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Protecting Democratic Voters Pt II [1]

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Date: 2022-08-09

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/2022electionprotection

This is the second part on Protecting Democratic Voters. Part One can be found here: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2114035/edit

https://www.azmirror.com/2022/05/31/gop-lawmaker-calls-on-vigilantes-to-film-and-follow-voters-to-combat-unproven-ballot-mules/

GOP lawmaker calls on ‘vigilantes’ to film and follow voters to combat unproven ‘ballot mules’

A Republican state senator called on “vigilantes” to spy on people who deposit early ballots in ballot drop boxes for elections later this year, imploring them to use hidden cameras and follow voters to their cars in an effort to stamp out unproven fraud alleged by a conservative group that aims to restrict voting.

https://www.azag.gov/sites/default/files/2022-08/Letter%20to%20Fann%20-%20EIU%20Update%20080122.pdf

TTV claims that it discovered tide-turning voter fraud. It’s promised to release its evidence. It never has.

https://www.texastribune.org/2022/06/14/true-the-vote-big-lie-election-fraud/

Engelbrecht and Phillips still haven’t released the evidence. At one point in the film, they claim to have used the cellphone data to help solve the murder of a young Atlanta girl; that, too, has been debunked.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/us/politics/groups-like-true-the-vote-are-looking-very-closely-for-voter-fraud.html

But when True the Vote vetted petition signatures in Wisconsin’s recall election, the state’s Government Accountability Board reported that the process was “at best flawed.” The group raised questions about thousands of signatures that the board deemed valid.

The influx of white election observers in black neighborhoods caused friction with voters and poll workers, bringing back memories of a time when racial intimidation at the polls was commonplace in the South, said Gerald M. Birnberg, a lawyer and former chairman of the Harris County Democratic Party. True the Vote has strongly denied that it has engaged in voter suppression.

Finding that someone voted in the name of a dead person is the holy grail of the voter integrity movement, said Jay DeLancy, a retired Air Force officer in North Carolina who embraced the cause after attending a True the Vote meeting last year.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/25/us/politics/election-sheriffs-voting-trump.html

Conservative activists are working to recruit the law enforcement officers to their cause. Several sheriffs have already clashed with election officials.

An influential network of conservative activists fixated on the idea that former President Donald J. Trump won the 2020 election is working to recruit county sheriffs to investigate elections based on the false notion that voter fraud is widespread.

The push, which two right-wing sheriffs’ groups have already endorsed, seeks to lend law enforcement credibility to the false claims and has alarmed voting rights advocates. They warn that it could cause chaos in future elections and further weaken trust in an American voting system already battered by attacks from Mr. Trump and his allies.

One of the conservative sheriffs’ groups, Protect America Now, lists about 70 members, and the other, the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, does not list its membership but says it conducted trainings on various issues for about 300 of the nation’s roughly 3,000 sheriffs in recent years. It is unclear how many sheriffs will ultimately wade into election matters. Many aligned with the groups are from small, rural counties.

But at least three sheriffs involved in the effort — in Michigan, Kansas and Wisconsin — have already been carrying out their own investigations, clashing with election officials who warn that they are overstepping their authority and meddling in an area where they have little expertise.

For conservative activists focused on voter fraud, an alliance with law enforcement seemed natural.

True the Vote initially approached state and federal law enforcement agencies with its election claims, but did not provide sufficient evidence to warrant an investigation, officials said.

https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/ensure-every-american-can-vote/vote-suppression/myth-voter-fraud

The Bren­nan Center’s seminal report The Truth About Voter Fraud conclus­ively demon­strated that most alleg­a­tions of fraud turn out to be base­less and that most of the few remain­ing alleg­a­tions reveal irreg­u­lar­it­ies and other forms of elec­tion miscon­duct. Numer­ous other stud­ies, includ­ing one commis­sioned by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, have reached the same conclu­sion.

https://apnews.com/article/voting-rights-2022-midterm-elections-covid-health-wisconsin-c61fa93a12a1a51d6d9f4e0a21fa3b75

None of the election offices in states that allowed the use of drop boxes in 2020 reported any instances in which the boxes were connected to voter fraud or stolen ballots. Likewise, none reported incidents in which the boxes or ballots were damaged to the extent that election results would have been affected.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/7/14/2039801/-Why-Ask-Are-You-Registered-to-Vote-at-Your-Current-Address-Protecting-the-Right-to-Vote-in-GA

Since 2002 (HAVA), voters have been required to be registered at their current address.

But the primary reason we are reminding people this, and re-registering them if they are not registered at their current address, is that Republican poll watchers are using the National Change of Address database to challenge voter’s right to cast a ballot if they believe the voter isn’t registered at their current address. So even if you are legally registered, but NCoA suggests you or a family member may have moved, you could be challenged, even made to cast a provisional ballot at the polls — and then forced to document you live at the registered address shortly afterward (ballot curing).

The Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights thinks millions of legally cast ballots were not counted because the last step is not completed. And they believe that this disproportionately effects People of Color. I would argue that this is so because Republican and conservative groups are challenging voters in predominately Democratic areas, whereas Democrats don’t. We believe U.S. citizens who are registered should have a right to vote.

As a result, Democratic campaigns can no longer functionally end on election day, but must anticipate continuation at least until the period for ballot curing is over. Activists must start to take that into account, as well. The election won’t be over until (Democratic) ballots are cured!

In the Georgia special runoff, we didn’t let up until Friday, the last day to cure ballots. And I reminded my Albany State organizers of this, because they had participated in tracking down voters whose ballots needed to be cured. But they had forgotten (it wasn’t an exciting memory) and it’s drudge work. Both the new and the old voter suppression laws are all about making voters jump through additional hoops, unnecessary hoops, and we just can’t expect them to do that without being reminded, assisted and even harassed until the final steps are complete.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/7/20/2040849/-Testing-the-Legality-of-the-Georgia-Voter-ID-Law-Canvassing-in-GA

We filled out an Incident Report for every voter who didn’t have the proper picture ID to vote in Georgia, and made a list of all the other people who going our quest on Thursday to provide to the lawyers for the several cases taking Georgia to court to contest the new law. We will also be providing copies of those to the U.S. Dep’t of Justice Civil Rights Division this week. I’ll be walking those over myself. This is the very first piece of proof that Georgia Republicans are intent on suppressing the vote, keeping African-American voters from being able to vote. Yeah, yeah, we all knew that. But now we have real, documented evidence that it is so.

And we won’t stop. We have scheduled 14 more attempts to obtain these free Voter ID cards in the future in 5 Black Belt counties.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/9/1/2049558/-Second-Test-of-the-Georgia-Voter-ID-Law

As part of our targets for our weekly canvasses, we are mindful of the voters the Georgia Secretary of State removed from Georgia's voter files. Walking turf that includes voters who have been removed (or about to be removed) from the voter rolls adds to our message that Democrats Care! and that we are doing something about the GOP’s heavy handedness.

There were 1931 names on the Raffensperger reject list in Houston County. It is hardly surprising that this is twice the number of names on the Dougherty County list given the presence of Robins Air Force Base. So the clusters we included in our canvasses focused outside of Warner Robins, on minority neighborhoods in Houston. Our canvasses have multiple purposes and our biggest goal here is to connect with voters, especially minority voters, and inform them about the recent changes in the law and regulations that might affect them.

Republicans are well-organized and more motivated now. Covid-19 stopped their plans to funnel Democrats and minority voters into precincts in 2020 so they could challenged voters and, if not intimidate them from voting, at least force them to cast provisional ballots and make them take extra steps in order for their votes to be counted.

Republicans have been unleashed. Again.

In the early ’80s, Democrats accused the Republican National Committee and local Republicans of using off-duty police to patrol minority neighborhoods and precincts and other tactics to intimidate primarily minority voters in New Jersey. The lawsuit resulted in a consent decree that restricted the Republican National Committee from continuing these practices.

A federal judge ended those limitations in 2018, and ever since, Republicans have aspired to shape the electorate on election day in order to win elections.

The Trump campaign jumped at the opportunity, as soon as it opened its campaign headquarters in Arlington, VA. Intimidating voters is illegal under federal law, but Republican aspirations went well beyond the thought of voter intimidation. They tried to recruit 50,000 poll watchers, place them in heavily (primarily minority) Democratic precincts and challenge every single voter they could with a variety of rationales. True the Vote as well as Stop the Steal groups are trying to double that number with the same goal — intimidating voters and elongating the process in Democratic areas.

We are ready. Up until Labor Day, Hope Springs from Field PAC will continue to build out both the organizational capacity and the underlying database for cutting this GOP effort off at their knees. All our canvassers ask not only is the person they are talking to registered to vote, but registered to vote at their current address. We have started to curate training videos for poll watchers because some of these states require that poll watchers sit through trainings before they can obtain the needed credentials.

But because we continue to build a database of historical acts of voter suppression and intimidation, we have something that MAGA and True the Vote reactionaries don’t: prior communication with the courts, the Justice Department and local prosecutors. Prior election incident reports will be used to point out concerns to local District and US Attorneys offices before election day. It makes law enforcement aware of past practices, and reminds them of their duties to protect all voters in all precincts. It marries local, state and national efforts to protect the vote.

We are establishing Election Protection Teams who will know that we will call in local law enforcement, the feds or take incidents and disruptions to court, if necessary. Election Protection Teams will recruit, train and staff polling locations with Poll Watchers (inside), Poll Monitors (outside) and Ballot Curing Teams to help voters fix ballot issues before time runs out.

We start now, organizing among our most vulnerable voters, because it gives us the ability to correct issues (like voter registrations at old addresses), keeps voters engaged in the upcoming elections and build a trust network that will allow friends and fellow congregants to make sure that people vote and that their votes count. This is critical for many reasons, but the fact that this is a midterm election *and* the first election after electoral districts have been re-mapped makes it doubly so. Changes in polling locations may double the importance again. Voters want to feel comfortable about casting their votes.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/9/2114121/-Protecting-Democratic-Voters-Pt-II

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