#black voter suppression

[alwaysbewoke]

and they're at it AGAIN!!!

[iamrhyme]

Download ⬇️, Listen🎧 to, like♥️, comment🗨️ on, and share 🔄 episode 312 of the Narrative Podcast. The Narrative Podcast promotes positive self images about original people and original people culture. The Narrative Podcast: Changing the Narrative one episode at a time by destroying negative stereotypes about original people and original people culture. Let's change the Narrative!

Visit the virtual online bookstore on Poetizer.com and purchase

"The Black Card."

[thashining]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Joy-Ann Reid (@joyannreid)

Between 10,000 and 20,000 voters in Erie County, Pennsylvania still haven’t received their mail-in ballots, according to a new lawsuit filed by the Pennsylvania Democratic Party.

The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday, says that 40,844 mail-in ballot applications were approved in Erie County but, as of Oct. 28, only 21,536 ballots have been returned — a return rate of 52%, which is 15 percentage points under the state’s average return rate of 67%. Because of this, the plaintiffs alleged that up to 20,000 mail-in ballots requested by Erie County voters were never delivered.

The lawsuit also alleges that more than 300 voters received two mail-in ballots, one of which may not correlate to the local races those voters are eligible to vote for. The plaintiffs also allege that the United States Postal Service has no record of having received 1,800 mail-in ballots from the third-party vendor that the Erie Board of Elections contracted to distribute mail-in ballots.

The lawsuit says the vendor is still “in the process of trying to locate” the lost ballots. Under state law, mail-in ballots are required to be delivered to voters who requested them at least two weeks prior to the election.

The plaintiffs are asking the court to force the Board of Elections to fix the error by releasing the names of all the voters who might have been affected, to allow those voters to cancel their mail-in ballot status and cast a provisional ballot at an in-person polling place.

This might not happen on Nov 5

[odinsblog]

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is sending the police to people’s HOMES 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)

[pjharvey-moved]

personally i just think it’s really sad to see specifically so many women and minorities saying they’re not going to vote in the upcoming election given that we’ve fought tooth and nail for the right to vote. the us government (and others) wouldn’t have tried to keep us from voting for so long if our votes didn’t mean anything.

[eugenedebs1920]

It seems that rather than adapt to a diversifying American, Republicans will cheat to obtain or retain power. Their campaign of suppression, intimidation, and voter purges is at an all time record. SCOTUS and many in the Republican Party seem to forget that this is OUR country. That it’s WE the people. Do not let the forces of old and evil try to tell you otherwise. Make sure your registration is current and valid and let’s show these assholes who this country belongs to. From the revoking justices on the Supreme Court to the obstructionist in the house. This nonsense has gone on long enough! We are ashamed of the tactics some political figures resort to but. We are proud to be Americas! We will not be silenced. We are the people! 🇺🇸

[originalleftist]

I CANNOT OVERSTATE THE IMPORTANCE OF CHECKING YOUR VOTER REGISTRATION.

I just found out that North Carolina, one of the closest Presidential swing states in the country where a self-proclaimed "Black Nazi" and Holocaust Denier is running for Governor, has purged 10% of its voters.

And this same story is being repeated all over the country, on various pretexts (like not having voted/registered recently).

Republicans can't win a fair race. They KNOW they can't win a fair race. So they're trying to cheat.

If your vote didn't matter they wouldn't be trying so hard to deny it. Don't let them take your voice away.

(Also, vote Josh Stein for Governor if you're in North Carolina.)

[whitesinhistory]

On July 1, 1965, a white sheriff in Camden, Alabama, forced people to leave and then padlocked the doors of the Antioch Baptist Church—a Black church where leaders were discussing civil rights—even though he did not have the authority to do so. Community members from the Summer Community Organization and Political Education (SCOPE) group had been meeting at the church for several months, working to promote Black voter registration in Alabama and the rest of the South. According to the 1960 census, Black residents made up over 75% of the population of Wilcox County. However, because of established practices and laws passed with the intent of suppressing the Black vote—which were enforced in discriminatory ways—no Black people in Wilcox County were registered to vote during the 1964 election. When people at the Antioch Baptist Church began registering Black voters, they were quickly targeted by the white community. Two days before Sheriff P.C. Jenkins evicted people from the church, a group of white men had broken into the building and beaten two Black teenagers, inflicting injuries so severe that they were both hospitalized. Rather than providing protection from this violence, on July 1, Sheriff Jenkins announced that the church had been the cause of “too much disturbance,” and gave people only a few hours to clear out their belongings before putting a padlock on the door.  Though Sheriff Jenkins claimed that at least one church leader had expressed opposition to having the church involved in civil rights activism, the following day the chairman of the Board of Deacons denied that claim, and two weeks later the congregation and board of the church unanimously voted to support the church’s involvement in registering Black voters.   Read EJI’s report, Segregation in America, to learn more about how local white officials targeted civil rights activists and the Black church in their quest to uphold segregation.

[almostmyfest]

DEMAND REPARATIONS White guilt and shame are not enough to make up for over 500 years of colonialism, imperialism, slavery, segregation, voter denial/suppression, racial profiling, police brutality, racially biased death penalty sentences, job/education discrimination, etc.

Reparations is a start. It’s time to demand Congress pass a generational Reparations Bill for all Black people today and their descendants. Reparations can be paid for by defunding the military industrial complex, police force, and corrupt prison system in addition to a Reparations Tax on all white adults.

[alwaysbewoke]

[nando161mando]

Democrats to their young voters:

[thashining]

Even MAGA thought she was gonna win, out there burning ballots...

[odinsblog]

A study of police data showed that Black cyclists are stopped up to three times as often as whites.

A study done in December 2022 by Jonathan Manicham and Kevin Morris found that in Hillsboro County Florida, if you get stopped by the police for even a traffic violation within a certain window before an election, it reduces voter turnout by two percent in the targeted demographic.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis grabbed headlines throughout 2022 for practices that weakened democracy—from creating a police force to monitor voting to coordinating the arrests of people who allegedly voted illegally after the state told them they were eligible. In August, he suspended Tampa’s elected prosecutor, Democrat Andrew Warren, over his stated refusal to prosecute cases relating to abortion and trans rights, overriding voters’ decision.

But a host of more routine decisions made by Florida officials may be undermining the health of the state’s elections as well, even when they don’t seem directly related to voting rights.

To replace Warren as state attorney of Hillsborough County (home to Tampa), DeSantis appointed Susan Lopez, a member of the conservative Federalist Society. One of Lopez’s first decisions was to rescind a policy implemented by Warren to not prosecute bicyclists and pedestrians for certain traffic charges. A 2015 Tampa Bay Times report exposed the Tampa police department’s relentless ticketing of Black cyclists for things like having inadequate lighting, or riding on handlebars, a dynamic local organizers have labeled “bicycling while Black.” The report catalyzed a Justice Department investigation which ultimately confirmed the disproportionate enforcement.

New research shows how such low-level interactions with the police can undercut our democracy by reducing the number of people who participate in elections. A study I co-authored with fellow researcher Kevin Morris, published in December in the American Political Science Review, finds that traffic stops by police stops in Hillsborough County reduced voter turnout in 2014, 2016, and 2018 federal elections.

(continue reading)

[randomberlinchick]

As a black woman who grew up in North Carolina and has lived all over the United States, I’m very happy that Mr. Blow acknowledges that racism isn't just a problem in the south:

Blow dismissed the northern bias that racism is worse in the south. Its history may be fraught when it comes to anti-Black discrimination, but Black people have experienced racial violence everywhere in the country, not just the south. He made the point that many of the cities where Black men were killed by people were destination cities for many Black individuals in the first great migration out of the south. “Racism is not regional,” Blow said.

More from his interview with The Guardian here.

NGL, some of the most racist motherfuckers I've ever encountered were in NY and San Francisco. That aside, it is so fucking sad to see voter suppression still be an actual thing in 2023. Is this meant to be a democracy?

On another note, a dear friend of mine is the cinematographer for this documentary, and I'm very excited for him!