#us political suppression

[sniperct]

Basically republicans want to make it so your ID has to match your birth certificate which affects everyone from trans people to married women to immigrants.

Meanwhile, in GA, they're going to force all ballots to be hand counted, which could make it difficult to meet the deadline to certify the vote, and thus potentially allow them to give the state to Trump regardless of the outcome.

In many states, such as Ohio, Florida, Texas and North Carolina, they've been purging voters from the rolls by the millions.

If voting didn't matter, why are they trying so damn hard to stop us?

[hussyknee]

[this-dude-over-here]

hey so we should really be concerned about how several random bomb threats disrupted voting in several swing state areas with predominantly black populations today. like, that's fucking weird right. right?

[deaddee-anime-brownfanlady]

[shinelikethunder]

With less than a week to go, SCOTUS' partisan wing sends the message loud and clear that their attitude towards rubber-stamping outrageously illegal election-interference bullshit is "try and stop us, you jumped-up little shits."

However, in this particular case, you can still vote if Virginia has wrongfully purged you from the voter rolls. As of 2022, VA offers same-day registration and provisional ballots (where you follow up with documention after the fact), as long as you vote in the correct precinct.

Official Virginia page to look up the polling place for your address

Official Virginia same-day registration info

Official Virginia page to check your registration status

Ballotpedia state-by-state info on same-day registration

Ballotpedia state-by-state info on provisional ballots and what happens to ones cast in the wrong precinct

ACLU Know Your Rights voting fact sheet

Multilingual voter protection hotlines (English: 866-OUR-VOTE)

For anyone who became a citizen since their last DMV visit, or who suspects they made an error filing out their paperwork that would have booted them from voter lists, there are still ways to cast a ballot in next month’s elections. Registrars and election workers won’t turn eligible voters away from polls if they wish to utilize same-day registration or a provisional ballot, according to Henrico County Registrar Mark Coakley. [...] With a provisional ballot, voters will still need to follow up with their local registrar office to provide additional documents that can help verify their identity or other facts, like if they are residents of Virginia and the city or county they voted in, and whether they are U.S. citizens or have had their voting rights restored after a previous felony conviction. [...] Coakley said that when using a provisional ballot, voters are also given instructions to help with the follow-up procedures. “They’ll get a letter attached to their provisional ballot, giving them all the information of ‘This is the reason why (you may have this ballot)’ and ‘Here’s the ways to get hold of us to present evidence if you choose to do so,’” he said. Chesterfield County Registrar Missy Vera stressed that same-day registration can happen at any early voting location as well as on Election Day, which is Nov. 5.

[originalleftist]

Final Pre-Election Day Reminders:

(Please Share)

If you encounter voter suppression, intimidation, or other issues, you can contact these numbers:

You can also contact the Department of Justice and FBI, and of course report threats, violence, or intimidation to 911:

If you need a ride to the polls, this may help:

If you are not registered to vote, many states allow same-day registration:

If you are turned away at the polls, say:

I REQUEST A PROVISIONAL BALLOT AS REQUIRED BY LAW.

Be sure to insist on a receipt.

Vote as early as possible if you have't yet. Bring a friend with you- or more than one!

Check to confirm if possible that your ballot was counted- this goes for early/mail voters too. If there was a problem for example with your signature, it may be possible to "cure" your ballot and have it counted if you act quickly. Check your state election sites.

IF YOU ARE IN LINE, DO NOT LEAVE, even if the polls have closed.

IF YOU ARE IN LINE WHEN POLLS CLOSE, YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO VOTE.

Stay safe.

Stay focussed.

We've got this.

[rigaudon]

Okay, everybody, repeat after me: Voting is a civic duty, not a moral litmus test.

Voting is a civic duty, not a moral litmus test.

[dicapiito]

Something to watch out for since we all remember 2016

[reasonsforhope]

"In a 4-3 decision released on Friday afternoon December 22, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held that Wisconsin’s voting maps as currently drawn violate the state constitution and must be redrawn in time for the 2024 election.

Under the Wisconsin Constitution, state legislative districts must consist of “contiguous territory.” [Meaning: continuous] Yet, the majority opinion states, “the number of state legislative districts containing territory completely disconnected from the rest of the district is striking.”

“At least fifty of ninety-nine assembly districts and at least twenty of thirty-three senate districts include separate, detached territory,” states the majority opinion, written by Justice Jill Karofsky.

Contiguous districts are a safeguard against gerrymandering and help keep together groups of voters who live in the same areas and have the same interests, explains the decision, which includes maps highlighting the islands of noncontiguous voting areas in the state’s current districts.

The voters who brought the lawsuit, Clarke v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, argued that the current districts violate the constitution and asked the court to  order the adoption of remedial maps. They also asked the court to declare the November 2022 state senate elections unlawful, and to order special elections for state senate seats that would otherwise not be on the ballot until November 2026.

The court’s ruling agrees with the petitioners that “Wisconsin’s state legislative districts must be composed of physically adjoining territory,” and enjoins the Wisconsin Elections Commission from using the current legislative maps in future elections. But it declined to invalidate the results of the 2022 state senate elections.

Acknowledging that it is the legislature’s role to draw voting maps, the majority opinion urges the legislature to draw new maps that comport with the constitution. However, it also states, since the legislature might not draw such maps or the governor might veto them, the court will plan to adopt remedial maps that can be used in time for the 2024 elections and unless and until new, constitutional maps are enacted through the legislative process...

Wisconsin’s voting maps are widely considered among the most politically gerrymandered in the country. This was reflected in 2018 when Democrats swept every statewide election and earned 53 percent of assembly votes cast statewide but only 36 percent of Assembly seats went to Democrats. Voters in Wisconsin are evenly split along partisan lines, and statewide races are often decided by slim margins. Currently, however, Republicans hold a 22-11 supermajority in the state senate and a 64-35 near-supermajority in the state assembly."

-via The Progressive Magazine

Note: Article is a bit wordy but this is a Big Deal. We're going to get fair election maps in an important swing state. The maps thrown out by this decision were deliberately designed to give Republicans a massive advantage in the election.

This WILL make a huge difference in who's elected in 2024.

[thashining]

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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

[unofficial-project-2025]

Make sure to check your voter's registration regularly! Reblog so that more people may become aware of this!

EDIT: Gonna had a tip here to tell that, since this was probably done so that republicans could stop people from voting blue, it might be a good idea to register as R this year and then vote blue. Better safe than sorry IMO.

[creature-wizard]

Signs you might be dealing with a bot or troll trying to interfere with the US presidential election

Default PFP. Not everyone who has a default PFP is a bot or troll, and a few bots/trolls actually do have custom PFPs, but enough bots/trolls have default PFPs that it's always worth looking for additional signs you're dealing with a bot/troll when you see one.

(If you're a real honest-go-goodness Tumblr blogger and you have a default PFP, then I strongly recommend you change it because many people will block you on sight.)

Default colors/layout. Again, bots and trolls don't usually put a lot of effort into customizing their blogs. Some of them fiddle around with the basic settings, but they're very unlikely to upload custom graphics and put too much effort into customizing the colors. Same as above, not everyone who has a default blog theme is a bot or troll, but enough of them do that it's worth looking for other signs of suspicious activity.

Soundbitey content. Bots/trolls don't really engage with the content of the posts they interact with. They post very generic soundbitey responses, like "You have Trump Derangement Syndrome. See a therapist," "Fuck you, I'm not voting for Genocide Joe/Kamala the Cop," "America is run by lobbies. Voting is a scam," or "Republicans and Democrats both hate us, that's why I'm voting third party." Basically, if it sounds like a regurgitated line, you may be dealing with a bot or a troll.

Lack of personal content. Bot/troll blogs may have only one post, or might just have a bunch of reblogs with nothing of substances added to them. I'm going to point out here that I've also been seeing blogs do this with pro-Biden/pro-Harris content, so I'm not sure that all of these blogs are necessarily trying to interfere with the election, or if they're trying to get attention so they can try and advertise something else down the line. Some of these blogs also post or like porn, so I suspect a lot of them are actually pornbots trying to capitalize on politics.

Here's some examples of replies from bot/troll accounts:

whodathydro is a great example of an extremely obvious bot/troll. When we go to their blog, we can see that it hasn't been customized in any way, and there's not even a single post on it.

I've also got screencaps of one-post blogs over here that you can check out. (The first one has actually gussied up their blog a little, but it clearly hasn't been used in any way an genuine blogger would use their blog - no personal content, no engagement, nothing.)

So yeah, there ya go; if you see blogs like this they are probably trolls or bots; happy reporting and blocking!

[hussyknee]

Ayat Khaddura, 27, was a digital content and podcast presenter in North Gaza. She was one of the five journalists murdered by Israel's targeted air strike on Nov 20, along with her sister and grandmother in her home. She posted this video in the knowledge that these were probably her last moments.

Video description:

A young Arab woman in a hijab and abaya speaks into her camera in Arabic in a high, frightened voice. The subtitles read: "This might be the last video from me. Today the Occupation Forces dropped phosphorus bombs on the Beit Lahia residential area, and frightening sound bombs. And uhm, they dropped letters from the sky ordering us to evacuate. So of course nearly everyone evacuated for the most part. Everyone ran into the streets in a crazy way. No one knows where they're coming or going. Uhm, we're all split up and around. Me and some others stayed at home. The others evacuated and left. We don't know where they've gone, that's for sure. The situation is terrifying, the scenes are horrifying [voice breaking as she starts to cry], the situation is extremely difficult. May God have mercy on us." [She closes her eyes as she starts to cry openly. End clip.]

[New clip.] The same young woman is seated on a desk in front of a world map wearing a jacket over a t-shirt and her hijab. Large video caption reads "Message from Ayat Khaddura who was martyred yesterday". Her voice is sad and resigned, and her face is tired and tear-stained as she speaks in Arabic. Subtitles read:

"We are human beings, just like other human beings around the world. We had many big dreams, but unfortunately today our dreams are that if we are killed we will be martyred in one piece, one body (not torn to pieces) so that people can recognise us, and we will not be cut off in pieces and put in a bag. [struggles not to cry.] When we are martyred there will be a shroud for us and we will be buried in a grave. Our dreams have become that the war will stop, that we stop hearing the sound of bombing. We never imagined we would reach such a stage and live such a life that does not have the lowest basic necessities. [Blinks back tears.] There are things we can't talk about, there are things that people photographed and did not document. When the war will end, who will continue to talk to people? What happened to us, how we lived, what we saw. Everything is being destroyed before our eyes." [Looks down with a sob. End video.]

Israel dropping leaflets onto trapped and hiding people minutes before bombing them is nothing but a sick PR exercise— there's nowhere safe to go, no telling where the bombs will drop, no way to not leave family members behind while fleeing. Many people in North Gaza decided not to evacuate to the South, not only because similar calls to go South have ended in Israeli airstrikes massacring the refugees, but the possibility of being killed while trying to make the journey, the lack of food and water to sustain them, and inability to leave old and disabled family members behind. Some like Hind Khaudary, who had the opportunity to leave the Gaza strip entirely through foreign embassies, stayed behind to continue reporting the situation unfolding in the North. Meanwhile, Israel is continuing to bomb the South, despite their own evacuation orders.

Ayat is one of the fifty-three Middle Eastern journalists killed since Oct. 7. Forty-six of them were Palestinian, most massacred along with their families. Air strikes on other journalists managed to kill only their families instead. This is the deadliest period for journalists recorded by the Committee to Protect Journalists in its thirty years of existence. In fact, Israel killed one of the CPJ's own journalists documenting the murders around the same time as Ayat.

Nearly all these are targeted strikes. Israel controls the census in Gaza and therefore has information on where everyone lives. They also track journalists cellphones and use surveillance drones and quadcopters (drone snipers). Journalists and their families are known to receive threatening phone calls from unknown numbers before they're eventually attacked.

As to why Israel is so concerned about journalists? For the same reason the Biden Administration has stated openly.

But the administration remains wary about Netanyahu’s endgame and seeming lack of a plan for what to do once Hamas is defeated. There was no sense that the pause would turn into a lengthier cease-fire, a senior administration official said. And there was some concern in the administration about an unintended consequence of the pause: that it would allow journalists broader access to Gaza and the opportunity to further illuminate the devastation there and turn public opinion on Israel.

Please spread news of these journalists' murders, show their faces, say their names. While Western journalists from CNN and BCC are embedded with IOF teams to safely "report" on Gaza, Palestinian journalists who have been reporting there for years, wearing a press jacket and helmet they know won't protect them, are documenting and broadcasting the situation on the ground, watching their colleagues being picked off one by one for the last month and half, not knowing when it will be their turn. Ayat was not a combatant. She was a young woman a lot like most on this site, young and angry at injustice, armed with only a degree and internet connection to fight for her people. She wanted the world to witness her last moments: documenting the situation till the end, her terror of dying, how she clung to her faith and wanted to live. Hers and her compatriots work is to resist letting their people disappear among the vast uncounted; she resisted it to her last breath.

Empires and colonizers win wars by reducing people to numbers. When people become numbers they become collateral, cattle, "unavoidable casualties". This is what Palestinians have fought for decades to show: "We Are Not Numbers". If the West wants to kill human beings with impunity, everyone gets to see exactly which lives and loves and hopes it's snuffing out forever.

[shy-raccoon]

If your voter registration gets purged for being a democrat reregister as no party preference or independent. Make sure you can vote in this election especially if you live in a swing state or red state.

[feiofthefae]

If they don't demand a recount, I'm going to be pissed. And no, I don't care what side you're on, none of this is okay.

[contemplatingoutlander]

"One of the most important realities of American life is this: No nation can fully undo the effects of 345 years of state-sanctioned bigotry — from slavery to Jim Crow — in 59 years. The time period between the arrival of the first slaves on colonial shores in 1619 and the abolition of legalized discrimination with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 is simply too long, the discrimination too ingrained and the distortion of society too great to wave the wand of legal and cultural reform and quickly realize the dream of American equality."

--David French, Opinion Columnist for the The New York Times