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In reply to the discussion: I see one path out of this. ONE. Maybe I'm missing something. [View all]stillcool
(33,933 posts)35. here's a few facts about our elections and how fair they are
The Brennan Center for Justice has a plethora of articles pertaining to our elections. Too many to include here, and I'm sure more than you would care to read. Not sure if you're familiar with it but it's a great resource
https://www.brennancenter.org/
https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/ensure-every-american-can-vote/voting-reform/state-voting-laws
The Brennan Center tracks voting legislation around the country, keeping an eye on measures that restrict or expand voting access, improve security, or undermine election integrity
https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/ensure-every-american-can-vote/voting-reform/state-voting-laws
The Brennan Center tracks voting legislation around the country, keeping an eye on measures that restrict or expand voting access, improve security, or undermine election integrity
Growing Racial Disparities in Voter Turnout, 20082022
The gap is increasing nationwide, especially in counties that had been subject to federal oversight until the Supreme Court invalidated preclearance in 2013.
Recent scholarship finds that restrictive voting laws
generally limit the turnout of voters of color the most.3
But while the research documents the effects of individual
policies like polling place consolidation and voter
identification laws, less is known about how the effects of these
policies compound as more restrictions on voting are
enacted.4 Moreover, many policies and practices that drive
voting are not codified in state law. Take, for instance,
voter list maintenance practices: following the Shelby
County decision, jurisdictions that previously had been
required to preclear any changes to voting with the federal
government dramatically increased the rate at which they
removed voters, even if state laws governing list mainte
nance did not change.5 We cannot identify and measure
the impact of each individual change to voting policies
and practices across the country, but the racial turnout
gap necessarily takes account of all changes in voting
policy, statutory or otherwise. Our unique data set,
collected from nearly 1 billion vote records, allows us to
conduct this analysis for the first time.
This report uses voter file snapshots from shortly after
each of the past eight federal elections from Catalist and
L2 to estimate turnout rates by race. Catalist and L2 are
respected firms that sell voter file data to campaigns,
advocacy groups, and academic institutions. Our conclu
sions based on this body of information about individual-
level turnout behavior far surpasses what previous
researchers have been able to establish working from
limited survey data. We show that the racial turnout gap
has grown everywhere. In all regions, the gap in the 2022
midterms was larger than in any midterm since at least
2006. In 2022, white Americans voted at higher rates
than nonwhite Americans in every single state besides
Hawaii. Moreover, the turnout gap cannot be entirely
explained by socioeconomic differences in income or
education level between Americans of different races
and ethnicities.
That gap costs American democracy millions of ballots
that go uncast by eligible voters. It also has significant
consequences for political candidates and their
campaigns. In 2020, if the gap had not existed, 9 million
more ballots would have been cast far more than the
7 million by which Joe Biden won the national popular
the above is just a partial download of an article...just randomly chosen
Verified Voting has information about how each state chooses to run their elections, what equipment etc. When elections come around they have all kinds of information about what is going on in each state.
https://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/#mode/navigate/map/voteEquip/mapType/ppEquip/year/2024
A little article I had laying around...
Two men have re-engineered the US electoral system in favor of Republicans
If the right strews constitutional chaos over the certification of this presidential election, two people will have cleared the path
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/04/electoral-college-map-gerrymandering
Fri 4 Oct 2024 06.00 EDT
David Daley
If voters wanted to toss out lawmakers who force citizens to endure harder processes to make their voices heard, well, the politicians and Leos rightwing judges had that covered too. Arizona, Georgia, Alabama and Texas states that the Voting Rights Act has required to pre-approve the equity of legislative maps were suddenly liberated by the US supreme court to gerrymander themselves into safe districts..
----
Then, in 2019s disastrous Rucho v Common Cause, Roberts closed off appealing to federal courts to help fix partisan gerrymanders and suggested, apparently with a straight face, that voters still had the power to fix this through the ordinary political process, or by passing a law through Congress. Just like that, time and again, whether on voting rights or reproductive rights, the court would issue a ruling that benefited the Republican party, while telling citizens to fix it through a political process that the court helped engineer against them.
It could get worse still. If Georgias state election board appointed largely by the gerrymandered legislature, empowered by Shelby countys evisceration of preclearance succeeds in slowing the states count or certification to a crawl, it could push the battle for the states electors toward courts hand-picked and packed by Leo.
Likewise, a close win for Trump in Arizona or Georgia where fewer than 11,000 and 12,000 votes, respectively, made the difference in 2020 could easily be attributed to aggressive new voting restrictions that target minority communities, passed by gerrymandered legislatures freed from preclearance after Shelby. And if certification runs aground in the US House, where a majority of the Republican caucus voted against certifying free and fair results from Pennsylvania and Arizona in 2020, one big reason will be the new breed of extremist lawmaker elected to Congress from districts gerrymandered to be wildly uncompetitive.
This would be the ultimate proof of concept for the rights judicial capture and gerrymandering schemes: tilted legislatures, newly liberated by the courts, tipping the presidency back to a supreme court supermajority packed with three justices who proved their conservative bona fides working on Bush v Gore in 2000.
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If we impeach Trump, we get Vance.In many ways, I think Vance might be worse (if that's even possible).
Raven
Thursday
#1
In '26, the Senate will have 20 Republicans up for reelection & just 13 Democrats. n/t
elocs
Thursday
#21
The 2026 Senate map is not all that great for us. We have more actual at risk seats than the Rethugs do
Celerity
Thursday
#32
I see MAGA gov starving people until food riots start. I see MAGA gov declare national emergency
IA8IT
Thursday
#5
One option: Trumputin overplays his hand and tries a full-on takeover. And loses.
usonian
Thursday
#11
The reason we still have the fucking asshole in power is because the GOP has nobody else.
Initech
Thursday
#12
Ultimately, we need billions of dollars to invest in the media, reclaiming the national dialog
unblock
Thursday
#13
Sounds like the only viable plan at this point. We absolutely have to win super majorities in Congress.
Vinca
Thursday
#18
We must empower the masses. With internets, opportunity, awareness of abuse they've suffered
bucolic_frolic
Thursday
#26