#voter-suppression

#voter-suppression

What in the hell were FBI agents doing in an election facility in Fulton county, Georgia, last week? They surely weren't investigating a crime. Nor were they serving the public. Justifying President Trump's Big Lie about winning the 2020 election may seem like his own lost cause but like his Confederate forebears, he is weaponizing it, damage be damned. Not even his subsequent election victory has quieted Trump's appetite for more power, earned or otherwise.

Owing to the fevered narratives proliferating across right-wing media, many have come to believe that the nation faces a scourge of "illegal" voting and wide-scale fraud. But this misdirection, shrill as it is with racist dog-whistles, is itself a fraud perpetrated against democratic rights. The right-wing battle for voter suppression, long waged primarily at the state level, is now being perpetrated by the federal government and the Department of Justice (DOJ) itself.

the White House released the text of a sprawling executive order allegedly designed to ensure the integrity of U.S. elections. It demanded that states share their voter rolls with federal officials; mandated onerous proof-of-citizenship rules for people registering to vote (rules which didn't include drivers' licenses as valid forms of ID for this purpose); threatened local and state officials who didn't cooperate with this power grab with legal sanctions; and ostensibly outlawed the counting of any mail-in ballots received after Election Day.

What is preventing American's youngest voters from turning out? While voter enthusiasm is certainly key, systemic mechanisms uniquely hold this constitutionally protected class of voters at bay. In Montana, when the state Supreme Court struck down a 2024 voter suppression law that eliminated same-day registration, banned the use of student identification cards for voting, and prevented those recently turned 18 years old from access to vote-by-mail, the legislature was undeterred, passing a new law requiring aspiring student

Aware of how much is at stake in these midterms, the U.S. president has already launched an assault on several fronts to if all goes well, with the help of the Supreme Court alter the rules of the game before the vote (by manipulating the congressional map through redistricting), during the vote (by making it more difficult for minorities to vote), or afterwards (by denying the results if they are adverse).

Control seems like it will come down to two districts in Maricopa County, Arizona. ICE agents and National Guardsmen have been deployed there since that summer, ostensibly in response to criminal immigrants, though crime has been dropping for several years. The county is almost one-third Hispanic or Latino. Voting-rights advocates say the armed presence has depressed turnout, but nonetheless, the races are close.

Tom Lopach, president and CEO of the Voter Participation Center, a nonprofit focused on registering people of color, unmarried women, and young voters-three groups that make up what the organization calls the New American Majority-described the severity of the situation to NPQ: "We've seen an unprecedented effort to reduce access to voting on so many levels." He noted that executive orders, federal and state legislation, court rulings, and policy and staffing changes across government agencies form "a multi-pronged attack on voting."

Unlike the GOP's systematic efforts to disenfranchise voters, Democrats suggest that financial information about bond measures be communicated through voter pamphlets rather than on ballots, which does not equate to voter suppression.

Politics is a tool and it's a very important one for getting good done, but it's not the only one.