“Your place for all the information you need about voting rights,
voter suppression, and voting trends to prepare you to fight in the 2022 election.”
October 26, 2021
New Group Recruits Elected Officials to Battle GOP Efforts to Sabotage Elections & Voting Access
The newly combined group End Citizens United/Let America Vote plans to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to create a new organization called Leaders for American Democracy, aimed at battling the GOP’s growing effort to subvert elections and restrict voter access.
Already, Leaders for American Democracy has begun to recruit at least 500 officials from city councils, state legislatures, state attorneys general, and secretaries of state in key swing states where Republicans are expected to engage in bogus voter recounts, gerrymandered redistricting, and voter suppression. Those states include Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin, and Virginia.
As one member of the new group, Democratic Georgia State Rep. Bee Nguyen, notes, Republicans have what she calls “an incredibly coordinated and sophisticated campaign” to subabotage elections and restrict voter access. Americans, she says, also need to be “remind[ed] of the threat democracy faces…We’ve got to make this the most pressing issue for Americans.” More information on the group is at https://bit.ly/2Zcw6Bl.
Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters
Colorado County Clerk Who Disclosed Dominion Passwords & Hard Drives Blocked from Overseeing Future Elections
A Colorado judge has barred the Mesa County, Colorado, county clerk or her deputy from overseeing any future elections for being “unable or unwilling to appropriately perform the duties” of the county’s chief elections official.
As noted in the October 16 edition of the Voting Rights Gazette, Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters had allowed a non-county employee to copy the passwords and hard drives of their Dominion Voting Systems machines. She then posted the passwords online and made the hard drives available during an August symposium hosted by MyPillow executive Mike Lindell. Former secretary of state, Wayne Williams, is now the county’s designated elections official for an upcoming vote on Nov. 2.
For more on the judge’s decision, go to https://wapo.st/3lUASfg.
Low-Income Voters Provided Between 34%-45% of Biden Votes in Closely Contested States
High turnout among low-income voters in the 2020 election — especially in battleground states — helped deliver victories for Joe Biden and Democrats in the Senate and House, according to a study by the Poor People’s Campaign.
The percent of all voters with an annual income of less than $50,000, the baseline for being considered poor or low-income, was 35% of the voting total, much higher than in the past. That included large numbers of White voters as well as people of color. Where the margin of Biden’s victory was a squeaker-thin 3% or less, low-income voters accounted for 34% to 45% of the voting population. The highlights of the report can be found at https://bit.ly/3vzIWFl.
Four of Six States That Narrowly Went for Biden Will Not Conduct “Big Lie” Recounts
Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada, all of which Biden narrowly won, seem unlikely to hold recounts similar to those in Arizona and Pennsylvania, which Biden also narrowly won. The reason: in some of these states, Democrats control part of the legislature. In others, even the Republicans don’t support a recount.
In Wisconsin, for instance, the Wisconsin attorney general put a halt to subpoenas requested in a GOP-supported “investigation” by former justice Michael Gableman, saying the subpoenas were unlawful and “dramatically overbroad.” He then demanded that Republicans “shut this fake investigation down.” Republican Wisconsin Assembly, Speaker Robin Vos is now resisting calls for a further recount.
And in Georgia, Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan has stated, “At this point, we’ve not seen any sort of credible examples” of election fraud. Find out more at https://wapo.st/3vrlHgT.
Election Security & Voting Rights Both Under Fire in Michigan
Michigan Republicans are quietly moving to replace officials on key elections panels in the state with candidates who have embraced conspiracy theories about the last election. Among them—Nancy Tiseo from a Detroit suburb who last year urged that the meeting of the Electoral College be suspended and that military tribunals should be set up to investigate the election. (https://bit.ly/2Z2NJUg)
Meanwhile, the Michigan Senate passed two bills that will make it more difficult to vote. SB 304 requires that voters casting a provisional ballot must appear in person with an ID at their county clerk’s office to have that vote counted rather than the election officials doing their own investigation. Further, SB 3 would require voters to include a state ID number of the last four digits of their social security number on absentee ballots, which erects barriers to a certain segment of the voting public. Governor Gretchen Whitmer is expected to veto these measures. (https://bit.ly/3FYVHhE)
Montana Sued Over Bill Targeting College Student Voters
The Montana Democratic Party and others have sued Montana over a new law, SB319, that bans “voter identification efforts, voter registration drives, signature collection efforts, ballot collection efforts, or voter turnout efforts for a federal, state, local, or school elections” in any building on a public university campus. The suit contends that by singling out only public universities and not other public buildings, the law targets the constitutional rights of college students.
Why target college students? According to Pew Research, the demographic the GOP depends on most—Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation—made up only 44% of the electorate in 2020, down from 52% in 2018 (https://pewrsr.ch/3ntAXX5). In Montana, however, participation among voters aged 18 to 29 rose almost 40%.
The lawsuit is asking the court to prohibit enforcement of a law they contend “targets Montana’s college-age voters with surgical precision” and is “designed to… stop them from engaging in constitutionally protected political speech on college campuses.” (https://bit.ly/3aYwo0Z)
Bipartisan Virginia Redistricting Committee Meets the Enemy: Themselves
If you think non-partisan redistricting commissions are the answer to wiping out gerrymandering, think again. In Virginia, the bipartisan Virginia Redistricting Commission has found that even on a commission created expressly for non-partisan redistricting, partisanship is the real motivating factor.
Presented with a map that would have five safe seats each for Democrats and Republicans with one competitive district, a Democrat said no, claiming it would be a gain for Republicans. The map went down to defeat with a tie vote. A proposal with five safe Democratic seats and four safe Republican seats with two competitive districts also failed with a tie vote. (https://wapo.st/3B2MSzC)
If the Freedom to Vote bill gets passed, however, there would be a powerful, but little noticed, tool in the bill to solve the gerrymandering problem not just in Virginia, but especially in severe cases like Texas. It’s a provision that would allow courts to block maps if a computer simulation shows they produced an unacceptable level of bias in two of four recent elections. You can read about it and other redistricting protections in the Freedom to Vote Act in the Brennan Center’s excellent “Overview of Redistricting Provisions in the Freedom to Vote Act” (https://bit.ly/3aVfnoq).
Harvard University’s Marshall Ganz to offer webinar on community organizing
Webinar Offered Wednesday on “The Strength and Curse of Community Organizing”
The University of Minnesota’s Center for the Study of Politics and Governance is holding another of their superb webinars, this time on The Strength and Curse of Community Organizing, particularly in communities of color, working people, and the disaffected. Marshall Ganz, the Rita T. Hauser Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Organizing, and Civil Society at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, will lead the discussion on the successes, disappointments, and disasters of progressive organizing. The Zoom webinar takes place October 27 at noon CDT. Sign up at https://bit.ly/3C4QQcq.
Wisconsin Needs Your Help to Prevent Total GOP Control!
Why should Illinois care about Wisconsin, aside from the fact that it’s our immediate northern neighbor?
Right now, Wisconsin has a divided government. The Democratic Party controls the office of governor, while the Republican Party controls the offices of attorney general, secretary of state, and both chambers of the state legislature. That democratic governor, Tony Evers, and GOP Senator Ron Johnson are both up for reelection, and it’s going to be a tight, nasty race for both offices.
That’s why Wisconsin Dems are asking for volunteers–including from Illinois– to help with their upcoming Phonebank for Poll Workers.The goal is to recruit poll workers now to ensure that every polling place in the state is open. Wisconsin has a consistent problem with shortages of poll workers, and without enough poll workers, they simply can’t open enough polling places to serve voters. The phone bank is on Saturday, November 6, 11am-2pm CDT. Willing to help out? Go to https://bit.ly/3jvlc0l to sign up!
There’s also a phone bank to reach infrequent Wisconsin voters to let them know the importance of continuing to elect Democrats. Says Wisconsin Dems’ Michelle Tunon, turning out these voters may be key to keeping Gov. Evers in office and also unseating Sen. Johnson. Sign-up for this phone bank is at https://bit.ly/3C6TEG5.
The Great Indivisible Illinois Convening Happens on November 13!
The not-to-be-missed, statewide Indivisible Illinois Convening is coming up November 13, 1 pm CST!
What is a Convening, you say? An exhilarating get-together of progressive activists! Via Zoom, we’ll hear from dynamic speakers, including Indivisible co-founders and co-executive directors Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg. Keynote speaker will be Rev. William Barber of the Poor People’s Campaign. They’ll be talking about issues that concern us, and they’ll get us revitalized to work for the 2022 election.
This is a great chance to come together, have a great time, meet new and old friends, and commit to organizing for action towards liberty, justice, and equity for all. Progressives from other states are welcome, too! Go to bit.ly/INDIVISIBLE-ILLINOIS-
