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      Kamala Harris says ‘everything on the line’ in midterm elections

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      Kamala Harris says ‘everything on the line’ in midterm elections Vice-president warns that the elections will determine whether ‘age-old sanctity’ of right to vote would be protected Kamala Harris warned on Sunday that the midterm elections in November would determine whether the “age-old sanctity” of the right to vote would be protected in the US or whether “so-called extremist leaders around the country” would continue to restrict access to the ballot box.With just 56 days to go until the elections, and with the paper-thin Democratic majority in both chambers of Congress, the vice-president said that “everything is on the line in these elections”.In an interview with NBC News’ Meet the Press, she said that the country was facing a rising domestic extremism threat.“I think it is very dangerous and I think it is very harmful, and it makes us weaker,” she said.Harris pointed to the plethora of extreme election deniers, many endorsed by Donald Trump, who have embraced Trump’s lie that the 2020 election, won by Joe Biden, was “stolen” from him.Many of them, whom Biden has lately slammed as “Maga Republicans”, after the Trump campaign slogan Make America Great Again, have won Republican nomination for statewide positions that control election administration.Were they to win in November they could command considerable power over both state elections and the 2024 presidential contest.“There are 11 people right now running for secretary of state, the keepers of the integrity of the voting system of their state, who are election deniers,” Harris said. “Couple that with people who hold some of the highest elected office in our country who refuse to condemn an insurrection on January 6.”She said that an “age-old sanctity” – the right to vote – had been violated as a response to Biden’s victory which saw Americans turn out to vote in unprecedented numbers, often via mail or drop-boxes, which helped increase access. “I think that scared some people, that the American people were voting in such large numbers,” she said.Congressional attempts to shore up voting rights have so far been stymied by the Senate filibuster, which requires 60 votes to pass most legislation. Harris said that should Democrats increase their Senate majority in the midterms, Biden would abolish the filibuster specifically for voting rights legislation. He could then pass stalled voting rights legislation that increases democratic safeguards.“We need to have protections to make sure that every American, whoever they vote for, has the unobstructed ability to do that when it is otherwise their right,” she said.On Sunday morning, Harris and the second gentleman, her husband, Doug Emhoff, joined the remembrance event at the National September 11 Memorial in New York to mark the anniversary of the al-Qaida terrorist attacks on the US, which killed 2,977 people.The vice-president did not speak, as per tradition, but in the NBC interview that aired she also spoke of America’s reputation as a world role model for democracy being under threat.She cited the right-wing challenges to election integrity, including the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, in a bid to overturn Donald Trump’s defeat , and extremist Republicans’ unwillingness to condemn it, while also fielding many candidates in current elections who still refuse to accept the true result.And she added that when meeting foreign leaders, the US “had the honor and privilege historically of holding our head up as a defender and an example of a great democracy. And that then gives us the legitimacy and the standing to talk about the importance of democratic principles, rule of law, human rights….through the process of what we’ve been through, we’re starting to allow people to call into question our commitment to those principles. And that’s a shame.”TopicsUS voting rightsFight to voteKamala HarrisUS midterm elections 2022US politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      He challenged his all-white city council in Alabama. Now he’s on it

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      He challenged his all-white city council in Alabama. Now he’s on itEric Calhoun, a Black resident who sued Pleasant Grove’s discriminatory voting system in 2018, was sworn in as council member on Monday A few years ago, Eric Calhoun felt out of touch with his city council in Pleasant Grove, a small Alabama city of just under 10,000 people outside of Birmingham.Calhoun, who is 71 and has lived in the city for nearly three decades, couldn’t find contact information for any of the five council members online. During the 2016 election, none of the white candidates running asked him for his vote. Voters in the city had never elected a Black person to the city council. Calhoun, like 61% of the city, is Black.In 2018, Calhoun became a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit that argued the racial makeup of the city council in Pleasant Grove was not an accident. The way the city was choosing its city council candidates made nearly impossible for a Black candidate to get elected. Essentially, the city allowed city council candidates to run citywide, instead of in districts, allowing blocs of white voters in the city to come together and defeat candidates preferred by Black voters.The city eventually agreed to settle the lawsuit and change the way it held city council elections.The results were immediate – in the first election under the new system last fall, the city elected three Black candidates to the five-member council. And on Monday, Calhoun became part of that majority. He was sworn in to fill a vacancy on the council after one of the council members resigned.“Color is not the issue,” Calhoun said in an interview. “The issue is representation and to make sure that we have a diverse city.”Calhoun’s appointment cements a Black majority on the council, said Yolanda Lawson, another councilmember who was elected last year. The city’s white mayor has the option of voting with the council and had regularly been doing so, resulting in a 3-3 split. Calhoun is replacing a white council member.“Not knowing what it was like prior to us being on the council, but I do notice more constiuents will begin with ‘I just never said anything because I didn’t think it would make a difference,’” Lawson said. “I personally feel that it is helping us to accomplish one of the things that I said myself I wanted to see, which is someone to represent me as a citizen. Not necessarily because I’m Black, but because it’s someone that’s willing to listen to my issues and my concerns.”In his new role on the council, Calhoun wants to promote neighborhood associations, local businesses and local parks. And he wants to make sure that anyone who calls him up with a concern feels heard.Pleasant Grove has long not been welcoming to Black citizens – in 1985 a court observed it had “an astonishing hostility to the presence and the rights of black Americans”. But in recent years, the Black population has surged.After decades of being locked out from political power, the majority-Black city council showed the importance of having Black representation at the local level, said Deuel Ross, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which helped represent Calhoun in the suit.“The city council has a lot of power over the police force. Over distribution of municipal resources. All things that the Black community has felt like it was being ignored in the past. So it’s wonderful to see the Black community has not only representation but the majority of the board at this point,” he said.This fall, the US supreme court will hear a hugely consequential redistricting case involving Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act – the part of the law that Calhoun sued Pleasant Grove under. The provision prohibits racial discrimination in voting practices, but the 6-3 conservative majority on the court has signaled deep skepticism of the provision and appears poised to narrow it.Such a ruling could make it harder to bring future cases that challenge election systems, like the one that existed in Pleasant Grove, that prevent minority voters from exercising their full political power.“[What] Alabama is arguing in the supreme court, is that any consideration of race in redistricting raises constitutional concerns. And I think that is an extreme position that the supreme court has never taken,” said Ross, who is also involved in that case. “If it did take that position, it would make it difficult not just in Pleasant Grove not just to have Black representation, but in Congress and county commissions and state legislatures all over the country.”TopicsUS voting rightsFight to voteUS politicsAlabamanewsReuse this content More

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      Election denialism remains powerful in Republican politics | The fight to vote

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      Election denialism remains powerful in Republican politicsRepublican nominees in Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania are on the verge of claiming offices where they would have enormous power over elections Get the latest updates on voting rights in the Guardian’s Fight to vote newsletterHello, and Happy Thursday,I’m writing this as we’re still digesting the results of Tuesday’s primary elections in several states, the latest test of whether Republican candidates who have embraced lies about the 2020 election can get the backing of GOP voters. So far, the results only add to the considerable evidence showing election denialism remains remarkably powerful in Republican politics.One of the most consequential results on Tuesday was in Arizona, where Mark Finchem, a state lawmaker, easily won the Republican nomination to run for secretary of state, a position from which he would oversee elections. Few people in Arizona have fought as aggressively to overturn the 2020 election as Finchem has – he first tried to block Congress from recognizing Joe Biden’s legitimate victory in the state, and has since sought to spread misinformation and decertify the election, which is not possible.Finchem now joins Kristina Karamo in Michigan, Jim Marchant in Nevada, and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania as Republican nominees on the verge of claiming offices where they would have enormous power over elections (Karamo and Marchant are running for secretary of state, Mastriano is running for governor, where he would get to appoint the secretary of state). So far, three of the four secretary of state candidates Trump has endorsed have won (the one exception came in Georgia’s primary).“Having even one election denier in a statewide office would be a five-alarm fire for our elections,” Joanna Lydgate, CEO of States United Action, which is tracking election deniers running for office, said in a statement. “Recent primaries – particularly in Arizona and Michigan – should worry all of us as Americans. But voters have the power here. They can slow this trend in the primaries to come, and they can stop it in its tracks in the general election.”Before Tuesday’s vote, Finchem, who was endorsed by Trump, encouraged supporters to congregate at voting sites to watch for wrongdoing. “Stand 75ft away from the entrance of the polls,” Finchem told a crowd recently, according to the Arizona Mirror. “The mere fact that you are there watching scares the hell out of them.”“If Mark Finchem is victorious this November, it could jeopardize the integrity of the 2024 presidential election and possibly could subvert the will of the people for years to come,” Ellen Kurtz, the founder and president of iVote, a liberal group focused on voting rights and elections, said in a statement. “No one who attempts to stop the peaceful transfer of power by attending a violent, deadly attack on our Capitol deserves to be on any ballot.”There’s deep concern that these officials, if elected, could use the power of their office to attempt to overturn the results of a valid election.Last week, I asked Chuck Coughlin, a Republican consultant in Arizona, what he thought Finchem would do if he was in charge of a future election and the result was in doubt. “He would not fall in line. He would follow the Donald Trump script of doing everything possible to be a disrupter if the election outcome is anything but what he wanted. I don’t see any go-along-to-get-along in Mark Finchem,” he told me.Kari Lake, a Republican who made election denialism a pillar of her campaign, also is leading in the Arizona governor’s race. Votes are still being counted, but if she wins, it would place election denialism front and center in a state where top Republicans have aggressively embraced it.There was one other big victory for Trump on Tuesday. Rusty Bowers, the term-limited GOP speaker of the Arizona House, lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger in a state senate race. Bowers played a central role in rebuffing Trump’s efforts to overturn the election in his state and was censured by the state GOP after he testified in front of the panel investigating the January 6 attack.Acknowledging the headwinds he faced for going against the former president, Bowers told NBC before the primary it would be a “miracle” if he won.Also worth watching …
      Arizona’s attorney general debunked a claim from Cyber Ninjas that nearly 300 dead people could have voted in the 2020 election in Arizona
      Some voters were stealing pens from voting sites in Arizona, egged on by a conspiracy theory
      A retired supreme court justice hired by Wisconsin Republicans to review the 2020 race publicly said in March lawmakers should consider decertifying the race. Privately, he said doing so was “a practical impossibility”.
      TopicsUS midterm elections 2022Fight to voteUS politicsUS voting rightsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

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      How the movement to undermine election results is spreading in the US | The fight to vote

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      How the movement to undermine election results is spreading in the USFrom Texas volunteers reviewing 2020 primary ballots to objections against absentee drop boxes in Kansas, undermining confidence in elections is metastasizing Get the latest updates on voting rights in the Guardian’s Fight to vote newsletterHello, and Happy Friday,Today I wanted to highlight four really good stories I’ve read over the last week that show how the movement to undermine confidence in election results is metastasizing.1 Volunteers in Tarrant county, Texas, are manually reviewing more than 300,000 ballots from the state’s 2020 Republican primary election, Votebeat reported last week. There’s no evidence of fraud or that the results were inaccurate in any way, but the ballots recently became open to public inspection and the group wants to see for themselves. John Raymond, a volunteer with the group conducting the effort, Tarrant County Citizens for Election Integrity, told Votebeat the effort was just a start. “A lot of people don’t have faith in our elections, so we’re just here counting, making sure that what the secretary of state’s numbers say are right,” he said.It’s not clear, however, what exactly the group is looking for or how they’re doing it. At the elections office, volunteers are going through the ballots, comparing them to data on their laptop and occasionally holding them up to the light (it’s not clear what they’re looking for). The elections office, which is required to comply with the group’s request for public information, has had to provide space and supervision for the process.It’s the kind of activity that Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who assisted Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, is encouraging citizens around the US to take up (it’s unclear if the Texas group is affiliated with her effort). There’s nothing wrong or unusual about concerned citizens wanting to check the results of an election. But there’s worry that shoddy methodology and misunderstandings will produce an impression that the election was stolen. That’s essentially what happened in Arizona, where a months-long review of the 2020 race produced no evidence the election was stolen, but those overseeing the review said they had several more questions. Election officials later debunked every single claim they made.2 Volunteers in Colorado are going door-to-door checking voter registrations to see whether people really voted in the last election, NPR reported last week. After the 2020 election, those who pushed some of the baseless conspiracy theories have encouraged this kind of door-to-door canvassing. Again, there’s nothing wrong with this on its face, but voter data is messy and it’s easy to get a false impression of what it shows. It’s also an activity that can easily slip into voter intimidation. The NPR story notes that canvassers asked one woman whom she voted for (even though all voters in the US are entitled to a secret ballot).3 In Georgia, citizens are relying on a new provision in Georgia law that allows any Georgian to bring an unlimited number of voter challenges, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. So far, more than 25,550 voter registrations have been cancelled, and 1,800 people have been removed from the rolls in some of the state’s most populous counties, according to a tally by Fair Fight, a voter advocacy group. There’s no evidence of fraud in Georgia in 2020, and critics worry that the process is flagging eligible people on the rolls.4 Kansas is set to have a high-stakes ballot referendum on Tuesday to remove the right to an abortion from the state’s constitution. Supporters of the amendment are already objecting to the presence of absentee ballot drop boxes in Sedgwick county, home to Wichita, according to the Wichita Eagle.Critics worry that some people could use the boxes, which are under video surveillance, to cast fake votes against the amendment. They haven’t offered specific evidence for those claims, instead pointing to the debunked film 2000 Mules, which makes outlandish claims about drop boxes. Trump and allies have railed against ballot drop boxes, even though there’s no evidence fraudulent votes were cast using them in 2020. This is the first time I’ve seen a political group point to their availability and call out the possibility of fraud before an election.Also worth watching …
      Amy Weirich, the Memphis prosecutor who brought charges against Pamela Moses, is in a tough re-election bid. Election day is Tuesday.
      Local election officials in a Michigan county that was a hotbed of conspiracy theories hosted a public demonstration and test of its voting equipment. No one showed up to watch.
      Some Democrats are concerned that the party is supporting election deniers in GOP primaries.
      Yesterday newsletter subscribers received an accidental repeat of last week’s Fight to vote newsletter. We are sorry for the error.TopicsUS voting rightsFight to voteUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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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
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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