Last Call For Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

Yet another 2022 GOP state redistricting gerrymander struck down as unconstitutional for disenfranchising Black voters, and this time the state in question is Georgia.

 

A federal judge ruled Thursday that Georgia’s district lines must be redrawn to ensure adequate representation of Black voters in Congress and the General Assembly, finding that the state’s maps illegally weakened their political power.

The decision could result in the election of additional Black representatives next year, with Democrats hoping to gain a seat in the U.S. House, where Republicans currently hold a 222-212 majority and control nine of 14 Georgia congressional seats. Before the General Assembly’s 2021 redistricting, the GOP held an 8-6 advantage in Georgia.

U.S. District Judge Steve Jones concluded that the Republican-controlled General Assembly violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits racial discrimination in elections.

Jones’ order requires legislators to create an additional majority-Black congressional district west-metro Atlanta by Dec. 8. His ruling also calls for two more state Senate districts and five more state House districts with Black majorities in the Atlanta and Macon areas.

“Georgia has made great strides since 1965 towards equality in voting,” Jones wrote in his 516-page order. “However, the evidence before this court shows that Georgia has not reached the point where the political process has equal openness and equal opportunity for everyone.”

Georgia Democratic Party Chairwoman Nikema Williams called Thursday’s ruling a “resounding victory” for democracy.

“Republicans knew they couldn’t win on their ideas, so they resorted to redrawing the maps in their favor instead,” she said.

Josh McKoon, chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, called Jones a “partisan Democrat ally.” Jones was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in 2011 by then-President Barack Obama.

“It is simply outrageous that one far left federal judge is invalidating the will of the elected representatives of the people of Georgia who drew fair maps in conformity with longstanding legal principles,” he said.

 

If by "conformity with longstanding legal principles" you mean "the centuries-long history of Southern states disenfranchising Black folk" then yes, Goergia's GOP is definitely conforming.  

Black voters in Georgia accounted for nearly half of the state’s sharp population growth — over 1 million new residents during the past decade — but state legislators shaped districts in a way that resulted in Democrats losing a seat in Congress during last year’s elections. Black voters overwhelmingly support Democrats while most white voters back Republicans.

Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, who leads more than 500 African Methodist Episcopal churches in Georgia and was a witness in the redistricting trial, said Thursday’s order was a “long march to justice.” His organization, the Sixth District of the A.M.E. Church, was a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

“It is unfortunate that, decades after the Civil Rights Movement, we still need to defend and promote the right for the African-American community to vote (but) make no mistake that we will continue to fight for these causes, not only because the facts and the law are on our side, but because democracy is our country’s most important tenant and is always worth fighting for,” Jackson said.

 

You're damn right they are worth fighting for.

 

Black Lives Still Matter.

Redistricting Rodeo, Con't

Democrats are feeling good about recent court decisions that could mean enough redistricting going into the 2024 election that the Dems could regain control of the House.

 

In the past nine days, state and federal judges threw out two congressional maps — and helped Democrats avoid a worst-case scenario in Ohio — kicking off an unusually busy redistricting calendar heading into the election year.

All told, a dozen or more seats across at least six states could be redrawn, increasing the likelihood Democrats could chip away the five-seat GOP House majority through redistricting alone.

Democrats could pick up an extra seat in each of a handful of states, including Florida, Alabama and Louisiana, and perhaps several more in New York. Republicans could still pick up as many as four seats in North Carolina, but the recent rulings put Democrats in a position to offset those losses — and then some.

Redistricting could not only give Democrats a slight edge in their bid to reclaim the majority they lost in 2022 but also increase the number of Black members in their conference. Prospective Democratic candidates in several key states are already eagerly eyeing a rare chance to run for a federal office, and the party is brimming with hope about growing its footprint in the South.

“It’s an incredible win,” Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said of Alabama. “It’s an incredibly important moment.”

The court rulings and new maps coming in the next four months, she said, could determine the 2024 House map.

None of the new maps are final. Higher courts could reverse lower court rulings, especially in Florida. But the recent spate of decisions have swung the momentum toward Democrats, and party operatives have grown far more optimistic about their House map after the recent rulings.

A change in the composition of even just a few districts could have a huge effect. With Republicans’ majority resting on such a narrow margin, the fight to control the House is expected to once again be highly competitive next year, and Democrats are searching for every possible toehold to climb back to the top.

The most notable movement for Democrats has been in a region that’s fallen away from them: the South. Over the past week, courts overturned Republican-drawn maps in Alabama and Florida for weakening the power of Black voters.

Alabama Republicans had thumbed their noses at the federal court’s instructions to redraw a map that it ruled likely violated the Voting Rights Act. They drew a new map this summer with just one majority-Black district — in spite of the court’s instructions to draw a second. The judges threw out the new map last week.

The three-judge panel ruled that the Alabama legislature does not get “a second bite at the apple” and appointed an independent expert to draw new lines by Sept. 25. Alabama Republicans said they will appeal the ruling.

Southern Democrats are thrilled by the prospect of a new majority-Black seat.

The court-appointed expert could draw a new district uniting Montgomery and Mobile — something that has sparked interest from local legislators in both cities. State Rep. Napoleon Bracy Jr., state Sen. Vivian Davis Figures and state Sen. Kirk Hatcher are high on the list of potential contenders.

Another name to watch: Steven Reed, who was just reelected as Montgomery’s first Black mayor. During his mayoral run, he remained pointedly noncommittal on whether he would be interested in running for a new majority-Black district.

 

This would be phenomenal if it panned out. There's every reason however to believe SCOTUS will step in and sink all of these redistricting efforts (except NC, or course). If anything I see Republicans gaining seats after the Roberts Court gets done.

 

I'll be thrilled if I'm wrong, but the conservatives on the court know who is paying them millions to side with the GOP, and they'll deliver.

The Big Lie, Con't

Once again, the actual voter fraud in 2020 and 2022 favored Trump and the GOP, not Democrats.

James Saunders, the 56-year-old Shaker Heights tax attorney convicted last week of voting multiple times in the last two general elections, was sentenced to three years in prison, a judge decided Monday morning.

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Andrew Santoli coupled Saunders' sentence with a $10,000 fine, a punishment, as Santoli detailed in last week's hearing, to match the severe violation against the nation's voting laws.

"You violated the premise that every citizen, regardless of race, creed or religion, speaks in one voice," Santoli told Saunders from the bench last Monday. "Your opinion does not outweigh other citizens."

Throughout the case, the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office presented evidence that Saunders, who traveled regularly to a second home in Pompano Beach, Florida, attempted to cross states lines to vote multiple times, by mail and in person in Broward and Cuyahoga counties.

The case of election fraud was the first of its kind in 2023, county prosecutors present at trial told Scene. Because Saunders' duplicitous votes infringed on federal law, his actions in Florida were under Santoli's, and the court's, jurisdiction.

For both prosecutors present at trial and for Chief Prosecutor Michael O'Malley, the Saunders trial—and its steep sentencing—was a clear deterrent to future violators.

"One person one vote is the foundation of our democracy," O'Malley wrote in a statement. "I think the message is clear: do no commit election fraud in Cuyahoga County."

 

The system works, and it catches the actual vote cheaters.

 

And you know what?

 

It caught Trump and his merry band of clowns too.

A Supreme Week From Hell

With the last week of June upon us, several critical Supreme Court decisions are still awaiting, and these rulings could affect the rights and lives of tens of millions of Americans in the days ahead.

The Supreme Court is set to hand down key decisions this week on student debt relief, affirmative action and federal election laws as it enters the last week of its summer session with 10 cases pending.

The court has given no indication it will break its norm of finishing decisions by the end of June, and the next batch is slated to be released Tuesday morning.

Beyond the decisions, the court is also forming its docket for the next term. The justices on Monday could announce whether they will take up several high-profile cases, including on guns, racial discrimination and qualified immunity.

Here are the remaining cases as the Supreme Court wraps up its annual term:

President Biden’s plan to forgive student debt for more than 40 million borrowers will soon be greenlighted or blocked, depending on how the justices rule.

Biden’s plan would forgive up to $10,000 for borrowers who meet income requirements and up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients.

But the debt relief remains on hold until the Supreme Court resolves two lawsuits challenging the plan.

If either succeeds, the debt relief will be blocked.

During oral arguments, the conservative majority cast doubt that the administration had the authority to cancel the debts, expected to amount to hundreds of billions of dollars.

But before they can strike down the plan as unlawful, the justices must first decide whether any of the challengers have legal standing.

The six GOP-led states and two individual borrowers challenging the plan have promoted various arguments.

Missouri’s argument received the most attention, and conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three liberals in questioning the state’s theory during oral argument.

The cases are Biden v. Nebraska and Department of Education v. Brown.

When the Supreme Court upheld affirmative action in college admissions in 2003, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in her majority opinion made a temporal prediction:

“The Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today,” she wrote.

That landmark decision, Grutter v. Bollinger, marked its 20th anniversary Friday.

It might not reach its 21st.

The justices have been weighing whether to overturn Grutter — and decades of affirmative action programs in higher education along with it — in challenges to admissions policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

During oral argument, the majority appeared skeptical of upholding race-conscious college admissions.

The justices tend to write no more than one majority opinion for each monthly argument session.

Chief Justice John Roberts and conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh have not yet issued majority opinions for any cases argued in November, when the affirmative action challenges were heard, meaning one of them is the likely author.

The cases are Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina.

Web designer Lorie Smith, an evangelical Christian, is challenging Colorado’s public accommodation law on free speech grounds.

Like many other states, Colorado’s law prohibits businesses that serve the public from discriminating based on sexual orientation.

Smith wants to expand her business to create wedding websites. But Colorado’s law would demand she create same-sex wedding websites if she wants to do so for opposite-sex unions, and Smith is vehemently opposed to gay marriage.

The justices are now set to decide whether public accommodation laws, as applied to Smith and other artists, violate the First Amendment by compelling their speech.

The conservative majority signaled support for Smith during oral argument.

Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch appear to be the likely pool of authors because they are the two remaining justices who have not issued majority opinions from a case argued in December.

The case is 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis.

The court is weighing a major election clash that will decide who has the final word on setting federal election rules.

North Carolina Republican lawmakers appealed a state court ruling that struck down their congressional map, promoting to the justices a sweeping argument known as the “independent state legislature” theory.

That theory asserts that state legislatures have exclusive authority to set federal election rules under the Constitution.

Adopting it would claw back the ability of state courts and state constitutions to block legislatures’ congressional map designs and other regulations surrounding federal elections.

It’s possible, however, that the court tosses the case without reaching the theory’s merits.

As the justices considered the case, Republicans regained control of North Carolina’s top court and overturned the underlying decision that struck down the state’s congressional map.

The Supreme Court has been paying close attention to whether they still have jurisdiction in the case, a potential offramp from the high-stakes dispute.

Based on the decisions released so far, Roberts or Gorsuch appears to be the likely author of the majority opinion.

The case is Moore v. Harper.

Again, predicting SCOTUS decisions is something even the experts get wrong, and I'm just a guy with a blog who probably should have walked away a decade ago. But as I'm here and you're reading this, I expect three really awful conservative decisions and a punt on the independent state legislature nonsense, with the court all but begging for cases where they can greatly expand on the precedents set in all four cases.

But if the worst comes to pass, and the Roberts Court sides with NC in the final case there, our democracy is all but finished. The notion that state legislatures can simply determine the electoral college outcome of each state regardless of the vote for president is heartstopping lunacy, and you'd better believe that Republican state legislatures will anoint Republican winners for everything across the board, no matter what the voters actually say or do.

Granted that would mean Democratic state legislatures could simply appoint democrats across the board too, but who knows how far that could go? We don't need to find out.

The point is, this is most likely going to be a dismal week, starting Tuesday.  

A Supreme Surprise Across The Board

As it's June, we're now squarely in Supreme Court Sadness Season to see whether marginalized groups get to keep their rights, and who will have them stripped. But today at least, in two huge decisions, SCOTUS sided with the people.

 

First, a major ruling on Alabama's congressional redistricting and disenfranchisement of Black folk in the state: in a 5-4 decision, SCOTUS sided with a lower court ruling that Alabama's congressional districts violated the Voting Rights Act.

 

The court in a 5-4 vote ruled against Alabama, meaning the map of the seven congressional districts, which heavily favors Republicans, will now be redrawn. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, both conservatives, joined the court's three liberals in the majority.

In doing so, the court — which has a 6-3 conservative majority — turned away the state’s effort to make it harder to remedy concerns raised by civil rights advocates that the power of Black voters in states like Alabama is being diluted by dividing voters into districts where white voters dominate.

In Thursday’s ruling, Roberts, writing for the majority, said a lower court had correctly concluded that the congressional map violated the voting rights law.

He wrote that there are genuine fears that the Voting Rights Act “may impermissibly elevate race in the allocation of political power” and that the Alabama ruling “does not diminish or disregard those concerns."

The court instead “simply holds that a faithful application of our precedents and a fair reading of the record before us do not bear them out here,” Roberts added.

The two consolidated cases arose from litigation over the new congressional district map that was drawn by the Republican-controlled Alabama Legislature after the 2020 census. The challengers, including individual voters and the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, said the map violated Section 2 of the 1965 voting rights law by discriminating against Black voters.

The new map created one district out of seven in the state in which Black voters would likely be able to elect a candidate of their choosing. The challengers say that the state, which has a population that is more than a quarter Black, should have two such districts and provided evidence that such a district could be drawn.

A lower court agreed in ruling last January, saying that under Supreme Court precedent, the plaintiffs had shown that Alabama’s Black population was both large enough and sufficiently compact for there to be a second majority-Black district. The court ordered a new map to be drawn, but the state’s Republican attorney general, Steve Marshall, turned to the Supreme Court, which put the litigation on hold and agreed to hear the case.

Four conservative justices, led by Justice Clarence Thomas, dissented in Thursday's ruling.

Thomas wrote that his preferred outcome “would not require the federal judiciary to decide the correct racial apportionment of Alabama’s congressional seats.”

He added that under the approach taken by the lower court, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act “is nothing more than a racial entitlement to roughly proportional control of elective offices .... wherever different racial groups consistently prefer different candidates.”

Last year, the Supreme Court was divided 5-4 in allowing the Republican-drawn map to be used in November’s election, with Roberts then joining the court’s three liberals in dissent.

Republicans won six of the seven seats in the election, while Democrats won the majority-Black district. With Black voters more likely to vote for Democrats, Democrats might have picked up an additional seat if a new map had been adopted.

The Alabama case was one of several in which the Supreme Court’s decisions may have contributed to Republicans winning their fragile majority in the House of Representatives.

 

It's a narrow win, but a win nonetheless, in a state that will continue to be dominated by the GOP for decades to come. As to when Alabama Republicans get around to redrawing said congressional districts, well, don't hold your breath on that one. I expect that as with Ohio, the state will drag its feet for years on this, and it'll all become moot in 2032 anyway (it may take that long).

 

No, don't expect a more fair map for 2024 elections in Alabama, Ohio, or any other red state. No matter what the Supreme Court says, Republicans know at this level, nobody can enforce a ruling like that anyway..but for today, it's a win. A ruling against this would have effectively ended the Voting Rights Act. Chief Justice Roberts has been relentlessly hostile towards to VRA but this time he held back.

Imagine how racist you have to be to get John Roberts to say "This is a clear violation of voting rights for Black folk."

The other major ruling involved the right for Medicaid patients to sue states in order to provide treatment under the law, and the decision was 7-2 in favor of the spouse of a woman who died after a nursing home refused to provide her care.

The Supreme Court upheld a key mechanism for beneficiaries of federal spending programs to sue if states violate their rights Thursday, the conclusion of a case that spawned protests, hearings and bottomless worry from activists and experts terrified that the Court would use it to hobble programs like Medicaid.

The case grew from a garden-variety Medicaid one, where a nursing home inhabitant’s family alleged that he was ill-treated. But the municipal-run nursing home, Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County, Indiana (HHC), sensing an opportunity, challenged the mechanism to sue writ large.

Experts pounded the alarm: “This case is to Medicaid what Dobbs was to abortion,” Sara Rosenbaum, professor of health law and policy at George Washington University’s school of public health, told TPM.

And activists started devising plans of action to compel the HHC board to drop the case before the right-wing majority could get its hands on it. While those efforts were ultimately unsuccessful — the case went forward, with oral arguments in late 2022 — the coalition got the result they fought for by a large margin: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was joined in her majority opinion by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Chief Justice John Roberts. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented.


Those most invested in the case were shocked by the outcome.

“I think I’m going to cry now,” Bryce Gustafson, an organizer with Indiana’s Citizens Action Coalition and one of the leaders of the push to get the case dropped, told TPM.

At first blush, the decision “looks like a grand slam for rights under Federal spending clause programs,” Tim Jost, professor of law, emeritus, at the Washington and Lee University School of Law, said.


“The Supreme Court upheld the rights of nursing home residents and other Medicaid recipients on all points, reaffirming decades of federal law,” he added. “Only Justice Thomas would have held that programs established under congress’s spending power are not enforceable by individuals.”

HHC, in a statement provided to TPM, insisted that it was just doing its “fiduciary duty” in bringing the case.

“HHC’s goal was to understand from the Supreme Court the status of the governing law on the availability of federal claims regarding its nursing home operations,” a spokesperson said. “With the Court’s definitive answer today that Medicaid-supported nursing home residents have both administrative and federal court remedies for alleged violations, HHC will continue to work to manage those operations safely and effectively and analyze the impact of the decision on those public resources.”

This pathway to sue, known as private rights of action under Section 1983, is critical for holding states accountable to make sure they provide the full services they’re required to within these spending programs. Without it, those who depend on federally-funded, state-administered programs — think Medicaid, SNAP (formerly known as food stamps) or WIC, which helps low-income pregnant women and mothers with young children buy food — are left with little recourse should states stop providing the benefits they’re required to give.

So a reprieve for now, until the next case that threatens rights, and sveral of those are still left undecided heading into the next few weeks. 

Last Call For Lake Of Fire, Con't

Failed Republican professional loser Kari Lake has lost yet again, with an Arizona judge ruling against her idiotic "election fraud" claims for the final time.

 

A Maricopa County judge has affirmed — again — Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs' win in November and rejected Republican Kari Lake's claims that improper signature verification and misconduct affected the outcome.

The ruling comes after Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson heard three days of testimony and argument in his Mesa courtroom May 17-19. That proceeding, an unusual second trial in Lake's legal challenge to her November loss to Hobbs, was limited to a single claim about signature verification.

Lake's legal team argued it could prove signatures were examined in a matter of seconds, so short a timeframe it did not count as verification under state law. Thompson, in a Monday night ruling, disagreed.

"Accepting that argument would require the court to re-write not only the (Election Procedures Manual) but Arizona law to insert a minimum time for signature verification and specify the variables to be considered in the process," he wrote.

Lake has not conceded the race, which she lost by 17,117 votes, or less than 1 percentage point. Instead, she's pressed forward in court asking judges to set aside Hobbs' win, and she is likely to appeal Thompson's latest ruling.

Defense lawyers welcomed Thompson's decision following the case that, while seemingly about signature verification, often veered into larger questions about securing elections and voter trust.

"The court's ruling only confirms what we have known all along: Arizona’s elections are safe, secure, and reliable, and those who help facilitate Arizona’s elections are honest, have the highest integrity, and are committed to the preservation of our democracy," said Craig Morgan, an attorney with Sherman & Howard who represented the secretary of state. "This is a victory for Arizona, our election processes, and voters across the state."

In a statement, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Clint Hickman, a Republican, critiqued Lake's false claims and her effort to "discard the valid votes of hundreds of thousands of Arizona voters."

"When 'bombshells' and 'smoking guns' are not backed up by facts, they fail in court," he said. "This is justice, and this is what happened today in Kari Lake’s election contest."

 

And with Lake's definitive court loss, Maricopa County is quickly pressing for additional fines and sanctions against Lake's legal team. 

Lawyers for Maricopa County have asked a judge to issue sanctions against former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake's legal team for its "heinous and profoundly harmful" claims that the November 2022 election was "rigged."

In a request late Monday, deputy county attorneys laid out five "material misrepresentations of fact" made by Lake's lawyers leading up to and during a three-day trial last week. The attorneys ask the judge to order Lake's attorneys to pay a fine, although they leave the amount up to the court to determine.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson on Monday affirmed Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs' win in November and rejected Lake's claims that improper signature verification and misconduct affected the outcome.

If Thompson agrees to order sanctions, his would be the second court to do so in Lake's six-month legal effort to overturn her loss to Hobbs.

 

Of course, Lake doesn't care in the least. She has her eyes set on bigger things, like failing her way into the US Senate.

Former Republican candidate for governor Kari Lake on Tuesday pledged to appeal her latest courtroom loss in her effort to unseat Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.

"We're also going to continue to, not only raise funds, but energy, for our legal team to continue pushing our case to the United States Supreme Court," Lake said in a news conference outside her campaign headquarters that pivoted between grievances over 2022, looking forward to 2024, and taking on reporters in Lake's characteristic combative style.

 

Why should any Republican accept an election loss ever again?

In her news conference, Lake repeatedly made false claims that contradicted Thompson's latest ruling and that were not substantiated by two other courts — the state Court of Appeals and Arizona Supreme Court — that have considered the case. She called Hobbs a "fraud who is sitting in the Governor's Office" and alleged "criminals and crooks" operate elections.

“The courts just ruled that this corrupt election will stand," Lake said. "The courts just ruled that our elections can run lawlessly. The courts have ruled that anything goes. Well, we can play by those same rules.”

She also announced Tuesday a vague plan to register voters and "chase ballots," signaling a shift in her focus as her appeals continue to unfold. The former candidate said she would spend millions of dollars on that effort through her Save Arizona Fund. What her own political future holds is uncertain, and Lake repeated on Tuesday she was considering a run for U.S. Senate next year.

"I haven’t made up my mind on that," she told reporters.

 

In a three-way Senate race with Kyrsten Sinema and Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, I expect Lake would have an excellent chance at winning.

Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

Republicans are well aware that if they limit voting eligibility only to older, white people who can afford to take time off on a Tuesday in November and make it impossible for other people to do so, they'll win every time.

 

A top Republican legal strategist told a roomful of GOP donors over the weekend that conservatives must band together to limit voting on college campuses, same-day voter registration and automatic mailing of ballots to registered voters, according to a copy of her presentation reviewed by The Washington Post.

Cleta Mitchell, a longtime GOP lawyer and fundraiser who worked closely with former president Donald Trump to try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, gave the presentation at a Republican National Committee donor retreat in Nashville on Saturday.

The presentation — which had more than 50 slides and was labeled “A Level Playing Field for 2024” — offered a window into a strategy that seems designed to reduce voter access and turnout among certain groups, including students and those who vote by mail, both of which tend to skew Democratic.

Mitchell did not respond to a request for comment, and it is unclear whether she delivered the presentation exactly as it was prepared on her PowerPoint slides. But in addition to the presentation, The Post listened to audio of portions of the presentation obtained by liberal journalist Lauren Windsor in which Mitchell discussed limiting campus and early voting.

“What are these college campus locations?” she asked, according to the audio. “What is this young people effort that they do? They basically put the polling place next to the student dorm so they just have to roll out of bed, vote, and go back to bed.”

The GOP has not formally endorsed Mitchell’s plan but has worked closely with her since Trump left office. The presentation made clear that at least some key figures within the party remain intent on tightening rules for voting and elections. The persistence of the message as the 2024 vote approaches comes despite the fact that candidates who emphasized Trump’s stolen election narrative were repudiated in many key statewide races in the 2022 midterms.

After the presentation, Mitchell was seen at the Four Seasons hotel bar, meeting with donors and Republican strategists.

“As the RNC continues to strengthen our Election Integrity program, we are thankful for leaders like Cleta Mitchell who do important work for the Republican ecosystem. Our guests in Nashville were grateful for her to travel to the event and share her efforts,” said Keith Schipper, an RNC spokesman.

Mitchell told her RNC audience that her organization, the Election Integrity Network, “is NOT about winning campaigns,” according to the text of the presentation. But the slides gave little other rationale for why campus or mail voting should be curtailed. At another point in the presentation, she said the nation’s electoral systems must be saved “for any candidate other than a leftist to have a chance to WIN in 2024.”

 

They don't want you to vote.

 

That's the whole story.

 

Vote.

The Road To Gilead Goes Through Idaho

Idaho Republicans are looking to classify "abortion trafficking" as a state felony, and while so far the legislation they are proposing only applies to transporting a minor without parental consent to get abortion services of any kind, it's only a matter of time before the state decides any woman, not just minors, would be subject to this new criminal felony.

 

Idaho already has some of the most extreme abortion restrictions on the books, with nearly all abortions banned in the state and an affirmative defense law that essentially asserts any doctor who provides an abortion is guilty until proven innocent. And now Idaho Republicans have set their sights on hindering certain residents from traveling out of state to get an abortion.

House Bill 242, which passed through the state House and is likely to move quickly through the Senate, seeks to limit minors’ ability to travel for abortion care without parental consent. The legislation would create a whole new crime — dubbed “abortion trafficking” — which is defined in the bill as an “adult who, with the intent to conceal an abortion from the parents or guardian of a pregnant, unemancipated minor, either procures an abortion … or obtains an abortion-inducing drug” for the minor. “Recruiting, harboring, or transporting the pregnant minor within this state commits the crime of abortion trafficking,” the legislation adds.

Abortion trafficking would be a felony, and those found guilty would face two to five years in prison. The legislation also includes a statute allowing the Idaho attorney general to supersede any local prosecutor’s decision, preemptively thwarting any prosecutor who vows not to enforce such an extreme law.

Since the bill would criminalize anyone transporting a pregnant minor within the state to get an abortion or to obtain medication abortion, it could apply to an aunt who drives a pregnant minor to the post office to pick up a package that includes abortion pills. Or it could target an older sibling who drives a pregnant minor to a friend’s house to self-manage an abortion at home. Either violation would carry a minimum sentence of two years in prison.

The legislation doesn’t actually say anything about crossing state lines, but Republican lawmakers are creative. Most pregnant people in Idaho are not traveling to obtain an abortion elsewhere in the state, since nearly all abortions are illegal in Idaho; they’re traveling to the border with the intent of crossing state lines, likely into Washington, Oregon or Montana, to get an abortion there.

“Technically, they’re not criminalizing people driving in Washington state with a minor. The crime is the time that someone is driving the minor in Idaho,” said David Cohen, a law professor at Philadelphia’s Drexel University whose work focuses on constitutional law and abortion policy.

“They’re going to say what they’re doing is just criminalizing actions that take place completely within Idaho, but in practice what they’re criminalizing is the person helping the minor,” Cohen, who also litigates abortion-related cases with the Women’s Law Project nonprofit, told HuffPost.

State Rep. Barbara Ehardt (R), one of the sponsors of the abortion trafficking bill, said plainly that the intent of the legislation is to limit minors’ ability to travel out of state without parental consent.

“It’s already illegal to get an abortion here in the state of Idaho,” she told HuffPost. “So, it would be taking that child across the border, and if that happens without the permission of the parent, that’s where we’ll be able to hold accountable those that would subvert a parent’s right.”

In the past, a bill like this would have been brushed aside as political fodder, never to become law. But Idaho has seen a Christian white nationalist insurgency in recent years, helping to create a Legislature that’s quickly gone down the far-right rabbit hole — including by introducing legislation that would bring back firing squad executions, or make it a crime punishable by life in prison for a parent to get gender-affirming care for their transgender child.

 

More red states will pass legislation like this in the years ahead, and eventually, as I've been saying for nine months now, someone will pass a law making it a crime for anyone to cross a border to get an abortion.  That's going to lead to a huge Supreme Court fight, probably in 2024, where the Roberts Court is going to uphold the law for a state, and several more of these laws will pass.

I guarantee you this is coming.

The only solution is to vote out Republicans.

You can complain about Dems all you want, but there's zero chance of national legislation fixing all this and fixing the Supreme Court as long as Republicans remain with enough power to block it.

I know people don't believe in voting our way out of this, but not doing so hands everything over to these bastards.

Last Call For Virginia Is For Haters, Con't

Supposedly "moderate" Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin has just eliminated the right to vote for hundreds of thousands of Virginians, announcing that his office will no longer automatically restore the right to vote for felons who serve out their sentences. 

 

Governor Glenn Youngkin just gave himself a lot more power to pick and choose Virginia voters. The Republican governor’s administration told state lawmakers in a letter last week that he was rescinding his predecessors’ policy of automatically restoring the voting rights of people with felony convictions.

Going forward, Virginians will no longer regain their rights when released from prison—the most recent policy announced by Virginia officials in 2021—nor at any later point, unless Youngkin deems them to be worthy on an individual basis.

His decision, which a future governor could alter, sidelines many residents who expected they would get to vote in Virginia elections.

“I’ve never voted in my life. I was looking forward to voting this year,” Sincere Allah, who was released from prison the week Youngkin was inaugurated in 2022 and who has since waited to learn if his rights will be restored, told Bolts, in reference to the state’s upcoming legislative and prosecutorial elections. “I can pay taxes, I can be held to the same standard as everyone else when it comes to laws and rules and regulations, but I have no say-so or representation.”

Youngkin’s announcement also puts Virginia in a category all its own: It is the only state where someone who is convicted today over any felony is presumed to be barred from voting for life, with no remedy other than receiving a discretionary act of clemency from the governor.

Virginia’s constitution permanently disenfranchises people with a felony conviction. Only Iowa and Kentucky have such a harsh rule on the books—other states with a lifetime ban, like Mississippi, do not apply it to all felonies—but their sitting governors have each issued executive orders that automatically restore at least some people’s voting rights upon completion of their sentences.

For much of the last decade, Virginia governors adopted a similar approach, enabling hundreds of thousands of people to regain the franchise. Anyone whose rights have already been restored will retain the ability to vote. But for others, Youngkin has now rolled back those reforms.

“We are back to 1902-era policy,” Democratic state Senator Scott Surovell tweeted last week after Youngkin’s administration notified him of the change, in reference to the 1902 convention that designed Virginia’s disenfranchisement system with the explicit goal of disenfranchising Black residents: “discrimination within the letter of the law,” as one delegate termed it. That legacy lived on; as recently as 2016, 22 percent of Black Virginians were barred from voting.

“This language in our constitution is from extraordinarily dark origins,” Surovell told Bolts in a follow-up. “I thought we’d settled this debate over the past twelve years of reform, but apparently… anything’s on the table.”

 

When I say the chief goal of the Republican Party is the eliminate the entire Civil Rights Era and take us back to a Jim Crow time where the citizenship rights of anyone who isn't a white, straight Christian male are completely optional, this is precisely what I mean. It's not a dramatic construct, it's the actual truth.

 

If you can't win in the marketplace of ideas, reduce the number of people allowed in the marketplace.

 

It's the Republican way!

Burning Lake Of Fire, Con't

Professional election loser Kari Lake had nearly all of her "election fraud" case tossed by the Arizona Supreme Court this week. 

 

Arizona's top court has declined to hear Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake's challenge to her election loss, but kept the case alive by sending one of Lake's claims back to a county judge to review.

Lake asked the Arizona Supreme Court to consider her case after a Maricopa County judge and state appeals court rejected her claims that she was the rightful governor, or that a new election should take place.

The former television news anchor made seven legal claims in her case, six of which the state's top court said were properly dismissed by lower courts, according to an opinion released Wednesday written by Chief Justice Robert Brutinel.

Those included claims that tens of thousands of ballots were "injected" into the election, which Lake called an "undisputed fact" in her lawsuit, as well as alleging that problems with tabulation machines disenfranchised "thousands" of voters.

The opinion said Lake's challenges were "insufficient to warrant the requested relief under Arizona or federal law."

But the sixth legal claim, which has to do with Lake's allegation that Maricopa County did not follow signature verification procedures, must receive a second look by a county judge, the court ordered. The county and appeals courts interpreted Lake’s signature-related challenge as applying to the policies themselves, not how the policies were applied in 2022, and dismissed her claim based on grounds that she filed her legal challenge too late.

But that was an error, the Supreme Court said, noting, "Lake could not have brought this challenge before the election."

Lake's claim invokes a section of Arizona law that requires signatures on early ballot envelopes be checked against the signature already in a voter's file, and sets the process and timeline for verifying, or "curing," a ballot if the signature doesn't appear to match. She claimed Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer's office accepted "a material number" of ballots with unmatched signatures last year.

The Supreme Court did not evaluate Lake's signature claim on its merit, only on the legal justifications offered by prior courts. The court's order requires Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson to evaluate that single element of Lake's case again to determine if the claim was properly dismissed previously, or if Lake can prove “votes (were) affected ‘in sufficient numbers to alter the outcome of the election.’”

The Supreme Court quoted the appeals court ruling, saying that to prove her claim, Lake must provide a “competent mathematical basis to conclude that the outcome would plausibly have been different, not simply an untethered assertion of uncertainty.”

In response to the ruling, Richer, who also is a Republican, said, “I of course have the utmost respect for both the people sitting on the court and the court as an institution, and we’ll now proceed and win, again, for about the 30th time."

His office, as well as the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, have defended their work in numerous lawsuits stemming from the November election, and became targets for attack among losing Republican candidates and their allies.

Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, a defendant in the lawsuit, did not comment Wednesday evening on the court's ruling.

Alex Nicoll, a spokesperson for Lake, declined comment, noting Lake’s longstanding refusal to speak to The Arizona Republic. In a separate statement sent to The Republic and other media outlets, Lake made various claims that cannot be verified and overstated the court’s ruling. She said she was "thrilled" by the court's decision and that the signature issue “alone casts the veracity of Katie Hobb’s victory in serious doubt.”

In addition to further review of the signature verification piece, there is another unresolved issue in the case: whether Lake should face sanctions for filing what Hobbs’ attorneys have dubbed a frivolous and bad-faith lawsuit. Lawyers for Hobbs asked the court to order Lake to cover their costs and attorneys' fees, and Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes’ lawyers sought unspecified sanctions as well.

The Supreme Court said Lake, Hobbs and Fontes could file court arguments on the issue, but restricted those arguments only to Lake’s factual claims, such as that over 35,000 ballots were “added” to affect the outcome of the election.

Brutinel succinctly shot down that claim.

“The record does not reflect that 35,563 unaccounted ballots were added to the total count,” he wrote in the court’s opinion. “The motions for sanctions will be considered in due course.”

 

So Lake may have a legal claim to a small part of her case, which isn't actually something that would have affected the outcome of the election at all. Meanwhile, legal sanctions against her for wasting the state's time are being considered.

 

The bigger picture here is that Lake's claims that the election was stolen from her were laughed out of court completely.  It's ball game, and the only questions left are how badly Lake is going to be made to pay for her farce.

Last Call For The Devils Already Down In Georgia

As I have been predicting for months now, Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis is going to find indicting Donald Trump or any of his minions nearly impossible because she almost certainly will be stopped by Georgia Republicans under GOP Gov. Brian Kemp.

 

To Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Atlanta, several bills in the Georgia legislature that would make it easier to remove local prosecutors are racist and perhaps retaliatory for her ongoing investigation of former President Donald J. Trump.

To the Republican sponsors of the bills, they are simply a way to ensure that prosecutors enforce the laws of the state, whether they agree with them or not.

Two of the measures under consideration would create a new state oversight board that could punish or remove prosecutors for loosely defined reasons, including “willful misconduct.” A third would sharply reduce the number of signatures required to seek a recall of a district attorney.

The proposals are part of a broader push by conservative lawmakers around the country to rein in prosecutors whom they consider too liberal, and who in some cases are refusing to prosecute low-level drug crimes or enforce strict new anti-abortion laws.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida last year suspended a Democratic prosecutor in the Tampa area, Andrew Warren, after Mr. Warren said, among other things, that he would not prosecute anyone seeking abortions. The Republican-controlled Pennsylvania House voted in November to impeach Larry Krasner, the liberal district attorney in Philadelphia. And a Republican-backed bill currently under consideration in the Indiana legislature would allow a special prosecuting attorney, appointed by the state attorney general, to step in if a local prosecutor is “categorically refusing to prosecute certain crimes.”

The debate in Georgia is unfolding amid mounting concerns over urban crime, particularly in Atlanta. But Ms. Willis has been a centrist law-and-order prosecutor who has targeted some prominent local rappers in a sprawling gang case. She is also part of the changing face of justice in Georgia: The state now has a record number of minority prosecutors — 14 of them — up from five in 2020, the year Ms. Willis, who is Black, was voted into office.

And of course, there is the Trump inquiry, the latest accelerant to the partisan conflagrations that have consumed the increasingly divided state for years. The subject of Ms. Willis’s investigation is whether Mr. Trump and his allies tried to flout Georgia’s democratic process with numerous instances of interference after his narrow 2020 election loss in the state.

Ms. Willis has said she is considering building a racketeering or conspiracy case. Anticipation is rising, particularly since the forewoman of a special grand jury charged with looking into the matter spoke publicly last month, saying that the jury’s final report, which is still largely under wraps, recommended indictments for more than a dozen people.

Ms. Willis must now decide whether to bring a case to a regular grand jury, which can issue indictments. A decision ‌could come as early as ‌May.

In the Republican-controlled legislature, as of Friday afternoon, the prospects seemed favorable for the bills creating an oversight committee. They were dimmer for the recall election bill, which would lower the number of registered voters required to sign a petition to prompt a recall of prosecutors from the current 30 percent, which is standard for local elected offices, to just 2 percent. The measure was introduced after some high-profile Trump supporters in Georgia promoted the idea of a recall campaign against Ms. Willis, even though such an effort would be unlikely to succeed in Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold.

Those supporters include United States Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who tweeted in August that Ms. Willis was using taxpayer funds “for her personal political witch hunt against Pres Trump, but will NOT prosecute crime plaguing Atlanta!”

Ms. Willis, who first described the bills as racist in a State Senate hearing last month, repeated the accusation in an interview at her downtown Atlanta office this week, pointing out that the majority of Georgians now live within the jurisdictions of the 14 minority prosecutors.

“For the hundreds of years we’ve had prosecutors, this has been unnecessary,” Ms. Willis said, referring to the bills. “But now all of a sudden this is a priority. And it is racist.”

Lawmakers have fired back. At the hearing last month, State Senator Bill Cowsert, a Republican who is the brother-in-law of Gov. Brian Kemp, said, “For you to come in here and try to make this about racism, that this bill is directed at any district attorney or solicitor because of racism, is absurd, and it’s offensive, and it’s a racist statement on its own.”

Senator Brian Strickland, a Republican who was presiding over the meeting, told Ms. Willis, “You’re being emotional.”

Lawmakers have insisted the new legislative push is unrelated to the Trump investigation. In an interview this week, State Senator Randy Robertson, a Republican sponsoring one of the oversight panel bills, said the legislation was inspired by the case of Mark Jones, a prosecutor from Mr. Robertson’s district who was imprisoned in 2021 for public corruption.

“Leading up to that, everybody was kind of scrambling around, saying, ‘How do we — you know, this guy’s doing a terrible job, how do we get rid of him?’” said Mr. Robertson, adding that existing remedies were insufficient. “There was really no avenue for individuals to go to.”

 

I nearly guarantee these measures will be passed and signed into law by Gov. Deal, and I guarantee you that Georgia Republicans will attempt to remove DA Willis from office. They will have to in order to stop Trump from going to state prison.

Willis will have to be disposed of. in some way, and this is the route they will take in the weeks and months ahead. The oversight board that I expect will be created later this spring will have one emergent goal, to remove Willis from office before she can indict Trump. Even if she does press charges, "willful misconduct" will be found and the case dropped.

I told you this was coming, and now the plan is pretty clear. Fani Willis's days as DA are numbered.

Last Call For Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

Arizona Republicans are doing their dead-level best to destroy voting in the state, vowing that if they can't win, then nobody will.

 

Officials in a rural, Republican-controlled county in Arizona have voted to delay certifying the results of this month's midterm elections and miss the state's legal deadline of Monday, despite finding no legitimate problems with the local counts.

The move by the board of supervisors for Cochise County in southeastern Arizona, near Tucson, puts more than 47,000 Arizonans' votes at risk and is expected to set off court action. The state's secretary of state's office plans to file a lawsuit on Monday, spokesperson Sophia Solis said by email.

"There is no reason for us to delay," said the board's chair, Ann English, a Democrat, whose vote was outnumbered by the county's two Republican supervisors, Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd.

Before Monday's vote, Arizona's state election director, Kori Lorick, said in a statement that the state's secretary of state "will use all available legal remedies to compel compliance with Arizona law and protect Cochise County voters' right to have their votes counted" if the board failed to complete its "non-discretionary duty."

 

The problem with that of course is that the Arizona GOP may actually end up losing more races as a result of Cochise County's Republicans disenfranchising themselves like the childish idiots they are.

Board members who voted against certification would face the very real prospect of civil and criminal penalties. And in all likelihood, they would achieve nothing, as Arizona courts would almost certainly step in and order the board to abide by its legal obligations and certify the results.

But in the unlikely event that the courts didn’t intervene, the board’s gambit would only hurt the voters of Cochise County and the candidates that they support.

If the board has still refused to certify by the Dec. 5 deadline for state certification (which can be extended to Dec. 8, but no later), the law requires that the secretary of state still move ahead with the statewide canvass of results. In that case, the statewide canvass would not include the results from Cochise County, which is heavily Republican.

This mass disenfranchisement of Cochise County voters − at the hands of their own board of supervisors − could result in flipping the final results in a number of tight races, with Republican candidates and voters paying the price. For example, Republican Juan Ciscomani would likely lose his congressional race to Democrat Kirsten Engel.

That decision could prove decisive in the race for state superintendent, handing Democrats a win over their Republican opponents. This outcome would be even more likely if another heavily Republican county, such as Mohave County, followed the lead of Cochise County and likewise refused to certify. 

 

Again, the law makes it clear that these Republican scoundrels don't have any recourse. The courts will almost certainly rule against the county and possibly they could end up in jail. 

But if they are willing to disenfranchise their own voters, let the Democratic candidates take the wins.

And if you don't think 10 or 20 thousand votes matter in the grand scheme of things...

 

A swing of 3,340 votes from GOP to Dem in the 5 closest House races would have allowed Dems to hold the House.

— Tom Bonier (@tbonier) November 27, 2022

 

We lost the House by less than 4k.

 

Always remember that.

Ridin' With Biden, Con't

In the wake of last week's assassination attempt on Nancy Pelosi by a right-wing domestic terrorist that invaded the Pelosi's home, President Biden laid out his final argument before the midterms why MAGA trolls are the biggest threat to American democracy in decades.

Signs of strain in the nation’s democratic system mounted Wednesday with less than a week left before the midterm elections, as President Biden warned that candidates who refuse to accept Tuesday’s results could set the nation on a “path to chaos.”

Biden’s grim assessment in a speech Wednesday evening came as the FBI and other agencies have forecast that threats of violence from domestic extremists are likely to be on the rise after the election. In Arizona, voters have complained of intimidation by self-appointed drop-box monitors — some of them armed — prompting a federal judge to set strict new limits. And the GOP has stepped up litigation in multiple states in an effort to toss out some ballots and to expand access for partisan poll watchers.

Speaking at Washington’s Union Station — steps from the U.S. Capitol, which was attacked by a pro-Trump mob in the wake of the nation’s last major election — Biden warned of an ongoing assault on American democracy. The president spoke as a growing number of major Republican candidates have said they may follow in former president Donald Trump’s footsteps and refuse to concede should they lose.

“It’s unprecedented. It’s unlawful. And it is un-American,” Biden said. “As I’ve said before, you can’t love your country only when you win.”

The virtually unprecedented presidential message — a plea to Americans to accept the basic tenets of their democracy — came as millions of voters have already cast their ballots or are planning to go to the polls on Election Day, and as some election officials expressed confidence that the system would hold.

Biden spoke days after an assailant armed with a hammer broke into the San Francisco home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and, according to police and prosecutors, bludgeoned her 82-year-old husband, Paul. Biden opened by addressing the gruesome early Friday morning assault.

“We must, with one overwhelming unified voice, speak as a country and say there’s no place, no place for voter intimidation or political violence in America, whether it’s directed at Democrats or Republicans,” he said. “No place, period. No place, ever.”

Last week, multiple government agencies, including the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, issued a memo warning that threats posed by domestic violent extremists would probably increase in the 90-day post election period, according to a copy of the document obtained by The Washington Post.

The memo listed possible scenarios that could trigger more violence, including “actual or perceived efforts to suppress voting access.”

“Following the 2022 midterm election, perceptions of election-related fraud and dissatisfaction with electoral outcomes likely will result in heightened threats of violence against a broad range of targets — such as ideological opponents and election workers,” the memo read.

 

Judging from the screeching and howling from the right today, Biden's plea for  basic human dignity is falling on deaf ears. As John Ganz writes, Biden is on the right side of history here, and you can't make people who don't want democracy actually want democracy.

The idea that one party, even if it has a clear-cut ideological or partisan agenda, can also embody the democracy as such has a lot of historical precedent. That was part of Roosevelt’s appeal. It’s also an old tradition in France, where the entire left would periodically identify itself with the republic and adopt a politics of “republican defense” against the right, usually when the right would engage in some coup-like behavior. The last great example of this, the Popular Front of the 1930s, was not a government of centrist compromise but quite radical in the social reforms it pushed through. The idea was that the surge of the far-right suggested a fundamental social problem that needed to be remedied through bold action. Did that approach work? Well, in some ways yes and in some ways no, but let’s leave that for another time.

Democracy is not simply the presence of a multi- or two-party system: That’s a necessary but not sufficient condition. There are some actual substantive commitments that come with it. One of the most important of these is a belief in popular sovereignty, which is the principle that virtually all Republican politics are designed to get around: either in the old fashioned form of Senatorial or Judicial anti-majoritarianism and gerrymandering or its more recent politics of menacing putschism and election denial. The former is bad, but conforms to the rule of law and one hopes can be remedied over time. The latter breaks the system. Fused together, as they are now, they form the basis of potential one-party rule.

Look, they even say it all the time—“We’re a republic, not a democracy,”—or some such similar bullshit. It’s just the simple truth: They don’t want the country to be a democracy anymore. They know it. We know it. But for some reason all these pundits say we shouldn’t say it. The centrist pundit, in either his cynical or naive form, loves to warn about the dangers of rhetoric, but this kind of equivocation about the parties sets the predicate for political cynicism and resignation: everyone shrugging their shoulders and saying, “Well, they are both bad, they Democrats have their authoritarian side, too, after all. I mean, look at all that manipulative ‘ saving democracy’ talk.” It also allows us to settle for the curtailing of democracy, but not an absolute destruction: some kind of hybrid regime: “Well, it’s not really an authoritarian dictatorship, there’s an opposition, after all, look, there’s still a Democratic mayor of…Ann Arbor.”

Are the Democrats incompetent, cynical, flailing, etc.? Of course. After all, this is the Democratic Party we are talking about. But, as always, they are still not the Republicans.

 

Choose a side, folks.

The Big Lie, Local Edition

Here in Kentucky, Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams is under heavy fire for not being part of The Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 election.

 

Months ahead of the midterm election in Kentucky, Secretary of State Michael Adams continues to find himself combating election conspiracy fallout from the 2020 election and the primary in May.

That is some of what he shared with an audience Wednesday as guest speaker at Paducah Rotary Club's weekly meeting at the Carson Center.

Over recent weeks, Adams has been vocal on social media to shut down false claims of violations to voter integrity in Kentucky.

"I am really concerned about these conspiracy theorists making it harder for us to get poll workers. I don't want poll workers to feel like they're having to sit there, it's a long day as it is, and then have angry people come up and accuse them of fraud. It's ridiculous," Adams said.

Adams himself has been the target of baseless claims accusing him of overseeing voter fraud. Just last week he reported another death threat he had received to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Adams also voiced concern at an up-tick in demands for a recount following an election.

"What I don't want to have is abusive process for people who lost by a landslides demand recounts. Recounts are far more demanding on our county clerks and our election officials. They put a great strain on our process. They mean that we can't use the machines for voting because they're locked down. We've had five county clerks in the state resign in the last month alone, because, it's not just one thing, but in part it's the abuse they're getting from people and the absurd demands that they're getting from people," Adams said.

He said one of the ways he can thwart disinformation about alleged election irregularities is by traveling the state and talking with people one on one.

"All I can do is handle Kentucky. All I can do is talk to Kentuckians about what Kentucky does right. We've got a great record. We've made enormous strides improving our process that last few years making it more accessible, making it more secure, banning practices that have led to fraud in our state and other states, requiring an ID to vote, but also expanding access for our voters so they can go vote more easily. Not just having one arbitrary day but multiple days to pick to go vote," Adams said.

 

Which is true. 

Despite the famous quote attributed to Mark Twain about "When the end of the world comes, I'd rather be in Kentucky because it's 20 years behind" (which, by the way, Twain never actually said) it really does seem like the Commonwealth really is 20 years behind, back in the 2002 era of merely evil, greedy Republicans like McConnell instead of the full-on fascist election deniers like we're seeing in several other Secretary of State races in 2022.

To his credit, Adams is merely an evil, enabling Republican in a state where Republicans win by 15-20 points.

But I expect Adams is going to face a fierce primary challenge from a Trumpian election denier next year.

And as far as 2022 elections go, well, expect the goofballs in the state legislature to interfere with more "voter integrity" legislation should any Democrats actually win in November.

 

Lact Call For Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

Florida GOP Gov. Ron Desantis's election police are doing exactly what I said he would do with them: turning them into his personal election Gestapo to terrorize Black and brown voters in the state.

 

In a made-for-TV spectacle Thursday focused on the work of his new “election crimes” state law enforcement office, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) declared that 20 out of 11.1 million votes cast in the 2020 election in the state had been submitted by people allegedly voting illegally.

The event included all of the necessary law-and-order dress-up: Held in the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, DeSantis spoke in front of a wall of uniformed law enforcement officers and behind a podium labeled “ELECTION INTEGRITY.”

The governor’s remarks were punctuated by the cheers of an audience in the courtroom’s jury box and public gallery, which held up signs, distributed minutes earlier, that read “MY VOTE COUNTS.”

The Washington Post reported that a volunteer with the Palm Beach County Republican Party monitored who entered the room, and that the Democratic vice mayor of Fort Lauderdale — where the event was held – was denied entry.

Joe Scott, Broward County’s supervisor of elections, told The Miami Herald his office hadn’t received any advanced notice on the substance of the press event; rumors swirled ahead of time that DeSantis was coming down to announce Scott’s suspension.

“They were very mysterious about it, with everybody. Nobody really knew what it was about,” Scott told the Herald. “You’re making an election-related announcement in my backyard, and they didn’t tell me anything about it.”

During Thursday’s event, Peter Antonacci, the DeSantis-appointed director of the Election Crimes office, claimed without evidence that illegal voting may have swayed a 2021 special congressional election — though the race he referred to was a Democratic primary in a single congressional district, not a statewide general election.

“You may think that 20 voters is not a lot. But you’re in Broward County and you know that you just elected a person to Congress here this year by five votes,” Antonacci said, adding: “I’m certain that in that tranche of voters, there were plenty of illegal ballots cast, and it is just awfully unfair to the supporters of political candidates, to the candidates and to the public at large.”

DeSantis didn’t go into detail about the alleged offenders, except to say that they had at some point been convicted of either murder or sexual assault, and then, at some time after that, “they went ahead and voted anyways.”

People with those convictions aren’t eligible to have their voting rights restored in Florida. But, as the Herald noted, the Florida Division of Elections is required to inform county supervisors of their findings of voter eligibility, and it’s not clear whether that occurred in these cases.

Though DeSantis said 20 people were being charged, a press release listed only 17 people, most in their 50s or 60s: The other three, Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokesperson Gretl Plessinger told TPM, have not yet been taken into custody.

It’s not clear yet, because Plessinger did not make charging documents available, how much the defendants knew about their alleged criminal activity; in another recent case of alleged election crimes in Florida, an Alachua County election official registered several people in government custody to vote even though they were allegedly not eligible. The election official was cleared of wrongdoing, while the incarcerated would-be voters now face charges.

“They actually helped us fill out the voter rights registration forms,” one of the defendants in that case, John Rivers, told Fresh Take Florida. “They came in and recruited us to vote, and then you know, told us that we could vote and now they’re charging us for voting.”

“I don’t understand how I can be charged with voter misconduct,” said another defendant, Dedrick De’Ron Baldwin. “All I was doing was what they told me I had a right to do.”

On Thursday, DeSantis said the 20 voters he announced were facing charges had committed “election fraud.” But the Florida Department of Law Enforcement press release actually listed two alleged violations: “false affirmation – voting or elections,” and “voting as an unqualified elector,” both third-degree felonies.

More important than the details of the alleged violations, apparently, was praising Ron DeSantis. Ashley Moody, Florida’s attorney general, commended “our very detail-oriented governor.” And DeSantis himself paused at one point to note the source of all the hubbub.

“This was my idea!” the governor exclaimed.

 

So they hunted down people with prior convictions and will almost certainly send them back to state prison for decades, even though they had served their time and even worse, they were told they were allowed to vote by state voting officials and registered by them.

Three Orange County residents with felony convictions accused by Florida’s new elections police force of illegally voting told agents they believed their civil rights had been restored before they cast ballots in 2020, according to affidavits released Friday.

“They did not go through any process. They did not get their voting rights restored, and yet they went ahead and voted anyway,” DeSantis said at the news conference. “That is against the law and now they will pay the price.”

But state Sen. Jeff Brandes, who wrote the bill implementing Amendment 4, said it was lawmakers’ intent that ineligible people would be “granted some grace” by the state if they registered to vote without the intent to commit fraud.

“Some of the individuals did check with [Supervisors of Elections] and believed they could register,” the St. Petersburg Republican said on Twitter.

The three Orange residents accused of voter fraud told investigators they thought they could vote and had received voter ID cards, according to affidavits. All of them affirmed on voting applications that their rights had been restored.

Stribling, who was convicted of second-degree murder in 1993, told an agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement that she had “served her time in prison and was no longer a convicted felon,” an affidavit said. She also said she believed that her rights were restored at a clemency hearing but could not provide paperwork backing that up.

“Stribling believed that her rights were restored because she completed the voter registration application and received a voter registration card,” Special Agent Ryan Bliss wrote in the affidavit. “[Special Agent] McGinley asked Stribling if she had the right to own a firearm restored and Stribling answered in the negative because she is a felon.”

Washington, who was convicted of attempted sexual battery, told agents a probation officer told him that his civil rights would be “automatically restored upon his release from prison,” according to another affidavit.

 

Given the Byzantine mess that Florida's system to restore voting eligibility for released felons requires, a system that demands thousands of dollars in court fees and no way to track down exactly how much people owe, it's a system ripe for criminal justice abuse. DeSantis of course will ride it all the way to higher office if he gets the chance.

These folks were victimized by the system, and Ron DeSantis wants to crucify them on his hill of "voter integrity".

Absolute bastard of a man.

Last Call For Trump Cards, Con't

Donald Trump is telling us his exact authoritarian GOP plans that will destroy the country piece by piece, and he's outlined them publicly in his hate rallies across the country over the summer.

For the first time since leaving office, former president Donald Trump has started getting specific about what he would do if he wins a second term in the White House.

The pitches he’s made onstage over the past month in speeches from D.C. to Dallas to Las Vegas are a stark contrast from ordinary stump speeches. He promises a break from American history if elected, with a federal government stacked with loyalists and unleashed to harm his perceived enemies.

There has never been a potential candidate like Trump: a defeated former president whose followers attacked the Capitol, who still insists he never lost, and who openly pledges revenge on those he views as having wronged him.

As his 2016 campaign and administration showed time and again, from the border wall to the Muslim ban, he and his aides worked furiously to translate rally slogans into official policy — whether or not there were legal or political barriers to overcome. And if Trump does return to the White House in 2025, this time he will be surrounded by fewer advisers interested in moderating or restraining his impulses.

Instead, his administration would probably be staffed by dedicated loyalists, and would have the advantage of an emboldened conservative majority on the Supreme Court. He and his advisers would also have more experience in how to exert power inside the federal bureaucracy and exploit vulnerabilities in institutions and laws.

Trump has strongly hinted that he wants to run for president again and has been considering an early announcement ahead of the November midterms. Last week’s search of his Mar-a-Lago residence and club added urgency for those of his advisers who favor an early launch, a person with direct knowledge told The Washington Post, but Trump hasn’t committed to a timeline.

 

What are his plans?

 

1. Federal death penalty for drug dealers.
2. Round up homeless into massive tent cities and leave them there.
3. Use the DC National Guard or even the US military against political protesters.
4. Fire tens of thousands of federal civil service workers.
5. Eliminate the Department of Education and run all schools from state and local school boards.
6. Eliminate early, mail, and absentee voting.
   

It's nuts across the board, and very, very fascist.

And pay attention, because whoever wins the 2024 GOP nomination will be pushing on all of these plans and more.

Voting Running The Gauntlet

Understand that Republicans are massing armies of "poll watchers" in multiple swing states in order to intimidate, challenge, and disenfranchise thousands and thousands of young, Black and brown voters in key precincts, with the aim of "stopping the steal" in November.

 

The Republican National Committee has been relying on a stable of the party’s most prolific spreaders of false stolen-election theories to pilot a sweeping “election integrity” operation to recruit and coach thousands of poll workers in eight battleground states, according to new recordings of organizing summits held this spring in Florida and Pennsylvania obtained by POLITICO.

On the tapes, RNC National Election Integrity Director Josh Findlay repeatedly characterizes the committee’s role as supporting in-state coalitions — delivering staff, organization and “muscle” in key states to the person they identify as the quarterback of the effort to create a permanent workforce: Conservative elections attorney Cleta Mitchell, who was a central figure in former President Donald Trump’s legal strategy to overturn the 2020 election.

“Cleta Mitchell, she’s like the best election and election law expert out there. We’re not going to tell her what to do,” Findlay told a March 31 Pennsylvania session organized by Mitchell.

Publicly, the RNC has insisted its goal is to ensure there are enough trained poll workers to protect the electoral process and ensure partisan parity at polling centers. The recordings, however, indicated that the RNC is relying heavily on people who have spread false or unproven claims of irregularities and conspiracies. The recordings feature Findlay speaking at a number of Mitchell’s “Election Integrity Network” summits, which her group has hosted in battleground states including Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. The RNC is just “part of the team,” he told a Florida summit the same month.

While Republicans have said the aim of their “election integrity” effort is to ensure there are well-trained poll workers during the next election, the recordings also feature Mitchell speaking openly about the need to challenge efforts by nonprofit groups aligned with Democrats to create a “new American majority” of young voters, people of color and unmarried women.

“It’s a place the left sees as a great target of opportunity, and we have to make sure that doesn’t happen,” she said, referring to Democratic efforts to register voters from traditionally underrepresented voting blocs.

Mitchell was on Trump’s post-election phone call directing a Georgia elections official to “find” him 11,700 votes after losing the state, and is she among those currently under subpoena in a criminal investigation by the Fulton County district attorney. Days after the 2020 election, she was exploring ways to keep Trump in power via a slate of fake electors from several battleground states. White House call logs show she is also among a handful of individuals with whom Trump spoke on Jan. 6, 2021, the day the Capitol was attacked, and she is suing to block the House Jan. 6 committee from obtaining her full phone records.

Mitchell, in a response to POLITICO, said her comments about the “new American majority” were referring to an executive order by the Biden administration directing federal agencies to help citizens register to vote and to educate them on how to do so. The effort amounts to turning “every federal agency into a Democratic turnout machine — using our tax dollars in the process,” said Mitchell.

 

This is why they want to eliminate early voting, eliminate voting places, eliminate mail voting, and eliminate voting drop boxes: to force anyone who does want to vote in urban areas to run the gauntlet of screaming assholes demanding identification, again and again, bogging down lines of voters, already slowed down by Republicans strategically eliminating voting machines in Black precincts. 

 

They want local news stories of "voter fraud" and "urban violence at polling places" to scare off other voters too. They sure won't touch my polling place, a senior citizens' center in Kentucky. It never takes me more than 20 minutes to vote, and when I was able to vote by mail in 2020, it was the easiest thing in the world. 

In 2022 they want people to spend an entire day waiting in line, and then accuse them of cheating.

If you can vote early in your state, do it.

All this is planned disenfranchisement and harassment, and it's going to be on a scale unheard of in November. The Roberts Court certainly isn't going to help. Democratic candidates are going to lose millions of votes in November as a result.

We have to vote in numbers they can't stop.