Back in 1981 the GOP ran a Ballot Security Task Force, even sporting official looking armbands, though the whole thing was made up by the GOP. From a description in the New Republic:
Once the poll monitors had set up shop, they soon began, in the language of the complaint, “disrupting the operations of polling places, harassing poll workers, stopping and questioning prospective voters, refusing to permit prospective voters to enter the polling places, ripping down signs of one of the candidates, and forcibly restraining poll workers from assisting, as permitted by state laws, voters to cast their ballots.”
Because of how ugly it got and how illegal it was the GOP was put under a consent decree. That was kept in place for nearly four decades. A federal judge allowed that decree to expire in 2018. So the GOP is getting ready for full-on aggressive voter intimidation. They’re recruiting 50,000 volunteers as “poll watchers.” The nasty guy uses terms such as an “army” ready to “go to battle” to defend him against his enemies. Several organizations with misleading names, such as Honest Elections Project and True the Vote, are helping recruit the volunteers, with a preference for military veterans. State level GOP officials are setting up their own groups. These volunteers will be encouraged to do all those things described in the quote above. Of course, they will be doing them in black majority precincts.
SemDem discussed what we can do about it.
The number of undecided this time is low – about 2.4%. That means the Get Out The Vote drives will be critical. Which side can get more of their people to the polls would win. Or … which side could do the most to prevent the other side from voting.
The Democratic leadership needs to prioritize voting over campaigning. They need to prepare for the legal battles that will surely come.
As for the rest of us, SemDem has suggestions. Be a poll worker. Be a poll monitor, though if someone is aggressive I don’t think I’d be the right guy to tell them to back off. Be part of a group to monitor ballot drop boxes to make sure they aren’t tampered with. If you’re in an area where there will be long lines (because officials make sure there aren’t enough voting machines) bring comfort to the line with food or drink. Report voter intimidation to local election officials, the Democratic Party, and to the ACLU (1-866-OUR-VOTE).
Check your voting eligibility and get others to check too. That’s not a big deal in Michigan because one can register to vote on election day (thanks to voting rights passed two years ago), but is a big deal elsewhere. Do not accept a provisional ballot. They rarely get counted. Instead, work out what issue needs to be resolved.
A great way to avoid voter intimidation is to vote at home if at all possible, even if that means taking the completed ballot to city hall rather than putting it in the mail.
Andrea Grimes tweeted:
“but GOP voters use mail-in ballots, too! this doesn’t make any sense!!”Dan Solomon responded:
it does if you realize he’s trying to stop an election and short of that, entirely deligitimize it, rather than stop democrats, uniquely, from voting
it’s not 4D chess it’s just logic
incidentally, this is why i think Texas is a much more important state for Biden than the conventional wisdom says. because we aren’t doing widespread mail-in voting, our results will be in early, and if Biden wins it, it disrupts whatever narrative the Trump campaign might want
Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed that every single appointee in the nasty guy administration needs to know they will be prosecuted if (hopefully when) Joe Biden wins the election. Dartagnan includes quotes from Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times and from a report from the Center for American Progress. If not prosecuted all of them will go on a looting spree between the time the election is called and the inauguration. We already know that several of them such as Cruella DeVos at Education are there to destroy the department they were put int charge of. We must assume once they know they’re on their way out they will maximize the damage. They will delete data from hard drives, shred documents, actually steal government property, and do all they can to cover up what they’ve done.
Why? Because so far no one has stopped them and many, such as William Barr of formerly Justice, clearly believe they will get away with it. Because if we’re a nation of the laws that no one is above the law we must demonstrate that. If we fail to it will happen again.
An objection is that such criminal charges are seen as political that any future president will feel free to conduct harassing investigations against the opposing party. But Barr has already breached that precedent. Others will complain prosecutions will be divisive. But we already are divided. In addition we should explain that everyone, including Republicans, should be united in support of the rule of law. There should not be one set of laws for the well connected and another set for everyone else.
These investigations should not be done by Biden or even Harris who has a prosecutor background. It should be done by career Justice officials who show integrity (if there are any left).
There should be a Truth Commission. One was proposed after Bush II (see waterboarding and the Wall Street crash), but didn’t happen. Because it didn’t we now have the nasty guy. And if we don’t again, there will be another nasty guy.
But the efforts can’t stop at “exposing” the criminality. There must be actual consequences – jail time if appropriate.
Biden will want to look forward, not back, especially after this nightmare. But Biden can’t do what Ford did for Nixon. If he did he would approve all the nastiness – including kids in cages – the nasty guy committed.
The only way to keep these people from looting on the way out is to make sure they know they will be prosecuted.
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