Voter Suppression

[Willfully Horn 8,046]

15 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

This is not helping your argument.

My argument hasn’t proved persuasive. A familiar situation for me. Though I have heard why it won’t work, I haven’t heard of the harm that would arrive in the effort.

[brakeman 28,418]

[brakeman 28,418]

On 5/24/2021 at 6:30 PM, gmr548 said:

I don’t know how Democrats can look around and conclude the filibuster shouldn’t be killed to get this passed. The GOP is dragging this nation into third world status, and of Democrats don’t wield the hard earned control of the federal government to stop it, they’re complicit.

just maybe a little complicit.

[Longhorn_Fan68 33,887]

ffs. no wonder Texas Dems left the state

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13,050]

They are straight up fascists to the point that Canada won't even allow them and we empower them. Lovely.

[Longhorn_Fan68 33,887]

come again?

 

[Longhorn_Fan68 33,887]

Seems like a good first step, but several leaps to go

 

[WhatTheBuck 28,797]

16 hours ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

ffs. no wonder Texas Dems left the state

 

That’s as brilliant as having the Hell’s Angels handle security at Altamont. 

[Mrs Whiggins 13,050]

15 hours ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

Seems like a good first step, but several leaps to go

They're likely hedging their bets. Judd Legum has a really long twitter thread on corporate donors. Click to read, about fifty tweets so be forewarned. Many are to candidates who voted to overturn the election.

 

[Dbeasy 15,084]

Nice summary of Texas Voting Law changes by CNN. SIAP. I haven't been following this thread.

Partisan poll watcher protection. Partisan poll watchers would enjoy broad new protection and access in Texas. This includes being "entitled to sit or stand near enough to see and hear the activity." Effectively, the bill makes it illegal to obstruct or create distance for poll watchers in any way while also giving poll watchers more legal recourse against election officials.

Voting rights activists for months have sounded alarms about empowering partisan poll watchers and expanding voter challenges, arguing it could lead to voter intimidation.

Mail-in ballot restrictions. Identification requirements for mail-in ballots would include requiring the last four digits of a Social Security number or a driver's license number on all vote-by-mail applications and ballot return envelopes.

Drive-thru voting ban. Each polling place in Texas would be "located inside a building" and "No voter may cast a vote from inside a motor vehicle" unless they met specific requirements.

Early voting hours. Early voting would be prohibited at polling locations statewide "earlier than 6 a.m. or later than 9 p.m."

Tracking software. Election officials in large counties would be required to monitor "all input and activity" on voting machines via tracking software.

Video recording and livestream protocol. Election officials in large counties would be required to set up video surveillance systems, with livestreams made available to certain counties.

Assistance restrictions. Anyone who "simultaneously assists three or more voters" would be required to fill out a form detailing their relationship to the voters and whether they're being paid by a political campaign or committee.

What's in House Bill 3?

Though HB3 contains many of the same provisions as SB1, it differs in a few critical ways.

More poll watcher protection. The House version offers even more protection to poll watchers, requiring that they get a warning about behavior that violates election law before they can be removed.

Harsher unsolicited ballot application punishment. The House version would make it a state felony for election officials to distribute unsolicited mail-in ballot applications.

Early voting hours. The House bill provides for early voting hours from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Can Democrats actually block either legislation?

While their travel to Washington placed Texas at the heart of the national fight over voting rights, the group of Texas Democrats has acknowledged that they can only hold off Republicans' push for new voting laws for so long.

MORE ON VOTING RIGHTS

 

• 'Angry and affected': Young voters in Texas protest restrictive new voting laws
• Biden gives an angry cry for action on voting rights but stops short of calling for filibuster reform
• These states have enacted new laws making it harder to vote

 

That's because after the current special session ends on August 7, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott will likely call another special session during which GOP lawmakers can advance their legislation.

In the meantime, the state Democratic lawmakers have met with members of Congress and urged them to pass federal voting rights legislation.

"We're actually handing the baton to our Senate colleagues, our Senate members, to finish this race," Texas state House Rep. Nicole Collier told reporters Wednesday.

But the legislative reality remains: there is currently no Republican support in the US Senate for voting rights legislation and Democrats do not have the votes to overcome the filibuster. Last month, Republicans were successful in blocking the For the People Act, banding together to vote against opening debate on the bill.

[Bama Chick 28,596]

Your periodic reminder that even “good” republicans are shit ass racist garbage.



“Dilution of votes”, huh?

I think I have a burst eardrum from that dog whistle.

[Neonmoon 38,130]

 

[Longhorn_Fan68 33,887]

26 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

 

dude...

[atomheartbevo 89,777]

On 7/15/2021 at 3:16 PM, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

ffs. no wonder Texas Dems left the state

 

A feature, not a bug.

[atomheartbevo 89,777]

On 7/15/2021 at 3:19 PM, Mrs Whiggins said:

They are straight up fascists to the point that Canada won't even allow them and we empower them. Lovely.

Founded by a guy who shoved a dildo up his ass while live-streaming to prove some point.

[atomheartbevo 89,777]

22 hours ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

Seems like a good first step, but several leaps to go

Only if they withhold money or even donate to opponents of anybody supporting voter suppression.

[StassneyHorn 6,627]

The motor voter law has made registering online to vote in Texas accessible when renewing or registering your car for the first. It’s the only way to register online to vote in Texas. Since last September, 1 million people have registered or updated their information through the portal.

https://www.kut.org/texas/2021-07-31/about-a-million-texans-have-registered-to-vote-online-since-court-ruling-on-motor-voter-laws

[StassneyHorn 6,627]

I hate mobile formatting

Edited July 31, 2021 by StassneyHorn

[Satchel 6,948]

Black people had more voter protections on August 11, 1965 than we have on August 11, 2021. No victory stays won.

[Brisketexan 105,273]

1 minute ago, Satchel said:

Black people had more voter protections on August 11, 1965 than we have on August 11, 2021. No victory stays won.

Well, they shouldn'ta stayed all black and stuff.  Duh.  Get with the MAGA.  Remember, the last "A" stands for "Again," and it sure as shit don't refer to any period after black folks got all uppity and got civil and voting rights and such.

[Satchel 6,948]

6 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Well, they shouldn'ta stayed all black and stuff.  Duh.  Get with the MAGA.  Remember, the last "A" stands for "Again," and it sure as shit don't refer to any period after black folks got all uppity and got civil and voting rights and such.

Which begs the question: can white people be uppity?

[Captainant 27,727]

33 minutes ago, Satchel said:

Which begs the question: can white people be uppity?

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13,050]

Okay Texas, you're up:

 

[Satchel 6,948]

5 hours ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

Okay Texas, you're up:

 

You’re correct. Texas is home to the largest black population in the country and if we can match Georgia’s output or come close to reaching Beto’s goal of registering 2 million new Texas voters, we could do some damage in this state.

[Biff Tannen 45,712]

5 hours ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

Okay Texas, you're up:

 

Well, but you see, we are doing the OPPOSITE.

[Satchel 6,948]

4 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

Well, but you see, we are doing the OPPOSITE.

I’m not so sure. I can’t speak for all targeted voter groups, but I will say just as we’re seeing in Georgia, targeted people take great umbrage at being screwed with. The result is a renewed energy and determination to win. We saw it in the 2008 and 2012 turnout.

[WhatTheBuck 28,797]

On 8/11/2021 at 4:28 PM, Satchel said:

Which begs the question: can white people be uppity?

Of course we can. That’s our privilege. We rule. 

[StassneyHorn 6,627]

FYI, In Georgia when you get your driver's license or renew youre auto-registered. You would literally have to select a box to opt-out.

Georgia has online registration. Only way to register online in Texas is when you register your vehicle.

[bolverk 29,708]

tl;dr: House passes reform bill; Senate unlikely to pass because of the fucking filibuster.

House Passes a Voting Rights Bill, but a G.O.P. Blockade Awaits in the Senate
Named for the civil rights icon John Lewis, the bill is narrower than the Democrats’ sweeping elections overhaul that has stalled in the Senate, but faces similar obstacles.

The House voted on Tuesday to restore federal oversight of state election laws under the 1965 Voting Rights Act and expand its reach, as Democrats moved to strengthen a crowning legislative achievement of the civil rights era amid a renewed national fight over access to the ballot box.

The legislation, named after Representative John Lewis of Georgia, the civil rights icon who died last year, is a linchpin of the party’s strategy to combat voting restrictions in Republican-led states. It would reverse two Supreme Court rulings that gutted the statute, reviving the power of the Justice Department to bar some discriminatory election changes from taking effect and easing the path to challenge others in court.

Up against urgent deadlines before next year’s midterm elections, Democrats voted along party lines to adopt the bill 219 to 212 in a rare August session, just days after it was introduced. But stiff Republican opposition awaits in the Senate, where a likely filibuster threatens to sink it before it can reach President Biden’s desk.

Spoiler

That outcome is becoming familiar this summer, as Democrats on Capitol Hill try to use their party’s control of Congress and the White House to lock in watershed election changes — only to be blocked by their Republican counterparts. In the meantime, more than a dozen G.O.P.-led states have already enacted more than 30 laws this year making it harder to vote.

Frustration with that dynamic has fueled increasingly desperate calls from progressives and many mainstream Democrats to invoke the so-called nuclear option and eliminate the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate. Doing so would allow Democrats to move unilaterally without Republican support, but any rules change would require support from all 50 Democrats in the chamber, and key moderates are opposed.

Brimming with urgency and symbolism, the debate leading up to Tuesday’s vote only served to deepen a divide between the parties over voting issues that has rapidly widened in the past year.

Democrat after Democrat showed images of Mr. Lewis and warned that the victories for Black voting rights he won after being beaten bloody on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma half a century earlier were once again on the line. They pointed to new rules in Georgia, Ohio, Florida and elsewhere making it harder to vote by mail, to vote early or to register to vote close to Election Day, which they said disproportionately affected voters of color and young people.

“Old battles have indeed become new again,” said Representative Terri A. Sewell, the Alabama Democrat who represents Selma and wrote the bill in Mr. Lewis’s name. “While literacy tests and poll taxes no longer exist, certain states and local jurisdictions have passed laws that are modern-day barriers to voting.”

Proponents of the bill framed it as a vital complement to Democrats’ other major elections bill, the For the People Act, to halt and reverse that retrenchment, which has stalled in the Senate amid a Republican filibuster. Even more ambitious, that legislation would set new national standards making it easier to vote, end partisan gerrymandering and combat dark money.

Republicans, who once enthusiastically supported expansions of the Voting Rights Act, dismissed that concern as hyperbolic and self-serving. Democrats, they argued, were ignoring the nation’s racial progress as justification to allow the federal government to run roughshod over the states and rewrite election rules in a way that would benefit their political candidates.

“Not only is our country not facing a new era of Jim Crow voting laws, as many of my Democrat colleagues have claimed, it is incredibly offensive to lie to the American people to advance a political agenda,” said Representative Rodney Davis, Republican of Illinois.

He cited statistics showing record turnout among Black voters during the 2020 election, a far cry from the small percentages that were able to vote in many Southern states the 1960s.

“We should celebrate this progress, not ignore it,” Mr. Davis said.

Much of the present conflict can be traced to 2013, when a conservative majority of the Supreme Court in the case of Shelby County v. Holder effectively struck down a provision of the Voting Rights Act requiring states and jurisdictions with a history of discriminatory voting practices — mostly in the South — to clear any changes to their election rules with the federal government before carrying them out.

The provision had been highly effective, blocking more than 3,000 proposed electoral changes found to be discriminatory during the half century it was in effect and contributing to the statute’s reputation as one of the clearest legislative successes of the civil rights movement. But the justices ruled that the formula used to determine which entities should be subject to such requirements was outdated given the country’s progress, and said Congress would have to update it for it to be constitutional.

In the absence of any so-called federal pre-clearance requirement, more than half of states have enacted laws making it harder to vote over the last eight years. Voting advocates have been just as concerned that in its absence, state lawmakers will be able to use the once-in-a-decade redistricting process that is underway to marginalize voters of color.

Then, last month, the Supreme Court in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee took aim at a separate section of the statute and made it harder to win court challenges against election rules on the grounds that they are discriminatory.

Lawmakers drafted the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to reverse both rulings and spent months collecting a careful legislative record in anticipation that any changes that became law would be scrutinized by the justices.

At its core is a new formula for determining which states and local entities should be subject to pre-clearance by looking at voting rights violations over the last 25 years. At least one analysis suggests eight states — Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas — and a handful of counties would be subject to such oversight.

But it would also require most jurisdictions in the country — not just those with a history of discrimination — to get federal approval before adopting certain sensitive electoral changes, like stringent new voter identification requirements, removing polling places, completing the lines of electoral districts or putting in place new policies to cull voter rolls en masse.

Other provisions tucked in the bill could have a meaningful impact on voting disputes. For example, the legislation would lower the bar for plaintiffs suing to stop elections changes under the Voting Rights Act to win preliminary injunctions to keep them from taking effect until a court can review them. Currently, elections changes that are later struck down can often take effect for months or even years because the lawsuits take so long to resolve.

Elsewhere, the legislation appears to take direct aim at many of the Republican state officials who have used unsubstantiated and often vague concerns about voter fraud — particularly the false claims promulgated by former President Donald J. Trump — to justify locking in new restrictions on mail-in ballots and the use of drop boxes, or to cut back on early voting. Merely invoking concerns of “voter fraud” is not enough, the bill says, implying that states would have to provide evidence to back up their claims.

Senators are still negotiating their own version of the legislation and have yet to settle on a date to reintroduce it or call a vote. Unlike the For the People Act, it is likely to attract some bipartisan support — but not nearly enough to pass it.

Only one Republican, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, has been willing to attach her name to similar bills in recent years. A spokeswoman for Ms. Murkowski declined to comment on the House version of the bill, but senators told The New York Times earlier this year that she did not believe she could find nine other Republicans to join her in breaking the filibuster to pass the bill.

 

[Biff Tannen 45,712]

Make them vote it down. They will, but get it on record and reload for the next round.  I don’t think it’s much of a plan, but seems like that’s all we’ve got. 

[LABEVO 928]

On 8/20/2021 at 1:38 PM, Satchel said:

You’re correct. Texas is home to the largest black population in the country and if we can match Georgia’s output or come close to reaching Beto’s goal of registering 2 million new Texas voters, we could do some damage in this state.

This is why I can't stand Beto. Abrams lost and took action to fix her state. Beto went to cry into his wine and complained that it was unfair. 

[OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys 2,078]

10 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

Make them vote it down. They will, but get it on record and reload for the next round.  I don’t think it’s much of a plan, but seems like that’s all we’ve got. 

No vote, right?  Some pro forma filibuster and we will never hear of it again. 

[tantric superman 4,667]

5 hours ago, LABEVO said:

This is why I can't stand Beto. Abrams lost and took action to fix her state. Beto went to cry into his wine and complained that it was unfair. 

I wish Beto was better than he was, but hat's off to him for the energy generation and helping to register and getting out the vote. 

[Voldemort86 2,259]

Beto isn’t great, but he still helped flip a lot of offices in the city of Houston and made a lot of races way closer than people thought they would be.

[StassneyHorn 6,627]

9 hours ago, LABEVO said:

This is why I can't stand Beto. Abrams lost and took action to fix her state. Beto went to cry into his wine and complained that it was unfair. 

This is really fucking stupid

[Longhorn_Fan68 33,887]

36 minutes ago, StassneyHorn said:

This is really fucking stupid

And completely and utterly untrue. I've actually gotten annoyed at how much I still hear from him. He's done anything but sit and do nothing.

[Bama Chick 28,596]

This is why I can't stand Beto. Abrams lost and took action to fix her state. Beto went to cry into his wine and complained that it was unfair. 

This is possibly the most ill informed take I’ve seen on this topic.

Don’t make me pull the receipts. I have a file.

[tx 3 putt 77,335]

10 hours ago, LABEVO said:

This is why I can't stand Beto. Abrams lost and took action to fix her state. Beto went to cry into his wine and complained that it was unfair. 

[Satchel 6,948]

11 hours ago, LABEVO said:

This is why I can't stand Beto. Abrams lost and took action to fix her state. Beto went to cry into his wine and complained that it was unfair. 

Beto is currently invested in a robust campaign to enroll 2million new voters in Texas.

[SydneyCarton 48,150]

Meanwhile, the Castro brothers are intent on smelling their own farts until they die. And I'm not a huge Beto guy. 

[OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys 2,078]

19 hours ago, Bama Chick said:

Don’t make me pull the receipts. I have a file.

The file is all crinkled and surprisingly wet.

[Bama Chick 28,596]

What am I? Some kind of amateur?

My shit is laminated.

[Bama Chick 28,596]

Stupid Tapatalk

[LABEVO 928]

On 8/25/2021 at 8:07 PM, Bama Chick said:

This is possibly the most ill informed take I’ve seen on this topic.

Don’t make me pull the receipts. I have a file.

I am not trying to be obtuse.  Haven’t followed him closely so my ill informed view was that he took his ball and went home after he lost. Sending emails is nice but truly unaware what he has done since…

[Biff Tannen 45,712]

Well SB 1 passed the texas house. Not great Bob. 

[Js1 85,527]

Great job Texas Dems! You really showed everyone 

[UpperWestside 6,186]

So hot here in DC this morning, but this was worth coming down from NYC to march for voting rights. Reverend Al is just dripping sweat, but good on him for marching instead of just showing up to speak.

Edited August 28, 2021 by UpperWestside

[PenelopeWitherspoon 19,142]

So hot here in DC this morning, but this was worth coming down from NYC to march for voting rights. Reverend Al is just dripping sweat, but good on him for marching instead of just showing up to speak.

Well done.

[Longhorn_Fan68 33,887]

 

[StassneyHorn 6,627]

Beto's group, Powered by People, is now adding individuals across Texas counties who will go straight to you in order to register you to vote thru their "Drive to You" program.. Texas still doesn't have online registration unless you are renewing or registering your car. Best you can do now is print out a pre-filled form and then mail it or find an in person way of doing it. Beto O'Rourke launches tool allowing Texas voters to register at home | TheHill

They are holding virtual registrar deputy training online if you want to register, Join a Powered By People event today (poweredxpeople.org)