voting rights

GOP war on voting: the GOP myth of rampant voter fraud

by

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave. When first we practise to deceive!”

The Republican Party has for years perpetuated the myth of rampant voter fraud for two purposes: (1) to suppress voter turnout, and (2) to delegitimize Democratic voters.

This GOP mythology has been so pernicious that Greg Sargent at the Washington Post writes today, Trump will claim the election was stolen. This new poll shows GOP voters may believe him.

There’s a simple reason Donald Trump keeps claiming that rampant voter fraud ensures a rigged election whose outcome will be illegitimate, if he loses: Republican voters, and Trump supporters, are inclined to believe him.

Screenshot from 2016-01-26 06:42:51The Public Religion Research Institute released a remarkable new poll this morning that confirms the point. It finds that a huge majority of Republican respondents say voter fraud is a bigger problem than restricted access to voting is. And there is a striking racial divide on this question as well — more on that in a moment.

The poll finds that among Americans overall, only 43 percent have a great deal of confidence that their votes will be counted accurately. That’s unfortunate, to be sure. Meanwhile, the partisan divide is notable: 55 percent of Democrats have a great deal of confidence in the vote counting, while 44 percent of Republicans and 41 percent of Trump supporters feel the same way.

Read more

The GOP’s worst nightmare: boycott the election

by

Question: If Trump supporters actually believe that this election is “rigged” like “The Donald” claims, why bother voting?  Wouldn’t the appropriate response be to boycott the election because the outcome is “rigged”? This is what happens in other countries.

This is the scenario that Brian Beutler raises at The New Republic. Republicans’ Worst Nightmare Isn’t What They Think It Is:

It’s a fool’s errand to search for method in Donald Trump’s campaign tactics, but if you were tasked with ascribing method to his behavior in recent weeks, you’d have to conclude his aim is to further divide his own party and unite the opposition.

* * *

Trump’s ongoing claim that the election is being “rigged” through voter fraud in minority communities, and his threat to reject the validity of the election result, are no exceptions. “I’ll look at it at the time,” Trump told Chris Wallace, the moderator of last week’s debate in Las Vegas, later adding, “I’ll keep you in suspense, OK?”

cartoon_64Republicans were reportedly despondent. A handful of GOP officeholders, and a number of conservative commentators, have since come forward to condemn Trump for vandalizing the underpinnings of democracy. The others who have remained silent, for fear of running afoul of his supporters, must nonetheless be concerned that Trump is undercutting his own turnout efforts by increasing the perception among those supporters that voting is pointless. By contrast, Trump’s efforts to incite voter intimidation and accuse minority voters of ballot-stuffing is at least correlated with, if not causing, an increase in early voting among Democrats.

Trump’s antics are forcing Republicans to confront a nightmare scenario in which they underperform the polls, which are already ominous for down-ballot GOP candidates. But the truly horrifying scenario for them is one they probably haven’t thought of yet, and it isn’t that Trump refuses to concede when Clinton defeats him.

Read more

Maricopa County settles lawsuit re: long voting lines – vote early to avoid those lines

by

Last Thursday, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law announced a settlement that requires Maricopa County to implement a plan to monitor and reduce wait times before the Nov. 8 general election. It must continue the program in each primary and general election through 2020. Biggest Arizona county to revamp polling to avoid long lines:

MaricopaPollLineLawyers’ Committee President Kristen Clarke says the settlement shows county elections officials are serious about avoiding voting problems.

“Arizona’s election officials have acknowledged their debt to voters and are now putting in place the reforms needed to prevent a recurrence of these problems in November,” Clarke said in a statement.

Elizabeth Bartholomew, spokeswoman for the county recorder’s office, said the plan has been in place since early this month.

The county cut polling locations to just 60 from about 200 in 2012, but it returned to the normal 724 polling places for the August state primary and for the general election. The polling place reduction and the fact that independents could not vote as they can in regular primary elections were seen as the two main causes of the problems, which saw some voters waiting for more than five hours to cast their ballots.

The lawsuit was one of several filed after problems with the March 22 election.

Read more

Trump election observers: RNC warns its members not to engage in poll watching or any other so-called ‘ballot security’ measures

by

VotersBack in August, Donald Trump said he was recruiting an army of election observers to guard against a “rigged” election. Trump campaign launches drive to recruit ‘election observers’.

This week, Trump added yet another GOP ratfucker to his team to run his election observer operation. Controversial Republican Mike Roman to run Donald Trump’s ‘election protection’:

Donald Trump’s “election protection” effort will be run by Mike Roman, a Republican operative best known for promoting a video of apparent voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers outside a polling place in 2008.

Roman is to oversee poll-watching efforts as Trump undertakes an unprecedented effort by a major party nominee by calling into question the legitimacy of the popular vote weeks before election day.

Read more

(Update) 10th Circuit rules against Kansas on proof of citizenship requirement for voter registration – what about Arizona?

by

Kansas and Arizona both use a “dual” election system based upon the form of voter registration one uses.

NoVoteBoth states refused to allow those who use the federal voter registration form, which requires only an attestation of U.S. citizenship, to vote in state and local races after losing a legal challenge earlier to require the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to add the state-specific requirement of proof of citizenship to the federal voter registration form for Kansas and Arizona. Voters using the federal voter registration form can only vote in federal races.

This “dual” election system is being litigated in Kansas, and this week a unanimous 10h Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the arguments of Kansas in an 85 page Opinion (.pdf).

Arizona is not a party to this lawsuit, but it has been working in concert with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the GOP’s voter suppression specialist, in challenging the federal voter registration form for proof of citizenship. This decision is thus persuasive precedent to challenge Arizona’s “dual” election system.

Read more