US voting rights

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘We’re watching you’: incidents of voter intimidation rise as midterm elections near

      by

      ‘We’re watching you’: incidents of voter intimidation rise as midterm elections nearDrop box watchers, threatening letters and harassment – voters and election officials alike report increase in occurrences In suburban Mesa, Arizona, people staked out an outdoor ballot drop box, taking photos and videos of voters dropping off ballots. Some wore tactical gear or camouflage. Some were visibly armed.‘The Trump playbook’: Republicans hint they will deny election resultsRead moreOthers videotaped voters and election workers at a ballot drop box and central tabulation office in downtown Phoenix. They set up lawn chairs and camped out to keep watch through a fence which had been added around the facility for safety after 2020 election protests.Some voters claim the observers approached or followed them in their vehicles. Other observers hung back, watching and filming from at least 75ft from the drop boxes.In total, the Arizona secretary of state has received more than a dozen complaints from voters about intimidation from drop box watchers, many of which have been forwarded to the US Department of Justice and the Arizona attorney general as of late October, as well as a threat sent to the secretary of state herself. A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on 1 November to limit the watchers’ activities.These activities have led to calls from Maricopa county officials to “decrease the temperature” of heated rhetoric and actions in advance of Tuesday’s midterm elections. But though Arizona has become a hotbed for these tactics, it is also a sign of the mounting national threats to security that voters are facing as the 8 November elections near – part of an orchestrated countrywide strategy pushed by rightwing groups who believe baseless conspiracy theories that the 2020 presidential election was rife with fraud and irregularities.“I think that this drop box monitoring could very likely take hold in a number of different states,” said Jared Davidson, an attorney with Protect Democracy, a non-profit, non-partisan organization involved in one legal challenge against the drop box watchers. “I certainly hope it doesn’t and I hope that a win in our case will send a strong deterrent effect to folks who are organizing in other places.”‘All of a sudden now, we’re reaching voter intimidation’Drop box watching efforts have been largely coordinated by election deniers belonging to several different groups across the country, usually inspired by the viral movie 2000 Mules, which makes false, debunked claims about so-called “mules” stuffing drop boxes with ballots in a widespread spree of fraudulent voting during the 2020 presidential election. In recent months, drop box watchers spread the word on rightwing-friendly social media platforms like Truth Social and Telegram. One of the groups, Clean Elections USA, intends to send the photos, videos and information it collects to True the Vote, the organization behind 2000 Mules, Votebeat reported.The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, said in recent days that the justice department “has an obligation to guarantee a free and fair vote by everyone who’s qualified to vote and will not permit voters to be intimidated”. The department also filed a “statement of interest” in one of the Arizona drop box lawsuits, saying that the behavior probably violates federal voting rights law.In Michigan, a local offshoot of a group called the America Project is training volunteers to set up hidden cameras to monitor drop boxes and to carry guns in case they encounter criminals while watching the boxes, the Detroit Free Press reported.A pastor in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, told PennLive he had seen increased traffic in his community, where trucks with Maga flags drive through regularly, which he sees as an attempt to intimidate the largely Black community. In response to concerns over such intimidation and efforts by election deniers to recruit and train poll observers and workers, the faith community in Philadelphia is encouraging people to become poll monitors.‘We will be watching’Arizona became a sort of ground zero for drop box watching during early voting in October. Arizona voters extensively use no-excuse mail-in voting, and early voting at the polls and via mail and drop boxes begins 27 days before election day.“There’s nothing in and of itself that’s unlawful to sit and film a drop box – it’s odd behavior in my opinion,” Bill Gates, the Republican chairman of the Maricopa county board of supervisors, said in an interview. “When you have a weapon, and then you have camouflage on, and then you make a statement like ‘I’m out here hunting mules’ – all of a sudden now, we’re reaching voter intimidation.”Rural Yavapai county saw plans for drop box watches in what was dubbed “Operation Drop Box”, organized by the Lions of Liberty, a rightwing group that claims the US has been “hijacked and undermined by global elites, communists, leftists, deep state bureaucrats and fake news”, and the Yavapai County Preparedness Team, which is affiliated with the Oath Keepers extremist group, according to its website. Those groups told their volunteers to “stand down” after they were sued in federal court.But drop box watchers have been encouraged by some rightwing elected officials and candidates who have feigned credulity of false claims of a stolen election. One state lawmaker, the Arizona senator Kelly Townsend, encouraged “vigilantes” to stake out drop boxes (the same lawmaker then said last month that “wearing tactical gear while watching a ballot drop box could be considered voter intimidation”, so people shouldn’t do it). The Republican candidate for Arizona secretary of state, Mark Finchem, tweeted in late October to tell his followers to “WATCH ALL DROP BOXES. PERIOD.” He also urged followers to record voters using them.Voters who have filed complaints against the practice said they felt intimidated and found the drop box watchers’ behavior alarming.“I’m a senior and was very intimidated by his actions,” one complaint about a Phoenix drop box watcher reads.“Camo clad people taking pictures of me, my license plate as I dropped our mail in ballots in the box. When I approached them asking names, group they’re with, they wouldn’t give anything,” another complaint from Phoenix reads.“I felt very intimidated and scared about who was watching me deposit my ballot in the box. A man with a camera was snapping shots of me, my car and my license plate. Definitely without my permission,” yet another reads.The Maricopa county sheriff, Paul Penzone, said that he was increasing security and directing more deputies to monitor the drop box situation in response to claims of voter intimidation. But the presence of uniformed law enforcement can also be a concern for voters who may distrust police, particularly voters of color.On 28 October, federal judge Michael Liburdi ruled against voter advocacy groups in a case brought by the Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans and Voto Latino. Liburdi wrote that, while some voters may be “legitimately alarmed” by the drop box watchers, their activity was protected by the first amendment.But a separate lawsuit from the League of Women Voters of Arizona, represented by the non-profit Protect Democracy, claims the drop box watchers violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. Also before Judge Liburdi, that case prevailed in getting the practice curtailed in several ways that should make watchers’ activities less threatening to voters.Now, because of a temporary restraining order that Judge Liburdi issued, observers affiliated with the Clean Elections USA group cannot take photos or videos of voters within 75ft of a drop box, nor can they post images online implying someone is committing a crime. They now have to be 250ft away from a drop box if they are wearing body armor or carrying guns. Even then, the threat continues.‘How did we get here?’It’s not just the drop box activities that have election workers, voters and activists worried. Across the country, elected officials have been receiving threats from the same groups that are closing in on voters.One email sent to several workers at the Arizona secretary of state’s office, including the secretary of state herself, Katie Hobbs, vulgarly harassed the employees, threatened to find their addresses using local tax records and referred to the French Revolution. Hobbs, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate for governor, has been subjected to threats after 2020, resulting in federal charges for one man who made a death threat against her. Two other local elected officials, the Maricopa county supervisor, Clint Hickman, and county recorder, Stephen Richer, have faced threats that resulted in federal charges this year as well.The chairs of all 15 Arizona county Democratic parties also received unsigned threatening letters, featuring the words “WE ARE WATCHING YOU”. “Retirees with nothing else to do will be filing hundreds of lawsuits, if not more,” the letter said. “They will be locating your homes, your social media profiles and pictures and posting them online as well.”Bonnie Heidler, the chair of the Pima county Democratic party, received the letter at the office’s headquarters and immediately informed the FBI. She wanted the letter on record, in case anything happens. She pointed out that the language of the letter was similar to an 14 October social media post from Finchem directed at Pima county, in which the candidate said: “We will be watching.”The county party’s building is up for sale, and someone called the realtor saying they wanted to buy the building so they could blow it up, Heidler said. The party is discussing ways to improve security, she added.“What Trump did was, he let the genie out of the bottle. And now we can’t get the genie back in. And that’s the problem. He’s given them credence that they’re ‘very fine people’,” Heidler said.Election workers in other states have also faced harassment and threats for doing their jobs. Election officials now routinely receive calls, voicemails, emails and social media posts that range from vitriolic to frightening.A mother and daughter who were election workers in Georgia told the January 6 committee they were threatened and told they should be jailed or killed.The entire election staff in rural Gillespie county, Texas, quit earlier this year, having finally had enough of the onslaught of harassment and false claims after 2020.The threats have left polling places understaffed or with inexperienced staff, as seasoned election workers decide to leave. In some areas, like Akron, Ohio, local officials have put laws in place to increase penalties for people who harass or interfere with election workers.Few Republicans have stood up to stolen election claims, and the ones who have have faced harsh electoral consequences from Trump’s rabid base. The Republican governor, Doug Ducey, who ignored Trump’s phone call while signing off on Arizona’s 2020 results, is not up for re-election, but he has still largely remained quiet. Arizona’s house speaker, Rusty Bowers, who refused to overturn the election results, lost his primary. County elected officials, who have been steadfast in support of the way the county ran the election, have faced endless outrage and threats.“How did we get here?” Gates said. “We got here because there are a few people that have normalized this sort of behavior, and then a bunch of my fellow Republicans who remain silent while that goes on, out of fear of some political ramification.”He doesn’t think the fervor will die down unless other Republicans start calling out those who are undermining democracy.“Literally, the eyes of the world are on Maricopa county,” Gates said. “If we engage in this kooky behavior, that’s not a good image to be providing to the rest of the country and the rest of the world. We’re better than that.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US voting rightsArizonaUS politicsPostal votingfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Early voters in Arizona midterms report harassment by poll watchers

      by

      Early voters in Arizona midterms report harassment by poll watchersComplaints detail ballot drop box monitors filming, following and calling voters ‘mules’ in reference to conspiracy film A voter in Maricopa county, Arizona, claims a group of people watching a ballot drop box photographed and followed the voter and their wife after they deposited their ballots at the box, accusing them of being “mules”.Trump’s ‘big lie’ hits cinemas: the film claiming to investigate voter fraudRead moreThe voter filed a complaint with the Arizona secretary of state, who forwarded it to the US Department of Justice and the Arizona attorney general’s office for investigation, according to Sophia Solis, a spokesperson with the secretary of state’s office.The incident allegedly occurred at a Mesa, Arizona, outdoor drop box on the evening of 17 October. Early voting, both in person and via mailed ballots, began on 12 October ahead of the midterm elections.“There’s a group of people hanging out near the ballot drop box filming and photographing my wife and I as we approached the drop box and accusing us of being a mule. They took a photographs [sic] of our license plate and of us and then followed us out the parking lot in one of their cars continuing to film,” the voter wrote in the complaint.In Arizona, voters can only drop off ballots for themselves, people in their households or families, or people they’re providing care for. Other states don’t ban so-called ballot harvesting. The practice became illegal in Arizona in 2016.The incident comes as people in Maricopa and Yavapai counties have started to monitor drop boxes, spurred by the movie 2000 Mules, which makes unsubstantiated claims that “mules” are stuffing ballot boxes with votes. In other states, similar efforts to monitor drop boxes are under way, organized by people who remain convinced the 2020 presidential election was stolen.The Maricopa drop boxes are already under video surveillance by the county and broadcast on a live feed on the county’s website, and the Yavapai drop boxes have cameras mounted on them.Election officials and voter advocacy groups have warned that the practice could lead to voter intimidation. At a press conference in Phoenix on Wednesday, Maricopa county supervisor Bill Gates said people outside the Maricopa county tabulation and election center were approaching and photographing election workers as they went into the site to work.“They’re harassing people. They’re not helping further the interests of democracy. If these people really wanna be involved in the process, learn more about it, come be a poll worker or a poll observer,” Gates said.On Wednesday, a few people with cameras gathered outside a fence around the tabulation center’s parking lot and identified themselves to reporters as part of a group called Clean Elections USA. On its website, the group says it’s looking for “true Patriots to take a stand and watch the drop boxes” by gathering video and witnessing any potential “ballot tampering”.In Yavapai county, groups that planned to organize drop box watches received legal warnings that they could be intimidating voters, halting their plans for coordinated watches, but some people are still watching the boxes from their cars, one of the groups, Lions of Liberty, told local TV station AZFamily.Yavapai county sheriff David Rhodes issued a statement about drop box watching and voter intimidation this week, saying that the number of ballots a person drops off does not indicate a crime or suspicion of a crime. Arizona’s ballot collection law doesn’t specify how many ballots a person can drop off, just the people they can carry ballots for.“It is difficult to know each voter’s circumstance so your behavior towards others attempting to cast ballots must not interfere with that person’s right to vote. Should your actions construe harassment or intimidation you may be breaking Arizona’s voter intimidation laws,” Rhodes wrote.Election officials ask voters to report instances of harassment and intimidation to their local election offices or other authorities, so that those claims can be investigated.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022The fight for democracyArizonaUS politicsUS voting rightsPostal votingnewsReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Anger as DeSantis eases voting rules in Republican areas hit by hurricane

      by

      Anger as DeSantis eases voting rules in Republican areas hit by hurricaneExecutive order makes voting easier in Florida’s Lee, Charlotte and Sarasota counties but not in Democratic Orange county Governor Ron DeSantis has made voting easier in certain Florida counties battered by Hurricane Ian – but only Republican-leaning ones.DeSantis signed an executive order on Thursday that eases voting rules for about 1 million voters in Lee, Charlotte and Sarasota counties, all areas that Hurricane Ian hit hard and that all reliably vote Republican.Meanwhile, Orange county, a Democratic-leaning area which experienced historic flooding from the storm, received no voting exceptions, reported the Washington Post.The accommodations include extended early voting days and the ability for voters to send mail-in ballots from addresses not listed in voting records.Voting rights groups had previously asked the governor to extend the statewide voting registration deadline, which ended on Tuesday, and to add more early voting days, as well as implement other accommodations.DeSantis complied – but only for the three Republican counties.“Tens of thousands of Floridians have been displaced, and today’s executive order fails to meet the moment and ensure voting access for all Florida voters,” said Jasmine Burney-Clark, founder of voter rights organization Equal Ground, in a statement. “Instead, Governor DeSantis is politicizing a natural disaster.”In the emergency order, DeSantis said the decision to only accommodate three counties was based on “based on the collective feedback of the Supervisors of Elections across the state and at the written requests of the Supervisors of Elections in Charlotte, Lee, and Sarasota counties”, the Post reported.But Burney-Clark said that the decision to exclude other counties “will remain yet another example of Governor DeSantis disenfranchising voters”.The governor had previously declined to make adjustments in voting laws during other statewide emergences, including at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, despite requests from local election officials.DeSantis and Florida Republicans have also enacted a number of laws that restrict voting in the past two years, including one measure that bans anyone helping drop off mail-in ballots from having more than two ballots that do not belong to them.TopicsRon DeSantisFloridaUS voting rightsHurricane IanUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      US midterms 2022: the key candidates who threaten democracy

      by

      ExplainerUS midterms 2022: the key candidates who threaten democracy In several states Republican candidates who dispute the 2020 election results are running for positions that would give them control over electionsThere are several races on the ballot this fall that will have profound consequences for American democracy. In several states, Republican candidates who doubt the election 2020 election results, or in some cases actively worked to overturn them, are running for positions in which they would have tremendous influence over how votes are cast and counted. If these candidates win, there is deep concern they could use their offices to spread baseless information about election fraud and try to prevent the rightful winners of elections from being seated.What are the US midterm elections and who’s running?Read moreHere’s a look at some of the key candidates who pose a threat to US democracy:Doug MastrianoMastriano, the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, played a key role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He was the “point person” for the Trump campaign in Pennsylvania as lawyers put together fake slates of electors for Trump, according to emails obtained by the New York Times. He also organized an event with Rudy Giuliani after the 2020 election in which speakers spread misinformation about the 2020 election. He hired buses and offered rides to the US Capitol on January 6 and was there himself. He has supported the idea of decertifying the presidential race in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state, which is not possible.If elected, Mastriano would wield considerable power over elections in Pennsylvania. The state is one of a handful where the secretary of state, the chief election official, is appointed by the governor. Mastriano has said he has already picked someone, but hasn’t said who. The Philadelphia Inquirer has speculated he could pick Toni Shuppe, an activist who has spread voting misinformation and theories linked to the QAnon movement. Mastriano has also said he would decertify election equipment and cause all voters in the state to re-register to vote.Mark FinchemFinchem is the Republican nominee for Arizona secretary of state, which would make him Arizona’s chief election official. Finchem, a member of the Oath Keepers, was at the US Capitol on January 6. He introduced a resolution earlier this year to decertify the election. In 2020, he was one of several lawmakers who signed a joint resolution asking Congress to reject electors for Joe Biden.He has said, falsely, that Joe Biden did not win the election in Arizona in 2020, which is false. “It strains credibility,” he told Time magazine in September of Biden’s victory. “Isn’t it interesting that I can’t find anyone who will admit that they voted for Joe Biden?” When a reporter asked him whether it was possible that people he didn’t know voted for Biden, Finchem said: “In a fantasy world, anything’s possible.”Kari LakeA former news anchor with no prior political experience, Lake made doubting the 2020 election a centerpiece of her successful bid to win Arizona’s GOP nomination for governor.If she wins the governor’s race, Lake would be one of the statewide officials charged with certifying the results of the presidential election. She has called the 2020 election “corrupt and stolen” and said she would not have certified it. She joined an unsuccessful lawsuit to require ballots in Arizona to be counted by hand, which experts say is unreliable and costly. She has backed ending mail-in voting, which is widely used in Arizona.Jim MarchantMarchant is the Republican nominee for secretary of state in Nevada. He is linked to the QAnon movement; he has said he was pushed to run for the position by Trump allies and a prominent QAnon influencer. He leads a coalition of far-right candidates seeking to be secretary of state in key battleground states.He lost a 2020 congressional race by more than 16,000 votes, but nonetheless challenged the result by alleging fraud. He has since traveled around the state pressuring counties to get rid of electronic voting equipment and instead only hand-count paper ballots. Such a switch would be unreliable – humans are worse at counting large quantities of things than machines – as well as costly, and take a long time, experts say. He has falsely said voting equipment is “easy” to hack and said that Nevadans’ votes haven’t counted for decades. He has claimed there is a global “cabal” that runs elections in Nevada and elsewhere.Kristina KaramoKaramo, the GOP nominee for secretary of state, became nationally known after the 2020 election when she claimed she witnessed wrongdoing as ballots were being counted in Detroit. The allegations were debunked, but Karamo, a community college professor who has never held elective office, went on to rise in conservative circles. She appeared on Fox News and was a witness at a high-profile legislative hearing about election irregularities. She joined an unsuccessful lawsuit to try to overturn of the election. She has claimed “egregious crimes” were committed during the 2020 election and said on a podcast: “It’s time for us decent people in the Republican party … to fight back. We cannot have our election stolen,” according to Bridge Michigan.Abortion on the ballot: here are the US states voting on a woman’s right to chooseRead moreShe has also come under fire for comments on her podcast comparing abortion to human sacrifice and opposing the teaching of evolution in schools, according to Bridge Michigan.Matthew DePernoDePerno, a lawyer who has never held elected office, became a celebrity in conservative circles for his work after the 2020 election. He helped lead a lawsuit in Antrim county, in northern Michigan, where a clerk made an error and posted incorrect information on election night. He claimed election equipment was corrupted, and a judge authorized an investigation of the county’s election equipment that became the basis of an inaccurate report that Trump allies used to spread misinformation about the election. A Republican-led inquiry into allegations of fraud found his actions to be “​​misleading and irresponsible”. DePerno has said he would arrest Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat serving as Michigan’s top election official, as well as Dana Nessel, his Democratic opponent in the attorney general’s race.DePerno also faces potential criminal charges for unauthorized access to voting equipment. A special prosecutor is investigating the matter.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsRepublicansPennsylvaniaArizonaNevadaMichiganexplainersReuse this content More

    • 238 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      The most terrifying case of all is about to be heard by the US supreme court | Steven Donziger

      by

      The most terrifying case of all is about to be heard by the US supreme courtSteven DonzigerIf the court upholds the rogue ‘Independent State Legislature’ theory, it would put the US squarely on the path to authoritarianism It is well-known that intense competition between democracy, authoritarianism and fascism is playing out across the globe in a variety of ways – including in the United States. This year’s US supreme court term, which started this week, is a vivid illustration of how the situation is actually worse than most people understand.A supermajority of six, unelected ultraconservatives justices – five of which were put on the bench by presidents who did not win the popular vote – have aggressively grabbed yet another batch of cases that will allow them to move American law to the extreme right and threaten US democracy in the process. The leading example of this disturbing shift is a little-known case called Moore v Harper, which could lock in rightwing control of the United States for generations.The heart of the Moore case is a formerly fringe legal notion called the Independent State Legislature (ISL) theory. This theory posits that an obscure provision in the US constitution allowing state legislatures to set “time, place, and manner” rules for federal elections should not be subject to judicial oversight. In other words, state legislatures should have the absolute power to determine how federal elections are run without court interference.Think about this theory in the context of the last US election. After Joseph Biden defeated Donald Trump resoundingly in both the popular vote and in the electoral college, Trump tried to organize a massive intimidation campaign to steal the election which played out in the storming of the Capitol building on 6 January. But behind the scenes, the legal core of this attempt was to convince the many Republican-controlled state legislatures (30 out of 50 states) to send slates of fake Trump electors from states like Arizona, Georgia and Michigan where Trump actually lost the popular vote.If Trump had succeeded, he would have “won” the election via the electoral college (itself an anti-democratic relic) and been able to stay in office another term. If the supreme court buys the theory in the Moore case, this could easily happen in 2024 and beyond. In fact, it is possible Republicans will never lose another election again if this theory is adopted as law. Or put another way, whether Republicans win or lose elections via the popular vote will not matter because they will be able to maintain power regardless.That’s not democracy. And it would put the United States squarely in the same category as authoritarian countries with illiberal leaders like Hungary, Poland, Turkey and Russia. Each of the leaders of those countries ostensibly “won” elections that were structurally rigged to virtually guarantee they could not lose.It is disturbing that the supreme court used its increasingly diminished credibility with the public to take on a case that has no real purpose other than what I am describing in this column. In the United States, our highest court only rules on approximately 70 cases a year out of the 7,000 petitions for review that are presented. It is a relatively lazy court. In contrast, the supreme court of Brazil rules on approximately 100,000 cases a year. If the US court agreed to accept the Moore case for review, it almost certainly plans to endorse this rogue ISL theory, that could blow up elections and democracy in the United States as we know it.Context is important. This situation did not just come out of nowhere, but really is the product of a multi-decade strategy by a coalition of corporations and rightwing religious fundamentalists dating back decades to take control of the US government.Recent US history shows how spectacularly effective rightwing funders, representing wealthy Americans and corporations, have been in essentially buying control over our political system. These forces correctly perceive that if democracy is allowed to exist in an unfettered and neutral way, then corporate profits will be diminished and the powerful fossil fuel industry will be phased out over time. So they are organizing to prevent that from happening.This rightwing funding network simply could not exist with the enormous power that it has accumulated without the US supreme court’s Citizens United case, which laid the groundwork for the current takeover of the supreme court. One industrialist just turned over his entire $1.6bn fortune to an organization controlled by Leonard Leo, the brilliant mastermind behind the pro-corporate Federalist Society, which essentially put all six of the ultraconservatives on the court.Should the court endorse the ISL theory, Republican-controlled legislatures also will be able to gerrymander political districts to lock in permanent control of federal elections without judicial oversight. Gerrymandering is a fancy term to describe another method of voter suppression in the United States: setting district maps to guarantee that progressive or minority candidates simply cannot get elected except in pre-approved districts. It explains, for example, why in the state of North Carolina Republicans control eight of 13 seats in the US House of Representatives despite the Democratic party winning well over 50% of the statewide vote in the last several elections.The Moore case would in practice strip people of the right to fair elections by placing electoral power in the hands of a small group of officials at the state level who set district maps. In a presidential election, these officials could determine what slate of electors gets put forth to the electoral college, regardless of the outcome of the state’s popular vote.In the gerrymandered map at the heart of the Moore case, an evenly divided popular vote in North Carolina would have awarded 10 of the state’s 14 seats in the House of Representatives to Republicans.While many are focused on the January 6 proceedings, the real coup has been going on quietly in the supreme court without a single shot being fired. As the judicial branch is set to deliberate a case that could drastically weaken the other branches of government, never has it been more clear that it is time to rein in the power of our least democratic institution.
      Steven Donziger is a human rights lawyer and environmental justice advocate. He is also a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsUS supreme courtOpinionUS politicsLaw (US)US voting rightscommentReuse this content More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      US supreme court hears case that could gut voting rights for minority groups

      by

      US supreme court hears case that could gut voting rights for minority groupsIn Merrill v Milligan, the court will decide whether Alabama’s new congressional map violates the Voting Rights Act The supreme court’s conservative majority appeared unsettled on Tuesday on whether it would gut one of the most powerful remaining provisions of the Voting Rights Act in a case that has profound implications for the representation of Black Americans and other minority groups.The case, Merrill v Milligan, centers on how much those who draw electoral districts should be required to consider race. It involves a dispute over the seven congressional districts Alabama drew last year. Only one of those districts has a majority-Black population, even though Black people make up a quarter of Alabama’s population. Earlier this year, a three-judge panel unanimously ruled that the configuration was illegal under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which guarantees minority groups equal opportunity to participate in the electoral process. It ordered Alabama to draw a second district with a minority population. The supreme court stepped in earlier this year and halted that order while the case proceeded.A court caught Republicans discriminating against Black voters – here’s howRead moreThe state’s solicitor general, Edmund LaCour, argued on Tuesday that the lower court’s ruling was incorrect because it required Alabama to consider race above traditional, race-neutral criteria. In order to require Alabama draw a second majority-minority district, he said, the plaintiffs should have first had to prove that such a map could exist without taking race into account at all. He argued that computer simulations programmed with race-neutral criteria never produced a map with a second majority-Black district.Justice Samuel Alito, one of the court’s most conservative jurists, seized on that point repeatedly in support of Alabama’s argument. “How can it be reasonably configured if you can’t get that map with a computer simulation that takes into account all of the traditional race-neutral factors?” he said.But even Alito acknowledged that some of the arguments Alabama made were “far-reaching”. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, another conservative justice, said at one point she would be “struggling in the same way others have about narrowing down exactly what your argument is”.Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson all seemed deeply skeptical about all of Alabama’s arguments. Embracing the state’s approach would upend how the court has long approached section 2 redistricting cases. Kagan said the case was a “slam dunk” case under the court’s existing precedent before laying out how she believed the lower court had correctly evaluated the facts. “It seems to me you’re coming here … and saying change the way we look at section 2 and its application,” she said.The supreme court has long allowed for the use of race and required those who challenge maps to meet a difficult three-part test to challenge the map. The first part of that test requires plaintiffs to show that the minority population is sufficiently large and compact enough to comprise a majority in a reasonably configured single-member district.Democracy, poisoned: America’s elections are being attacked at every levelRead moreAlabama’s congressional map easily meets the conditions needed to bring a section 2 challenge, experts have said. There is clear evidence Black and white voters prefer different candidates and mapmakers were easily able to draw a second majority-Black congressional district that comported with the traditional criteria Alabama uses.“There is nothing race-neutral about Alabama’s map,” Deuel Ross, a lawyer who represented some of the plaintiffs, told the justices. “Section 2 is not an intent test or about putting on racial blinders.”Requiring plaintiffs to draw that map without considering race at all would have profound consequences for Black representation across the US. It would make it much harder for plaintiffs to bring challenges to maps, essentially requiring them to show that discrimination is occurring without looking at race.“Alabama isn’t asking the court to apply section 2 as it’s been applied for the last 40 years,” said Elizabeth Prelogar, the United States solicitor general, which backed the plaintiffs in the case. “Instead, Alabama is asking the court to radically change the law by inserting this concept of race neutrality and effectively limiting section 2 to intentional discrimination.”A ruling in favor of Alabama could also produce a “broad upheaval” in the law and clear a pathway for Alabama and other states to get rid of existing majority-minority districts. “Make no mistake, every majority-minority district would become a litigation target,” said Abha Khanna, a lawyer for one of the groups of plaintiffs.The case marks the latest occasion in which the court has considered the Voting Rights Act, a crowning achievement of the civil rights era. In 2013, the court gutted a provision in the law that required states and other jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to get federal approval before enacting changes. In 2020, the justices made it harder to use section 2 to bring challenges to voting laws outside of redistricting.Kagan acknowledged that history of chipping away at the law on Tuesday. After calling the Voting Rights Act “one of the great achievements of American democracy”, she said: “In recent years, this statute has fared not well in this court.”“You’re asking us, essentially, to cut back substantially on our 40 years of precedent and to make this too extremely difficult to prevail on. So what’s left?” she said in a comment that appeared to be directed more at her colleagues on the bench than any of the lawyers.US supreme court to decide cases with ‘monumental’ impact on democracyRead moreSome of the most pointed and extensive questioning on Tuesday came from Jackson, the newest member of the court, who was participating in just her second day of oral arguments. She directly challenged LaCour’s argument that the prohibition against racial discrimination in the constitution’s 14th amendment does not allow mapmakers to consider race in redistricting.But Jackson questioned how that could be the case when history shows that the 14th amendment was adopted as part of a race-conscious effort to guarantee equal rights for Black Americans in the 19th century. “I don’t think that the historical record establishes that the founders believed race neutrality or race blindness was required,” she said, in what seemed to be an appeal to conservative originalists on the court. “It was drafted to give a foundational, a constitutional foundation for a piece of legislation that was designed to make people who had less opportunity and less rights equal to white citizens.“I’m trying to understand why that violates the 14th amendment given the history and background of the 14th amendment.”TopicsAlabamaThe fight for democracyUS politicsUS supreme courtLaw (US)US voting rightsnewsReuse this content More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Democracy, poisoned: America’s elections are being attacked at every level

      by

      Democracy, poisoned: America’s elections are being attacked at every level In the first of a new series, we look at how November’s midterm elections could be an inflection point as election deniers seek to take control of the vote counting processItem number 28 on the agenda for the March meeting of the county commission in rural southern Nevada seemed benign enough. But by the end of the hour-and-45-minute presentation Sandra Merlino, the longtime local clerk, felt sickened.About The Fight for Democracy – a Guardian seriesRead moreOne by one, a band of activists took to the podium to argue that Nye county should switch from electronic ballots to paper ones in forthcoming elections. They were led by Jim Marchant, a Las Vegas businessman who lost a 2020 House race but refused to concede, alleging fraud. He argued that the county couldn’t trust its electronic election equipment and that it should switch to a system in which it only used paper ballots and counted those ballots by hand.Three other speakers offered a flurry of complex-sounding analyses purporting to prove that the county’s voting equipment was vulnerable to hacking. They included Russell Ramsland, a Texas man who helped Donald Trump and allies push outlandish theories about fraud after the 2020 race, and Phil Waldron, a former army colonel who produced a 38-slide PowerPoint presentation after the 2020 race, urging Trump to seize control of voting equipment.Merlino was alarmed. She knew that what they were saying was bogus – the county’s election systems aren’t connected to the internet and there’s no evidence they were not secure. Counting ballots by hand was costly, not reliable, and would take a long time after the election to complete. “It’s so prone to error,” she said. “It just is a nightmare as far as I’m concerned.”A longer count could also leave more time for chaos after election day, said Jessica Marsden, a lawyer for Protect Democracy, a government watchdog group. “That’s exactly the kind of change that would slow down the count, giving you time to sow confusion and cry about fraud – all the mayhem we saw in 2020,” Marsden said.The episode in Nye county is just one example of a new poison that has seeped deep into the bloodstream of American politics since the 2020 election. While there have long been fights in America over who gets to vote, this new toxin is focused on how the vote is counted and on undermining confidence in results. Its prevalence has raised an alarming possibility that once seemed unfathomable in one of the world’s leading democracies – that the result of a valid election could be overturned.“People need to stop fooling themselves. This is unlike anything that’s happened in American history,” said Sean Wilentz, a Princeton professor who was among a group of historians that met with Biden earlier this year to discuss the threat to democracy. “It is continuing and it is grave. And I think the country needs to wake up.”The movement threatens American elections from the top down and the bottom up at the same time. At the top, there is a push to install statewide officials who would have no reservations about making baseless claims of fraud and overturning an election result. From the bottom, it seeks to harass, threaten and ultimately remove non-partisan local election officials and make it harder for them to administer elections. If there is an overarching strategy to the movement – and it’s not clear there is one – it seems to be to cause as much chaos, as much confusion, and as much uncertainty, as possible.Since the 2020 election, this movement has enjoyed a once unimaginable amount of success. Candidates who questioned the 2020 election performed remarkably in the GOP primaries this year, advancing to the November ballot in 27 states. Facing unrelenting pressure and harassment, election officials are retiring from their jobs. And to work the polls this fall Republicans are recruiting people who believe the 2020 election was stolen.The 2022 midterm elections offer an inflection point unlike any America has seen before. Election deniers are on the verge of winning their campaigns for offices with oversight of elections. What happens in November will determine whether people who have spread lies about the 2020 election will be in charge of overseeing future contests.This is why today the Guardian is launching The Fight for Democracy, a series focused on investigating the threats facing the democratic system in one of its supposed bastions. Building off an impactful series on US voting rights, it will scrutinize the movement to undermine election legitimacy, weaken voting rights and target election officials – a movement that ultimately seeks to codify a system of minority rule fundamentally opposed to the promise of a multiracial, multicultural, representative, constitutional democracy.The county commission eventually voted 5-0 to ask Merlino to consider switching to hand-counting paper ballots. She resigned from her role shortly after and has since been replaced by Mark Kampf, a retired financial executive, who has falsely said Trump won the 2020 election. He is moving ahead with a plan to use hand-counted paper ballots in the election this fall.Merlino doesn’t want anyone to fail in their job, but she said the change was concerning.“Even though I’m conservative or whatever, I treat everybody the same. I’m a non-partisan when it comes to my office,” she said. “I think what’s eventually going to happen is you’re going to get people in office, good people, who feel that way, that they serve everybody, that don’t want to do it any more. So what’s going to happen is you’re going to get these people that are conspiracy theorists.”Election deniersA recent analysis by FiveThirtyEight estimated that 60% of Americans will have election deniers on the ballot in November.The threat posed by individuals prepared to throw out legitimate election results is especially pronounced in the handful of key battleground states that were decisive in 2020.That suggests a concerted effort to target roles with the goal of possibly overturning valid election results, a phenomenon that has come to be called election subversion. “It’s not just the number of election deniers who are running, worrying though that is. It’s the way these candidates have focused on the very positions that are most pivotal in determining the outcome of state and presidential elections,” said Jessica Marsden, a lawyer with Protect Democracy.Among the Republican candidates are four extreme election deniers running for governor in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Doug Mastriano, competing in Pennsylvania, was a central figure behind the plot to send fake Trump electors to Congress on January 6 even though Biden won the state by 80,000 votes.There are also three extreme election deniers running for secretary of state – the top election administrator post – in Arizona, Michigan and Nevada. In Arizona, state representative Mark Finchem actively lobbied to overturn Biden’s victory and hand the state’s 11 electors to Trump; he has been involved with the far-right Oath Keepers militia and was at the Capitol on January 6. In Michigan, Kristina Karamo first came to prominence when she falsely claimed a miscount in Detroit based upon a basic misunderstanding of election procedures.In Nevada, Marchant, who led the presentation in Nye county, is now the Republican nominee to be the state’s top election official.Marchant, who is closely linked to the QAnon movement, is also leading a nationwide group of election deniers vying for secretary of state positions; should he win in November, he told the Guardian he plans to scrap all electronic voting machines and switch to paper-only counts.Out-of-state fundingThese candidates are being supported by a flood of money that’s unprecedented for secretary of state races, which have long drawn little attention.In six states with competitive secretary of state races this year, candidates raised $16.3m overall as of the beginning of August, more than double the amount raised at the same point in 2018, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Not accounting for incumbents, who have a significant fundraising advantage, election denier candidates have far outpaced those who have not questioned the election results.Much of the money is coming from outside the states where the candidates are running. Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock.com CEO, who has been one of the most prolific financial backers of election denialism, has been a major donor. So has Richard Uihlein, a GOP mega-donor.“In years past, a lot of people wouldn’t have been able to name their own secretary of state, never mind one of another state. So the idea that a candidate could raise a majority of their money, as some of these are, from out of state, is very surprising,” said Ian Vandewalker, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, who has been tracking funding in these races.One of the most successful fundraisers has been Finchem, in Arizona, who had raised $1.2m in his race, 59% of which came from out-of-state donors. In Nevada, candidates have raised more than five times the amount of money raised at the comparable point in past cycles.“To some extent, it’s the usual suspects. People who have been involved in election challenges, including to one degree or another, January 6, who are either directly supporting candidates or are spending in ways that help them or their message,” Vandewalker said. “At the same time, there clearly is some degree of a broad base of financial support for these candidates.”Eyes and earsThere is a long US tradition of politicians alleging voter fraud, a specter that in recent years has been used to justify sweeping new voter restrictions, including polling place closures, aggressive voter purging and limits on mail-in voting.Making matters worse, in 2013 the US supreme court gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, a historic piece of legislation from the civil rights era that was supposed to ensure equal access to the polls. As a result, the legal system’s power to protect minority voters from unfair restrictions has been blunted.The push to put election deniers in control of statewide elections has been complemented by an equally forceful push to exert more influence over election administration at the local level.One part is an aggressive effort to recruit poll observers and poll workers to be eyes and ears in the polling place.Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who was closely linked to Trump’s effort to overturn the election, is playing a leading role. Working through the Conservative Partnership Institute, which is linked to Trump’s political apparatus, she’s held a series of events across the country encouraging people who doubt the 2020 election results to sign up to be poll workers. The group encourages attendees to become embedded in their election offices and to become a “permanent presence” in every election office and to determine whether government officials are “friend or foe”.A second part of this effort appears to involve putting as much pressure as possible on local election officials, making it harder for them to run elections and seeding the ground for more chaos. Since the 2020 election, election officials have faced an unprecedented wave of harassment and many are choosing to leave the field. Nearly one in five officials surveyed by the Brennan Center earlier this year said they were “very” or “somewhat likely” to leave the field by 2024.Already beefing up security in their office, election officials are now being swarmed with voluminous records requests related to the 2020 election, forcing them to reallocate resources to fulfill them that would otherwise be going towards getting ready to run the elections.Lynn Constabile recently stepped down as the elections director in Yavapai county in Arizona after working there for nearly two decades. Trump handily won Yavapai county, but that didn’t stop false claims about the election from spreading.“After the 2020 election, we just had to put up with kind of a barrage of garbage that came our way. Every day a new conspiracy theory – taking up time that I needed to plan the 2022 election. So probably around last fall I decided I really wasn’t being effective any more in my county,” she said.“People would call us on the phone and yell at us. I’ve been called a communist. And you know, it gets old. We got a barrage of records requests. I would get 10-page records requests. Just threatening that if I didn’t fulfill it, they were gonna sue us. You’re trying to do your job but there’s not enough hours in the day,” she added.She didn’t get explicit death threats, but she did get menacing messages that said things like “watch your back” and “you should be nervous”. She installed security cameras around her house – not something she thought she would ever have to do. It also became hard to find people to fill both full-time and seasonal jobs.“The people that were applying, they didn’t really want to work for us, they wanted to watch us,” she said.Perfect stormThe multiple pressures bearing down on US elections could come to a crunch when Americans choose their next president in 2024. “We face a perfect storm,” Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of the new book Power Politics: Trump and the Assault on American Democracy, told the Guardian.“There are restrictions on voting rights, a toxic information ecosystem, political violence – there’s lots of mischief that could take place.”With Trump hinting strongly that he plans to run again, the conditions for West’s perfect storm are all too conceivable: Trump stands, Trump loses in the same swing states that defeated him in 2020, Trump launches a false “stolen election” plot 2.0.Only this time the forces of subversion are far more organized, sophisticated and powerful. Which is one reason so much is at stake in the midterm elections in November.At state level, should election deniers win governor or secretary of state positions they would be empowered to wreak havoc around the 2024 presidential election on a scale that will make Trump’s first “stolen election” effort look like a tea party.Take Finchem in Arizona. He has already made several unsuccessful attempts to overturn Biden’s 2020 win by decertifying results in pockets of the state. As secretary of state, the top election administrator in Arizona, his fraudulent ploys would carry much more weight.In Pennsylvania, Mastriano, should he manage to win his increasingly beleaguered campaign and become governor, would have the power to select the secretary of state who in turn would hold sway over how the count is conducted in critical parts of the commonwealth. The Finchems and Mastrianos would be well placed to throw out just enough votes on fake grounds of mass fraud to swing the result in their states to Trump.“The way election subversion would most likely play out in 2024 is that the secretary of state would refuse to count a certain segment of votes, claiming they were tainted by fraud, and that would lead to a different slate of electors being sent to Congress,” Marsden said.At that point, the crisis would switch to Congress itself. Here too the stakes couldn’t be higher in November.Should the Republicans take control of the House of Representatives, elevating Kevin McCarthy, an avid backer of Trump’s stolen election lie, to the role of speaker, they would be in a strong position to accept the electors sent to Congress fraudulently by election deniers in the states.Potentially the only person left who could stave off democratic disaster would be Kamala Harris, the vice-president, who under the US constitution will preside over certification just as Mike Pence did in 2020. But should she attempt to block the Republicans from certifying Trump as president on the back of fraudulent state actions, she could trigger a confrontation between the executive branch in the form of the vice-president and the legislative branch in Congress.“It’s all about power now,” West said. “If you have power, you can use it to your own advantage – we’re seeing a lot of that in American politics these days.”TopicsUS newsThe fight for democracyUS elections 2024US midterm elections 2022US politicsRepublicansUS voting rightsfeaturesReuse this content More