#Voter Intimidation

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dean Obeidallah at The Dean's Report:

On August 20, a little before dawn, 87 year-old Lidia Martinez was abruptly jarred awake by an unexpected knock on her door. The longtime activist who for over 35 years has worked to expand voter registration among seniors and veterans in south Texas, cautiously peered out the door. Standing on her doorstep were nine police officers dressed in tactical gear and carrying firearms. After showing her a search warrant, Martinez’s home was searched as she was forced to stand outside in her nightgown in her driveway in full view of her neighbors. Martinez was later questioned for three hours after which the police seized her phone, computer, personal calendar and more.

[...]

These bad faith searches orchestrated by Paxton were predicated on the claim that the people being investigated were registering non-citizens to vote—despite zero evidence presented of wrongdoing. Very alarmingly, if Donald Trump and House GOP have their way, these types of raids would be happening nationwide with federal law enforcement under a GOP President.  That is why GOP House Speaker Johnson is now demanding the proposed SAVE Act be included in any deal to provide funding to keep the government open.

To be clear, federal and state law already makes it a crime for non-citizens to vote. But this new federal legislation would establish criminal penalties for registering an applicant to vote in a federal election who fails to present documentation proving U.S. citizenship.  That means that what we are seeing in Texas is coming attractions of what the GOP wants to do nationally.

Keep in mind despite Texas AG Paxton’s two year investigation, no charges  have been filed against any of the people whose homes were searched.  Indeed, there may never be charges because even Paxton’s basis for the search is BS. In his press release announcing the investigation, the Texas AG presents no evidence of wrongdoing. Instead, Paxton makes baseless claims like these organizations have set up voter registration booths outside state agencies where people could register inside. Paxton’s press release literally includes this question with no answer: “Why would they need a second opportunity to register with a booth outside?” But nowhere in his press release does he even allege any criminal conduct—only questions.

And Paxton—a close ally of convicted felon Trump—showed his bad faith earlier in August on a radio show when he peddled lies about non-citizens voting. Paxton declared, “There’s a reason Joe Biden brought people here illegally. I’m convinced that that’s how they’re going to do it this time, they’re going to use the illegal vote. Why were they brought in, why did he bring in 14 million people?” adding, “He brought them here to vote.”   That is nothing more than the type of BS you hear on Fox News. But now Paxton has weaponized government by targeting people registering those he believes will vote for Democrats. The backlash to Paxton’s actions have been swift. LULAC requested that the Department of  Justice investigate Paxton's office for Voting Rights Act violations. LULAC CEO Juan Proaño and the group's national president, Roman Palomares, summed up well what is really going in their letter to the DOJ: "These actions echo a troubling history of voter suppression and intimidation that has long targeted both Black and Latino communities, particularly in states like Texas, where demographic changes have increasingly shifted the political landscape.”

The Texas GOPs voter intimidation tactics are based on the faux outrage campaign against noncitizen voting.

[odinsblog]

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is sending the police to the homes of people for the ‘crime’ of signing a pro-choice petition

Isaac Menasche remembers being at the Cape Coral farmer’s market last year when someone asked him if he’d sign a petition to get Florida’s abortion amendment on the ballot.

He said yes — and he told a law enforcement officer as much when one showed up at the door of his Lee County home earlier this week.

Menasche said he was surprised when the plainclothes officer twice asked if it was really Menasche who had signed the petition. The officer said he was looking into potential petition fraud.

Though the officer was professional and courteous, Menasche, who has had little interaction with police in his life, said the encounter left him shaken.

“I'm not a person who is going out there protesting for abortion,” Menasche said. “I just felt strongly and I took the opportunity when the person asked me, to say yeah, I'll sign that petition.”

The officer's visit appears to be part of a broad - and unusual — effort by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration to inspect thousands of already verified and validated petitions for Amendment 4 in the final two months before Election Day. The amendment would overturn Florida's six-week abortion ban by proposing to protect abortion access in Florida until viability.

(continue reading)

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Ken Paxton’s goons interrogated 80 year old women for 3 hours. Tex-ass voter intimidation and suppression of Latino voters.

🤬

[alwaysbewoke]

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Texans claim mailer supporting former President Trump is voter intimidation | MY SAN ANTONIO

By Warren Brown

A political mailer sent to residents of multiple cities across the Lone Star State is going viral for alleged voter intimidation. The mailer includes an ominous threat to notify former President Donald Trump if registered Republicans don't vote.

“Your voting record is public… Your neighbors are watching and will know if you miss this critical runoff election. We will notify President Trump if you don’t vote. You can’t afford to have that on your record,” reads one side of the mailer. On the other side, the mailer states, “Please don’t make us report you to President Trump” and that “President Trump will be VERY DISAPPOINTED.”

The political piece of mail has been delivered to separate ends of the state and has been met with shock and outrage from viewers alleging voter intimidation. Redditors report receiving it in Victoria and Denton — southeast of San Antonio and the northern part of Dallas-Fort Worth, respectively — showing a wide geographic distribution of the letter.

MySA reached out to the office of the Secretary of State but did not receive a response. The Texas Ethics Commission's general counsel, James Tinley, told MySA in an email, "the TEC is generally prohibited from commenting on or even confirming or denying whether a complaint has been filed," and does not have jurisdiction over claims of voter intimidation.

A logo for the "America First Conservatives Election Dept" is seen on one side of the mailer, but a search for the organization was unable to tie the letter to a specific organization. A presorted postage marker can be seen in one of the images floating around and includes a permit number. MySA reached out the United States Postal Service in hopes of identifying a sender. A USPS representative was unable to provide an immediate answer.

The sender is likely safe from criminal prosecution from the state, as the Texas election code says retaliation against a voter, the state's legal term for intimidation, requires a person to knowingly harm or threaten to harm the voter by an unlawful act. The threat to notify Trump is too vague to qualify.

However, federal law is a different case. It includes a broader term for "intimidation of voters" and targets "Whoever intimidates, threatens, coerces, or attempts to intimidate, threaten, or coerce, any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of such other person to vote or to vote as he may choose, or of causing such other person to vote for, or not to vote for, any candidate for the office of President..."

Reddit users didn't hold back their distaste for the letter, with user hardman52 reporting he received it Wednesday in a post to the Denton subreddit.

"What are they even implying here?...that Trump is going to put you on the list for the train to the concentration camps?" said user MaverickTTT. "These people are fucking deranged."

A user in Victoria near the Texas coast also created a post about receiving the mailer. They note the letter could come "from either side of the political spectrum."

"This could be work from either an extreme right-wing party member hoping to scare us into voting for Trump or (the less likely scenario) an extreme left-wing party member hoping to paint Trump in a bad light," hoopur told MySA in a direct message on Reddit.

User Dentony5 tells MySA they believe the mailer is "part of an internal fight within the Texas GOP" and is tied to far right elements aiming to get Trump supporters to the polls. Hoopur separately mentioned the possibility of the letter coming from either side of the aisle.

In either scenario, hoopur identifies one part of the population they believe is more likely to react to the mailer at the voting booth.

"This would easily fool an elderly person or a new generation of voter, who does not know exactly how protected they are," hoopur writes. "Nobody wants their 'vote' to be publicized, let along criticized, by the community. The noticed claiming 'your neighbors [who we insinuate vote for Trump] will be upset,' would obviously persuade (scare) them into voting for the candidate."

[thundergrace]

August 21, 2024

Texas’s highest criminal court announced on Wednesday it would again consider the case of Crystal Mason, a Texas woman who was sentenced to five years in prison for trying to cast a provisional ballot in the 2016 presidential election when she was ineligible to vote.

The announcement from the Texas court of criminal appeals is the latest step in a nearly eight-year case that has captured national attention because of the severity of Mason’s sentence. Mason, who lives in Fort Worth, attempted to vote in 2016 while on supervised release – which is like probation – for a federal tax felony. Texas, like several other US states, bars people convicted of a felony from voting until they have completed their sentence.

[...]

Sorrells has also defended the decision to appeal the case. “I want would-be illegal voters to know that we’re watching,” Sorrells said in May. “And that we’ll follow the law and we will prosecute illegal voting.”

The timing is no coincidence. This is purely voter intimidation. Once again, they're trying to make an example of this woman. It's blatant, and it's disgusting. These people are evil. And because I know some people will try it - it's not even that she was charged and convicted (even though the people monitoring her release testified that they did not tell her she couldn't vote), the controversy was in her sentencing. Five years in prison for not understanding that you can't vote even while on probation for a felony crime is ridiculous.

[joe-england]

MAGA Man Gets a Taste of His Own Medicine from Local Hero

[workersolidarity]

🇵🇰 🚨

INTERFERENCE AT THE POLLS RECORDED BY PAKISTANI VOTERS IN 2024 GENERAL ELECTION

📹 Scenes of interference by the Pakistani military in Thursday's contentious Pakistan General Elections to intimidate PTI supporters out of voting for their preferred candidates.

Protests have since broken out across Pakistan as PTI supports hit the streets to demand an end to the persecution of Imran Khan and his PTI party.

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Matt Keeley at NCRM:

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton threatened to sue two large, Democratic-leaning counties should they proceed with their plan to mail voter registration forms to eligible voters who are currently unregistered. Bexar and Harris counties have proposed using third-party vendors to mail the forms. Though the plan is to only send them to people who are eligible to be registered, Paxton said that the forms could fall in the hands of those who are ineligible to vote, which would “encourage” them to register illegally, according to KSAT-TV. “At worst, it may induce the commission of a crime by encourage individuals who are ineligible to vote to provide false information on the form,” Paxton said, according to KENS-TV. “Either way, it is illegal, and if you move forward with this proposal, I will use all available legal means to stop you.”

Bexar and Harris counties both have high Latino populations, with nearly 20% of all Texan Latinos living in Harris County, according to The Hill. Paxton has faced accusations of specifically trying to suppress the Latino vote. Following raids on the homes of Latino voting activists, the League of United Latin American Citizens called for an inquiry into alleged civil rights violations, according to USA Today. At least six LULAC volunteers had their homes raided by police, and had voter registration materials seized, along with phones, computers and other electronic devices, USA Today reported. Paxton said the search warrants were “part of an ongoing election integrity investigation” into “allegations of election fraud and vote harvesting that occurred during the 2022 elections.” LULAC says one of the people raided was Lidia Martinez, an 87-year-old member of the organization. On August 20, her home was raided, and she was interrogated for hours, according to LULAC. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2022 elections in Texas or elsewhere in the United States. Paxton’s most recent probe, despite the raids, has led to no charges thus far, according to the Texas Tribune.

Texas AG Ken Paxton (R) is a jackboot fascist disgrace to the Lone Star State and America.

[odinsblog]

“True the Vote” is a right-wing Republican proxy group, comprised of of racist, angry and sometimes armed white people—because we are talking about the “former” confederate states of the South, where the lax gun laws are just as crazy as their judges and governors—who methodically “challenge” the votes of anyone waiting in line to vote who isn’t white and who they deem to be not voting for the Republican candidate on the ballot.

👉🏿 https://www.texastribune.org/2022/06/14/true-the-vote-big-lie-election-fraud/

👉🏿 https://www.democracydocket.com/analysis/true-the-vote-voter-intimidation-case-goes-to-trial-in-georgia/

👉🏿 https://www.democracydocket.com/analysis/voter-testimony-intimidation-and-disenfranchisement-in-the-georgia-senate-runoffs/

👉🏿 https://www.democracydocket.com/analysis/section-11b-of-the-vra-protects-voters-from-intimidation/

[hellpuppetswithfleshymembers]

The Petition Gestapo are on the prowl.

[kp777]

'Old-fashioned voter intimidation': Trump threatens to jail opponents

MSNBC

Sept. 9, 2024

The former president threatened to prosecute lawyers, donors and election officials for 'unscrupulous behavior' as he sows doubt in the integrity of the 2024 election. Former Senator Doug Jones and Stuart Stevens join.

[whitesinhistory]

On July 18, 1946, a white mob shot a 37-year-old Black veteran named Maceo Snipes at his home in Butler, Georgia. A day earlier, Mr. Snipes had exercised his constitutional right to vote in the Georgia Democratic Primary, becoming the only Black man to vote in the election in Taylor County. For this he was targeted and lynched.

Mr. Snipes had served in the U.S. Army for two and a half years during World War II and, after receiving an honorable discharge, had returned home to Taylor County, Georgia, to work as a sharecropper with his mother. Mr. Snipes’s family later recalled that he had received threats from the Ku Klux Klan in the days leading up to the election, but he still bravely went to vote in the gubernatorial primary on July 17, 1946.

Just two years before, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Smith v. Allwright had ruled it unconstitutional for political parties to hold “all-white primaries,” in which only white voters were permitted to participate in choosing the party’s candidate. This established that Mr. Snipes and other Black people were legally entitled to vote in the primary, but many white Georgians resented the ruling—including candidate Eugene Talmadge, who campaigned on a promise to restore white primaries in the state. A staunch white supremacist, Mr. Talmadge had been previously elected governor of Georgia on three occasions with a segregationist platform and the open support of white terrorists groups, including the Ku Klux Klan. “The South loves the Negro in his place,” Mr. Talmadge had said in a 1942 campaign speech, “but his place is at the back door.”

When the primary concluded, Mr. Talmadge had won the party’s nomination and received the most support in rural areas. When Taylor County votes were tallied, Mr. Talmadge had won all but one vote—and white community members believed that Mr. Snipes, known to be the only Black voter in the county, had cast that lone vote of opposition.

A day after the primary, a mob of white men, including a white veteran named Edward Williamson, arrived at Mr. Snipes’s grandfather’s house in a pickup truck and called out Mr. Snipes’s name. Mr. Snipes got up from the table where he was eating dinner with his mother and went outside to see who was there, only to be shot multiple times at his own front door. The truck of men then drove away.

Severely wounded and assisted by his mother, Mr. Snipes walked for several miles searching for help before he was finally transported to a hospital in Butler and admitted for care. According to his family, the hospital’s segregation policies delayed Mr. Snipes’s treatment for several hours; relatives later recounted that a doctor told them Mr. Snipes urgently needed a blood transfusion but could not get one because the hospital did not have any “Black blood” to use. Two days later, on July 20, 1946, Mr. Snipes died.

By assertively exercising his constitutional right to vote, Mr. Snipes had become a target for white people committed to maintaining white supremacy and racial hierarchy.

Mr. Snipes’s veteran status also added to his vulnerability. White people intent on maintaining Jim Crow and racial subjugation of Black people worried that military service would make Black men leaders in the fight for racial equality at home and frequently targeted Black veterans returning from World War II with racial violence for wearing their uniforms in public, asserting their rights, or denouncing inequality. Black veterans often faced horrible discrimination, mistreatment, and even murder at the hands of white Americans determined to suppress their potential activism. During the era of racial terror, lynching was meant to send a message of domination and to instill fear within the entire Black community. After threats of further attacks, Mr. Snipes’s body was buried in an unmarked grave and several members of his family fled with their young children to Ohio.

When local authorities investigated Mr. Snipes’s shooting, Edward Williamson admitted to killing him but claimed Mr. Snipes had pulled a knife on him when he went to the Snipes home to collect a debt. A member of a prominent white family in Taylor County, Mr. Williamson’s story was believed at face value despite contrary assertions in Mr. Snipes’s deathbed statement and his mother’s witness testimony. The coroner's jury ultimately ruled that the shooting had been in “self-defense,” and no one was ever held accountable for Mr. Snipes’s death.

Between the end of Reconstruction and the years following World War II, thousands of Black veterans were accosted, assaulted, and attacked, and many were lynched. Brave Black men and women, like Mr. Maceo Snipes, risked their lives to defend this country’s freedom only to have their own freedom denied and threatened, or their lives tragically taken, because of racial bigotry.

To learn more about the racial discrimination and violence experienced by generations of Black veterans, read EJI’s report, Lynching in America: Targeting Black Veterans. 

[thashining]

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