The plan is not to cut down on fraud, but to make the made up issue of election theft their rational to limit the number of Democratic ballots counted in November. While their main goal is to limit and suppress the votes of minorities, they will also impact seniors, college students, and frankly all of us. Scary, right?!
The Republican program, which has gained steam in recent weeks, envisions recruiting up to 50,000 volunteers in 15 key states to monitor polling places and challenge ballots and voters deemed suspicious. That is part of a $20 million plan that also allots millions to challenge lawsuits by Democrats and voting-rights advocates seeking to loosen state restrictions on balloting. The party and its allies also intend to use advertising, the internet and President Trump’s command of the airwaves to cast Democrats as agents of election theft.
This assault on our democracy is brought to you by the Supreme Court, who dismantled the Voting Rights Act in 2013. This was bolstered by a 2018 federal court ruling that allows the national Republican Party to mount campaigns against purported voter fraud without court approval.
Besides the national party and Mr. Trump’s campaign strategists, conservative advocacy groups are joining lawsuits, recruiting poll monitors and mounting media campaigns of their own. Leading them is a new and well-funded organization, the Honest Elections Project, formed by Leonard Leo, a prolific fund-raiser, advocate of a conservative judiciary and confidant of President Trump.
What is their main goal, reduce voter turnout, especially in minority communities.
But Democrats say the Republican focus on monitors and repeated allegations of fraud are part of a coordinated strategy to depress turnout, especially by minorities, by fueling anxieties among voters already suspicious of the authorities.
The piece doesn’t say what Democrats are doing to counter the Republican effort, which begs the question, what are we doing?
AlterNet has a story: How Democrats are trying to save the right to vote in a pandemic — and fight GOP suppression tactics:
The Democrat-led House’s massive pandemic bill seeks to counter years of Republican voter suppression tactics that have shadowed swing states, a contrast to a more circumspect proposal from Senate Democrats who are seeking to expand voting by mail without specifying additional reforms.
That’s great, but how do you get the bill through the Senate? You can’t.
But the authors of a Senate proposal to expand absentee voting in 2020, Sens. Ron Wyden, D-OR, and Amy Klobuchar, D-MN, seem to recognize the constitutional decree that states will run elections means that Democrats would lose Republican support if the pandemic bill imposed additional specific election reforms.
There appears to be only one solution, a massive Democratic voter turnout that overwhelms Republican suppression effort.
Given the pandemic and how close this election could be, the mantra, “every vote counts,” couldn’t ring more true...
Vote!