LA Times: 'There is a voter-suppression wing': An ugly American tradition clouds the 2020 election

[TomCADem]

This has to be one of the priorities if Democrats can win the Senate, which is to take steps to fight voter suppression.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/elections-2020/there-is-a-voter-suppression-wing-an-ugly-american-tradition-clouds-the-2020-presidential-race/ar-BB1am3Bq?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=msnbcrd

A Memphis, Tenn., poll worker turned away people wearing Black Lives Matter T-shirts, saying they couldn't vote. Robocalls warned thousands of Michigan residents that mail-in voting could put their personal information in the hands of debt collectors and police. In Georgia, officials cut polling places by nearly 10%, even as the number of voters surged by nearly 2 million.

The long American tradition of threatening voting access — often for Black people and Latinos — has dramatically resurfaced in 2020, this time buttressed by a record-setting wave of litigation and an embattled president whose reelection campaign is built around a strategy of sowing doubt and confusion.

Voting rights activists depict the fights against expanding voter access as a last-ditch effort by President Trump and his allies to disenfranchise citizens who tend to favor Democrats. The administration insists — despite no evidence of a widespread problem — that it must enforce restrictions to prevent voter fraud.

“We have an incredibly polarized country and we have a political party whose leader thinks it's to the party's advantage to make it harder for people to register to vote and to vote,” said Richard L. Hasen, a UC Irvine law professor and authority on voting. “So that is where we are.”

[Sherman A1]

1. I wish that we had compulsory voting in this country

and could put all this BS behind us.

[SheltieLover]

2. Conspiratorial repukes always thieving - money & freedoms!

[TomCADem]

3. They Are Protecting Freedom, By Taking Away Our Rights to Vote

I guess it like Trump's COVID strategy that if you contract and die from COVID, it will no longer dominate your life.

[SheltieLover]

5. Ironic, given they are the party that doesn't want govt. In our lives

Translation: they do not want regulations on businesses.

[pat_k]

4. "They" have gotten better at it every election cycle for decades

And tragically, as Republicans have systematically poured money into taking over secretary of state and governorships for the purpose of manipulating elections (which they know that could not win if voting were truly free and fair), Democrats have done almost nothing nationally.

When calling for action on the Federal level from members of the House and Senate, the frustrating answer I've gotten over, and over, and over, and over is that elections are a state issue. That has been slowly changing, but the modest efforts are piecemeal and have been seriously underfunded relative to Republican systematic and coordinated efforts.

Perhaps we will finally turn the corner and mount some serious and well funded efforts to turn things around. I hope so.

They have gotten so good at it that I believe almost any election in which the polls of likely voters favors a Democrat by less than 5 points is stealable -- and many, many, many, have been stolen.

[SheltieLover]

6. This is what happens when we don't prosecute!

[pat_k]

7. Absolutely!

On this, and Soooo many other things. "Let's look forward not back. . . " "Let's fix {whatever} and move on.

[SheltieLover]

8. Our chess game is dynamic

Capable of looking in both directions while throwing out the garbage!