN: That interview with Rogers went viral. A year later, he was charged with felony voter fraud for voting when he was ineligible while on felony parole. Last week, a district court judge in Texas set aside his indictment, which was brought by the Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton who is running for reelection and supports former Trump’s claims of the 2020 election was stolen. Days later, Paxton launched a 2022 so-called Election Integrity Team.
This comes after a legal setback in Florida for Republican Governor Ron DeSantis also running for reelection. Last Friday, a Miami man arrested under DeSantis’ newly-formed Florida Office of Election Crimes and Security had his charges dismissed. Floridians voted in 2018 to allow formerly incarcerated people with past felony convictions to cast ballots, excluding those convicted of murder or felony sex offenses. Robert Lee Wood was among 20 mostly Black voters arrested in August who said they were encouraged to vote by Florida officials and were not made aware of this exclusion, which is not stated on voter registration forms. Police bodycam footage shows how people seemed puzzled by their arrests and didn’t intend to run afoul of the law. This is Tampa resident Ramona Oliver being arrested.
ROMONA OLIVER: Oh my god. Let me tell my husband.
POLICE: We’re telling him. He’s right here.
POLICE: We’ll tell him right here. So if you could put your hands behind your back please.
ROMONA OLIVER: Oh my god.
POLICE: Do not move.
POLICE: So, ultimately, ma’am, you have a warrant. Okay. The warrant—hold on, listen. I know you’re caught off guard. I understand. Right? So you have a warrant. It’s for voter fraud, okay? Hear me out. It’s an ROR. You know what an ROR is?
ROMONA OLIVER: Oh my god.
POLICE: You go in, you get booked, and then they’re going to release you from booking.
POLICE: You can go right out.
POLICE: You’re going to be right back out. Okay?
POLICE: You’re getting out and right back home.
POLICE: But you have a warrant.
ROMONA OLIVER: Okay. I’m like, voter fraud? I voted but I ain’t commit no fraud!
POLICE: Well, so that’s the thing. I don’t know exactly what happened with it, but you do have a warrant and that’s what it’s for.
ROMONA OLIVER: Oh my god.
POLICE: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we are joined in Orlando, Florida, by Desmond Meade, President of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition and Chairman of the Floridians for a Fair Democracy. He spearheaded Amendment 4, which re-enfranchised 1.4 million Floridians. His latest book is titled Let My People Vote: My Battle to Restore the Civil Rights of Returning Citizens. Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Desmond. As we watch this video and this woman saying “Oh my God,” can you talk about the 20 or so Floridians who were just arrested by the so-called Election Integrity—the election police force that DeSantis has just created?
DESMOND MEADE: Good morning, Amy. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I’m looking at the video and just hearing this woman speak and it just infuriates me, almost like getting retraumatized again thinking about those 20 people, some of whom were arrested by SWAT teams and having helicopters over their homes as if they were Pablo Escobar or something. Each one of these individuals terrified, some being drug out their home in the middle of the night still in their pajamas, wouldn’t even be allowed to get into regular clothes. And to think all because of the state’s failure to have a system in place that could assure any American citizen that lives in the state of Florida whether or not they are eligible to vote. So, it is very infuriating. I know that we talk about the impact, the chilling impact that this can have on especially returning citizen voters, and sadly, Amy, the damage has already been done. Right now we are forced to try to mitigate those damages by responding to these arrests.
AMY GOODMAN: Desmond, just clarify your terms. Explain what you mean—and you consider yourself a returning citizen—by this term “returning citizens.”
DESMOND MEADE: I am glad you asked that, Amy. Returning citizen is used interchangeably with justice-impacted people or people who have had previous felony convictions, who have been impacted by the criminal justice system. We tend to shy away from using the word “felon” because that is a dehumanizing term. Unfortunately, this country is accustomed to using that word, but when you do that, you kind of lose the humanity in some of these stories.
When you showed that gentleman that was excited about being able to vote and was willing to stand in line for hours to do so, that’s the human part of it, and I appreciate you for showing that. But it reminds me even of the young man who was investigated for voting fraud talking about how he has been hidden away from society for so long, and when he was told by the supervisor of elections that he was eligible to vote, how he felt like he was finally part of society. These are the stories that we have to uplift, because it’s more about the people and less about the politics.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about how you felt when you were able then to vote and why this was so important to you.
DESMOND MEADE: Amy, let me tell you, and I know it’s hard for people to wrap their head around, but I really do believe that when we talk about voting, it actually transcends partisan politics. I know every time we say voting, it’s within a conversation about Democrats and Republicans. But when I went to vote for the first time in my very first presidential election in 2020, I didn’t feel as if I was voting as a Democrat or Republican or even as an African American. What I felt I was doing was engaging in an act that validated my existence on this planet, that validated my existence within the society. That my voice matters, right? It was such a sacred experience that I felt, and it really drove home why we were so adamant in fighting for everyone, every returning citizen having an opportunity to participate in our democracy and how important everyone’s participation is to our democracy in order for our democracy to be more vibrant and thrive.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s not just returning citizens who are excited about voting; the state of Florida— you spearheaded Amendment 4—it overwhelmingly passed. But then can you talk about how the Republican-led legislature tried to restrict what the people of Florida—Democrat, Republican, Independent—voted for? You, actually, Desmond, had very little resistance in this amendment that enabled something like 1.4 million more Floridians to vote.
DESMOND MEADE: You are right, Amy. I think your previous guest alluded to it, that we are at a time now in this country where you have elected officials that are blatantly ignoring the will of the people. Here in Florida, the people clearly spoke. We had a very beautiful moment when we passed Amendment 4 because we had people from all walks of life and all political persuasions—Democrats, Republicans, independents. As a matter of fact, over a million people who voted for Governor DeSantis also voted for Amendment 4.
However, I believe since the formation of this country, there has always been a select group of politicians who would much rather pick and choose who gets to vote for them as opposed to letting everyone have a say in how their country is governed. As a matter of fact, it hasn’t been too long since women were given the right to vote. There was a time in this country when there were politicians that strenuously believed that women should not be able to have a say in how this country is ran., and they were willing to abuse women, they were willing to incarcerate women to prevent them from having a say. This is the same thing that we are seeing right now.
AMY GOODMAN: Desmond Meade, let’s go back to this arrest of the 20 people, almost all African American, who were arrested and what they were told. To be very clear here, this is more than arresting them; it sends a message to people who have been incarcerated—or not—in Florida, “You better watch out; if you vote, you might be arrested,” whether or not later on the charges get dropped. But the idea that in fact, a number of them did not think they could vote but they were told, “Don’t worry about it, sign up and if you can’t, you won’t be able to vote. You will be told.”
DESMOND MEADE: Yes, you are perfectly right, Amy. I tell folks that there’s a bigger story within the story that’s told. Prior to the August arrests, there were some arrests in April, I think, in Alachua County. In this particular case, you had ten men that were arrested. Some were drug out of homeless shelters. There was a grandfather that was arrested in front of his grandkids. These gentlemen were all told by the supervisor of elections that it was okay for them to register to vote.
And they did. We know that there is probably hundreds even thousands more individuals that are facing the possibility of being arrested or even prosecuted.
At the end of the day, we have always stated that the burden is on the state. When a person fills out a voter registration form—even a third-party voter registration organization, when they help someone to register to vote, it is not their responsibility to ensure that that person is totally a qualified voter. They do not have the resources that the state has, right? Those applications are then sent to the Secretary of State whose responsibility it is to run the applications through whatever various systems it have to ensure whether or not that person is a qualified voter. If that person is not qualified, then the Secretary of State would not issue a voter identification card. However, if that person is qualified, the state would send that person a voter identification card. And when that person receives that card, there’s no other option but to believe that they are legitimate voter. Because if you can’t rely on the state to give you assurances about whether or not you can vote, then who else can you rely on?
AMY GOODMAN: I’m looking at a New York Times piece about one of the people arrested named Robert Lee Wood who received a voter card from Florida six or seven weeks after filling out the application, and then he gets arrested. Can you talk, as we wrap up, Desmond Meade, about how many people who were formally imprisoned do have the right to vote in this country who may not know this, or just what is the population we are talking about?
DESMOND MEADE: Let me tell you about Florida because Florida is such a pivotal state. There is over 600,000 returning citizens that are living in Florida right now that are eligible to register to vote and participate in elections. But they face the challenge of, number one, the chaos surrounding the payment of fines and fees that kind of discourages them from even trying to vote, and then now you have these arrests.
One very important thing though I want to note, Amy, is that I remember when there was a raid on Mar-a-Lago, President Trump’s home, how some people were questioning the timing of the FBI raid, saying that it’s suspicious that they would raid two years before the presidential election. Now, my statement to them is that if people are concerned about the timing two years off, here in Florida these arrests started on the eve of elections, whether it was the primary election that we had in August and now of course the general election that we have here in November. These arrests are frighteningly close to elections and it can’t be any other conclusion to make other than that this is an intimidating tactic to scare people away from participating in our democracy.
So folks need to be outraged at this. Folks need to fight back. One of the ways they can do this, Amy, is that we have set up bail funds for these individuals and we have set up a legal defense fund.
The gentleman that you talked about whose case was dropped, we were able to provide an attorney for this young man so he is able to successfully challenge these charges in court.
AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds, Desmond.
*DESMOND MEADE: We are providing attorneys for any individuals who are arrested on these charges and we are making sure that people are also able to bail out if they cannot afford to post bail.
AMY GOODMAN: Desmond Meade, we want to thank you for being with us, President of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition and Chair of the Floridians for a Fair Democracy. Tune in on November 8th for our three-hour election night special beginning at 9:00 P.M. Eastern. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Since the 2020 election, lawmakers in all but eight states have attempted to pass laws that would create new election investigation agencies, establish criminal penalties for election offenses or further empower law enforcement officials to investigate such crimes, according to an analysis by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.
The proliferation of election crime legislation represents the most intense voter suppression threat in decades and comes in direct response to former President Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was fraudulent.
In the last two years, at least 130 bills have been introduced across 42 states that would increase the involvement of law enforcement in the voting process, the analysis shows. Of those bills, 28 have passed in 20 states.
Some of these efforts have grabbed attention individually, like Georgia’s law making it a crime to hand out food or drinks – even water – to voters waiting in line or Florida’s creation of an entirely new law enforcement agency to police elections, the Office of Election Crimes and Security, which has already been criticized for bringing flimsy prosecutions.
Reveal’s first-of-its-kind analysis shows those bills were part of a larger movement, mostly led by Republican state lawmakers and fueled by conspiracy theories. While some of those efforts have so far failed, they show no sign of relenting, as the myth of voter fraud has become a central GOP platform.
Three trends from the analysis stand out:
The bills represent the latest chapter in the long history of U.S. voter suppression. Throughout the Jim Crow era, Black Americans encountered poll taxes, literacy tests, state violence and intimidation if they wanted to vote. In the last decade, as the Voting Rights Act has been weakened, the suppression has appeared in more subtle ways as lawmakers have instituted voter ID requirements and closed polling places. Research shows these things make it more difficult for voters of color – particularly Black, Latino and Indigenous Americans – to cast a ballot.
Leslie Proll, senior director of voting rights at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said the nascent criminalization push is more intense than even the Jim Crow era.
“This criminalization of the vote is a very concerning new form of suppression that certainly has roots in history,” Proll said. “But we’ve not seen it in the way that we’re seeing it now.”
The wave of legislation is being propelled by a phantom problem: Study after study has shown that there is no widespread voter fraud, and Republican-led lawsuits and audits have failed to prove the claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
However, with the midterms approaching, conservative groups, militias and sympathetic law enforcement officials are ramping up plans to surveil voters. Those plans, combined with the new laws and enforcement powers, are setting the stage for a prosecutorial campaign this Election Day and beyond, one that doesn’t root out widespread fraud but instead punishes individuals for mistakes or small infractions.
The criminalization push could also deter people from voting at all.
“They’re tapping into an ancestral fear of the whole process,” said Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, a Georgia-based election law attorney at Lawrence & Bundy.
Reveal used records from LegiScan, which catalogs virtually every bill introduced by state-level lawmakers in all 50 states, to identify and classify every proposal related to election crimes following the 2020 election.
At least 65% of the proposed bills were introduced by Republicans or Republican-majority committees. When Democrats have advanced legislation, it has often criminalized election interference, in response to reports of harassment and threats against voters and poll workers.
In many cases, the proponents of the harshest laws are also purveyors of the lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
In Arizona, state Sen. Wendy Rogers introduced a bill this year to create a multimillion-dollar agency devoted to investigating election fraud. The Arizona attorney general’s office already has an election integrity unit that does just that.
Speaking to a crowd last year about the 2020 election, Rogers was clear about her goal.
“I want to see arrests,” she told a cheering audience. “I want to see perp walks.”
Rogers, who has praised White nationalists and said she wants to see her political opponents hung, is closely allied with the GOP candidates for governor, attorney general and U.S. Senate in her state, all of whom have been endorsed by Trump, are proponents of the Big Lie and have promised to crack down on alleged voter fraud if elected.
Attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh has said he will “prosecute the crimes of the rigged 2020 election.” That’s despite a GOP-led audit of the 2020 results in Arizona’s largest county that found no evidence of fraud. Mark Finchem, the Republican candidate for secretary of state, has encouraged surveillance outside ballot drop boxes – and armed men have already been spotted monitoring the boxes at night.
In their zeal to pursue election crimes, Arizona officials have often been ahead of the curve.
The state outlawed ballot collection back in 2016. Earlier this year, lawmakers there considered a bill targeting election workers. It would increase penalties for election officials who send an unsolicited absentee ballot – boosting the potential prison time from two years to 10.
In Wisconsin, the Republican-led Legislature got to work almost immediately after the 2020 election, as Trump and his surrogates obsessed over absentee ballots being a vector for voter fraud.
In March 2021, a group of state senators introduced a bill that would have made it a felony to return another voter’s absentee ballot, with limited exceptions for relatives and guardians. State Sen. Duey Stroebel, the author of the bill, described it as an effort to “safeguard the return of another person’s absentee ballot.”
That summer, legislators sent that and other election-related bills to Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, who vetoed it. “This bill adds no additional security or fraud prevention beyond what our state laws already provide,” he said. “One can easily imagine the ways that the measures proposed in this bill would result in voters being deprived of their fundamental right to vote.”
But the state’s Republicans didn’t relent. Early this year, they introduced another wave of bills that would make it harder to vote.
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Among them was legislation that would make it a felony for nursing home employees to force residents to vote or prevent them from voting. The bill was a response to a conspiracy theory about Trump’s 2020 loss in the Badger State: that pandemic-era changes to voting at nursing homes had led to widespread fraud.
The bill passed within a couple of weeks of introduction. The theory, first propagated by a local sheriff’s office, was then debunked. And again, Evers exercised his veto power.
Evers is now locked in a tight reelection race against Tim Michels, who is endorsed by Trump and as governor would be in a position to enact the GOP’s legislative priorities ahead of the 2024 election. Meanwhile, because of redistricting in Wisconsin, Republicans could gain a supermajority Nov. 8. That would give them the ability to override Evers’ veto even if he wins reelection.
While Wisconsin presents a heightened example of the emerging threats to democracy, Reveal’s analysis shows attempts to criminalize voting have been wide reaching across the country.
For example:
In late August, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called a press conference to celebrate the first prosecutions of his new elections investigation team. A presumed 2024 Republican presidential candidate, the governor said officials arrested 20 Florida residents who voted in the 2020 election despite having felony convictions that made them ineligible to vote.
Surrounded by uniformed officers, DeSantis issued a warning: “Today’s actions send a clear signal to those who are thinking about ballot harvesting or fraudulently voting. If you commit an elections crime, you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
He revealed scant details about the arrests. But it soon became clear that the prosecutions had problems. It turned out that in some cases, election officials – who were responsible for checking voter eligibility – had sent the voter in question a registration card. (A Miami judge has already thrown out one of the cases.)
DeSantis also touted a different part of the law that created the elections police unit: a provision on ballot collection. State lawmakers had first criminalized the practice in 2021, making it a misdemeanor to deliver more than two ballots on behalf of anyone other than a family member.
In less than a year, it had become a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.
For years, Election Day in San Luis, Arizona, was a festive event. Whenever an election rolled around, parties – with music and carne asada – would pop up outside polling places in the small city tucked into the southwest corner of the state.
Guillermina Fuentes, the onetime mayor of San Luis and a fixture in the community, was always close to the center of the celebration. “In San Luis, people know two things: beans and Guillermina,” said Pastor Manuel Castro, who runs the local Gethsemani Baptist Church and has known her for more than three decades.
If the 66-year-old Fuentes was not running for office – she’d been a local City Council and school board member, too – then she was out helping others vote, friends and family members said. In San Luis, which is 95% Latino, absentee voting can be particularly difficult. There is no home delivery mail service, and residents have a long tradition of assisting friends and neighbors with voting.
That’s how she spent Primary Election Day in 2020.
It was Tuesday, Aug. 4, and Fuentes was stationed just outside the polling place at the Cesar Chavez Cultural Center, supporting a slate of City Council candidates, answering voter questions and handing out campaign literature.
“Juntos saldremos,” read the blue shirts of the other volunteers: We’ll get out of this together.
Unbeknownst to Fuentes and others, they were being surreptitiously recorded by a man in his car, Gary Snyder, a Republican write-in candidate for the San Luis City Council.
He had been dispatched by fellow Republican David Lara, a perennial candidate for local office who knew Fuentes through his involvement in the local political scene. Lara, who owns a water and ice supply company, had run for City Council, mayor and county supervisor numerous times. He ran for constable once. “Every two years, I was losing elections,” he said.
The reason, he said: voter fraud, specifically vote buying and absentee ballot fraud. Lara often complained about this, filing multiple reports with local and state officials, he said.
Nothing ever came of these grievances. But on the day of the 2020 primary, he decided to try something different. He asked Snyder to secretly record Fuentes and the others to collect evidence of a conspiracy.
“You are going to witness fraud like you’ve never believed before,” Lara said he told Snyder, who declined to be interviewed. “You wouldn’t believe it. But I’m going to disappear. I’m gonna pull away, because these people know me well. And if I’m around, they’re careful. You’re the newbie, so they’re gonna drop their guard. And just take as many pictures and videos as you can.”
As the day progressed, Snyder shared pictures and video with Lara.
Then, a potential hit: At one point, Fuentes’ neighbor Alma Juarez approached the table of volunteers. Dark sunglasses shielded her eyes from the bright August sun. She was there briefly, just long enough to hand a ballot to Fuentes. Fuentes looked at it closely, appeared to write something on it, then handed it back to Juarez, along with a few other ballots that were sitting on the table.
Almost as quickly as she arrived, Juarez walked into the polling place with the ballots.
The interaction appeared unremarkable. It took less than 20 seconds. But to Lara and Snyder, it was evidence that Fuentes was part of the wide conspiracy they’d been trumpeting.
And now there was a law in Arizona to do something about it. Four years earlier, before Trump popularized “ballot harvesting” as a conservative talking point, Arizona lawmakers had passed a bill that prohibits anyone from collecting and returning someone else’s ballot, with limited exceptions. People who violate the “ballot abuse” law, as it became known, could face felony charges, punishable by up to two years in prison and a $150,000 fine.
The law was “designed to go after large-scale, knowing, massive collection of ballots that threatens the integrity of the system,” said Eric Spencer, then the election director at the secretary of state’s office. It was engineered to target criminal syndicates attempting to cheat the vote, not individual voters, he added.
The Democratic National Committee immediately challenged it in court, arguing that the law was meant to suppress the vote in Native American, Latino and Black communities. A federal appellate court agreed and struck down the law.
However, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority decided to uphold the law in 2021, further weakening the protections of the Voting Rights Act.
The first person to be targeted under the new law: Guillermina Fuentes.
The “Snyder video,” as it became known, quickly made it to Yuma County Sheriff Leon Wilmot’s office.
Two days after the 2020 primary election, his armed officers launched a door-to-door investigation into alleged vote tampering.
In body-worn camera videos from the investigation, obtained by Reveal through public records requests, officers peppered residents with questions about how they voted and whether anyone came to collect ballots from them.
At one woman’s home, officers asked how she had returned her early voting ballot.
“Are we in trouble for something?” she nervously asked. No, the officers said; they were “just making sure everybody’s vote actually gets counted.”
In a separate interaction, officers asked a man if he knew what was happening in San Luis with regard to voter fraud or ballot harvesting. “Do you have any knowledge of Guillermina Fuentes?” one of the officers asked.
The man, who did know Fuentes, said he believed that the people filing complaints were “targeting” San Luis voters and that police visiting residents at home would be “making those people fear for even voting.”
“I am shocked,” he told the officers. “There’s so much more that you guys should be doing.”
Eventually, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office took over the case. Investigators tried to figure out whose ballots Fuentes had been handling, even sending her fingerprints to the FBI for analysis at its Quantico, Virginia, headquarters. But they couldn’t find evidence that she had handled any ballots in a box from the polling location. One of the ballots belonged to Hilda Juarez, Alma Juarez’s sister, court records show.
In the end, investigators didn’t appear to find any evidence of a wider conspiracy and built their case around the Snyder video. In early December, the state charged Fuentes and Juarez with ballot abuse for handling four ballots.
Neither woman was accused of voting illegally or of buying or selling ballots, according to court records.
Officials had scrutinized the ballots, comparing the signatures to the ones in the voters’ registration files. The votes were ultimately counted.
Earlier this year, both women pleaded guilty, admitting to having touched and later deposited the ballots. Juarez pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor offense of ballot abuse.
Fuentes’ plea, meanwhile, was for a felony. Both Fuentes and Juarez declined to comment.
But in court records, Fuentes told state investigators that she had not completed a ballot for any of the voters and said she never forced community members to give her their ballots. She dismissed claims that she was a “ballot harvester” as politically motivated.
“I’m not a criminal,” she said. “For so long, I would help people with their right to vote.”
Lead prosecutor Todd Lawson said Fuentes abused her prominent position in the community to illegally collect the four ballots.
Fuentes “appears to have been caught on video running a modern-day political machine seeking to influence the outcome of the municipal election in San Luis, collecting votes through illegal methods, and then using another person to bring the ballots the last few yards into the ballot box,” Lawson wrote in a sentencing memo. He sought a one-year prison sentence for Fuentes.
Her lawyers have pointed out that the one-year sentence was harsher than penalties Lawson sought for some others in the state charged with illegal voting.
In 2020, Tracy Kay McKee voted on behalf of her dead mother. His recommendation: 30 days in jail. That’s a fraction of what he recommended in Fuentes’ case.
McKee is a White Republican. Fuentes is a Latina Democrat.
Chapman, Fuentes’ attorney, raised the disparity in an October hearing ahead of her client’s sentencing.
“The attorney general asked for 30 days of jail time in a case involving a White woman who voted an actual fraudulent ballot for a Republican candidate,” Chapman said.
“In this case, all of the ballots were signature verified and voted. There was no fraudulent ballot voted,” she added. “What are the differences in these cases that would call for a sentence requested by the attorney general’s office that is 12 times harsher than that requested for a White woman who voted a false ballot of a dead person?” (The court ultimately sentenced McKee to two years’ probation.)
Lawson did not respond to Reveal’s request for comment. In court, he said it was “patently untrue” that the state was seeking steeper penalties for Fuentes for “racist purposes.”
“This is a case about integrity of campaigns, integrity of the ballot and the handling of ballots,” Lawson said.
For his part, David Lara said in an interview with Reveal that the state should use capital punishment to deal with people who violate election laws.
“If it was up to me, voter fraud should be death penalty, because people should not mess with a vote,” Lara said. “That is sacred to me.”
When pressed on whether Fuentes deserved a penalty that strict, he walked it back. A year’s incarceration would be an appropriate sentence in her case, he said.
As part of her plea agreement, Fuentes lost her voting rights and is barred from holding public office. She had to give up her school board seat earlier this year.
At her sentencing hearing Oct. 13, Judge Roger Nelson called Fuentes a criminal. “You committed a criminal offense,” he said. “I don’t think you recognize that.”
He sentenced Fuentes to 30 days in jail. Some people in the courtroom started to cry.
Lizette Esparza, Fuentes’ daughter, said in an interview that the last two years have been especially taxing for her family. “It’s very heartbreaking to see what my mom has to go through for something that has been a common practice,” said Esparza, a local elementary school superintendent.
“To me, it’s not only unfair, but I really think that this is political – I even wanna say it’s a persecution,” she said. “It’s gonna trickle down to the community.”
Luis Marquez met Fuentes when they both worked the fields as teenagers. A retired San Luis police officer, he testified in support of Fuentes. He said the case has seeded fears about voting in San Luis.
“Every time you talk about a ballot, people are like – they get nervous about it,” he said.
“It deterred a lot of people from helping anybody else,” he added.
The surge in new election crimes bills is troubling for communities like San Luis, said Andy Gaona, an elections attorney at Coppersmith Brockelman, a Phoenix law firm. He handled an appeal in Fuentes’ case and is a member of the Arizona Voter Empowerment Task Force.
“As someone who operates in this space, it’s very concerning and it sets a dangerous precedent going forward,” Gaona said. “What it demonstrates is that the Big Lie has intensified the efforts in certain states to criminalize voters and to discourage them from voting.”
Meanwhile, the local sheriff and state attorney general are continuing to investigate election cases in San Luis. This past spring, the sheriff announced that his office is investigating 16 cases of alleged voting fraud involving ballots cast in 2020 and voter registrations ahead of this year’s August primary election.
Wilmot’s office has provided limited information about the investigations, but public records obtained by Reveal show that none of the cases point to widespread fraud.
In one case, a sergeant visited an elderly woman. He told the woman that the signature on her ballot did not match her voter registration and that officials suspected the signature was forged. Her response: “I’m an old lady and I’m shaky.”
The Sheriff’s Office has not yet filed any criminal charges in relation to the open investigations.
But Wilmot’s been recognized by the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association – a nationwide movement of sheriffs who assert that they are the ultimate authorities on U.S. law – for his investigations in Yuma County. The association has teamed up with the nonprofit True the Vote, which has a history of making baseless voter fraud claims and questionable financial transactions, to draw up plans to police the upcoming election.
“We’re gonna make sure that we have election integrity this year,” Mark Lamb, an Arizona sheriff, said at a July Trump rally in the state. “Sheriffs are going to enforce the law. This is about the rule of law. It is against the law to violate elections laws – and that’s a novel idea, we’re going to hold you accountable for that. We will not let happen what happened in 2020.”
A week after Fuentes’ sentencing, Brnovich announced new indictments in San Luis, charging two more women with illegally handling ballots during the 2020 primary. Lara and Snyder celebrated the indictments on social media.
The cases have energized Lara in his decades-long crusade against voter fraud. He told Reveal that he collaborated with True the Vote early this year, providing the nonprofit with information on the San Luis prosecutions. Fuentes’ case ended up in its film, “2000 Mules.”
Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor, has amplified the Snyder video and his claims about Fuentes’ case on social media, giving his political profile a boost. Snyder is now running for state Senate.
As for Lara, he intends to be back out there on Election Day. “Same game plan,” he said.
Reporters Melissa Lewis, Cassandra Jaramillo and Jessica Pishko contributed to this story. It was edited by Maryam Saleh and Andrew Donohue and copy edited by Nikki Frick.
Ese Olumhense can be reached at eolumhense@revealnews.org. Follow her on Twitter: @essayolumhense.
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