#interview with the vampire#iwtv#the vampire armand#assad zaman
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The women of the world will dominate politics, some day, and you mustn't be too old-fashioned in your notions to join the procession of progress.
L. Frank Baum, Phoebe Daring: A Story for Young Folk
The best way to vote, no matter where you live.
Black voters were forced to repeatedly endure and overcome relentless obstacles designed to stop them from exercising their right to vote in our democracy.
Despite one of the highest voter turnouts in the history of this country, examples abound that illustrate the deeply rooted problems with America’s voting system. The civil rights Election Protection hotline received nearly 32,000 calls on Election Day alone. Reports from the Voting Rights Defender and Prepared to Vote project teams at my organization, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., revealed the depth and breadth of the issues faced by Black voters.
First, these reports indicated that voter intimidation was experienced at polling places in all 10 states we monitored for suppressive tactics, including multiple incidents in Florida during the early voting period. Armed supporters of President Donald Trump were present at multiple polling sites on Election Day in Florida, North Carolina, and Louisiana—a particularly foreboding image for Black voters, who have endured harrowing violence at the polls throughout this country’s history.
Moreover, outside of a polling location in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, an old state flag containing the Confederate emblem was flown, confronting voters with a symbol of white supremacy and racism as they sought to cast their ballots. And, in Autauga County, Alabama, one of our nonpartisan poll monitor volunteers who was evaluating polling place accessibility was pulled over by a sheriff’s deputy and threatened with arrest if she returned to her rightful, legal duties.
Beyond these egregious attempts to intimidate Black voters and those safeguarding their rights, voter suppression tactics were also employed in myriad other ways. In countless states, voters—who already had to risk COVID-19 exposure when they headed to the polls—were forced to wait in line for hours to cast their ballots, increasing their exposure risk, as well as subjecting them to cold, hunger, and discomfort. In Alabama, two elderly voters fainted while waiting in lengthy lines—despite this, they refused to leave their polling place until they had cast their ballots.
Let this be clear: Long lines at polling places and early voting sites are not an inevitability. They are a result of voter suppression and deliberate neglect of our voting system that disproportionately affects voters of color. According to a recently published study, residents of entirely Black neighborhoods waited 29 percent longer to vote in the 2016 election—and were 74 percent more likely to spend more than half an hour at their polling places. We will undoubtedly see similar metrics once comparative wait times from this election are analyzed.
It could have been much worse. That so many polls were open despite the pandemic must be attributed in good measure to the extraordinary effort led by LeBron James’ More Than a Vote, which partnered with LDF to sign up tens of thousands of new poll workers.
Voters also had to overcome obstacles to mail-in voting, which played a more prominent role than ever in this election due to the pandemic. States relentlessly erected or maintained barriers to make it more difficult for individuals to cast their ballots. Despite trial court decisions finding that these barriers burdened the right to vote for Black voters and disabled voters, appellate courts turned back these decisions.
LDF remains embroiled in litigation against the United States Postal Service, challenging mail delivery changes made by its leadership early this summer that resulted in the late delivery of absentee ballots across the country.
LDF and co-counsel sued the USPS, as did several states, and multiple court rulings were issued ordering the agency to suspend these changes and prioritize election mail. Yet, problems with the USPS persisted.
On the morning of Election Day, a United States District Court judge ordered the USPS to sweep 12 facilities that process ballots for 15 different states after receiving reports that more than 300,000 ballots across the country could not be traced. USPS leadership defied this court order, necessitating multiple hearings and additional orders from the court to address the issue.
In addition to these already substantial hurdles, voters endured misinformation campaigns on Election Day, including robocalls directed at voters in the predominately Black city of Flint, Michigan, recommending that they vote the day after the election. Voters also encountered confusing signage, last-minute polling place changes, parking problems due to overcrowded facilities, and malfunctioning voting machines that deleted or changed their votes.
This never-ending list of problems characterizes what was described as a relatively standard Election Day in America. For Black voters, this “standard” equates to a perennial battle against old and new ways that their country is trying to strip them of their right to vote. It is a deplorable stain on our democracy that cannot continue.
There’s a heroic story to be told in this election. It is about the courage and resilience of Black voters and the networks of organizations that worked to protect the vote. This election laid bare the extreme urgency with which we must undertake serious, comprehensive voting system reforms. Anything less is an unacceptable affront to Black voters, who are entitled to have their voices heard, fully and unencumbered.
The 2020 election will not reflect the will of all the people but of the people who manage to overcome obstacles to the ballot box.
For most of American history, only a sliver of the population could vote, giving lie to the constitutional guarantee of self-governance. The civil rights movement of the 1960s persuaded lawmakers to outlaw disenfranchisement on the basis of race, sex, wealth, and age—and to police states’ compliance with the Voting Rights Act. This consensus stuck for about four decades; as recently as 2006, the Senate unanimously reauthorized the VRA. In recent years, however, the GOP has grown increasingly hostile to equal suffrage. George W. Bush’s Justice Department launched a five-year hunt for voter fraud to justify new voting restrictions. It failed but used the crusade as propaganda against voting rights, anyway. Republican-controlled states began implementing voter ID laws during this period, insisting that they were necessary to prevent fraud that did not exist. Republican lawmakers then worked with conservative attorneys to dismantle the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance requirement, prevailing at the Supreme Court in 2013’s catastrophic Shelby County v. Holder. That indefensible decision unleashed a wave of voter suppression in every state where Republicans ran the government. It led to mass poll closures and early voting cuts in disproportionately nonwhite communities, new restrictions on voter registration drives, draconian voter ID rules, racist redistricting, proof-of-citizenship requirements, partisan voter purges, poll taxes, and outright voter intimidation.
The best way to vote, no matter where you live.
Good voting information!
Republicans’ alleged lies convinced a court to scrap a special election that threatened the GOP’s supermajority.
They need to start indicting these people for perjury.
By the president’s own standards, prosecutors should throw the book at him.
Donald Trump has made unfounded accusations of widespread voter fraud a centerpiece of his presidency, as well as his reelection campaign. He claimed millions of people voted illegally in 2016, created an inept committee to investigate voter fraud, and now opposes mail-in voting, claiming it’s inherently fraudulent.
Now it appears that the president himself committed voter fraud.
On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that when Trump registered to vote in Florida, he claimed the White House as his legal residence. On the same day he filled out his voter registration, however, Trump formally declared himself a “bona fide resident” of Palm Beach, the location of his Mar-a-Lago club. The president therefore tried to register to vote under an out-of-state address that is not, in fact, his legal residence.
Under Florida law, providing false information on a voter registration form is a third-degree felony, punishable by five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. As the Washington Post notes, the state has previously targeted individuals for registering under the wrong address. In 2018, Deltona City Manager Jane Shang faced charges for listing City Hall as her residence to avoid disclosure of her home address. She ultimately avoided prison through a deferred prosecution agreement that included a hefty fine and community service. In 1993, a restaurateur was charged with voter fraud and jailed for registering under the wrong address.
Trump corrected his registration 31 days after the initial filing, and he seems to have made an honest mistake. That is no surprise: Most alleged instances of voter fraud arise out of errors committed by either voters or election officials. But Trump’s Justice Department has little sympathy for such mistakes. In 2018, federal prosecutors charged 20 people in North Carolina with voting illegally in the 2016 election. Law enforcement arrested these individuals before dawn, then dragged them to jail cuffed and shackled.
This sting was the result of a sweeping, invasive investigation in which the DOJ demanded millions of voter records from the state. But the 20 defendants were not a crew of sophisticated election thieves. They were confused immigrants who believed they could vote. Election officials had even mistakenly urged some of them to register. As punishment, they received small fines. A federal judge scolded prosecutors for obsessing over voter fraud instead of addressing election mismanagement. While the Justice Department fixated on this operation, it overlooked a sophisticated GOP election fraud scheme that led to far more serious charges, as well as a do-over election.
The 26th Amendment takes on newfound importance in the pandemic.
The 26th Amendment is often viewed as a relic of the Vietnam War era, when 18-year-olds protested the fact that they were old enough to be drafted but not to cast a ballot. Ratified in less than 100 days, the amendment enshrined in the Constitution citizens’ right to vote at age 18, knocking down laws that set the voting age at 21. For decades, that guarantee was rarely invoked in court since lawmakers generally honored it. But as today’s voting rights foes exploit a pandemic to disenfranchise Americans, the amendment has newfound importance: It should prevent states from discriminating against younger voters with both subtle and brazen tactics.
