I recently took a dive down the rabbit hole, researching voter suppression. I wanted an idea of what tricks the GOP is pulling to break the back of our democracy and keep their grip on power.

As promised, here’s the thread. So pour yourself a drink, ‘cause here we go:

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Trump and members of his team know they face criminal investigation and prosecution the minute Bill Barr is no longer there in position to obstruct justice. They’re cornered right now —if they lose their grip on power, many of them will face jail time.

And they know it.

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They also know that if a free and fair election were held today, Donald Trump would lose and lose BADLY.

Because of this, they all know they cannot afford to allow America to have a free and fair election in November.

This thread explores how they’ll pull that off.

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Under normal circumstances, 33 states allow every eligible voter to vote absentee, without requiring any special excuse.

In other words, if your eligible to vote in person, you’re automatically eligible to vote via absentee ballot in those 33 states — no questions asked.

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That leaves 17 states who only allow voters to vote by mail if they have a particular excuse (such as being away or being over the age of 65, in some states).

It should be noted, btw, that “over the age of 65” is a particularly friendly demographic for Republicans.

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Of those 17 states, 13 have relaxed that requirement for the primaries or runoffs, but only a few of them (so far) have committed to doing so in November.

In fact, some are doing exactly the OPPOSITE. Let’s take a stroll over to Iowa, shall we?

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Earlier this month, Iowa carried out vote-by-mail Republican primaries, overseen by the Republican Sec. of State, who mailed out primary ballots to every eligible voter. It worked like it was supposed to.

So guess what the Republican-controlled legislature wants to do, now?

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You guessed it: In the Iowa legislature, state Republicans are now advancing a bill to forbid their Secretary of State from mailing out ballots to all eligible voters in November—even though they *just did it* for a Republican primary.

Let that sink in for a moment.

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Even if they don’t automatically mail ballots to every absentee voter, one would hope eligible voters could still request them during a coronavirus pandemic, right?

Right??

Nope. Not in all states.

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In 4 states, even if you’re immunocompromised or otherwise at high risk, that isn’t considered a valid reason for you to request an absentee ballot for November—despite the coronavirus pandemic.

Those four states? Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Mississippi.

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So even if you’re at risk, they want you to go to voting place.

Ok.

But as we recently saw in Georgia, there’s no guarantee your usual polling place will be open, and even if it is, there’s no guarantee the voting machines will have been delivered before the doors open.

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That’s right: in Gwinnett County, GA, 16 out of 156 precincts — 1 in 10 — *DID NOT EVEN HAVE VOTING MACHINES WHEN THE DOORS OPENED AT 7AM*.

And those that DID have voting machines? They didn’t work a lot of the time. As a result, voters had to wait in line for hours.

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Now why’d they suppress Gwinnett County voters, I wonder?

Well for one, Gwinnett is GA’s second-most-populous County. For another, the majority of Gwinnett Co. voters aren’t white. Can you think of any reasons why the GOP would want to suppress THOSE votes in November?

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Now let’s take a stroll one county over, to Fulton County—i.e. Atlanta.

Georgia recently eliminated 80 polling places in Atlanta. In one precinct, they now have one polling place for 16,000 registered voters—and when the doors opened at 7am, the machines weren’t working.

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Anyone wanna guess what Atlanta/Fulton County have in common with neighboring Gwinnett County? Or why GA officials would want to make it harder for them to vote?

If you guessed “the majority of the voters there aren’t Republicans” then DING DING DING you win the prize!

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While this thread is already long enough without re-litigating the 2018 Georgia governors race, it’s worth noting that the man responsible for overseeing the 2018 Georgia governors race— then-Sec. of State Brian Kemp—was also the person who barely won the Governors race.

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Want to guess whose office canceled *OVER 700,000* Georgia voter registration in 2017 alone? If you guessed “Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp” then DING DING another prize for you!

Want to guess who announced he was running for Governor that year?

Brian Kemp.

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After canceling >700K voter registrations in 2017, Kemp then put additional new registrations on hold.

In October 2018 alone, his office put 53,000 new voter registrations on hold—nearly 3/4 of which were from minorities. Kemp then went on to win by a mere 54,723 votes.

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But enough of picking on the State of Georgia — let’s now roll on over to Mitch McConnell’s home state of Kentucky.

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In Kentucky, the number of polling places has been reduced from 3,700 to fewer than 200. Jefferson County (Louisville), for instance, has 616,000 REGISTERED VOTERS.

Those 616,000 registered voters will now have ONE polling place.

Take a moment to let that sink in.

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Anyone want to guess what makes Jefferson County special, or what would make Republicans want to suppress the vote there?

If you guessed “half of Kentucky’s black population lives in that one county” then you’re really in a roll with this guessing thing!

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Now to his credit, Kentucky’s Republican Sec. of State Michael Adams is working to reassure voters that absentee ballots are safe, with the voter education campaign slogan “easy to vote, hard to cheat”

But will all Jefferson County’s eligible voters get ballots? We’ll see.

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Next, let’s move to the swing state of Wisconsin — a state that Donald Trump barely won in 2016, with a margin of fewer than 23,000 votes.

A state he badly needs to win in 2020.

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In the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where there would normally be 180 polling places, there are now only FIVE—for a city of 590,157.

How’s that supposed to work?

(For reference, in my home town, which has fewer than 8,000 people total, there are THREE polling places)

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Just in case you haven’t noticed the pattern yet, here’s a handy map that shows how the 2016 vote broken down. Milwaukee is at the bottom righthand side there.

Wonder why Republicans would want to keep Milwaukee voters from voting?

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Here’s as good a time as any to wade into the voter turnout question. How many people will even show up to vote during a pandemic, in November? We don’t know.

We can make some guesses based on primary turn out, but ultimately we don’t know.

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Before the pandemic, the Milwaukee election commission forecasted 140,000 votes in the April Primaries.

There were only 75,292 (as of April 7th, the deadline for absentee ballots) — less than half the turnout from 4 years ago (167,765).

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I do think it’s reasonable to assume that reducing the number of polling places will drive turnout DOWN.

Why do I say that?

Because: in April, after they reduced the number of polling places, only 18,303 voted in person — for the entire city of Milwaukee.

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By comparison, in that same election, roughly 15,000 Wisconsin voters didn’t even get their ballots sent to them in time for them mail them back by the deadline, because the deadline was moved UP to April 7th.

State officials called this a “glitch”.

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(A similar “glitch” must have ooccurred over in Maryland, because there, where all registered voters are automatically supposed to get ballots in the mail, 160,000 ballots were never delivered, according to Maryland State officials. Where did they go?)



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Perhaps Milwaukee voters should consider themselves lucky, though. Their five voting places aren’t NEARLY as bad as what’s going on over in Nevada.

In Nevada, state officials sought to reduce the number of polling places to ONE per county.

Let’s do the math.

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For one, Nevada only has 16 counties. So that means, for a state of 3.08 million people, they’d only have 16 in-person voting stations.

SIXTEEN.

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What’s more, by breaking it down by county, that means that Nevada’s least populous county (Esmerelda County, Pop. 873) would have the same number of voting places as their two most populous counties: Washoe County (pop. 471,519) and Clark County (pop. 2,266,715).



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Nevada only has two counties with a population >60,000.

It also only has two counties where Trump lost in 2016.

Want to guess which two counties?

Yep. Washoe and Clark.

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Nevada, we should note, is a swing state.

A swing state that Donald Trump narrowly lost in 2016.

A swing state that now wants to have ONE polling place each in the two counties with the biggest populations by FAR—counties where a majority voted against Trump...

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We could keep going, state by state, but I think we’ve got enough examples to illustrate the problem.

This leads us to a question we’ve touched on, but haven’t really looked at in depth yet: if it’s harder to vote *in person*, what about absentee ballots?

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For starters, absentee ballots are both legal and reliable, and have been widely used for decades.

Among others, active duty military folks use them to vote when they’re stationed away from home.

So they’re not new, and they’re not particularly controversial.

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Not particularly controversial, that is, unless you’re an especially unpopular president running for re-election in the middle of a once-in-a-century global health crisis — in other words, Donald J. Trump.

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For reasons I’m sure you can (now) understand, Donald Trump — and his various boot-lickers — would prefer that the people of Atlanta, of Milwaukee, of Clark and Washoe Counties, etc. had an especially difficult time voting in November.

So now you see the one-two punch:

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The first punch is to make it as hard as possible to vote in person. We’ve covered that above.

The second punch is waging war on absentee ballots, so that people in those crowded areas can’t easily mail in their ballots (if they receive them at all).

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So NOW you understand why Trump has suddenly taken a *very keen* interest in bashing both absentee ballots and the US Postal Service.

He knows he won’t win a free and fair election, so he has to ensure the election is neither free nor fair.

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This thread is already past 40 posts, so I’m not going to wade into the postal question, other than to say this:

Pay VERY close attention to what Republicans try to do, regarding the US Postal Service in the coming months.

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Now, to be fair, many states are in a bind, even in states where officials *don’t* want to suppress the vote.

We’re in the middle of a pandemic, and roughly half of all poll workers are elderly.

So what to do?

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For one, states will need to provide voting machines *that actually work*.

Well, let me back up—unlike Georgia, states need to make sure voting machines ARE ACTUALLY DELIVERED IN THE FIRST PLACE.

That’s the first step.

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Next, they’ll need to provide ample PPE and disinfectant at those polling places. And that costs money.

Now, I’m not going to dive into prioritization of state and local funds here [*cough cough *POLICE BUDGETS* cough*] but that money has to come from somewhere.

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I *certainly* wouldn’t suggest that municipalities could delay buying new police cruisers and assault rifles and instead buy, I dunno, masks and Lysol for poll workers, but hey... if someone *else* wanted to suggest that, I wouldn’t argue either

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What I WILL say is: if the cities and states won’t reallocate funds, the federal government could.

One estimate I saw put the cost of PPE and other safety measures — nation wide — at around an additional $2 billion.

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That sounds like a lot of money, until you realize how many TRILLIONS in Federal stimulus money has been spent over the past 4 months.

In that context, 2 billion is basically a rounding error.

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To date, Congress has only allocated a little over $400M to the problem. It’s a start, but it’s not enough when you’re talking about ensuring a free and fair national election.

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But of course, as we’ve discussed, Republicans don’t want a free and fair election. President Trump — and most of his GOP toadies along with him — arr together waging war on American Democracy.

They. Do. Not. Want. You. To. Vote.

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So what can you do?

For one, double check to make sure you’re still registered to vote, and haven’t been “purged” from the rolls.

Two, if you can vote absentee, make sure you get your ballot early, and mail it back well before the deadline.

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Three, if you live in Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, or Mississippi, call your state secretary of state’s office and demand they fix their broken rules.

Sure, LA, MS, and TN may go for Trump anyway, but we we’ve seen, the down-ballot votes (like Secretary of State) MATTER.

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And lastly? If you live in a state where shennanigans are afoot? Protest.

Protest protest protest. Take to the streets, early and often. Make sure your state’s Secretary of State *knows* he or she will be held accountable, and that the voters are watching.

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At the end of the day? They can’t win this election fair and square.

They know that.

So they’re gonna try to steal it.

We cannot let them.

We MUST not let them.

Democracy must survive.

/End

Post Script to this thread:

Next time someone says “I dOnT kNoW wHy ThEy HaVE to PrOtEsT and RiOt, wHy CaNt tHey JuSt uSe tHe bALLoT BoX?” you can show them this thread.

Republicans are rigging and stealing elections—which makes them the enemies of democracy.

It’s that simple.

Post-Post Script:

The morning after I posted this thread, Dementia Don posts another all-caps screed against absentee ballots:

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1275024974579982336?s=21 https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1275024974579982336