Voter Suppression – USPS Crisis

KH Presse Anglais File 3 – American Elections 2020 – Voter Suppression – USPS Crisis

A/ Kamala Harris: Voting is the best way to honor generations of women who paved the way for me

Opinion by Kamala D. Harris The Washington Post, August 26, 2020 Leer en español: Votar es la mejor manera de honrar a las generaciones de mujeres que allanaron mi camino

Kamala D. Harris is the Democratic nominee for vice president and represents California in the U.S. Senate. One hundred years ago, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was formally adopted. Courageous American women had been organizing and protesting for seven decades to be treated as equal participants in our democracy, and their hard work finally paid off. After ratification votes from 36 states, it was official: Our Constitution would forevermore enshrine the right to vote for American women. That is, unless you were Black. Or Latina. Or Asian. Or Indigenous. We cannot mark this day, now known as Women’s Equality Day, without remembering all the American women who were not included in that voting rights victory a century ago. Black activists such as Ida B. Wells had dealt with discrimination and rejection from White suffragists in their work to secure the vote. And when the 19th Amendment was ratified at last, Black women were again left behind: Poll taxes, literacy tests and other Jim Crow voter suppression tactics effectively prohibited most people of color from voting. In fact, if I had been alive in 1920, I might not have been allowed to cast a ballot alongside White women. Neither would my mother, an immigrant from India, who first taught me how sacred our vote is. It would be another 45 years until the Voting Rights Act protected the voting rights of millions more voters of color — and an additional 10 years until Latinas and Indigenous women were no longer subject to literacy tests. So although the centennial of the 19th Amendment offers a reminder that extraordinary progress is possible, it is also a reminder that there has never truly been universal suffrage in America. We know what we have to do to fulfill the promise embodied in the 19th Amendment: We need to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, support automatic and same-day voter registration and help fund secure state voting systems. And that is what Joe Biden and I will do when we’re in the White House. But change cannot wait until then. Republicans are once again doing everything in their power to suppress and attack the voting rights of people of color. They are deploying suppressive voter ID laws, racial gerrymandering, voter roll purges, precinct closures and reduced early-voting days — all of which have been laser-targeted toward communities of color since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013. And this year, Republicans are also spending millions on every scare tactic and trick in the book. Most visibly, they are doing what they can to take advantage of a pandemic that the president cannot, or will not, get under control. They are spreading misinformation about voting by mail — a safe and secure voting option — and they have been caught trying to politicize the U.S. Postal Service. Meanwhile, the president himself has already requested a mail-in ballot this year and encouraged his supporters to do the same in places where he needs a political advantage to win. This double standard is not right and cannot stand. Our campaign, on the other hand, is committing the resources needed to beat back voter suppression. We need to make sure that everyone who’s eligible to vote is able to do so — and that their vote is counted. We’re working with election officials across the country to add early-voting locations. Where possible, we’re providing absentee ballot request forms with prepaid postage and tracking applications to confirm they were submitted, in accordance with state laws. And when necessary, we’ll go to court to protect everyone’s right to access the polls and safely cast their ballot — in person or through the mail. That said, this has to be a full team effort. Around 1920, Black women set up “suffrage schools” to teach each other how to pay a poll tax or pass the literacy test imposed on Black Americans by local election officials. So in that spirit, here’s what you, as voters, need to do: First, check that you’re registered to vote at iwillvote.com. Then, vote early if possible, either in person at your polling location while wearing a mask, or by requesting a ballot by mail, which you can mail back or drop off at drop boxes or at your local Board of Elections. If we do that — and if we vote in numbers no one has seen before — we can prove that these past four years do not represent who we are or who we aspire to be. And we can finish the work begun long ago to bring more voices into our democracy. After all, when the 19th Amendment was ratified 100 years ago, it would have been unimaginable for a Black woman to be a serious contender for the vice presidency of the United States. So this fall, remember the struggles and sacrifices that made it possible. Because the best way to honor the generations of women who paved the way for me — for all of us — is to vote, and to continue their fight for all Americans to be able to do the same, no matter their gender, race, age, ability or Zip code.

DEATH OF JOHN LEWIS https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/us/john-lewis-dead.html

B/ Postal Crisis Ripples Across Nation as Election Looms

President Trump’s furious objection to mail-in balloting and a new Trump-allied postmaster general are raising fears about the election and the Postal Service.

By Luke Broadwater, Jack Healy, Michael D. Shear and Hailey Fuchs The New York Times, Aug. 15, 2020

DARBY, Pa. — Each day, when Nick Casselli, the president of a Philadelphia postal workers union, sits down at his desk on Main Street in this historic town where trolley cars still run and the post office is a source of civic pride, his phone is full of alarmed messages about increasing delays in mail delivery. Mr. Casselli and his 1,600 members have been in a state of high alert since Louis DeJoy, a Republican megadonor and an ally of President Trump’s, took over as postmaster general in May. Overtime was eliminated, prompting backups. Seven mail-sorting machines were removed from a nearby processing center in West Philadelphia, causing further delays. Now, post offices are being told to open later and close during lunch. “I have some customers banging on my people’s doors: ‘Open up!’” Mr. Casselli said. “I’ve never seen that in my whole 35-year postal career.” Similar accounts of slowdowns and curtailed service are emerging across the country as Mr. DeJoy pushes cost-cutting measures that he says are intended to overhaul an agency suffering billion-dollar losses. But as Mr. Trump rails almost daily against the service and delays clog the mail, voters and postal workers warn a crisis is building that could disenfranchise record numbers of Americans who will be casting ballots by mail in November because of the coronavirus outbreak. For the most part, experts and employees say, the Postal Service is still capable of operating as usual. Yet the agency has warned states that it may not be able to meet their deadlines for delivering last-minute ballots. And this week, Mr. Trump said he opposed new postal funding because of his opposition to mail-in voting, which he complains will benefit Democrats and claims — without evidence — is riddled with fraud. At risk are not just the ballots — and medical prescriptions and paychecks — of residents around the country, but also the reputation of the Postal Service as the most popular and perhaps the least politicized part of the federal government. Philadelphia, a heavily Democratic city in a critical swing state, is a vivid example of how alarmed people have become. Representative Brendan Boyle said his office had received 345 complaints about the Postal Service last month — compared with just 17 in July 2019. Elected officials in several states say they have been flooded by worried calls and emails. Victoria Brownworth, a freelance journalist in Philadelphia, is among the residents worried about whether her ballot will be counted — and, in her case, also worried about much more. For Ms. Brownworth, who was paralyzed four years ago, the mail is her lifeline, delivering prescriptions and checks and mail-in ballots to her Philadelphia home. But that lifeline has snapped. She said she had received mail just twice in the past three weeks, and she dreaded November’s election, worried that her ballot would suffer the same fate as the oxygen tube that she ordered three weeks ago — and that had still not arrived. “It’s just terrifying,” Ms. Brownworth said. “Every day I ask my wife, ‘Did we get any mail?’ she says, ‘No.’” Mr. DeJoy, the postmaster general, told the Postal Service’s board of governors last week that there would be no slowdown of mail ballots and promised to deliver votes “securely and on time.” Experts agree that the Postal Service has the raw capacity to absorb additional ballots, even if 150 million people decided to vote by mail. In the month before Christmas every year, carriers deliver billions of pieces of mail and packages. “When you think about it from the standpoint of how much mail they handle, even in their currently diminished state, if every registered voter in the entire country voted by mail, that would be something they could still easily handle,” said Arthur Sackler, who runs the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, a lobbying group representing bulk mailers. “The question is whether these operational changes will have any impact on their ability to do so.” “If everything is delayed,” he added, “that will include the ballots.” Still, interviews with mail customers, election officials and postal workers in six battleground states show that mail delays — and 2020 worries — are widespread. In Ohio, where mail voting is likely to double, piles of undelivered mail are sitting in a Cleveland distribution center. In rural Michigan, diabetes medicine that used to arrive in three days now takes almost two weeks. In the Milwaukee area, dozens of trailers filled with packages are left behind every day. In New Glarus, Wis., the owners of the Maple Leaf Cheese and Chocolate Haus are worried their cheese will go bad now that deliveries that used to take two to three days are taking twice that. The disturbances have prompted a full-scale political war in Washington, where Mr. Trump falsely insists that mail-in voting is wracked by fraud and where billions of dollars in emergency aid that could help stem huge losses at the Postal Service are caught in a partisan drama. Democratic lawmakers have accused the president of sabotaging the Postal Service as a means of voter suppression and have started multiple investigations and demanded an end to delays. Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and other top Democrats in the House have begun discussing bringing lawmakers back early from their summer recess to address the issues with the Postal Service, two people familiar with the talks said on Saturday. On Friday, the postal services’s inspector general said she had opened an inquiry into Mr. DeJoy’s actions. Mr. Boyle, the Philadelphia congressman, for example, said it was no accident that mail service had become so abysmal in the key Democratic population center in Pennsylvania.“There is no plausible way for Donald Trump or Joe Biden to get to 270 electoral votes without Pennsylvania,” he said. While Mr. Trump’s war on the Postal Service seems aimed at Democrats, few Americans rely more on the mail than rural residents, many of whom are Trump voters. As a result, there are also a number of Republicans uneasy about what’s happening with the agency, in particular three Republican senators from largely rural mail- dependent states who are facing competitive re-elections this fall: Steve Daines of Montana, Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine. Mr. DeJoy has said he is trying to reform an organization with a “broken business model” facing a litany of billion-dollar losses and declines in mail volumes. But voters and postal workers said the Postal Service was more than a business. To Michele Brown, 67, who lives in Morley, Mich., the post office in the rural community serves as a gathering point and source of stability, employment and a critical link to the rest of the world. But not lately. Her 73-year-old husband, Bill, went three days without medication to treat his diabetes as the couple waited nearly two weeks for it to arrive in the mail from the Department of Veterans Affairs. “I feel like they’re playing games,” Ms. Brown said. “The mail had worked so efficiently. Letters I sent got there the next day. Now you can’t count on any of that.”

Election 2020 ›

What You Need to Know About Voting

How to Vote: Many voting rules have changed this year, making it a little trickier to figure out how to cast your ballot. Here’s a state-by-state guide to make sure your vote is counted. Three Main Ways to Vote: We may be in the midst of a pandemic, but whether you vote in person on Election Day, a few weeks early, or prefer to mail in your ballot this year, it can still be a straightforward process. Do You Still Have Time?: Voters in 35 states can request ballots so close to Election Day that it may not be feasible for their ballots to be mailed to them and sent back to election officials in time to be counted. Here’s a list of states where it’s risky to procrastinate. Fact-Checking the Falsehoods: Voters are facing a deluge of misinformation about voting by mail, some prompted by the president. Here’s the truth about absentee ballots.

C/ Adapted from: Jonah Fox, “Voter Suppression: The Unsung Virus of 2020” The Globe Post, August 7, 2020. https://theglobepost.com/2020/08/07/voter-suppression-pandemic/ The War on Vote-By-Mail

The state of voter suppression in 2020 is, above all else, ironic. In the past, its object has been to keep voters home. Now, it seeks to force them to the ballot box. Much of the vote this year will arrive in the mail, and the tactics used to suppress it are adapting accordingly. But to understand the war on vote-by-mail, we must first know who is waging it and why. The prospect of catching an infectious and potentially fatal disease hardly encourages the average voter to spend Election Day waiting in line at the polls. Voting by mail has never seemed more appealing or necessary. But Republicans are already suffering the down-ballot effects of an increasingly unpopular president, and now they fear that vote-by-mail will increase t urnout among Democratic-leaning voters: young people, minorities, and the poor. It’s not clear that mail-in voting actually benefits one party over the other, but the possibility is concerning enough to stop it. Restrict access to vote-by-mail, turnout will shrink, and the red team may just be able to evade a historic defeat in the general election. They are the ones waging the war on vote-by-mail in an effort to suppress turnout in November. How they are doing it requires some context. 16 states require a reason to vote by mail – typically, voters had to be away on Election Day or have an illness or disability to vote by mail; additional exceptions varied by state. This year, the big question is whether one’s fear of catching COVID-19 should make them eligible for an absentee ballot.

● Order in the Court Such a battle has been brewing in Tennessee. When a Nashville judge determined that COVID-19 was good enough reason to request an absentee ballot, the state appealed all the way to the Tennessee Supreme Court. In the meantime, it explicitly instructed local election officials not to send out absentee ballots to those who cited COVID-19 as a concern –directly violating the Nashville ruling. Missouri Governor Mike Parson recently signed legislation that allows all voters to vote absentee, including those vulnerable to COVID-19, but requires absentee voters to get a notary. North Carolina, similarly, passed bipartisan legislation requiring mail-in voters to have a witness sign their ballots – in the middle of a pandemic. These are additional barriers which contravene the urgency of a safe and smooth general election. As does the slow starvation of perhaps the most critical mechanism of all: the post office. The financial plight of the United States Postal Service (USPS) is nothing new but never more concerning. President Donald Trump’s administration and some Congressional Republicans are currently denying the USPS the emergency funding it will need to brave the tsunami of mail-in ballots soon to crash on its doorstep. The chain of events is maddeningly predictable: voters may stay home, election results may be delayed, and the ensuing uncertainty will foment whispers, then cries, of an illegitimate process. Indeed, the foundation for such accusations is already forming.

● The Red Herring Fox News said it best way back in 2012: “The GOP has created a fictional controversy about voter fraud to hide the reality of efforts to suppress likely Democratic voters.” Study after study has reiterated the simple truth that voter fraud in America is extremely rare. But an argument debunked is not an argument defeated, and partisans continue to cite voter fraud as the reason why mail-in voting is an untenable approach. No one has inflated the threat of voter fraud more than President Trump himself, who has warned, among other things, that a mail-in election would be tarnished by millions of foreign votes.

●Braving the Rainstorm Voter suppression is nothing new and hardly distant. The war on vote-by-mail only emphasizes its rejuvenation in the past decade, traceable to one landmark court decision. In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County versus Holder that states could bypass the need for “pre- clearance” – permission from the federal Justice Department to change any voting or election procedures. Shelby struck down the part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act which allowed the federal government to keep a close eye on states with a history of voter discrimination. Texas began flaunting its independence by implementing an infamously strict voter ID law. Other states followed with ID laws of their own. Jurisdictions originally restrained by pre-clearance began purging voters from the rolls at a rate 40 percent higher than those that were never under supervision. More restrictions followed. And according to constitutional law historian Lawrence Goldstone, they all continue a tradition of voter suppression that traces back to the Civil War. Much of his research focuses on how white supremacists kept black Americans in a state of legal subordination even after they were freed from slavery. In particular, they passed laws specifically designed to exclude “freedmen” from the voting process. “Southern states realized that all they needed to do was avoid announcing that a different standard existed for whites and blacks,” Goldstone told The Globe Post. “They took to writing seemingly race-neutral laws in which there would be provisions that would apply overwhelmingly to blacks.” As long as states did not mention race, they could plausibly deny that their intentions were racist. The aftermath of the Shelby ruling has demonstrated that discrimination is not behind us. Voter suppression is the unsung virus of 2020. It’s in Texas. It’s in Tennessee. It’s being encouraged by the White House. It has infected our elections in three different centuries, and it spreads most when it goes unnoticed.

D/ Trump, the Mail and the Unbinding Baseless Election Conspiracy.” Biden, you see, had of America suggested that Donald Trump “wants to cut off money for the post office so they cannot deliver mail-in The Postal Service facilitates citizen inclusion. ballots.” There was, said the post, no evidence that That’s why Trump hates it. Trump’s “stance toward the U.S. postal system is related to the presidential election.” By Paul Krugman,Opinion Columnist A few days ago Factcheck.org conceded that Biden The New York Times, Aug. 17, 2020 had, in fact, been right. The confirmation? Trump’s own

statements. In June the independent website Factcheck.org made Nancy Pelosi is calling the House back from summer a dig at Joe Biden, publishing a post titled “Biden Floats recess to consider legislation on the issue, and for good reason: There are not one but two possible constitutional As the mail-in voting crisis has erupted, some of the crises looming. In one, millions of votes never get usual suspects on the right have taken to denouncing the counted. In the other, delays in the counting of mail-in Postal Service as a bad, money-losing business. But the votes lead Trump to claim victory in an election he founders didn’t put the postal clause in the Constitution actually lost. because they saw it as a business opportunity; the Postal These November nightmares are the reason we need Service was supposed to serve broader national goals — to act urgently to secure the integrity of America’s mail. and it still does. But there’s also a larger, longer-term aspect to the But, you may ask, why should this logic apply only assault on the postal system. It’s part of a broader attack to the mail? Shouldn’t we support other institutions that on the institutions that bind us together as a nation. bind the nation together? Yes, we should — and do. There was, after all, a reason the Constitution The Rural Electrification Administration, created in specifically granted Congress the ability to “establish the 1930s to bring power to rural areas, was about post offices and post roads.” Clearly, the founders saw national integration as well as economic development some kind of national postal system as one way to help — and beginning in 1949 it subsidized the expansion of turn the still shaky idea of the United States as a nation rural telephone networks, too. The Interstate Highway into reality. In fact, in its early years one of the post System was justified in part with dubious claims about office’s key roles was the delivery of newspapers, as a national security, but it had the effect of reinforcing way to keep Americans informed and connected. national unity. The Postal Service as we know it now didn’t emerge What about the internet? Should we have a policy to all at once. Instead, it evolved gradually, through an ensure that Americans have access to modern accumulation of both formal legislation and precedents. telecommunications, too? Actually, yes. Direct delivery of mail to urban homes didn’t begin Internet access in America is far more until 1863, and permanent rural free delivery until 1902. expensive than in other advanced countries, because The Parcel Post wasn’t created until 1913; previously, largely unregulated private providers abuse their market rural customers had to rely on a cartel of private power, much like the private shippers that exploited companies that conspired to keep shipping rates high. farmers before the creation of the Parcel Post. All these changes, however, had a common theme: Of course, we don’t expect every service in the bringing Americans into better contact with one another modern economy to be subject to a universal service and the world at large. A key part of the post office’s obligation. We don’t all need golf course memberships ethos has long been that it has a “universal service or private boats to participate fully in our national life. obligation,” “binding the nation together” and But most Americans — presumably including most “facilitating citizen inclusion.” of the 91 percent of the public with a favorable view of For much of America’s history this largely involved the Postal Service — believe that there are some things bringing remote areas access to the fruits of urban that should be universally available, even if providing economic progress; it’s hard to overstate how much those things isn’t profitable, because they’re important difference the rise of the mail-order business, made components of full citizenship. possible by postal expansion, made to the quality of Unfortunately, Trump and those around him don’t rural life. And postal delivery remains crucial in rural share that belief, perhaps because they don’t really buy areas, which are poorly (and expensively) served by into this notion of “full citizenship” in the first place. private delivery companies. And that’s one reason they might have been trying to But it’s not just the rural population; the Postal cripple the post office even if it weren’t their best hope Service remains a lifeline, sometimes literally, for many of stealing this election. Americans who for whatever reason have limited ability to, say, visit a pharmacy to pick up prescriptions. The

Department of Veterans Affairs delivers about 80 percent of its outpatient prescriptions by mail.

E/ The Guardian view on voter suppression: the battle for democracy Editorial Sun 10 Nov 2019

The practice is old, the tactics have evolved. The fight to vote will be critical in the upcoming US presidential election

Democracy is, by definition, people power. But even now the question of who constitutes “the people” remains. The answer may determine whether Donald Trump remains president after 2020. Democracy in America faces many perils, from dark money to foreign interference, but one goes directly to its central promise of one person, one vote. Attempts to restrict the right to vote are as old as the struggle to expand it beyond wealthy white men. In the US, it took the civil rights movement to extend the franchise to all African Americans. Efforts to erode it have intensified in the last two decades – particularly since 2013, when a supreme court ruling gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which required federal approval of changes to election laws and policies. As a year-long Guardian series, The Fight to Vote, sets out, more than half of US states have since passed laws suppressing the votes of the poor, the young and the non-white – all groups more likely to vote Democrat. In North Carolina, a federal appeals court noted, the Republican legislature requested data on the use, by race, of voting practices – then implemented changes that “target[ed] African Americans with almost surgical precision”. Although such efforts are most associated with the south, Ohio and Wisconsin have also passed strict voter- identification or roll-purge acts. (Gerrymandering can be regarded as another denial of voting rights, since it removes the power of a person’s ballot.) The blatant tactics of earlier times, such as literacy tests, have been replaced by more insidious means. Closures of polling sites, restrictions on polling hours and early voting disproportionately affect black people, thanks to their employment patterns. Measures come cloaked in bureaucratic or even righteous guise: absurdly restrictive rules on voter identification are presented as an attempt to tackle the phantom threat of fraud. Attempts to challenge and overcome such laws are themselves criminalised, with registration drives in states such as Tennessee treated as suspicious. Meanwhile Republicans snub election security legislation to address proven Russian meddling. In 2016, black voter turnout fell by 7 percentage points. Barack Obama had driven record turnout in 2008 and 2012; but this was also the first presidential election for half a century without key protections. In Georgia last year, Republican Brian Kemp beat the black Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams to the governorship by just 50,000 votes. As its secretary of state, with oversight of elections, he had purged 1.5 million voters from the rolls. Last year’s midterms raised the stakes further. Republicans understand what they are up against electorally. This spring the Democrat-controlled House passed a sweeping package of ethical and election reforms including the establishment of automatic national voter registration. Mitch McConnell, the majority leader of the Republican- controlled Senate, wouldn’t allow a vote on it. And a second term would allow the Trump administration to keep stacking federal courts with rightwing judges, and exacerbate the supreme court’s rightwards tilt. The UK also needs to pay attention. The government wants to introduce compulsory photo identification for voters – a move that campaigners warn would disenfranchise tens of thousands of people. But if the US offers a warning, it also offers signs of hope. Carol Anderson, author of One Person, No Vote, cites the role of a voting registration drive in Alabama last year in speeding Doug Jones to victory over Roy Moore in the Senate race. Stacey Abrams is leading a nationwide campaign against voter suppression. Efforts to restrict voting rights will redouble. But resistance is growing too.

F/ Ending gerrymandering

Four more states could stop politicians from choosing their voters on November 6th

The Economist, Oct 6th 2018| GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN

AMERICAN democracy suffers from a Catch-22. When voters delegate power over government policies to their elected representatives, they also delegate control over the rules of the elections in which those representatives are chosen. Unsurprisingly, political parties have done their best to rig those elections in their own favour, by gerrymandering the borders of legislative districts. For voters unhappy with such shenanigans, the only recourse is to support a different political party. However, in most cases, the gerrymandering successfully prevents reformist candidates from winning elections, ensuring that the system remains in place. Campaigners for fair redistricting long hoped for some help from the Supreme Court. Anthony Kennedy’s retirement from the court makes that less likely, so their attention has turned to direct democracy. They can already claim one modest victory this year. One of America’s most effective gerrymanders can be found in Ohio, where Republicans won 58% of votes for the House of Representatives in 2016 and 75% of the seats. In 2012 Republicans spent heavily in a successful effort to defeat a ballot initiative that would have outsourced the drawing of districts to a non-partisan commission. The state’s Republicans feared that a renewed anti- gerrymandering referendum campaign might succeed in a political environment that looks much more favourable for Democrats. As a result, Ohio’s Republican party gave its assent to a modest reform, which requires numerous steps to secure bipartisan support for legislative maps, and shortens the lifespan of those passed by a one-party majority from ten years to four. Voters approved the initiative in May by a three-to-one margin. The success of the referendum in Ohio has inspired campaigners elsewhere to push for more ambitious changes. Next month electorates in Colorado, Missouri, Utah and Michigan will all have the opportunity to wrest control of district-drawing away from their representatives. Opponents in both Missouri and Michigan filed lawsuits to keep the initiatives off the ballot, but lost in court. Of the quartet, Michigan is the most populous, and a victory there would be the most politically consequential. An email sent by a Republican mapmaker and later made public admitted the party sought to “cram all of the Dem garbage” into a small number of districts near Detroit. The current campaign there was launched not by Democratic operatives but by Katie Fahey, a 28-year-old who used to work for a pro-recycling campaign, and founded the advocacy group Voters Not Politicians after receiving positive feedback to a Facebook post. It collected enough signatures to put a question on this year’s ballot that would appoint a citizens’ commission to draw borders, which requires only a simple majority to pass. Ms Fahey has reason to be optimistic: a poll conducted in September for the Detroit Free Press found that voters supported it by a margin of 48% to 32%, though a plurality of Republicans were opposed.

That should come as little surprise, given that gerrymandering currently benefits Republicans in Michigan— as it does in all but a handful of states nationwide. Nonetheless, the group is eager to stress its bipartisan credentials. At one gathering of volunteers, around a dozen of those attending enthusiastically proclaimed support for both parties. Even if all four initiatives succeed, the ceiling for sweeping change using this approach alone is fairly low. There are only ten more states that allow ballot initiatives and have multiple congressional districts drawn by their legislatures. Nonetheless, a number of movements in recent history that began with state-level ballot initiatives have wound up gaining widespread acceptance.

G/ Thousands at risk from rightwing push to purge eligible voters from US rolls

The Guardian, 23 Sep 2018

In June last year, Luis, a resident of Virginia, was was, his name attached to a report in which Pilf claimed astonished to discover that his name and personal to have discovered more than 5,000 non-citizens in details, including home address, had been posted on the Virginia who had cast 7,474 votes – every one a internet by a group known as the Public Interest Legal criminal act amounting to a felony. (…) Foundation (Pilf). Alien Invasion is one of the more startling examples Luis’s data had been released by the group, along with of a growing rightwing push to pressurize election hundreds of other names, as an appendix to Pilf’s two- officials across the country to purge large numbers of part report called “Alien Invasion”. The front people from the registered voter rolls. With the midterm cover showed a UFO hovering ominously over a elections rapidly approaching, and with so much riding billboard on which the famous tourism slogan “Virginia at both national and state level on voter turnout, the is for lovers” had been photoshopped to read: “Virginia stakes could not be higher. is for aliens”. Voting rights experts warn that hundreds of thousands In lurid language, Pilf claimed that it had uncovered of eligible voters could face hurdles as they try to get to proof that “large numbers of ineligible aliens are polling stations in November. African American, registering to vote and casting ballots”. It warned its Hispanic or other minority communities, as well as readers: “Your vote is at risk. New alien voters are being young voters, are especially vulnerable to purges as they added to the rolls month after month, and swift changes more frequently experience the kind of bureaucratic must be made to ensure that only Americans are hiccups that can lead them to them being mistakenly choosing American leaders.” ruled ineligible. The only problem was that Luis, in common with A recent study by the Brennan Center for Justice found dozens of other Virginians on the list posted by Pilf, was that since 2013, when the US supreme court drastically not in fact an “alien”. He was born in Los Angeles and reduced federal controls against discriminatory has always enjoyed US citizenship, with full rights to behavior by largely southern states, there has been a vote since the age of 18. He also happens to be a federal dramatic uptick in voter purges. The numbers affected employee of the US immigration service. Yet here he are breathtaking: between 2014 and 2016 alone, 16 million people nationwide were removed from register lodged with a federal court in Richmond, Virginia, has rolls. been brought in the names of three plaintiffs: Eliud The US Department of Justice, which has the task of Bonilla, Luciania Freeman and Abby Jo Gearhart. The protecting the voting rights of Americans, has three were among Pilf’s “alien” names yet, like Luis, increasingly switched its focus under Donald Trump turn out to be US citizens born in this country with full from policing purges to encouraging them. The voting rights. president has personally championed conspiracy Pilf drew its information for Alien Invasion from theories about “alien” voters, claiming that 3m illegal Virginia’s “declared non-citizen” registry, into which votes were cast in the 2016 presidential election – people whose eligibility to vote is uncertain are put for conveniently, precisely the number by which his rival verification. Election supervisors have pointed out that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. individuals can be put into that category for a variety of In June, the US supreme court lent its weight to the reasons including failure to respond to official letters or wave of purges sweeping the country when it ruled in clerical errors – in other words, inclusion in the pile is favor of Ohio’s tough stance in which citizens can be not confirmation that you are a non-citizen. (…) thrown off voter lists simply for missing an election and Pilf declined to tell the Guardian what steps it had then fail to respond to official correspondence. Should taken, if any, to verify the status of the people whose other states follow in Ohio’s footsteps, the Washington names it posted. But Adams insisted in an email that Post estimates that millions of legitimate American voter fraud was widespread in US elections, and thus his citizens who should be fully entitled to participate in the Alien Invasion investigation was justified. He said: democratic process will be in peril of being cast adrift. “People who deny that voter fraud is occurring and that Pilf and its president, J Christian Adams, a former aliens are voting in sizeable and unacceptable numbers senior official in the DoJ, are at the forefront of the are flat-earthers.” Leading academics, however, wave. Justin Levitt, one of the country’s foremost disagree with him. Studies have concluded that “by any election experts who was a senior official in the civil measure, voter fraud is extraordinarily rare”. rights division of the justice department and is now a With the clock ticking to the midterm elections, professor of election law at Loyola in Los Angeles, said: attempts to block people from voting through purges are “Pilf wants to sweep people off the lists in ways that are likely to grow more intense. unreliable, and poor and transient people are more likely As for Luis, he scoffed when the Guardian asked him to get knocked off the rolls and then find it harder to get whether Alien Invasion had put him off trying to vote. back on.” “On the contrary, I want to vote now more than ever,” he said. “Usually I don’t vote in midterms, but after what they did to me – this year I definitely will.

More links and resources >> Two very useful videos on VOTER SUPPRESSION >The one providing the historical perspective: https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/opinions/op inion--voter-suppression-never-went-away-it- evolved/2020/08/13/6c1367ae-01f3-4cc0-8d66- 8dc479d94d56_video.html >The one focusing more on today’s ongoing fight “Black Voters Matter” https://abcn.ws/2YPbyux >> The Long Read Timeline: Voter suppression in the US from the Civil War to today (cf mail) Poll taxes continued into the 20th century. Terrance Smith, ABC News, 20 August 2020 The front page of Pilf’s ‘Alien Invasion’ booklet. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/timeline-voter- Photograph: Public Interest Legal Foundation suppression-us-civil-war-today/story?id=72248473 Pilf and Adams are now being sued for defamation and (cf text in the selection sent by mail voter intimidation over Alien Invasion. The case, The Long Read

Timeline: Voter suppression in the US from the Civil War to today

Poll taxes continued into the 20th century.

Terrance Smith, ABC News, 20 August 2020 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/timeline-voter-suppression-us-civil-war-today/story?id=72248473

Voter suppression has been a part of the United States political scene since the nation’s inception. From Jim Crow laws to the gutting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, citizens of the United States, particularly communities of color, have been disenfranchised in blatant and subtle ways. And now, with the 2020 election between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden less than three months away, more of the electorate is considering mail-in voting amid the threat of COVID-19. Trump has tweeted repeatedly his criticism of mail-in voting, claiming it leads to election fraud -- criticism that some see as a form of voter suppression -- an accusation the Trump administration has denied. However, voter suppression has been a tool historically used to deter Black Americans and other minorities from voting. "It is important to acknowledge that it has always, or almost for the entire history of our country, been about race, that voter suppression has been inextricably intertwined with an attempt to stop first Black men, and since then other people of color from voting," Sean Morales-Doyle, deputy director of Voting Rights and Elections at the Brennan Center, told ABC News. Below is a timeline of voter suppression in the United States from the post-Civil War era to the present day.

❖ Aftermath of Civil War, felon disenfranchisement and Jim Crow laws After the Civil War, three amendments -- the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, part of Congressional Reconstruction -- were passed, designed to ensure equality for African Americans in the South. The 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery and indentured servitude. The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, gave African Americans "equal protection under the laws." However, it wasn’t until the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, that states were prohibited from "from disenfranchising voters ‘on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.’" The 15th Amendment, however, did not provide automatic voting rights for African Americans. Congress did not provide enforcement for the 15th Amendment immediately. Tennessee was the last state to formally ratify the amendment in 1997. Voting rights were also denied for those convicted of crimes through felon disenfranchisement laws. By 1870, 28 states had adopted a version of these laws prohibiting convicted felons the right to vote, according to the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, a peer-reviewed study published by the Northwestern University School of Law. Some states still enact these laws. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, only two states, Maine and Vermont, gives everyone the uninhibited right to vote. Three states currently disenfranchise felons from voting permanently: Iowa, Kentucky and Virginia. Southern states also enforced rules commonly known as the Jim Crow laws, which mandated segregation in public places, particularly between white and Black Americans. Poll tax was one of the Jim Crow laws. Poll taxes discouraged those who could not afford to pay from voting and were a prerequisite to register to vote in Jim Crow states. Poll taxes disproportionately affected Black voters -- a large population in the antebellum South. Poll taxes continued into the 20th century. As of 1964, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas and Virginia clung to poll taxes, reported the New York Times in a Jan. 24, 1964 article. Literacy tests were also implemented to stop those who were uneducated from participating in the voting process. Literacy tests were administered at the discretion of those in charge of voter registration and often discriminated against African Americans. Literary tests asked civics questions such as "In which document or writing is the Bill of Rights found?" or "Name two of the purposes of the U.S. Constitution" as found in a 1965 Alabama literacy test. African Americans who took part in these test were descendants of slaves who were not allowed to read or write in several states due to anti-literacy laws. White men who could not pass the literacy tests were able to vote due to the "Grandfather Clause" allowing them to participate in voting if their grandfathers voted by 1867, according to NPR. That grandfather clause was ruled unconstitutional in 1915. Poll taxes were abolished in 1964 with the 24th Amendment and literacy tests were outlawed under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

❖ Women’s suffrage and gerrymandering Before the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the 19th Amendment was the first amendment that assured women in the United States the right to vote by stating "the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." However, when ratified 100 years ago, the 19th Amendment did not guarantee Black women the right to vote. According to National Geographic, "In fall 1920, many Black women showed up at the polls." In Kent County, Delaware, their numbers were "unusually large," according to Wilmington’s News Journal, but officials turned away Black women who "failed to comply with the constitutional tests." "Even though theoretically women, Black women for example, should have had the right to vote under the provision, as a practical matter, we know that that certainly was not the case and remains not a fully realized reality for many Black women, women of color in this country," Sophia Lin Lakin, deputy director of the Voting Rights Project for the ACLU, told ABC News. "[As for gerrymandering,] I think that’s very much tied into the story of voter suppression even though I think a lot of times people think of it as something a little bit different," Lakin said. Gerrymandering is also considered to be another form of voter suppression as it is defined by Merriam-Webster as "to divide or arrange (a territorial unit) into election districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage." Christina Greer, an associate professor of Political Science at Fordham University, said gerrymandering "ultimately does hinder people from the right to vote." "[It] either dilutes their vote, or it makes it hyper-concentrated so it dilutes in other places. It’s packing and cracking and you can use mathematical solutions to look at a state, and look at where people of color are, especially Black people in a particular area distributed throughout the state," Greer said. "And you can make districts where you can either pack them all into one or two districts." In some states like Maryland, according to the Brennan Center, after 2010 United States Census redistricting, "The Sixth District was overpopulated by about 17,414 people as Maryland started the 2010 redistricting cycle." Furthermore, "Democratic map drawers, rather than tweak the district at the edges to achieve the population parity that the Constitution requires, moved a total of 711,162 people into or out of the district ... more than 40 times the number needed to meet population equality requirements." The Center for American Progress released a report earlier this summer which focused on how partisan gerrymandering has limited voting rights. In the Republican-controlled legislature in the state of Wisconsin, gerrymandering "shifted control of the state Assembly outright in 2018, from Democrats who won a majority of the statewide votes to Republicans who fell short of a majority. In the Senate, Democrats fell 1% short of a majority of the vote, likely because of aggressive voter suppression targeting communities that disproportionately support Democrats."

❖ Gutting of the Voting Rights Act After the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, there were several changes within the United States government to get more people registered to vote. Lowering the age to vote from 21 to 18 with the ratification of the 26th Amendment during the Vietnam War, allowed more men and women across the country to register to vote. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993, commonly known as the "Motor Voter Act," was intended to offer more opportunities for voters to become registered by making the Department of Motor Vehicles, public assistance facilities and disabilities agencies places for people to register to vote. However, the fight to get more people to vote and the progress after the Voting Rights Act came to a halt after the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court case, Shelby County v. Holder, changed the way the Voting Rights Act was implemented nationwide. In a 5-4 decision, Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. According to the Department of Justice, "Section 4(a) of the Act established a formula to identify those areas and to provide for more stringent remedies where appropriate. The first of these targeted remedies was a five-year suspension of ‘a test or device,’ such as a literacy test as a prerequisite to register to vote." The 2013 decision ruled that "the coverage formula set forth in Section 4(b) of the Act was unconstitutional, and as a consequence, no jurisdictions are now subject to the coverage formula in Section 4(b) or to Sections 4(f)(4) and 5 of Act. Accordingly, guidance information regarding termination of coverage under Section 4(a) of the Voting Rights Act (i.e., bailout) from certain of the Act’s special provisions is no longer necessary." Chief Justice John Roberts said the Voting Rights Act was based on the "decades-old data and eradicated practices ... such [literary] tests" and that they "have been banned nationwide for over 40 years." While Jim Crow laws were banned nationwide because of the act, the floodgates were opened to allow states across the country to implement "massive dents" to the voting infrastructure in the United States, according to the Brennan Center. Since 2010 before the decision, 25 states have put into place new requirements such as voter ID laws, closing polling places and cutbacks to early voting, as per the Brennan Center. However, Texas and North Carolina faced challenges implementing these new laws. In Texas, the state introduced a voter identification law to establish voter eligibility in its 2014 federal election, and while the move was ruled unconstitutional by U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos of Corpus Christi, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the order, according to the Texas Tribune. In North Carolina, elected officials eliminated same-day registration, scaled back the early voting period and also implemented a photo identification requirement, however a U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs issued an order barring the photo identification requirement, reported ABC News’ North Carolina affiliate, WTVD. Today, activists look to make up ground lost throughout history and look to continue to fight voter suppression and restore the right to vote for those who have lost it. In 2019, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a new bill restoring key sections of the Voting Rights Act, but it has yet to be brought to the floor in the U.S. Senate (In 2020, the bill was named the John Lewis Act, to honor the late civil rights champion). Voter suppression has a long history in the United States, yet according to Morales-Doyle, there is reason to be optimistic about the future of voting. "We are in the midst of what I think is a moment when American citizens and voters are really taking voting rights and the way democracy works seriously and putting it at the top of their list of issues that they care about," Morales-Doyle said. "That’s really encouraging and I hope it means that we’ll take more steps forward in the near future."