“If the purges [of potential voters], challenges and ballot rejections were random, it wouldn’t matter. It’s anything but random. For example, an audit by the State of Washington found that a Black voter was 400% more likely than a white voter to have their mail-in ballot rejected. Rejection of Black in-person votes, according to a US Civil Rights Commission study in Florida, ran 14.3% or one in seven ballots cast.”
"[…] Democracy can win* despite the 2.3% suppression headwind.
And that’s our job as Americans: to end the purges, the vigilante challenges, the ballot rejections and the attitude that this is all somehow OK."
This article is in desperate need of citations and a public revelation of the calculations involved. It also has problems. I can’t speak to other states but where it does mention Pennsylvania, where I live, it omits critical information.
These don’t get sent out for fun. This is how the ordinary voter roll maintenance works. The cards are sent out after you fail to vote two consecutive federal elections, or when the department of state gets notified you moved or died through some other means, not for ‘targeting’ voters. You only actually get purged from the roll if you fail to respond to the card AND fail to vote for at least five consecutive years (This isn’t specified as far as I know, but a product of the timings involved). If you show up and vote in every presidential election, you do not get removed from the rolls even if you throw out the postcard. So if this:
Includes Pennsylvania, it is simply false. You can read the actual law yourself, they are all online. It’s PA Title 25. Chapter 19 lays out the rules for removal.
Details on Pennsylvania specific mail-in ballots being cancelled, which is a real issue, are woefully absent. According to the Governor’s office only about 1% of the 2 million returned (about 20,000) mail in ballots were rejected.
https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dos/newsroom/shapiro-administration-announces-57--decrease-in-mail-ballots-re.html
Harris lost by ~120,000 ish votes in PA. ‘Clerical errors’ are not even close to closing that gap.
It also mentions Secretaries of State being partisan hacks, but some odd reason fails to mention Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State was appointed by our Democratic governor who was not only a Democrat, obviously, but short listed for consideration as a running mate for Harris. Nevertheless, it is implied we should concerned about his Secretary of State targeting voters from her own party for removal in an election that could have had handed the governor his own path to the White House. Forgive me for my skepticism.
Voter suppression is a big deal, I’m sure there are elections it will swing at times. Heck, there is a fair chance it swung the senate race in PA since that one was only decided by ~15,000 votes, but based on what I already know, this article isn’t credible enough to be taken seriously in its current state.
I keep seeing a lot of arguments along the lines of “they can’t have done that, that’s against the law.”
**Republicans do not care about the rule of law. ** They loudly and repeatedly flaunt this at every opportunity. The entire reason we keep having to talk about this is because of how loudly and repeatedly they prove they are willing to break any law in order to win. The law does not matter, it is toilet paper, it does not stop them. That’s the whole REASON we are all up in arms about this in the FIRST place.
Your argument is a nonsensical one. You’ve illustrated the way the Poison Postcard is supposed to work, absolutely. But did it actually follow those rules? In some places like Texas and Georgia, that answer is a booming, resounding, FUCK NO they didn’t. So what about elsewhere then?
I’m supposed to believe that hundreds of thousands of Democratic Pennsylvania voters were illegally unregistered and denied their right to vote while democratic county election officials, county attorneys, the governor’s office, the state attorney general’s office, the department of state and many civic/legal orgs all just sat on their hands because of an article whose demonstration of fact taps out at “Trust me bro, I did the math.”
But my argument that we need to see the sources and math is “nonsensical”?
Fuck off.
Based
An award winng investigative journalist who has spent at least the last 25 years looking into this type of behaviour isn’t credible?
Upvoting before mods delete this for going against their zeitgeist