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Fighting for the Right to Vote, Cast a Regular Ballot and Have It Count in the Senate Swing States [1]
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Date: 2022-07-05
From the beginning, Hope Springs from Field PAC has had a primary purpose of preparing to fight and neutralize Republican/conservative efforts to suppress the vote in 2022. In a sense, we were thrown into the thick of this by our initial work in the Georgia Senate Runoffs last year. Right before Christmas (and pretty much concurrently to the beginning of Early Voting) we saw a very clumsy attempt by the Ku Klux Klan to suppress the vote in SW Georgia where we had been organizing.
Clumsy was the operative word here. These flyers started appearing in voters’ mailboxes, clearly aimed at suppressing the vote among African-Americans. And the flyers were fairly uniquely targeted. For example, one Black household that did not receive a flyer in the mail was where one of its voters had voted in the GOP primary in 2020. Yet surrounding households did receive them. We never found a single White household that received one of these flyers, either. Someone, with access to voter data, had come up with the mail list and understood how to target.
So Hope Springs has had this concern on its agenda from the beginning. And Georgia was not the only state where we have been working to mitigate GOP Voter Suppression. Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have all been states where we have been walking with — and collecting in significant amounts — Incident Reports that will help us target our Election Protection efforts in November. And we don’t just gather Incident Reports at the doors during our weekend canvassing.
Hope Springs from Field has been partnering with Black Churches in Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and Wisconsin helping them in their efforts to register voters (and re-register voters who have moved) by comparing their memberships with the voter rolls and provide that information to the Election Committees about who in their congregations are registered to vote (remember that these states have aggressive on-going efforts to remove voters from their rolls) and any address conflicts we find VAN (voter database). But we also provide and gather Incident Reports that their congregants fill out.
In Georgia, we have also been organizing Voter ID days were voters without the required photo IDs would go to their local Registrar’s Office and get a Georgia Voter ID card for free. We have now done 43 Voter ID days in 18 counties in southern Georgia so far and helped 9,584 voters get photo ID cards. This was a combination of voters we found at the door who needed photo IDs and members of our partner congregations.
2022 (so far)
In the past year, we have collected 1,596 Incident Reports at the door from witnesses who have experienced issues with voting in prior elections. The Incident Reports we use are, of course, designed for witnesses on election day, but they can also be used ex post facto to help warn of us where likely occurrences of voter intimidation or suppression could happen. But we have received three times that from the Black Churches we have partnered with. They have provided us with 5,785 Incident Reports from their congregations.
And here’s the reason why: we know that Republicans are coming after our voters, we know they want to force as many Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters to vote on Election Day and we know they want challenge our voters at the polls and force them to vote provisionally, adding an additional step for either the voter or the Elections office in order for their votes to count. In the states that require voters themselves to cure their ballots, we expect GOP efforts to be doubled in their effort to challenge our voters.
So this isn’t new. This is completely expected, and we witnessed the first stages of these kinds of preparation in the Virginia General Election in 2021. But we know that
The Republican National Committee is spending millions this year in 16 critical states on an unprecedented push to recruit thousands of poll workers and watchers, adding firepower to a growing effort on the right to find election irregularities that could be used to challenge results.
and
The RNC has so far signed up more than 14,000 poll workers and 10,000 poll watchers nationwide, and political director Elliott Echols said the party plans to have more than 5,000 in each state for the November midterms. Republican officials said the project, involving dozens of dedicated staffers, is an effort to level the playing field with Democrats at polling sites.
Hope Springs from Field PAC is knocking on doors and partnering with local civics and civil rights groups, Divine Nine chapters as well as Historically Black Colleges & Universities, raising awareness of the fact that Democrats care about our voters and are working to protect their right to vote. We are thinking about how to mitigate Voter Suppression efforts, get around them and make sure we have "super compliance," both informing and helping our voters meet the requirements and get out and vote. We are taking those efforts to the doors and gathering locations of the communities most effected (the intended targets or victims) of these new voter suppression laws.
Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/2022electionprotection
Hope Springs from Field PAC was started by former Obama Field Organizers because field was the cornerstone of our success. Election Protection was central to the Obama primary effort in 2008 because we were running against a party favorite with strong roots in state and local party organizations and we needed to appeal to voters outside that framework. We are returning to the old school basics: repeated contacts, repeated efforts to remind them of protocols, meeting them were they are. Mentoring those who need it (like first time and newly registered voters). Reminding, reminding, reminding, and then chasing down those voters whose ballots need to be cured.
Republicans have organized a really intensive effort here:
Historically, many poll workers have been retirees who come back election after election, and both parties at the local level have traditionally worked with election officials to staff their precincts. What’s different is the messaging, both to recruits and to party backers, about the reasons for the plan. While Democrats have set up legal hotlines and mobilized volunteers by stressing a need to help those denied a chance to vote, the Republican operation is centered on challenging ballots, spotting potential fraud — and for poll watchers, reporting those concerns directly to party attorneys on Election Day, according to the RNC.... The RNC’s program is the latest operation on the right since 2020 to focus on the smallest building blocks of American elections: polling precincts where people vote. While Democrats have set up legal hotlines and mobilized volunteers by stressing a need to help those denied a chance to vote, the Republican operation is centered on challenging ballots, spotting potential fraud — and for poll watchers, reporting those concerns directly to party attorneys on Election Day, according to the RNC.
In the Houston area, we see how this GOP operation is organized. There, GOP operatives have been knocking on doors in African-American neighborhoods asking people who answer the door to “verify which voters still live at that address.” This is straight out of the True the Vote playbook, and is a tactic now taught at the Leadership Institute.
Of course, this Intimidation of Voters here is implied: The county attorney’s probe is based on a complaint from at least one Sunnyside resident who said two men came to her home and asked questions they said were to confirm the identities of registered voters who live at that address. The men gave her an official-looking affidavit form and asked her to sign it attesting to the residents at the address “under penalty of perjury.” Sunnyside is a south Houston neighborhood, predominantly minority and lower-income in which 75% of residents are African-American and another 20% are Hispanic. You won’t find these kinds of “voter verification” efforts in predominantly White or Republican neighborhoods. These are precincts that vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. 2022 GOP Election Project Targets The 16 critical states where Republicans are recruiting tens of thousands of poll workers and watchers, and teaching them these Voter Suppression tactics, are the states where the U.S. Senate composition will be decided. It’s not a secret what the intention is here. Never has the difference between Democrats and Republicans been more clear. Democrats want — demand — to expand Voting Rights and other Constitutional Rights. Republicans want to take them away. We can hardly continue to expand these Rights unless we secure for every legitimate voter the Right to cast their ballot and have their Votes counted. This is an existential imperative.
Hope Springs from Field PAC is engaged in three different areas in a unique effort to maintain our Rights to Vote and have those votes counted. First of all, as mentioned above, we have been collecting Incident Reports from those who have witnessed Election Suppression and Intimidation at the polls.
These reports are combined with other historical data about voter suppression and polling place issues — including opening up on time (many voters like to cast ballots on their way to work and failure to open up a polling location on time can cause voters to leave without having cast a ballot in order to be at work on time). We combine historical data to look for patterns, because we have learned that voter suppression is often repeated in the same place. And not always by the same people. But patterns of voter suppression and polling place neglect are things we are looking for so that we can send teams to those locations to help deter, mitigate or possibly even take to court on election day.
One of the key reasons why we offer and collect Election Incident Reports is that we understand that voter suppression is historical. It is historical across a broad range of techniques and we now know that Republicans and conservatives share those techniques and tactics with each other, including training others in their tactics. By collecting post-incident reports, we are notifying minority voters that we are out there looking for them and actively protecting their Right to Vote. We are giving them confidence that they can vote without incident, that their vote will be counted and any attempt to prevent them from casting a lawful vote will be prosecuted.
But we don’t just use Incident Reports to predict future GOP Voter Suppression (remarkably, Republicans stationed poll watchers in all but one of the precincts in North Carolina and Georgia where Incident Reports forecast that activity), but we also use them to advise local District, State and County Attorneys and talk about historical trends related to voter intimidation and outright suppression in prior North Carolina elections. One District Attorney in Georgia has called this “working the refs.” But they also provide Democratic lawyers with background and historical documentation if they need to go to court to protect the rights of our voters. Incident Reports serve as our Pre-Election Warning System, and who doesn’t think we should have as extensive a pre-election warning system as we can build?
Secondly, we know that we have to have assets in place on Election Day (and Early Voting), first as Poll Watchers inside the polls, but also Observation Tables outside polling places where we have indications that something could occur inside. It might be counter-intuitive that we need a backup plan when we already have someone inside the polling place. But being a Poll Watcher can be a lonely experience, even when you know that you will have a Runner checking in on you (and the poll) 3-4 times on Election Day. And Poll Watchers don’t catch everything. Observation Tables provide reassurances to both voters themselves and to the Poll Watchers inside.
In the May primary, we recruited and trained 291 volunteers in North Carolina to serve as poll watchers, outside observers and legal eagles at 36 sites in 11 counties. We recruited and trained 663 volunteers in Georgia to serve as poll watchers, outside observers and legal eagles for Tuesday’s primary at 97 sites in 15 counties. Almost all of them came from either the Black Churches we have been working with, or Divine Nine chapters in those counties, or somehow linked to HBCUs where we have been recruiting volunteers. All save but 8 of them were African-American since we were watching majority minority polling locations (many in counties that had a historically high rate of lynchings).
Many of these outside Election Protection observer tables also set up selfie areas which were surprisingly well-used by voters after they voted. But it gave voters a reason to stop by the observer tables even if they had no other reason to do so. Which meant that they asked questions like, what are you doing here. Instilling confidence in your right to vote, in areas where it had been common to deter minorities from voting in the past.
Finally, we are committed to Ballot Curing until the very last minute in those states that allow for votes to be cured after Election Day. We fight for our votes until we can’t fight anymore. Like we did in 2021 for the Georgia Senate Runoff, where we organized volunteers to knock on doors of the homes of voters whose ballot issues could be resolved for their vote to be counted, we will do that again in 2022. And we don’t just do that to make sure that these votes are counted, but also to signal to Republicans and their conservative allies that we will fight to the finish.
Election Protection used to be a “last six weeks” item on the campaign calendar. But Republicans haven’t stopped organizing their efforts to suppress the vote, and we can’t stop organizing to prevent that from happening. Here’s the thing. We understand that we are filling a void — but it could be that the void disappears at one or more precincts in those last six weeks. As we recruit poll watchers, but find that the Senate or Coordinated Campaign wants to place poll watchers in those same precincts, we will gladly let them take over those duties there. We aren’t competing with the Senate campaigns (which is why we wrap up our own canvassing by Labor Day and start focusing on Election Protection thereafter). The point is to increase coverage, not to compete with other Democrats.
Hope Springs from Field PAC is trying to reinstitute best field practices, such as canvassing with people who look like the voters we are talking to and targeting former voters thrown off the rolls. A lot of these got forgotten because of the Covid restrictions in the last cycle, and we have an entire cycle of campaign staffers who were trained without the benefit of actually getting to do field. That’s why it is so important to start developing Election Protection strategies now, and not wait until a couple of weeks or so before the general election. We have a lot of work to do. Can you help?
If you are able to support our efforts to protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please donate:
secure.actblue.com/donate/2022electionprotection
Thank you for your support. This work depends on you!
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