The Eclipse of American Democracy, Fourteen: Southern-Fried Election Theft in 2018

Secretary of State Brian Kemp of Georgia just stole the election for Governor, and got away scot-free. He beat Democrat Stacy Abrams by about 55,000 votes out of nearly four million cast. Kemp stole the election by using the power of his office to make sure that voters unlikely to support him in his gubernatorial race lost their franchise. The scheme went like this:

* In 2017, (from Greg Palast of Truthout), "Brian Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state canceled the registrations of over half a million Georgians because they left the state or moved to another county. Except they didn’t. The nation’s top experts in address location reviewed Kemp’s list of purged voters — and returned the names and addresses of 340,134 who never moved at all."

How does the scam work? It's "purge by postcard," used in Georgia and other mostly Republican-controlled states, and it disproportionately affects poor and minority voters who tend to vote Democratic. Again from Greg Palast: "If you miss an election, Kemp sends you a postcard. It looks like junk mail. But if you read the block of print carefully, it asks you to return the card to Kemp after you’ve filled in the address that’s already on the front of the card."

"However, in June of this year, the Supreme Court said election officials can purge voters if they miss elections and don’t return that postcard, but only if the failure to return the postcard is a reasonable indication the voter has moved."

"Kemp has steadfastly refused to look at evidence that would show a voter has not moved. (Heck, Kemp didn’t even wonder why the purged voters paid Georgia taxes if they had left the state.)"

Note that voters do not receive any notification when they are purged.

* Kemp put 53,000 new voter registration applications, mostly from black voters, on hold using Georgia's "exact match" registration verification process, which requires information on voter applications to precisely match information on file with the Georgia Department of Driver Services or the Social Security Administration. "Mismatches" occur under the law, (from Shannon Van Sant of NPR, "for such reasons as missing hyphens, accent marks and middle initials. Those who are flagged can still vote ("provisonally") if they settle the discrepancy by providing proof of identity."

So let's say you try to vote provisionally. Guess what? That system is broken. When Phoebe Einzig-Roth went to vote in Georgia, from Eliza Carney of The American Prospect, "Einzig-Roth —who was born in New York and grew up in Boston—was told that "she might not be a citizen of the United States," and was directed to a supervising official. That official ultimately handed her a provisional ballot, but gave her no receipt, and no instructions on how to ensure that it would be counted. Einzig-Roth’s confusion turned to anger when she later tried to verify her eligibility, and was rebuffed for the lack of a receipt. "THIS is what voter suppression looks like in Georgia,” she fumed in a widely-circulated Facebook post."

More problems: (Again from Greg Palast on Salon.com)

"My team went to the campus of Emory University on Tuesday night, where nearly all the students who showed up to vote were black (although Emory is not a historically or predominantly black institution). Long lines kept the polls open until 10 p.m., and they ran out of provisional ballots by 4. When Kemp’s office sent over a stack, students filled out more than 100 provisionals in this precinct alone. And that was just one of thousands in the state."

"How many provisional ballots were cast in this election? Given the number of purged voters, given the arcane rule of "exact match" of driver’s license data and voter forms, given Georgia’s racially targeted voter ID laws – I could go on – it’s reasonable to project provisional ballots reaching 50,000."

"Then there are voters like Yasmin Bakhtiari of Atlanta, who tried to vote and was flatly denied even a provisional ballot — she asked three times within two hours — in direct violation of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).

They tried to do that to Ashlee Jones in DeKalb County.  She had registered to vote twice on Kemp’s website and got no confirmation. Jones was told she could not even get a provisional ballot. (I admit I got a little heavy with the precinct officials, and turned on the cameras. Jones got her provisional ballot. But that tiny victory was Pyrrhic: She knows Kemp or his replacement is likely to shred it.) Our researcher Rachel Garbus called several rural counties whose supervisors told her that no purged voter would get a provisional ballot, only those who "deserved" it. Having witnessed the scary Kemp-Trump rally last Sunday, I can tell you the color of "deserving" voters.

So far, it appears that most provisional ballots, and stacks of absentee ballots, have simply been rejected. Yet there is zero evidence that even one of these voters who signed their ballot envelopes under penalty of perjury is not a qualified voter."

Were Georgia's provisional ballots ultimately counted in a legal manner? It's not entirely clear. On the one hand, the state, to its credit, instructed county election officials to count absentee ballots even if they lack a voter’s date of birth, as long as the voter’s identity can be verified. But State Election Board member David Worley, a Democrat, said he was, "deeply disturbed" by the Secretary of State's instructions . "It makes it sound permissive, that counties can reject an absentee ballot if they want to," Worley said. "It’s a cheap, underhanded trick to allow some counties to reject ballots that federal law requires that they count. Frankly, I think it’s despicable."

* Finally Georgia doesn't ignore the classic voter suppression tactics. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "One-third of Georgia’s counties — 53 of 159 — have fewer precincts today than they did in 2012, according to the AJC’s count. Of the counties that have closed voting locations, 39 have poverty rates that are higher than the state average. Thirty have significant African-American populations, making up at least 25 percent of residents."

Though Stacy Abrams lost her race for Governor, she isn't giving up the fight for the right to vote in Georgia. From Richard Fausset of the New York Times, "Allies of Stacey Abrams, the Democrat who narrowly lost the Georgia governor’s race, filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday calling for sweeping changes to the state’s election procedures, and accusing Brian Kemp, the Republican victor, of systematically disenfranchising poor and minority voters when he was secretary of state."

"The lawsuit...would seek "wide, large-scale reforms" to improve future elections. One of its demands is for renewed federal oversight to protect minority voting rights."

Lack of federal oversight is definitely a problem. In 2013, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Acts, and the outcome has been predictable. Rob Arthur and Allison McCann of VICE.com noted recently that the end of federal oversight has precipitated the widespread closing of polling places in states where voter suppression was the norm during the 20th century:

"VICE News found that for every 10 polling places that closed in the rest of the country, 13 closed within the jurisdictions once under oversight. Policies that introduce barriers to voting — like Texas’ strict voter ID requirements and North Carolina’s elimination of same-day registration and limits on early voting — have been widely criticized for discouraging minority voters, who disproportionately vote Democratic. The vast majority of the jurisdictions once under federal supervision are in states with GOP leadership."

On a separate note, there's good news from another southern state with a long history of disenfranchising minority voters. Did you know that one out of every ten voting-age residents of Florida is a convicted felon? In that state "grand theft" of $300 or more is a felony, and felons permanently lose the right to vote. This has long been an easy way for Florida Republicans to keep the poor and minorities from voting. In November, Florida voters approved a ballot measure restoring voting rights to citizens convicted of certain felonies after they have served their sentences, including prison terms, parole and probationary periods. Florida Republicans are dragging their feet about implementing the new law, but appear to be resigned to let it go into effect.

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The Eclipse of American Democracy, Part Eight: Republicans Closing Polling Places

Another headline that encapsulates a big problem in just a few words:

"GOPer opposes early voting because it will boost black turnout"

The headline refers to Georgia state Representative Fran Millar, who according to Zachary Roth of msnbc.com as linked above, "opposes new Sunday voting hours because they’ll primarily benefit African-Americans—then explaining that he simply "would prefer more educated voters." Millar is saying blacks are uneducated? Effectively yes. But he and other Republicans have created a torturous framework of faux-logic around the idea of ending early voting. This allows them to appear (in their own minds at least) to not be highly partisan and racist. You see, according to the Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA), "When a voter in an early voting state casts his or her ballot weeks before Election Day, they’re putting convenience over thoughtful deliberation." Sure, because you can't possibly know a couple of weeks before election day that Donald Trump is an insane racist; you have to research that all the way to election day before you can cast an informed ballot.

Plenty of Republicans and conservatives however will be glad to tell you that they want to reduce the timeframe in which folks can vote because they don't like Democrats. Their justification is... well, I'm not sure really. All's fair in love, war and politics? Consider remarks made the late conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly in 2013, as analyzed by Jamelle Bouie of the Daily Beast:

"Here’s Schlafly: "The reduction in the number of days allowed for early voting is particularly important because early voting plays a major role in Obama’s ground game. The Democrats carried most states that allow many days of early voting, and Obama’s national field director admitted, shortly before last year’s election, that "early voting is giving us a solid lead in the battleground states that will decide this election."""

"The Obama technocrats have developed an efficient system of identifying prospective Obama voters and then nagging them (some might say harassing them) until they actually vote. It may take several days to accomplish this, so early voting is an essential component of the Democrats’ get-out-the-vote campaign."

"She later adds that early voting "violates the spirit of the Constitution" and facilitates "illegal votes" that "cancel out the votes of honest Americans." I’m not sure what she means by "illegal votes," but it sounds an awful lot like voting by Democratic constituencies: students, low-income people, and minorities."

As of 2018, Georgia Republicans are still trying to reduce the timeframe in which the polls are open. Democrats fortunately managed to defeat Senate Bill 363, which would have forced Atlanta’s polls to close at 7 p.m. instead of 8 p.m. and would have allowed voting in advance of Election Day on only one Saturday or Sunday. OK, so why is this bill needed exactly? From Mark Niesse of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Republicans complained that (early voting) gave an advantage to Democratic areas, where African-American churches could help drive turnout."

But hey, why debate what hours polling places will be open when you can just get rid of them in minority areas? In 2013 the Supreme Court, in a 5 to 4 vote (surprise, surprise) gutted the Voting Rights Act, freeing nine states, mostly in the South where discrimination of minorities had historically occurred. This allowed those states for the first time in decades to change their election laws without advance federal approval. These same states of course wasted no time in making it harder for the poor and minorities to vote. From Ari Berman of the Nation: "The Leadership Conference for Civil Rights surveyed 381 of the 800 counties previously covered by Section 5 where polling place information was available in 2012 or 2014 and found there are 868 fewer places to cast a ballot in 2016 in these areas."

Berman notes that in the 2016 March primary voters waited five hours or more to cast a ballot, and that the closing of polling places in Arizona has occurred most heavily in minority areas that tend to vote Democratic:

"The lines were so long because Republican election officials in Phoenix’s Maricopa County, the largest in the state, reduced the number of polling places by 70 percent from 2012 to 2016, from 200 to just 60—one polling place per 21,000 registered voters."

"Tucson’s Pima County—the second largest in the state, which is 35 percent Latino and leans Democratic—"is the nation’s biggest closer of polling places," from 280 in 2012 to 218 in 2016."

"Many of these counties have been hot spots for voting discrimination. Cochise County, on the Mexico border, which is 30 percent Latino, was sued by the Justice Department in 2006 failing to print election materials in Spanish or have Spanish-speaking poll workers, in violation of the VRA. Today, the county "is the nation’s biggest closer by percentage," having shuttered 63 percent of its voting locations since Shelby. There will be only 18 polling places for 130,000 residents in 2016, down from 49 polling places in 2012."

According to a recent study from MIT, nationwide white voters have the shortest waits to vote at their polling place, followed by Latinos, followed by black Americans.

In my next post I'll have a special shout-out to the state to the state that's worked to hardest to disenfranchise everyone who doesn't usually vote Republican: North Carolina.

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