STEALING/SUPPRESSING VOTES, A LONG, “PROUD” TRADITION

by Ruth A. Sheets

Last evening I watched a documentary, “Vigilante, Inc,” a film by Greg Palast. It was a story of the racism, fearmongering, and unamerican behavior of people, mostly Republicans  in Georgia whose efforts are designed to stop people of color from voting.  The mostly white legislature passed bills to let any citizen challenge any voters on the rolls, as many as they wish, without even a legitimate reason, and Governor Kemp signed it into law.  Kemp is a major proponent of this voter suppression project. 

In addition to purging the voter rolls, the voter suppression team uses fear and intimidation to silence anyone who questions this clearly unconstitutional project.  The ultimate goal seems to be to get county election boards to refuse to certify elections if the candidate who won was not the person the governor and his buddies want to win, including for President of the United States.  This is just the modern version of the well-practiced KKK voter-suppression of yore. 

Gov. Kemp has been using his various positions to reinstate the old Jim Crow laws, referred to by Black leaders as “Jim Crow 2.0.”  Kemp regularly does and says things that are pure racism and has no shame in doing it.  He does claim this voter purge is for the good of the state but his explanation is lacking. 

in the film, I learned that Brian Kemp’s family was one of the largest landowners in Georgia.  He uses their land for his own personal gain no matter how it harms the state or its communities.  His family’s wealth was built on the labor of enslaved persons.  At first, slavery was illegal in Georgia, but one of Kemp’s ancestors forced slavery into Georgia and it shaped the Georgia economy for generations.  A descendant of the first enslaved people in Georgia commented, “if you suppress the history, you suppress the vote,” and suppressing history of everyone but white men is on the chopping block in Georgia and numerous other states and so is voter suppression. 

Through this disturbing but important film, one can see that white supremacists have decided that attacking, intimidating, threatening, even  killing Black people and other people of color, young folks, and their allies are mostly successful tactics they can use to maintain their power and to keep certain people from voting.  Purging the voting rolls and arresting people who help citizens vote are also powerful suppressors. 

“True the Vote” is a master mind for the Vigilante movement.  They originate in Texas but have whipped up MAGAs all over the country, getting them to believe they had the right to attack voters as non-citizens, criminals, or with no stated excuse at all.  The group has signed up 40,000 vigilante volunteers monitoring potential voters of color and young people, getting names and addresses to challenge their right to vote.  Once Vigilantiism gets started, there are scared white people desperate for attention who will jump in to do their party’s bidding.  They choose names that sound Black or Hispanic or Asian, and claim those people are “illegal aliens” or some other such nonsense since lying is acceptable in this project.  They get a thrill and get away with it because they are white, mostly women.  Those women seem especially vulnerable to the Republican Lying and blaming.  In some districts, law enforcement is being used to intimidate voter registration programs, confiscating equipment, arresting the workers, etc., all of which are unconstitutional unless one believes “free speech” is only for Republicans. 

For me, there is no excuse for challenging voters and denying them the right to vote.  Voter registration should be automatic from the moment a citizen turns 18 and the registration should be till death.  Only change of address or political party should affect voter registration.  Our Constitution says everyone has the right to vote.  If our courts actually had decent people serving, people who understand the requirement of our Constitution, little to none of this bad behavior on the part of Republicans would be permitted, but even our Supreme Court Republican majority won’t stand with our Constitution.  That is truly scary.  It would help if all of us who are not brainwashed into the Trump/Kemp cult would stand up and call out the efforts of the purgers, those anti-American actors who would deny their fellow citizens the sacred right to vote in our democracy.

ONE-UPMANSHIP IN OUR REVENGE CULTURE

by Ruth A. Sheets

The states in the former Confederacy and Confederate wannabees are pushing to make more and more restrictive laws on their citizens, particularly those citizens who are not rich, white, straight, men. 

I know the main purpose of such laws is to gain power for those rich, white, straight, men, but it is at least as much to keep others from having power.  In the past few decades, women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community have been gaining some ground in being elected to office and holding slightly higher positions in business and industry.  The privileged white men see that as a decrease in their own power and now it is time for them to take revenge.

The most blatant actions being taken are on two fronts:  limiting or eliminating abortion and other reproductive rights for women, and limiting or eliminating voting rights for people of color.  Despite the fact that Rowe v. Wade is the "law of the land" states have defied it to pass extremely restrictive bans on what is legal.  How does that work?  I guess when rich  white straight men and the women they have recruited to their cause decree it, anything is worthy of being ignored, even the law.  As of this week, in Kentucky it is now completely "illegal" to perform or obtain an abortion, even though it is legal in this country to obtain and perform abortions.  Hmmm! 

This Kentucky event did not come from nowhere, formed whole.  Over the years, all kinds of restrictions to having a legal abortion have been tacked on.  Then when other states saw that what another state had tried and found it had worked, the original restriction was extended:  a 24 hour waiting period, then 48 hours, then 72 hours, often requiring the woman to return to the abortion center multiple times for no medical reason, while missing work or having to find child care for her kids. 

When the time extensions worked, they moved to invasive procedures before the abortion could take place:  vaginal ultrasound, lying about dangers of having abortion, forced counseling using lies and misdirection, requiring various permissions to have an abortion:  parents, husband, rapist, etc.  Those didn't prove sufficient to stop abortions, so, states declared that aborted fetuses had to be buried, abortion centers had to meet building standards that were completely unnecessary and doctors and others who performed abortions had to have privileges in local hospitals even though abortion is among the safest medical procedures performed.  Of course the hospitals in the former Confederacy and other white states would not give doctors those privileges, which they should not have needed at all.

Texas passed a law that not only banned abortions after 6 weeks when a "heartbeat" could be detected (not a heartbeat since there is no heart yet, but who cares about reality and science?), they deputized anyone anywhere to report anyone anywhere who helped a woman to obtain an abortion in Texas – vigilante law.  And, those snitches get to claim $10,000 for their reward.

A few other former Confederate states have jumped on board the vigilante wagon.  They also want to jail doctors who perform abortions for 10 years, eventually imprisoning women who have abortions too.  Missouri didn't want to stop there.  They want to put women to death for having an abortion.  That one didn't pass, but not by much. 

The Supreme Court has allowed all of these extensions of illegal abortion restrictions through refusing to hear cases or as in the Texas case, through the Shadow Docket, a sneaky way to rule on something without accountability or hearing a case, or a public ruling with the names of the justices attached.

Voting is also working its way through the one-upmanship treatment.  In 2013, John Roberts and his conservative Supreme Court decided to tear apart the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which had required states with a history of discrimination to get permission for any changes in voting policies in their state.  He, a privileged white man, claimed racism was a thing of the past in this country so . . .

Immediately, state after state in the former Confederacy returned to their discriminatory ways with a host of bills to keep the "wrong" people from voting.  When people found ways around some of the worst restrictions, new ones were introduced.  When Black people voted on Sundays as congregations, Sunday voting was scrapped.  When people who weren't the right kind of rich white male were elected, voter fraud was called.  When election workers picked up mail-in ballots from Native American reservations, laws were passed making it illegal for anyone but designated family members to hand in ballots. 

After what was nearly universally described as the best run and safest election in American history, Republicans in one state after another declared fraud and passed all kinds of additional voter restrictions from matching signatures of voters, (some signatures 50 or more years old when everyone knows people's signatures change over time), to forbidding anyone to give anyone food or drink while standing in voting lines that were designed to keep people of color waiting to vote for up to 8 hours sometimes in severe heat.  Those long lines would never happen in the areas of the state with mostly middle to upper class white people because those are the people Republicans think they can count on, and usually they can.  Besides, those white folks could cause trouble.

What has the Supreme Court done to end the one-upmanship?  Mostly nothing.  OK, they have arbitrarily allowed or disallowed gerrymandering, when gerrymandering should never be permitted in a democracy in the first place.  So far, they have permitted everything else states are doing. 

What can we the people do about the white state one-upmanship?

- We can demand that each woman has sovereignty over her own body and can make decisions for herself asking for advice and support only when she chooses. 

- Congress can stop the Rowe v. Wade challenges by codifying a woman's right to decide for herself into law.  Certifying the ERA which has been passed by the required 38 states would help too.

- Putting abortion in the realm of medicine where it belongs, monitored by medical personnel instead of ignorant vengeful politicians and judges.

- Voter registration be made automatic on the day a citizen of this country turns 18.  That would stop the challenges to the kind of license presented when a person first registered to vote because every citizen would be able to vote.

- Gerrymandering would be made illegal and every state would have an independent board to determine the maps each decade with legislative input, but not final say on the maps used.

- Election day should be a holiday and every workplace would be required to give employees paid time off to vote.  That wouldn't be a problem if every state had unrestricted vote-by-mail. 

Let's face it, racism and misogyny are alive and well in nearly every corner of this nation.  It is mostly the states of the former Confederacy and Confederate wannabees run by Republicans who are doing the most damage to the rights of women, people of color, and LGBTQ persons.  We need to call them out for their prejudices whenever possible and be sure we in other states are aware of our own biases so we are not participating in the revenge culture that demands we get even with those we think have taken what belongs to us alone.  We can do this.  It all starts with education, helping children of privilege see they don't deserve more than anyone else has, and it's OK.  Then, there's voting.

VOTING RIGHTS NOTE TO SENATOR TOOMEY OF PA

by Ruth A. Sheets

Today I received from Sen. Pat Toomey a response to a petition I signed on voting rights.  Sadly, it was the same note I have received since September, and it was just slightly modified from ones I have been receiving throughout this year.  This time, I could not just respond in my head as I usually do.  I included the actual note after my response.

I am frustrated with the careful cutting back of voting rights to help Republicans take and hold power they don’t actually deserve.  The fact that Republican legislators across this country actively and passively participate in this voting rights encroachment is unjust and paves a road toward an autocracy in which voting is just for show.  

~ ~ ~

Hello Sen. Toomey.  I wish you and your family a very MERRY CHRISTMAS. (I started with this as my proof there is no “war on Christmas.”)

I am writing because I received the communication below, from you, the exact response I received from you months ago, which means you have done no additional thinking about voting rights in this country and what state legislatures have been doing lately to make voting more and more difficult for people of color and poor people, all citizens of this country.  Then you say the Voting Rights bills don’t have 60 votes in the Senate.  I wonder why that is when Republicans claim to be so patriotic.  It is not patriotic to support legislatures that deliberately and with considerable precision work to eliminate voting rights for American citizens, to the point of gerrymandering outrageously on behalf of the Republican Party.  I get it that it will never impact you because you are a wealthy white man, but that is not the case in states where voter rolls are “purged” and guess who is most often purged.  Spelling errors, often made inadvertently by voter registration offices are used to cut people from rolls.  Polling places are set up at significant distances so people on very limited incomes can’t make it.  Then there are too few polls in those communities, so people wait in long hot lines and now, in Georgia, no food or drink are allowed to be handed out to people waiting in those lines.  I can’t imagine you waiting anywhere for anything, so you don’t see this as a problem.  Next, drop boxes that were made available so people could vote at home are slated to be removed in at least one state.  Then after voting was permitted on Sundays, it is now proposed to be stopped, why?  What has changed?  Nothing except that Black voters can use their day off and their attendance at church as a means to get to voting places and Republican legislators are worried they may vote and not choose Republicans.  

OK, you know as well as I do that “free speech” is not money.  Just because you are rich and I am not should never mean that your voice is more important than mine.  That’s not the way it is supposed to be in this country, but, alas, we have had a Supreme Court for a while now that cares as little as possible for people’s rights related to the operation of our nation.  They gutted the Voting Rights Act which had nearly unanimous support in Congress as recently as 2006 and state legislatures immediately jumped in to start limiting people’s right to vote.  Voter I.D. is your big whine these days too.  The “voter fraud” you are crying about is just not happening, except for the rare few Republicans who just have to get that extra vote in for Mr. Trump, and a voter ID would not have had any impact on that.  And, I think the latest version of the voting rights bills allow for voter ID.  

Nationalizing elections!  Are you kidding?  That is just a phrase Republicans are tossing about these days because you all know what is going on is cheating and like a magician, you want to distract people from recognizing what your party is really doing.  We’re not distracted.  We know.  It is your Republican constituents who don’t and who are being used for purposes they probably are unaware of.  I get it that you are toing the party line, but when the party line means that people’s rights are being trampled, it might mean you need to use courage and stand up for what is right.  I get it you can’t stand up for BBB because Oh well, McConnell, but you should be standing with the rights of the people to vote.  The stuff you put in your note is nonsense.  You truly do know that, right?  You have seen what is going on in Pennsylvania right now when Republican organizations are trying to get hold of personal information to challenge our votes on behalf of a defeated candidate.  OK, I am hoping you know this is wrong.  You may not get it.  And, if that’s the case, it is truly a good thing you are retiring because it means a lack of responsibility for serving your constituents, not just the Republican ones.  

I keep wondering what you have supported during this term that actually helped anyone that is not a corporation, a military contractor, or other such wealthy entity.  What rights have you stood for?  Which people in need have you supported programs for?  You couldn’t even get basic gun regulations which you claimed to support, passed when that kind of regulation has about a 90% approval rate among American citizens.  You do still have some time to make a positive difference, though, I am not hopeful that you will.   

Peace, Ruth Sheets