#Supreme Court voter suppression

[nodynasty4us]

During the oral arguments, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh brought up that keeping Trump off the ballot would disenfranchise his supporters. I am compelled to point out that this Court has no business worrying about disenfrachment when it continually undercuts the Voting Rights Act; nor should it have the audacity to concern itself about popular opinion when it consistently flouts it.

D.E. in Lancaster, PA, in Electoral-vote.com

[gwydionmisha]

Supreme Court rejects challenge to Jim Crow-era Mississippi voting law

[kreetn]

This was the plan all along. If this passes, USAmericans have two to three years before everything falls apart Completely.

Track the progress of this case here:

https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/moore-v-harper-2/

Reminder:

Do not photograph your protests

Do not tweet your protests

Do not expect merely voting to save you

DO wear a mask to your protests

DO not give in to despair

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Wisconsin’s conservative-controlled Supreme Court ruled Friday that absentee ballot drop boxes may be placed only in election offices and that no one other than the voter can return a ballot in person, dealing a critical defeat to Democrats in the battleground state.

The court did not address the question of whether anyone other than the voter can return his or her own ballot by mail. Election officials and others had argued that drop boxes are a secure and convenient way for voters to return ballots.

The decision sets absentee ballot rules for the Aug. 9 primary and the fall election; Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers are seeking reelection in key races.

The court’s 4-3 ruling also has critical implications in the 2024 presidential race, in which Wisconsin will again be among a handful of battleground states. President Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020 by just under 21,000 votes, four years after Trump narrowly won the state by a similar margin.

The popularity of absentee voting exploded during the pandemic in 2020, with more than 40% of all voters casting mail ballots, a record high. At least 500 drop boxes were set up in more than 430 communities for the election that year, including more than a dozen each in Madison and Milwaukee — the state’s two most heavily Democratic cities.

After Trump lost the state, he and Republicans alleged that drop boxes facilitated cheating, even though they offered no evidence. Democrats, elections officials and some Republicans argued the boxes are secure.

The conservative law firm Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty sued in 2021. The state Supreme Court in February barred the use of drop boxes outside election clerk offices in the April election for local offices, such as mayor, city council and school board seats. The court ruled Friday on the question of whether to allow secure ballot boxes in places such as libraries and grocery stores.

State law is silent on drop boxes. The court said the absence of a prohibition in state law does not mean that drop boxes are legal.

“Nothing in the statutory language detailing the procedures by which absentee ballots may be cast mentions drop boxes or anything like them,” Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote for the majority.

The court said absentee ballots can be returned only to the clerk’s office or a designated alternative site but that site cannot be an unstaffed drop box. The bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission had told local election officials the boxes can be placed at multiple locations and that ballots can be returned by people other than the voter, but put that on hold pending the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Rick Esenberg, president of the conservative law firm that brought the case, said the ruling “provides substantial clarity on the legal status of absentee ballot drop boxes and ballot harvesting.” He said it also makes clear that state law, not guidance from the Elections Commission, is the final word on how elections are run.

Concerns about the safety of drop boxes expressed by the majority “is downright dangerous to our democracy” Justice Ann Walsh Bradley wrote in dissent.

“But concerns about drop boxes alone don’t fuel the fires questioning election integrity,” she wrote. “Rather, the kindling is primarily provided by voter suppression efforts and the constant drumbeat of unsubstantiated rhetoric in opinions like this one, not actual voter fraud.”

Republicans who control the Wisconsin Legislature have also tried to enact laws limiting the use of absentee ballots, but Evers has vetoed them.

Republicans have made similar moves since Trump’s defeat to tighten access to ballots in other battleground states. The restrictions especially target voting methods that have been rising in popularity, erecting hurdles to mail balloting and early voting that saw explosive growth during the pandemic.

Bradley was joined in the majority by fellow conservative Justices Patience Roggensack, Brian Hagedorn and Chief Justice Annette Ziegler. In addition to Ann Walsh Bradley, Justices Rebecca Dallet and Jill Karofsky dissented.

[tkrr]

I’m absolutely done with the populist left.

They blame Ruth Bader Ginsburg for not retiring under Obama. They blame liberal “centrist” voters for not voting for Bernie, or Nina Turner, or whoever the fuck. They rail on about “corporate Democrats” and class struggle. Just enough of them — not many, but enough — vote third party in big enough numbers to completely ratfuck any progressive agenda they claim to support.

This Roe v Wade situation is something that class warfare can’t fix.

The Equal Rights Amendment situation remains unresolved. This needs to be the Democratic Party’s single biggest agenda item for 2022. (Second biggest? Restoring the Voting Rights Act.) And, sad to say as I’m an atheist and a strong supporter of separation of church and state, I think there are large swaths of this country where we need to appeal directly to Christian values, playing the WWJD card as necessary — talking about the Good Samaritan, Jesus and the adulterous woman, and other things that conservative churches tend to gloss over.

Please get out to vote. Even if your primaries have already passed, get registered for November. This is an all-hands-on-deck situation. Women’s, LGBT+, and voting rights are the priority. I don’t give a fuck about your complaints about “corporate Democrats”; we can deal with that shit later. Let’s get this done.

[cleoselene]

Did you know?

Democrats have won the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections going back to 1992? The only time the GOP has won the popular vote in the last 36 years in a presidential election was in 2004, and it was a pretty narrow margin. This was a wartime election and the first election post-9/11. The Democratic candidate was the unfortunately uninspiring John Kerry, who had been lied about. You know how in politics we say someone has been "swiftboated" when a successful lie is told about them? That term originates with the 2004 election because a bunch of people concocted an elaborate lie about John Kerry's military service. He wasn't super inspiring as a candidate, but that was the worst thing he did. He wasn't a bad guy. He was just running in a very gross, jingoistic time after the worst terror attack in American history, and had a bunch of successful lies told about him to the point where a whole word about a specific kind of lie was invented about it. THIS is the only time since 1988 that the Republican party has won the popular vote. George W. Bush did not win the popular vote in 2000. The Supreme Court ordered that votes stop being counted in Florida and handed the victory to Bush.

Donald Trump has never ever won the popular vote. The electoral college handed him the victory in 2016, less than 15,000 votes across three states decided the election. Hillary Clinton in total won about 3.7 million more votes than Donald Trump. Trump HATES hearing this number. He hates even more that Joe Biden got about 7 million more votes. He hates even more that you bring up the fact that he lost his midterm elections for his party in 2018, badly. And that the "Red Wave" in 2022 did not happen because of backlash at his Supreme Court. Or that in 2023 voters continued to reject his Supreme Court at the polls.

He knows, the Republicans know, that if more people vote, they lose. They don't want small d democracy. They want authoritarianism. They want to suppress it.

So when you get cute about not wanting to vote, you're not doing activism. You're surrendering.

[calicojack1718]

Confederate Descendants Spread Racism, Infect the Supreme Court, and Roll Back Civil Rights

John Roberts is just the latest generation of white supremacists dedicated to promoting the Confederacy, pro-slavery norms, and anti-democratic beliefs. There is a long sad history here traced by Rachel Maddow on Deja News and a study on culture

SUMMARY: There is a through line of white supremacy, racism, and pro-slavery views connecting the three-fifths compromise, the Civil War, Jim Crow, and Trump. This post uses the third episode of Rachel Maddow Presents and a study on the geography of culture to make the connections between past efforts to oppress Black and Hispanic Americans to our current installment of the ascendance of white…

[mylionheart2]

The Republican Party Is Organized Crime.

“We are in a fight for democracy, for justice and for the rule of law. There is a criminal enterprise afoot.”  — VP Kamala Harris

[generalgemini-booknerd]

Hey fellow Wisconsinites..

This one’s important. I know it doesn’t feel like it, but it’s super super important. GO VOTE!

[joe-england]

Must Do Before April 4!!

wisdems.org - It’s important.

[rjptalk]

DESTROYING DEMOCRACY

DESTROYING DEMOCRACY #VoterSuppression #Gerrymandering #ISL

The Real Steal by Rich Paschall Gerrymandering – The political manipulation of constituent districts to favor a political party. If you are ever wondering why a congressional district has such weird-shaped boundaries, it is likely because the party in power drew the boundaries to favor themselves. If you do not want people of color to have representation, for example, then divide them up in such…

[kp777]

By Christina Cauterucci

Slate Magazine

April 5, 2023

In what was likely the most important election of the year, Wisconsin voters elected liberal-leaning judge Janet Protasiewicz to the state Supreme Court on Tuesday.

It is hard to overstate the impact of this election on the state of Wisconsin. Protasiewicz will replace a retiring right-leaning justice, which means her election has flipped the majority of the court from conservative to liberal.

This opens the door to a slew of potential changes in Wisconsin law and could mean better prospects for Democrats in future election

s if the court reconsiders the state’s gerrymandered electoral map. Further, her margin of victory—about 11 points with most of the votes counted—was impressive for a state that voted for Joe Biden by less than 1 point less than three years ago.

Read more.

[alwaysbewoke]

our entire political system is flawed, but

you're not going to change it in one election to perfection; what you can absolutely do is make everything worse in one election. also, you can acknowledge that the system needs work and that you want more without lying and pretending as if it has produced nothing positive for you. the problem right now with many people is that you guys want an instant solution. you want an instant fix. however, there is no such thing. there will not be one election or one candidate or one bill that's going to fix this. this is going to take long-term, strategic, methodical work for us to make it right, and i can tell right now that many people are not up for the task. they're too weak, but they won't be weak enough to complain, make videos, tweets, ig posts, reels, tiktoks, blog posts and whatever whining when shit hits the fan. they'll be the first ones howling at the moon and gnashing their teeth without taking responsibility for the part they played in the shitstorm.

here's some simple advice: pack the senate and congress with hardcore progressives. hardcore progressives. and then go to your local election and pack that with hardcore progressives again. but by no means should any of us accept any talk or strategy that gives the republicans power. at some point, you've got to stop playing checkers in a chess game.

however, the problem is this point of view should have been adopted in 2016. i fear that it might actually be too late because people played checkers in the chess game knowing full well that whoever won that election was going to have at least one supreme court pick. that winner actually got three and now has set this country back for the foreseeable future. generations are going to be feeling that pain. we missed out on critical years to address climate change. the voting rights of black people have been completely undermined. the educational opportunities for black people have also been undermined. discrimination against gay people has been affirmed. we saw the death of millions of americans at the hands of a global pandemic that was profoundly mishandled, and yet having seen and experience all of this people are willing to entertain the idea of allowing those in power who did all this to get even more power again. UNBELIEVABLE! people like that deserve ridicule.

if you actually care about black lives, people of color, trans rights, gay rights, healthcare, education, palestine, dr congo, police brutality, child poverty, climate change, restoring democracy, voting rights, equitable access to all levels of education, ending the prison industrial complex, women's rights, and etc do not entertain any talk about taking actions that will give republicans power. not in the short term. not in the long term. don't let your anger and your disappointment force your hand into making things worse for yourself and others. there's already been widespread voter suppression so if you think you're going to give republicans all that power and then vote to take it away from them down the line when everything is more to your liking, you are delusional. if you really want to change things (like for real, you're not just talking shit about "progress"),here are some insightful videos:

#FuckBidenButHellToTheNoOnAnyRepublican

[wilwheaton]

DeSantis was the heir apparent, but as I've said along, he is a limp, wet noodle who will wither in the national spotlight. Trump is the main attraction, and the base belongs to him until he's dead or in prison. That's the reality the GOP establishment and big, conservative money machine doesn't want to admit or acknowledge. Due to a rigged Supreme Court, the electoral college, and voter suppression, it is a possibility that Trump could still return to power even if he, yet again, loses the popular vote. For mainstream media, many are not built for this moment or made for this fight. They, unfortunately, can't adapt or evolve to the changing political reality where the GOP is no longer a normal political party. They continue to distort reality with a skewed, "both sides" lens that mainstreams extremism. Example: ABC News recently referred to extremist group Moms for Liberty as "joyful warriors" who are "fighting back." Lovely. It's like Groundhog's Day if it were remade as a dystopian horror movie. No one has learned the lessons of the past 8 years.

From John Birch to Donald Trump: How the GOP got "devoured by their own Frankenstein monster"

[whenweallvote]

Good news in voting rights coming out of Montana! 🎉

Yesterday, the Montana Supreme Court struck down four major voter suppression laws passed in 2021, which:

🔹Eliminated same-day voter registration in most cases

🔹Made it more difficult to vote with a student ID

🔹Outlawed absentee ballots for new voters who would turn 18 by Election Day

🔹Banned paid ballot collection and reduced other forms of ballot return assistance

The Court’s decision is a MAJOR victory for Montana voters, specifically Native American voters, young voters, and voters with disabilities who would be disproportionately impacted by these laws.