Russian military intelligence in 2016 may have hacked the Democrats’ computer system, as well as voting software and a voting-system manufacturer, and they helped spread rumors about Hillary Clinton (though, ironically, Hillary’s private email server was one of the few the Russians apparently were unable to crack), but it was Republican officials on the ground, in states they control, that actually kept people from voting — or, if Democrats managed to cast a ballot, kept those votes from being counted.
For example, Donald Trump carried Wisconsin by nearly 23,000 votes. The state ranked second in the nation in voter participation in 2008 and 2012, but in 2016 saw its lowest turnout since 2000. A federal judge in 2014 noted that 9% of all registered voters did not have the newly required form of voter ID, and black voters were about 50% more likely than whites to lack these IDs because they were less likely to drive or to be able to afford the documents required to get a current ID, and more likely to have moved from out of state. Mother Jones noted that more than half the state’s decline in turnout occurred in Milwaukee, where nearly two-thirds of the state’s African-American population lives and which Clinton carried by a 77-18 margin, but where almost 41,000 fewer people voted in 2016 than in 2012. Turnout fell only slightly in white middle-class areas of the city but plunged in black ones. So discriminatory ID laws prevented 45,000 eligible voters from participating in the election.
Investigative reporter Greg Palast noted that 1.1 million Americans — many of them people of color — were purged from voter rolls of GOP-controlled states before the 2016 election, under the Crosscheck system created by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. He compiled a list of 7.2 million “potential” double voters whose names are similar. For example, Donald Alexander Webster Jr. was accused of voting a second time in Virginla as Donald Eugene Webster Sr. The list was loaded overwhelmingly with voters of color and the poor and the deletion of those voters was more than enough to provide for Trump’s margin of victory.
In 2013 the Supreme Court, in its Shelby County vs. Holder decision, removed a key protection from the 1965 Voting Rights Act that had required states with a history of voter discrimination to get US Justice Department approval before changing voting laws. With that requirement removed, 14 states put in new voting restrictions, including some states that had not been under federal supervision, such as Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin.
In “caging” states, voters were sent letters or cards marked “do not forward.” If voters did not respond to the card, they were challenged as “ghost” voters and their registrations were canceled.
In Michigan, the Crosscheck system purged 449,922 voters from the rolls and Trump’s victory margin was 10,704. In Arizona, the Crosscheck system purged 270,824 voters and Trump’s victory margin was 91,234. In North Carolina, Crosscheck purged 589,393 voters and Trump carried the state by 173,313. In Ohio, Crosscheck was used to eliminate 497,000 voters and Trump carried the state by 446,821.
Exit polls also provide evidence of shenanigans. In North Carolina, exit polls showed Clinton winning by 2.1 points. Instead, Trump won by 3.8 points — a swing of 5.9 points.
In Pennsylvania, exit polls showed Clinton winning by 4.4 points. Instead, Trump won by 1.2 points, a swing of 5.6 points.
In Wisconsin, exit polls showed Clinton winning by 3.9 points. Instead, Trump won by 1.2 points, a swing of 5.1 points.
In Michigan, exit polls showed Clinton and Trump tried at 46.8% each. The official vote showed Trump winning by 10,704 votes, but an estimated 75,000 ballots were not counted because of equipment malfunctions in Democratic strongholds in Detroit and Flint.
Critics say the exit polls were simply wrong, but Palast said the polls were accurate. “That’s because exit pollsters can only ask, ‘How did you vote.’ What they don’t ask, and can’t, is ‘Was your vote counted?’”
The mass disenfranchisement also likely impacted at least seven US Senate seats in the past two elections, Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman reported after the 2016 election. At least four Democrats would likely have won seats (in Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Missouri) that they officially lost in 2016. Similar results are evident from 2014 Senate races in North Carolina, Colorado and Alaska.
Since the 2016 election, another two million voters have been removed from the rolls nationwide, as the number of registered voters has dropped from 112 million to 110 million, Palast noted.
Palast noted that Ohio Republican Secretary of State John Husted removed another half a million people from Ohio’s voter rolls in the past two years. Husted targeted voters who failed to vote in two federal election cycles. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 states that registrants should not removed for failure to vote. However, the Help America Vote Act of 2002 allowed states to use a registrant’s failure to vote to identify an address that likely changed, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision in Husted, Ohio Secretary of State, v. A. Philip Randolph Institute et al. this past June.
Ohio claimed it had evidence that, in 2012, 1.5 million voters — 20% of its total voter base — had moved their residence. Thy were sent postcards asking them to confirm their mailing address.
Failure to return the postcard cost them their right to vote. The five right-wing Justices ruled that a voter’s failure to return a postcard (which asks the voter to confirm their address) constitutes solid proof that the voter had left Ohio or moved to another voting district.
Writing for the four dissenters, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the effect of the Court’s decision was to disproportionately wipe out the rights of “minority, low-income, disabled, homeless, and veteran voters.” Sotomayor went on to cite an investigation revealing that Ohio’s purge operation had knocked out the registrations of 10% of African American-majority neighborhoods in downtown Cincinnati compared to only 4% of voters in a nearby suburban, majority-white neighborhood.
Any of those people who lived in Ohio’s 12th Congressional District and tried to vote, thinking they were still registered, got a provisional ballot — and there were 3,435 provisional ballots in play in the election, which Republican Troy Balderson led Democrat Dan O’Connor by 1,564 votes in the official tally. Most of those provisional ballots were from O’Connor’s home county, Franklin (Columbus).
Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp removed 591,548 names from the state’s voter rolls in 2017, and Palast said that removal list is overloaded with voters of color and young voters — that is, Democrats. On July 24 Kemp won the Georgia Republican nomination for governor and the Democratic nominee, Stacey Abrams, told Palast she fears this ethnic cleansing of the voter rolls will have an impact on the general election. Anybody who voted in the Democratic primary should watch out for post cards in their mail.
So, as the election approaches, worry about enemies, foreign and domestic. Be prepared for Russians to spin disinformation and Republicans to try to keep you from voting. Make sure you are still registered to vote at your local election office. You can check online at Vote.org. If you don’t already have a state-approved photo ID, such as a driver license or state ID, get one, if possible. Some states allow voters to present other forms of ID along with a declaration that there is an impediment to getting a photo ID. Don’t be denied. — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, September 1, 2018
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