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      ‘Democracy runs through Arizona’: candidate for attorney general says fate of the nation is at stake

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      Interview‘Democracy runs through Arizona’: candidate for attorney general says fate of the nation is at stakeNina Lakhani in Phoenix Kris Mayes, a former Republican, says protecting democracy, the heating planet and abortion rights are urgent prioritiesThe future of American democracy could be determined by a handful of attorneys general, who will also play a crucial role in shielding women and doctors from draconian abortion bans, according to the Democratic candidate for that office in Arizona.Kris Mayes, 51, who switched parties in 2019 due to the expansion of Trumpism in the Republican party, is urging voters to take the attorney general and other down-ballot races like secretary of state seriously in the November midterms, or else risk losing US democracy altogether.“We’ve never lived in a more dangerous time for our democracy. If we elect a couple of attorney generals who refuse to certify the 2024 elections, it essentially means our democracy is gone. It couldn’t be more stark, so these elections really matter for the whole country,” said Mayes, in an interview with the Guardian at her Phoenix home.In 2020, Trump pressured Republican officials to overturn Biden’s victory in swing states including Arizona, where multiple investigations and lawsuits have ruled out fraud. Last week, House speaker Rusty Bowers, who testified in front of the January 6 congressional committee about Trump’s efforts to force him and other local officials to overturn the results, was declared “unfit to serve” by the state Republican party.The sanction, which Mayes described as a “travesty”, reaffirmed her decision to leave the party.“I was a lifelong Republican but the party left me and many moderates like me. We need a healthy two party system in this country, so it makes me really sad to see the party I once served has fallen this far and gotten this sick,” said Mayes, who grew up in a Republican family on a tree farm in Prescott about 90 miles north of Phoenix.“I appreciate those Republicans who have stayed to fight for democracy and our party, but ultimately I couldn’t be a part of it.”Arizona is among 33 states and US territories electing an attorney general in November – who as the top lawyer and top law enforcement officer plays a crucial role in the election process, including certification and preventing voter suppression.The Department of Justice is suing Arizona over its latest voter restrictions, while Republicans recently tried (and failed) to ban mail voting for the midterms, even though the vast majority of Arizonans use vote-by-mail.Mayes, who filed an amicus brief opposing the ban, said: “We have incredibly well-run, safe elections yet the Republican party continues to perpetuate the big lie. There’s been a very clear trend to curtail voting rights and as attorney general I will use my bully pulpit and the courts to fight those efforts.”Mayes’ opponent will be decided in next week’s primary, with the six Republican candidates vying for the nomination each having made border security and election integrity central to their platforms.But it’s abortion that has brought increased scrutiny to the attorney general race since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade and handed back power to the states.Shortly after, Mark Brnovich, the outgoing attorney general and senate candidate, tried to revive a statute from Arizona’s territorial days that bans abortion in almost all circumstances. The courts will decide whether this draconian 1864 law is revived or new legislation banning terminations after 15 weeks comes into force in September. The law, which was signed in May, has no exceptions for rape or incest. In addition, a 2021 so-called personhood law that would provide rights to foetuses faces a court challenge.As it stands, it’s a legal mess.Still, the Republican candidates have all indicated that they would enforce whichever restrictive law the courts decide takes precedence, whereas Mayes says she considers all three to be unconstitutional.“Unlike the federal constitution under which Roe sat, the right to privacy in the Arizona state constitution is broad and explicit, which protects a woman’s right to choose and reproductive freedom. As attorney general I should not and will not enforce laws I believe are unconstitutional and therefore will not prosecute any woman, doctor, midwife, pharmacist under these laws.“I think our founding fathers would be appalled by these laws,” added Kayes, who can use her supervisory authority over county attorneys to advise them that prosecutions would be unconstitutional.Arizona’s constitution is one of the most individually oriented in the country, but if Mayes wins, abortion will almost certainly end up in the state supreme court – which the outgoing governor Doug Ducey has packed with a conservative super majority.Ultimately, abortion rights advocates will probably attempt to give Arizonans the final say through a ballot initiative, though recent changes by the Republican controlled legislature has made this harder. Almost nine out of 10 Arizonans want abortion to remain legal at least in some circumstances.Mayes said: “Republican leaders are in a race to bottom to satisfy a base which doesn’t represent many moderate Republicans or independents who are repulsed by the criminalization of abortion.”Donald Trump has endorsed a bunch of big lie proponents in the state including attorney general hopeful Abe Hamadeh, 31, the son of Syrian immigrants and former Maricopa county prosecutor, who has indicated that he supports the pre-statehood abortion law, describes the humanitarian crisis at the border as an “invasion” and does not believe Biden won the 2020 election.The attorney general’s office has been held by a Republican for the past decade, but Mayes says she doesn’t fear any of the candidates. “They’re all the same – all six have said they would not have certified the 2022 election and to a person they seem almost giddy about prosecuting women and doctors after the fall of Roe. I know Arizonans are going to reject this brand of anti-democratic and anti-woman Republicanism.”Mayes says she will use the state’s $5bn surplus to target the huge explosion of fentanyl trafficking into the state, which mostly arrives from Mexico through legal points of entry, but is otherwise light on details about the southern border.Unlike most of the Republican candidates, Mayes does not have experience in the criminal justice system, but argues that her background in environmental law and consumer protection makes her uniquely qualified to tackle the state’s climate challenges.“We are in the midst of an epic drought, escalating heat and dwindling water supplies. This is an all hands on deck moment if we are to survive as a state. There’s a lot the attorney general could do and hasn’t … we can’t wait for the next generation to solve this,” said Mayes, who has worked as a senior sustainability scientist at Arizona State University (ASU) since 2010.Before entering academia, Mayes served for seven years as a Republican on the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC), a quasi-executive regulatory agency for utilities including energy and water which also oversees securities regulation and pipeline safety. Before that, she was a political reporter in Arizona.“Having been a journalist made me a great corporation commissioner and will make me a great attorney general, because these jobs are all about asking tough questions of powerful entities and people, getting at the truth and following that wherever it leads you.”Mayes has been endorsed by a slew of local Democrats, the president of the Navajo nation, Planned Parenthood and the environmental group the Sierra Club. She’s very much a moderate Democrat and hopes that her track record as a moderate and pragmatic Republican – and her reasons for leaving the party – will persuade the state’s large number of independents and enough Republicans to vote for her.A third of the electorate is made up of independent or “other” voters that aren’t registered to a major political party. “I think that many Republicans identify with my journey – I’m reaching out to them actively.”As a single mother to a nine-year-old daughter and an openly gay woman in an increasingly hostile political environment for LGBTQ communities, Mayes says her decision to re-enter politics was not an easy one. “I don’t think it’s too much to say that American democracy runs through the state of Arizona in 2022, and whether or not we can preserve it may depend on what happens in down-ballot races like mine.”This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice in the Americas InitiativeTopicsUS politicsArizonaUS voting rightsinterviewsReuse this content More

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      Why a ‘spider crab’ is crawling to the top of a US ‘I voted’ sticker contest | The fight to vote

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      Why a ‘spider crab’ is crawling to the top of a US ‘I voted’ sticker contestVoters in Ulster county, New York, may receive a sticker of Hudson Rowan’s design this November – and many say it’s ‘a fitting image’ of the political scene Get the latest updates on voting rights in the Guardian’s Fight to vote newsletterHello, and Happy Thursday,One morning a few months ago, Ashley Dittus, a Democratic election commissioner in Ulster county, New York, came into work and saw that someone had sent in the first submission in a countywide contest for an “I voted” sticker. She opened the email and was shocked. “It was a moment I’ll never forget,” Dittus told me on Wednesday.The design was a skull-like head with bloodshot eyes and multicolored teeth sitting atop turquoise spider legs. To the creature’s right, the words “I voted” were scribbled in graffiti-like font. It was 4/20 so she wondered whether someone was playing a trick.But the design was real. It was the creation of Hudson Rowan, a 14-year-old from Marbletown, which is about 100 miles north of New York City. Dittus circulated the design around the small office, evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, and everyone laughed.The staff chose it as one of six finalists in the contest and put it on the board’s website for the public to vote on. Now, it appears extremely likely that Ulster county voters will get the sticker when they go to the polls this November. As of Wednesday morning, it had received nearly 174,000 votes out of nearly 186,000 cast. That’s more votes than there are registered voters in the county (voting is open to all members of the public). Last year, in the county’s first design contest, 2,200 people voted.I’ve become mildly obsessed with the design, which is such a clear break from the usual charming, but restrained, designs of the stickers Americans get when they cast their vote. Hudson told me yesterday that when his mom told him about the contest, he wasn’t really into the idea because the typical “I voted” designs aren’t really his style of drawing. But he decided to bring his own style to the contest and doodled out the creature in about 10 minutes on his iPad. There wasn’t anything in particular that inspired the creature, but he noted it was reminiscent of a robot spider he used to paint when he was younger.“I didn’t want to do what everyone would expect. I just decided to import my own style of drawing and see what would happen,” he said.“I think the colors and the craziness just represents the world how it is right now. And how everyone feels when they’re like voting and how the world is. And everyone’s kind of emotions through the colors,” he said. “I feel like my creation kind of changes it up … adds a new flair and hope to the world.”He said the last few days have been “amazing” as the design has gone viral and people have reached out with support.“I’m glad that I can and I hope I will inspire many people to vote. So many people have told me that they’re going to go vote just so they can get my sticker, which I think is crazy and amazing,” he said.I sent the sticker design to my colleague Jonathan Jones, who reviews art for the Guardian, and asked him why he thought it had resonated with so many people. He said the design was “hilarious” and “perhaps a fitting image of the desperate political scene”.“This grimacing skull-like head on kinda spider legs has the nihilism of Rick and Morty and speaks to a generation whose recent political education includes a riotous coup attempt and a supreme court revoking an essential human right,” he said. “Yet it turns that monster around, making it a comedy badge of using the vote to fight back.”There’s also something about the unpolished drawing that may resonate with average people, said Jeremy Fish, an artist who grew up in upstate New York. “This humanoid spider crab is an ugly drawing, and sometimes that is what it takes to get the average dude to engage in the ugliness of modern politics,” he said. “Cheers and good job, Hudson.”Raquel Breternitz, the design director for Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 presidential campaign, said she had also become obsessed with the image. It is “very obviously not what you’d expect from a ‘political design’”, she said. It’s not polished, and lacks the typical red, white and blue, and iconography typically used in politics, she noted.“What I believe is speaking to people about this image is that it hits at more nuanced, mixed feelings re: voting, than what we’ve come to expect,” she wrote in an email. “It gives the sense of us, continuing to go and cast our silly little votes, for our silly little democracy, while things feel desperate; like they’re falling to pieces around us, and the representatives we voted for seemingly lack the political will to respond in kind.”“The fascinating piece of this to me is that the design legitimately is motivational and is expected to boost turnout. It’s inspiring people to vote,” she added. “At this point, what a lot of people want to hear isn’t the bland, positive assertion that voting is some great duty that will fix what ails us, but the honest admission that it’s small, desperately small in the face of things, and yet still – essential.”Siddhartha Mitter, an art critic in New York, was concise in his review. “Looks about right,” he said.Dittus, the election commissioner, said her office has been flooded with calls from all over the country asking how to get one of the stickers and requests for T-shirts and other apparel with the design. She said she has passed the branding requests to Hudson, who said he’s considering it.She said she hopes that the sticker will increase voter turnout, especially for voters aged 25 and under, traditionally a group with low turnout. “If it inspires people to go vote just to get a funny sticker and take a second to think about and look at what’s on the ballot, then I think we’ve done a good job of raising awareness for voting,” she said.“Whatever this humanoid is, he certainly looks very happy in the picture. He’s smiling, his rainbow teeth are on full display. He looks happy that he voted.”Also worth watching …
      Grid published a deep dive into the Conservative Partnership Institute, a conservative non-profit, that has been leading a push to recruit election workers, among other efforts.
      The Wisconsin supreme court ruled on Friday that ballot drop-boxes were illegal. Writing in dissent, three justices said the majority’s rhetoric was “downright dangerous to our democracy”.
      Election officials are worried about insider threats to voting systems
      TopicsUS voting rightsFight to voteUS politicsNew YorkfeaturesReuse this content More

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      I want a voice in Texas’s political future – but will my state even let us vote? | Alexandra Villarreal

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      I want a voice in Texas’s political future – but will my state even let us vote?Alexandra VillarrealWhen my partner and I moved to Austin in 2020, I faced numerous obstacles in registering to vote. There is no state where it’s harder to cast a ballot than Texas My partner and I moved to Austin from New York in the summer of 2020, when the US was in the throes of what felt like the highest-stakes election of our lifetime. As a freelance reporter for the Guardian, I wrote about voting rights and how Texas’s byzantine laws disproportionately disenfranchised Black, Latino and young voters, even as I – a Latina in my mid-20s – was registering to vote.As experts walked me through Texas’s complex web of voting restrictions for articles, I simultaneously took note of exactly what I needed to do to participate in the upcoming election. I had to be registered roughly a month before election day. Texas had no real online registration, so I would need to send my application through the US Postal Service. Well before the early October deadline, I carefully filled out and posted my voter application. Then, I waited.For weeks, my name never popped up on Texas’s searchable database of registered voters, but when I grew worried and contacted my local election office, they assured me I was good to go. I was surprised when, well after the registration deadline for the general election had passed, I received an intimidating notice signed by my county’s voter registrar saying my application had been marked incomplete because of some nebulous problem with my social security number. Distraught, I called different election authorities in Austin until someone finally told me to disregard the letter, which they said had been sent by mistake.I felt anxious. Part of me already expected more issues even before I went to the polls and a worker flagged my registration. She told me I could vote provisionally, but I wanted to be certain my vote would count, so my partner and I drove around town until we secured a printed document that irrefutably proved I was registered. Finally, after months of wading through antiquated voter registration requirements, weeks of stressful troubleshooting, and hours running around Austin, I cast my ballot.My privilege – a car, a flexible work schedule, knowledge of Texas voting laws – made it so that I could wedge my way into the democratic process. But I wondered how many other people had faced similar obstacles without the luxury to keep fighting. I also wondered why my white male partner’s experience voting in Texas for the first time had been so seamless and mine so fraught. I do not doubt that the chronic inefficiencies of the state’s electoral system may be reason enough to explain those discrepancies. But after months poring over the state’s history of racialized voter suppression, I could not dismiss a sneaking suspicion that on our application forms, the harsh, Anglo-European consonants of his surname may have attracted less scrutiny than the Spanish rolling “Rs” and soft double “Ls” in mine.Nearly two years later, I will probably never get the satisfaction of definitive answers. What I do know is that there is no other state in the country where it’s harder to cast a ballot than in Texas, and that even in 2020 – when Texans visited the polls in record numbers – we still ranked seventh lowest for voter turnout nationwide. Anyone who assumes that this lack of participation reflects a larger ambivalence among Texans commits a grave injustice; I have personally witnessed legions of us standing in hours-long lines to vote on local propositions, or marching 27 miles across central Texas in the summer heat to protest voter suppression. But because having a say here requires these herculean sacrifices of time and energy, the state has successfully bullied millions of other eligible voters into silence through lost absentee ballot applications, rejected signatures, poorly informed poll workers and any number of other hurdles inherent to the system’s design.The end result is a toxic reality where Texas politics are so far afield of the political will of most Texans that it’s hard to consider the state a democracy. A comfortable majority of registered voters in Texas oppose banning all abortions, yet that is effectively what state politicians have done in the aftermath of the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade. Polling shows overwhelming support from both Texas Democrats and Republicans for common sense gun safety measures such as universal background checks and red flag laws (a whopping 59% of Texans even want a nationwide ban on semi-automatic weapons), yet counterintuitively, state lawmakers have continually passed legislation making it easier to have a gun on hand, without training or a permit.If anything, Texas politics are trending further to the far right – and farther away from us, the people. Last month, the Republican party of Texas boggled the nation with its platform, where members called for a change to the 14th amendment that would end birthright citizenship for the children of immigrants, likened being gay to “an abnormal lifestyle choice” and opposed “all efforts to validate transgender identity”. Also on the platform, Republicans rejected the 2020 presidential election results as illegitimate, embraced a slew of voting restrictions, and advocated for repealing the 1965 Voting Rights Act, legislation that protects voters of color.In fact, Texas has long been infamous for disenfranchising its own people, so much so that for decades it was one of only nine states in their entirety – most of them former members of the Confederacy – required by the federal government to receive administrative or judicial preclearance before implementing any voting changes. Texas’s membership in this less than illustrious club of voter suppression states is thanks to the pioneering actions of former representative Barbara Jordan, Houston’s native daughter and the first Black congresswoman to represent the deep south, who in the 1970s advocated for expanding the 1965 Voting Rights Act to protect Latino and Black voters from not only racist but also linguistic discrimination.With Jordan’s institution of preclearance came an era of forced détente for Texas’s war against its people. But even with the attorney general and DC’s district court acting as watchdogs, the state’s Republican majority continued to advocate for racial gerrymandering and provisions tainted by discrimination. Then, in 2013, the supreme court’s decision in Shelby county v Holder effectively struck down preclearance across the country, allowing newly emboldened Texas politicians to declare open season on their disfavored constituents through legislation such as voter identification laws that honor handgun licenses but not student IDs.Even after Texas’s population ballooned by more than 8 million residents in the last two decades, and even though 91% of that growth was attributable to people of color, the state’s ruling party has done everything in its control to shore up white electoral power. Last year, Texas lawmakers agreed upon political maps that discriminate against Latino and Black voters to dilute their influence, rig elections for Republican incumbents and redraw districts that were becoming competitive so that Trump enthusiasts now have the upper hand. These gerrymandered maps so clearly disadvantage Texas’s majority-minority population that the US Department of Justice has sued, claiming Texas lawmakers have “refused to recognize the state’s growing minority electorate”.Meanwhile, Texas’s Republican leadership has also capitalized on the “big lie”, a conspiracy theory of mass voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election, to enact even more voting restrictions based on specious talking points around “election integrity”. Amid this latest assault on voting rights, belligerently advanced during both regular and special sessions of the Texas legislature last year, I walked the halls of my state capitol wondering how much harder it could get to cast a ballot here. Young Texans drove across the state and pulled all-nighters so they could join public testimony decrying the unconscionable damage further barriers to the polls would do. But Texas’s representatives refused to listen and instead deployed shifty procedural moves and behind-closed-door dealings to bypass public scrutiny.Even after democratic lawmakers made the bold decision to break quorum and derail last year’s voting legislation, Republicans eventually bulldozed over them to pass a new flurry of restrictions around voting hours, drive-thru voting and mail-in voting – innovations famously used by left-leaning Texas counties to more safely promote participation in the last presidential election, amid a global pandemic. With those new restrictions in effect during this year’s primaries, an Associated Press analysis revealed that more than one in eight mail-in ballots across 187 Texas counties were categorically rejected, a bleak referendum on Texas’s state of democracy.Every two to four years, national publications and pundits have made a tradition out of speculating whether this will finally be the election when Texas turns blue, or at least purple. Their perennial questions will undoubtedly re-emerge this general election, with Beto O’Rourke at the top of the Democratic ticket and with so many fundamental rights at stake.But what these buzzy analyses so often miss is the lack of agency Texans feel in regard to our own political future. We desperately want a voice in what happens to us, so much so that we willingly sacrifice sleep to testify, wear down our soles marching, and drive around town scrambling for paperwork to finally prove our equal citizenship. But as we nervously approach the front of the line at the polls, we feel a different, more visceral question tugging at our hearts and minds:Will our state even let us vote?TopicsUS voting rightsTexasUS politicscommentReuse this content More

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      ‘It’s a sham’: fears over Trump loyalists’ ‘election integrity’ drive

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      ‘It’s a sham’: fears over Trump loyalists’ ‘election integrity’ drive Roger Stone and Michael Flynn involved in ‘Operation Eagles Wings’, push to train activists in election canvassing and poll-watchingA conservative group called the America Project that boasts Donald Trump loyalists and “big lie” pushers Roger Stone and Michael Flynn as key advisers, has begun a self-styled “election integrity” drive to train activists in election canvassing and poll-watching, sparking fears from voting rights watchdogs about voter intimidation.Patrick Byrne, the multimillionaire co-founder of the America Project, has said he has donated almost $3m to launch the drive, dubbed “Operation Eagles Wings”, with a focus on eight states including Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania, which Trump lost, plus Texas and Florida, which he won.Mark Meadows’ associate threatened ex-White House aide before her testimonyRead moreThe drive was unveiled in late February at a press event where Byrne touted plans to educate “election reform activists” to handle election canvassing, grassroots work and fundraising “to expose shenanigans at the ballot box” in what has echoes of Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged, and could become a sequel to those charges.Byrne, for instance, has said the operation’s mission is to “make sure that there are no repeats of the errors that happened in the 2020 election”, and stressed the “need to protect the voting process from election meddlers who care only about serving crooked special interest groups that neither respect nor value the rule of law”.But voting rights advocates have voiced sharp criticism of Operation Eagles Wings, calling it a “sham”, given the roles of Stone, Flynn, Byrne and others, and warning that it could lead to voter harassment at the polls and suppress legitimate votes.To lead the fledgling operation, the America Project recruited Tim Meisburger, an ex-Trump official in the US Agency for International Development: Meisburger left the agency abruptly under a cloud in mid-January 2021 after a video surfaced of him falsely informing staffers that the Capitol attack was mostly peaceful except for “a few violent people”, and that “ several million” people were demonstrating peacefully for election reforms.Overall, the America Project has boasted that its total funding is greater than $8m, including donations from Byrne, the ex-chief executive of Overstock.Byrne declined to respond to queries from the Guardian about what roles election canvassers were being trained to take on, and what the operation had done to date in its targeted states.Voting rights watchdogs say the new election integrity operation has an Orwellian quality, and poses dangers to voting rights and fair elections given the people who are so prominently associated with it.“Michael Flynn and Roger Stone have repeatedly proven themselves to be enemies of democracy,” Sean Morales-Doyle, the acting director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center, told the Guardian.He added: “While it is not clear what exactly they will ask their election reform activists to do, their claimed pursuit of “election integrity” is a sham, aimed instead at undermining public faith in our elections and setting the stage for future attempts to subvert the will of the people. The conspiracy theories they espouse would be laughable if they weren’t so dangerous.”Flynn, a retired army lieutenant general who served briefly as Trump’s national security adviser, and Stone, a longtime Trump confidant and self-proclaimed master of political dirty tricks, were in the vanguard of Trump loyalists promoting falsehoods about Joe Biden’s 2020 win.In mid-December 2020, for instance, Flynn suggested on the conservative network Newsmax that Trump could use the military to “rerun the elections” in several key states that Trump falsely claimed were rigged, and a few days later he attended a White House meeting with Trump, Byrne and other allies, where more wild schemes were discussed.Stone spoke at a pro-Trump rally on 5 January and the next morning was at the Willard hotel, which Trump loyalists had used as a base for plotting ways to overturn the election, accompanied by several Oath Keeper bodyguards, some of whom participated in the Capitol assault and now face criminal charges.At the rally on 5 January, Stone lavished praise on Trump’s allies who were there protesting, calling it “a historic occasion, because we’re mad as hell and we aren’t going to take it”.Flynn and Stone received pardons from Trump after they were convicted as part of the Russian 2016 election meddling investigations, including charges of lying to the FBI in Flynn’s case, and obstruction of a congressional committee in Stone’s.Not surprisingly, the Trump loyalists were subpoenaed by the House panel investigating the January 6 assault on the Capitol by hundreds of Trump supporters, but according to reports Stone and Flynn each repeatedly invoked their fifth amendment right against self-incrimination.In a video clip of a Flynn deposition that the House panel played last week, Flynn was even seen pleading the fifth when asked if he supported the lawful transfer of presidential power, and if he thought the Capitol violence was wrong.When Byrne first announced Operation Eagles Wings, Flynn and Stone were introduced as special advisers. “ If I didn’t think this had a chance to succeed I wouldn’t have gotten involved,” Stone said.There’s little doubt Byrne’s checkbook can bolster the fledgling election operation.Byrne, who falsely claimed that the 2020 election was rigged, and wrote a book entitled The Deep Rig, was the lead financier in tandem with the America Project to the tune of $3.25m of a controversial audit last year of Arizona’s largest county that Trump was banking on to prove fraud but that confirmed Biden won.The Byrne-backed Eagles Wings operation has touted plans to offer “commentary” on current election policies to ensure Americans have “access to fact-based truths about the election process”.Before launching its new operation, the America Project boasted that last year it recruited 4,500 volunteers to monitor polling stations during the gubernatorial race in Virginia where Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe, a former governor.In Virginia, the America Project has forged ties with Virginians for America First, a local group started by Leon Benjamin, a black pastor who in 2020 lost a race for a House seat by a whopping 23 points. Benjamin, who is running for a House seat again this fall, would not concede, citing “potential voter fraud”, in an echo of Trump’s bogus fraud claims.Last fall, Byrne and Flynn’s brother Joe, the president of the America Project, attended a fundraiser in Richmond, Virginia, for Benjamin’s group, to coincide with its release of a report calling for new curbs on voting, including ending early voting and absentee voting, and requiring voter IDs.Besides their roles with Eagles Wings, Flynn and Stone have been featured speakers along with rightwing pastors at “ReAwaken America”, which involves revival-style rallies in many states that have spread falsehoods that Trump lost due to fraud, and a distorted view of America’s separation of church and state.At a ReAwaken rally last November in Texas, Flynn claimed America should have just “one religion” – prompting heavy criticism from religious leaders and others.“If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion,” Flynn said. “One nation under God, and one religion under God, right? ”Adam Taylor, the president of the Christian social justice group Sojourners, told the Guardian that “Flynn has a warped understanding of religion and American history”.Similarly, criticism is mounting in Republican quarters about the roles of Stone and Flynn with their latest “election integrity” drive.Veteran Republican operative Charlie Black, who once was a lobbying partner of Stone’s, noted that Flynn used to have one of the highest intelligence jobs in the government, but “now he spouts conspiracy theories with no evidence to back them up. So does Roger, but he has done this for a while. Read his books for examples.”TopicsUS newsUS politicsRoger StoneMichael FlynnRepublicansUS voting rightsnewsReuse this content More

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      DoJ sues Arizona over voting law that requires proof of citizenship

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      DoJ sues Arizona over voting law that requires proof of citizenshipMeasure signed by Republican governor in March a ‘textbook violation’ of law designed to protect voters, department says The Department of Justice is challenging a new Arizona law that requires voters to provide proof of citizenship for presidential elections, among other new restrictions, saying the measure was a “textbook violation” of a federal law meant to protect voters.The challenged Arizona measure, HB 2492, was signed into law by the Republican governor, Doug Ducey, in March, requires anyone who wants to vote in a presidential election, or vote by mail in any election, to provide proof of citizenship.Next up: voting rights, as US supreme court set to tear up more protectionsRead moreThe law was among several pushed by the Arizona legislature following the 2020 election in a state where Donald Trump and his allies have spread baseless claims of fraud. Voting by mail is widely used in Arizona, a key battleground state, and Republicans in the state have made numerous attempts to make it harder to cast a ballot that way.In 2013, the supreme court ruled 7-2 in a case called Arizona v Inter Tribal Council of Arizona that the state could not require anyone who used the federal government’s voter registration application to provide proof of citizenship when they registered.As a result of that decision, there are tens of thousands of voters in Arizona who are only allowed to vote in federal elections, not state contests, because they have not provided proof of citizenship. As of March, there were roughly 31,500 federal-only voters in the state.Arizona lawmakers said that the decision only applied to congressional elections, not presidential ones, even though a lawyer for the legislature advised them the measure was probably illegal. A 1993 law, the National Voter Registration Act, requires all states to accept a federal form for voter registration – the form does not require proof of citizenship, but asks voters to attest under penalty of perjury that they are citizens.“House Bill 2492’s onerous documentary proof of citizenship requirement for certain federal elections constitutes a textbook violation of the National Voter Registration Act,” Kristen Clarke, who leads the justice department’s civil rights division said on Tuesday. “Arizona is a repeat offender when it comes to attempts to make it harder to register to vote. HB 2492 is in direct with the 2013 US supreme court decision.”Some see the law as a blatant effort to get the US supreme court to reconsider its 2013 decision. The court has become significantly more conservative since then; three of the justices who were in the majority in that case – Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg – have been replaced with more conservative justices. Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented in 2013, saying they believed Arizona could require proof of citizenship for those who use the federal form.The court’s new conservative majority has shown a blunt hostility to voting access, siding with state lawmakers and upholding nearly every voting restriction that has come before it in recent years.Arizona’s attorney general, Mark Brnovich, vowed on Friday that he would continue to defend the law. “Please be assured I will defend this law to the US supreme court if necessary and defeat the federal government’s efforts to interfere with our state’s election safeguards,” Brnovich, a Republican running for US Senate, wrote in a letter to Clarke.The justice department is also challenging other provisions of the Arizona law. The measure also required Arizona to add a section to its own state registration form asking voters to provide their place of birth. It also instructs election officials not to accept a voter registration form if the voter forgets to check the box indicating they are a US citizen. Those requirements violate the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which makes it illegal to reject someone’s voter registration if they fail to provide information that is immaterial to their eligibility to vote, Clarke said.“Checking this box is not material to establishing the voting qualifications of applicants who have already proven that they are US citizens,” she said. “That information is not material to establishing whether a voter is a US citizen because of naturalization an expatriation patterns among other reasons.”TopicsUS newsThe fight to voteArizonaUS voting rightsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Republican party building an ‘army’ to overturn election results – report

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      Republican party building an ‘army’ to overturn election results – reportAlleged scheme include installing volunteers as poll workers and getting attorneys who could intervene to block votes, Politico says The Republican party is building a grassroots “army” to target and potentially overturn election results in Democratic precincts, the Politico website reported on Wednesday, citing video evidence.The alleged scheme includes installing party-trained volunteers prepared to challenge voters at Democratic-majority polling places, creating a website to put these workers in touch with local lawyers and establishing a network of district attorneys who could intervene to block vote counts.Many Republicans still believe Donald Trump’s lie that he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden because of widespread voter fraud. At state level the party has passed laws that make it harder to vote while pro-Trump candidates are running for positions that would give them control over future elections.Politico obtained a series of recordings of Republican meetings between the summer of 2021 and May this year.It said one from November shows Matthew Seifried, the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) election integrity director for Michigan, urging party activists in Wayne county to obtain official designations as poll workers.Seifried says: “Being a poll worker, you just have so many more rights and things you can do to stop something than [as] a poll challenger.”Some of the would-be poll workers complain that fraud was committed in 2020 and that the election was “corrupt”.At another training session last October, Seifried promises support for such workers: “It’s going to be an army. We’re going to have more lawyers than we’ve ever recruited, because let’s be honest, that’s where it’s going to be fought, right?”Politico also obtained Zoom tapings of Tim Griffin, legal counsel to the Amistad Project, a self-described election integrity group that Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani once portrayed as a “partner” in the Trump campaign’s legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Griffin is seen meeting with activists from multiple states and discussing plans for identifying friendly district attorneys who could stage interventions in local election disputes.He says during one meeting in September: “Remember, guys, we’re trying to build out a nationwide district attorney network. Your local district attorney, as we always say, is more powerful than your congressman.“They’re the ones that can seat a grand jury. They’re the ones that can start an investigation, issue subpoenas, make sure that records are retained, etc.”Politico added that installing party loyalists on the board of canvassers, which is responsible for certifying election results, also appears to be part of the Republican strategy.The revelations are sure to intensify concerns about fresh assaults on American democracy in 2022 and 2024.Nick Penniman, founder and chief executive of Issue One, an election watchdog group, told Politico: “This is completely unprecedented in the history of American elections – that a political party would be working at this granular level to put a network together. It looks like now the Trump forces are going directly after the legal system itself, and that should concern everyone.”The RNC insisted that it is simply trying to restore balance to election oversight in heavily Democratic cities such as Detroit. Gates McGavick, an RNC spokesperson, was quoted as saying: “Democrats have had a monopoly on poll watching for 40 years, and it speaks volumes that they’re terrified of an even playing field.“The RNC is focused on training volunteers to take part in the election process because polling shows that American voters want bipartisan poll-watching to ensure transparency and security at the ballot box.”TopicsRepublicansUS elections 2024US politicsUS voting rightsnewsReuse this content More

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      Crystal Mason on a ruling that could change her life: 'I know this is not over’ | The fight to vote

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      Crystal Mason on a ruling that could change her life: ‘I know this is not over’ A court in Texas must reconsider its decision to sentence Mason to five years for a voting error – how does she feel?Hello Fight to Vote readers,Every Tuesday night for the last year or so, Crystal Mason has had trouble sleeping.On Wednesday mornings, the Texas court of criminal appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, usually issues its ruling. And since March of last year, Mason has been waiting for a ruling from the court that could change her life. She’s been appealing a five-year prison sentence for voting a provisional ballot in 2016. Mason was ineligible to vote at the time because she was on federal supervised release – which is like probation – for a tax felony. Texas prohibits anyone from voting while they are serving a criminal sentence, but she says – and probation officials have confirmed – that no one told her she was ineligible.Yesterday, Mason, who is 47-years-old and raised seven kids and has six grandchildren, got the phone call she’s been anxiously waiting for. In an 8-1 ruling, the court told a lower court it had to reconsider the case to determine whether Mason actually knew she was ineligible to vote when she cast a ballot. It was a partial, but far from final, victory for Mason.I’ve been following Mason’s case for the last few years, and on Wednesday, I spoke with Mason hours after the ruling. We talked about about her case and why she thinks it’s struck a nerve across the US.How are you feeling, and what was it like to get the news this morning?I was at work and Kim [Mason’s lawyer] called me … She said the decision came in. I just started to panic, I started to sweat, like nervous, like, ‘What’s going on, Kim?’She let me know that it’s going back to the second court of appeals and they have to prove intent. Like where I really knew that I was committing a crime. And I feel like that’s a good step. That’s a good step right there.If you go off facts and facts alone, Sam, you know that the supervised release officer testified on the stand and said no one told me [I couldn’t vote] in the supervised release office. Then I received paperwork in my judgment and commitment, and in black and white, it’s not there. And then you can see it in my supervised release information, it was not there.Texas court ordered to reconsider decision to uphold prison sentence for woman who votedRead moreI think that the criminal court of appeals asked them something very important. That needs to be … that’s the whole case, right there. I’m very happy that they did that. But I know this is not over.You were never told, never had any idea, being on federal supervised release, that you couldn’t vote in Texas?Absolutely not. I was never told that. I never had any paperwork stating that. I was going by all my conditions of being on supervised release, and I did not see that at all. I do know that as a felon you still have the right to vote. I had no idea that being on supervised release took that right away from me.There’s no way … I’m on track. I got a good job. I’m making decent money. I’m in school. I’m back with my family, my kids, my grandbabies. You wouldn’t have ever taken a chance, if there was even a grey line, of me thinking that I was ineligible to vote. I just wouldn’t have did that. You just don’t.This has been a disaster for me. The jobs that I have lost. Me going back to prison [Mason was ordered to return to federal prison for 10 months for being convicted of a crime while on supervised release], leaving my kids. Me fighting to try to maintain everything. It’s been a disaster for me.There have been very significant consequences for you and your family. Can you walk me through what some of those consequences have been?I had to go back to prison. I had three jobs taken away from me. I fought to maintain my house and everything. And I am the provider for my family.You were not a political person in 2016.Not at all.And since then you’ve become political. Can you tell me a little bit about what you’ve been doing and what made you get more politically active?If you go back to my first interviews, you’ll hear me say ‘I’ll never vote again. I’ll never vote again.’ And that was it. And I realized that’s exactly what they wanted me to do. That’s exactly what they wanted me to say.I realized that no, I have to let everybody know that what I had done was an innocent mistake. And I am being prosecuted for an innocent mistake and that is not right. And then I had to let everybody know how important it is to go vote. Because the people that did this to me – the judge, the DA, the prosecutor – they’re all elected officials. So this is the reason why it’s so important that we get out and vote.And what has your group, Crystal Mason ‘The Fight’, been focused on? Has it been teaching people about their rights eligibility? Encouraging them to vote? All of the above?All of the above. Educating them on the different types of ballot. We’re getting ready to do a town hall. And that’s where we’re asking different candidates running for different positions to come to my venue and speak to the community. And let us know: who you are and what do you plan on doing if you get the seat you’re running for.I’ve traveled across the country, and almost everywhere I go, people have heard of that woman in Texas who was sentenced to five years in prison for trying to vote. I’m curious why you think your case has resonated so much and caused so much outrage?I think the people see the wrongness. The people that’s in the court system, the people that’s in a position to do something about it has turned a blind eye on it. I feel that people who hear the story and just really see, they know that I did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong. Nothing at all.I filled out a provisional ballot. I’m being sentenced for illegally voting and I never voted. I mean that’s wrong right there.There are some people who have said your case is an example of intimidation. Sending a message to Black people, and people who have felony convictions in their past, that you better be really sure you can vote before you try. Do you see it as intimidation? Have you heard from other people who are not going to vote because they heard about what’s happened to you?I have heard that. That’s because people are scared. They’re listening to me, and I tell them ‘yep, I’m right here but I’m fighting and it’s very wrong.’ But people don’t want to take a chance.And yes, I do feel like my case is sending a message to the Black and the brown [people]: ‘If you dare come to the polls, this could happen to you’. So yes, I do feel like it’s sending a message. It is a scare tactic. And that’s not right, that’s not right at all. So that’s the reason I’m out here speaking to people and telling people how important it is to vote.And actually you voted in the primary, a couple months ago [Mason’s supervised release expired last year, allowing her to vote in Texas]. What was that like for you to go back to the voting booth and cast a ballot when you were eligible?It was very exciting. I was with my family, and the things that I didn’t know [before], I knew. So once I finished up with my ballot, I automatically went to go help my mother. And of course I got stopped and they said, ‘Oh no, you can’t.’I told her … I can help her. I had to fill out a form, and they notarized it and everything. I turned around and I went to help my mom and I helped my niece. So I felt real good about being knowledgable about being able to help them through that ballot.Is there anything you hope people take away from your case? What do you hope people will learn from your case and take away from it.The importance of voting. Everybody that has something to do with my case are elected officials.TopicsUS newsFight to voteTexasUS politicsUS voting rightsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Texas court ordered to reconsider decision to uphold prison sentence for woman who voted

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      Texas court ordered to reconsider decision to uphold prison sentence for woman who votedCrystal Mason was sentenced to five years in prison for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election A Texas appeals court must reconsider its decision to uphold a five-year conviction for Crystal Mason, the Texas woman sentenced to prison for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election, the state’s highest criminal court ruled on Wednesday.My day with Pamela Moses after her charges were dropped | The fight to voteRead moreMason showed up to the polls to vote in 2016, while on supervised release – which is similar to probation – for a federal tax felony. She cast a provisional ballot at the urging of election workers, which was ultimately rejected because people with felony convictions in Texas cannot vote while they are serving any part of a federal sentence.Mason said she had no idea she was ineligible to vote, and an official from the federal probation office testified at her trial that they never informed her she was ineligible. “That’s just not something we do. In my opinion, that’s common knowledge, but that’s not something we do,” the official said during her trial.A local judge in Tarrant county, where Mason lives, convicted her of illegally voting in 2018 and sentenced her to five years in prison. An appeals court upheld that ruling in 2020.The Texas court of criminal appeals said the an appellate court had “erred by failing to require proof that the appellant had actual knowledge that it was a crime for her to vote while on supervised release”.Mason has remained out of prison on an appeal bond during that time. Her appeal to the Texas court of criminal appeals, Texas’s highest criminal court, was her last chance.“I am pleased that the court acknowledged issues with my conviction, and am ready to defend myself against these cruel charges,” Mason said in a statement. “My life has been upended for what was, at worst, an innocent misunderstanding of casting a provisional ballot that was never even counted. I have been called to this fight for voting rights and will continue to serve my community.”Anna Tinsley Williams, a spokeswoman for Tarrant County district attorney Sharen Wilson, declined to comment on the ruling because it was a pending case.The case attracted significant national attention because of the severity of Mason’s sentence. It’s one of a string of cases in which Black defendants have faced harsh punishments for voting errors, in what many see as an obvious effort to intimidate Black voters. There is no comprehensive data comparing punishment for voting crimes by race.Even though Mason will remain out of prison, the case has already taken a significant toll on her life. She lost her job after she was indicted for illegally voting, and was sent back to federal prison for several months for being charged with a crime on supervised release. She nearly lost her home to foreclosure during that time as her teenage children stepped in to run the household.In recent years, she has become much more politically active, encouraging people to vote and learn about their eligibility if they have a felony conviction. She introduced Beto O’Rourke onstage in March when he formally earned the Democratic nomination for Texas governor.During her trial, prosecutors argued Mason knew she was ineligible to vote because witnesses testified that she read and signed an affidavit on the provisional ballot stating the voting eligibility requirements. And when the second court of appeals upheld her sentence in 2020, the court said the fact that Mason didn’t know she was ineligible was “irrelevant to her prosecution”. All prosecutors needed to prove was that she knew she was on federal supervised release, Judge Wade Birdwell wrote for the court.The Texas court of appeals said Wednesday that interpretation of the law was incorrect and “would lead to absurd consequences that the legislature could not possibly have intended”.“The state was required to prove not only that Appellant knew she was on supervised release but also that she ‘actually realized’ that ‘these circumstances … in fact’ rendered her ineligible to vote,” Judge Jesse McClure III, wrote for the 8-1 majority.“The court of criminal appeals clarifying that innocent mistakes cannot be the basis for prosecution is critical,” said Thomas Buser-Clancy, a lawyer with the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, who is helping represent Mason. “We are hopeful that holding, as we go back to the lower court, will ensure that what was at worst an innocent mistake for Ms. Mason will lead to overturning her conviction.”The court rejected two other arguments offered by Mason’s lawyers in the appeal. They disagreed with an argument that because Mason’s ballot was rejected, she did not actually “vote” under the law. They also rejected an argument that her conviction should be overturned because federal law guarantees her the right to vote a provisional ballot. There were nearly 4,000 provisional ballots rejected in Tarrant county in the 2016 election. Mason appears to be the only person among them who was prosecuted.In a dissenting opinion, Judge Michelle Slaughter wrote that there was enough evidence that Mason knew she was ineligible to vote to convict her. After her federal conviction, she noted, the local election office sent two notices to her home address telling her she was ineligible to vote. Even though Mason was in federal prison at that time, Slaughter said, it was reasonable to infer Mason’s family either forwarded her the letter or that she read them when she returned home years later. (Mason has said she never saw the notices.) She also said the fact that Mason signed the provisional affidavit only corroborated that she knew she was ineligible.TopicsTexasThe fight to voteUS politicsUS voting rightsnewsReuse this content More