149,000 Georgia Voters Challenged

[jclay]

I just read this and need a reality check please; anybody else run into trustworthy reporting that this is real??? My head is spinning. https://truthout.org/articles/georgi...149000-voters/

[vertical_doug]

I just read this and need a reality check please; anybody else run into trustworthy reporting that this is real??? My head is spinning. https://truthout.org/articles/georgi...149000-voters/

https://www.cartercenter.org/resourc...es-georgia.pdf

snd from WABE

While it’s unclear how many more mass challenges may happen in the final days of the Midterms, election experts say these mass challenges tie up election workers in hours of additional labor at a moment when they’ve got no time to spare.

“It penalizes the staff, it challenges the voter, it causes delay, puts the poll worker in an awkward position. I call it using a shotgun to kill a flea,” Stephen Day, a member of the Gwinnett County Board of Elections, said at a recent meeting where the board tossed out thousands of challenges.
Related



It is interesting to see how well targeted this is.

[Mark Walberg]

Thanks for pointing this out.
Truly appalling !!!
Kemp has made it possible to take away the right to vote for many people for NO PROBABLE CAUSE.
This is so flagrantly unamerican.
We need to brainstorm on ways to block the relentless drive to amass power.
This is much worse than I thought was even possible.
How can we get rid of these people ?

[vertical_doug]

gerrymanderproject.png

At the end of the day, if you want competitive districts where candidates have to compete on ideas and not ideology. The way districts are cut needs to change. Both parties try to use it to their advantage and currently the republicans are doing a slightly better job. But only slightly.

But if you think of the entire US, only 40 of 538 districts are competitive, this is a real problem for our democracy and one politicians have no incentive to fix and SCOTUS does not care to weigh in.

[beeatnik]

My wife as an "emergency worker" (as in Covid emergency) has been working at a polling place since Saturday. The polling place is in Pasadena, open 8am to 7pm for early voting and 7am to 8pm today. On Saturday 4 people voted in person, 19 on Sunday and 21 on Monday. The workers (city and county employees) who include a district attorney are being paid overtime, so some individuals are earning $150/hour or about $1650 for the day. On Sat there were more workers than voters. Talk about using a shotgun. Oh, and 90% of staff is masked, in a city where 90% of persons over 5 are vaccinated. America is so weird.

[zetroc]

My wife as an "emergency worker" (as in Covid emergency) has been working at a polling place since Saturday. The polling place is in Pasadena, open 8am to 7pm for early voting and 7am to 8pm today. On Saturday 4 people voted in person, 19 on Sunday and 21 on Monday. The workers (city and county employees) who include a district attorney are being paid overtime, so some individuals are earning $150/hour or about $1650 for the day. On Sat there were more workers than voters. Talk about using a shotgun. Oh, and 90% of staff is masked, in a city where 90% of persons over 5 are vaccinated. America is so weird.

What's weird about wearing a mask? It's a simple way to protect the people around you, and this going into a bad RSV season.

[jimcav]

obvious thread drift, but toward the end of my career, where my job was public health, I often wore a mask during flu season--I was vaccinated, but that doesn't mean I couldn't get it and pass it along. I'd often get a 'look'', and then simply tell the individual, I wasn't sick, but could potentially pass it along, and then quote them the daily # visits to the ER or flu clinic on base for febrile upper respiratory infection, and then offer them a mask to reduce their (and others') potential exposure. My safety guy had inexplicably stock-piled thousands of N-95s, which in the navy system had a shelf life, so I'd offer them one. Most put it on--of course no idea if they kept using it though.
I saw innumerable individuals quick to wear sunglasses, safety glasses, gloves, and don masks for 'nuisance' dusts, but few seem to give much thought about respiratory illnesses you get from, breathing,...weird to me, but maybe the COVID experience will help some to be more proactive to protect their and other's health

[jclay]

Back on topic : The ability to challenge voters "needs some tightening up" accoding to Brett Raffensberger. The whole thing is despicable....but real. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...ty/ar-AA13IvMt

[beeatnik]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/gop-rides...191818738.html

[bcm119]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/gop-rides...191818738.html

That's FL. Easier to convince a lot of Cubans and Venezuelans that the democrats are "socialist".

[echappist]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/gop-rides...191818738.html

What exactly are you trying to say, and how is what you are trying to say at all relevant to the phenomenon of vote challenges?

As best as I can tell, both of your posts are just rehashes of what you have previously iterated, one of them a purely personal conviction and the other an observed and understood phenomenon concerning voters of South Florida. But neither has any relevance to the topic at hand. Why you feel compelled to insert your off-tangent ramblings into discussions, only you know.

[beeatnik]

Hey, man, I’m as concerned about the State of California spending $2000 grand per voter just to assure access. It strikes me as a type of correction or overreaction to the narrative of voter suppression.

As for the Cubans and Venezuelans, they have experience with regimes which limit political participation. It’s an interesting footnote as JClay is the representative from FL. I don’t know, whatever.

[echappist]

You know, you could save a lot of us the headache if you typed out your reasons when you post a link.

It is, after-all, why we have this post in the Announcements section, titled "Links for Nothing". Your readers don't have a clue as to why a link is posted until you explain its relevance. And as shown by your explanation above, we can at least follow your reasoning as opposed to taking random guesses.

[j44ke]

Hey, man, I’m as concerned about the State of California spending $2000 grand per voter just to assure access. It strikes me as a type of correction or overreaction to the narrative of voter suppression.

As for the Cubans and Venezuelans, they have experience with regimes which limit political participation. It’s an interesting footnote as JClay is the representative from FL. I don’t know, whatever.

My wife's organization (ICC ICA) has a significant presence in the countries of South America. She's down in Santiago, Chile right now in fact. Oppression has been a big part of their 20th century, more so than free and open society, and the US has been a big part of that. There is a complicated yin-and-yang between fearing the radicalization of the poor by the left and the absolutist purging of intellectuals & scientists from society by the right (and vice versa - hard to keep track sometimes.) Among her colleagues, she probably has slightly more who pay close attention to the right, but there are nearly as many who see the right as a necessary antidote to societal chaos. Most of her colleagues are the more worldly, elite financial minority who hear the gnashing teeth of the poor on the other side of their gates. And you are never quite sure whether the stories you hear are just the ones everyone thinks you want to hear.

Miami though is a sanctuary. They may have investment properties in NYC, but they have homes in Miami. And a lot of them like DeSantis. They don't trust him for a minute, but they like him for his willingness to strong-arm ideas they view as dangerous based on their experiences. So they donate to PACs and other instruments of contribution available to foreigners - if they are foreigners. Many families, as a product of the political upheavels in their countries, are dual US citizens. One of those weird situations where US government support for their country's oppressive regimes drove them out of their home country and to the United States. And these are the wealthy classes - the income gap can be tremendous.

These are all HUGE generalizations when talking about a continent. But the US is so Europe-focused and increasingly Asia-focused, it is like the world ends 50 miles south of the US-Mexico border. Mystifying. You wouldn't think at this point that a Venezuelan living in Miami because he was driven from his country would want a strong-man to lead a government, but where you or I might see a fascist dictator, he sees a great equalizer and defender against social chaos emanating from the left (or vice versa, sometimes hard to keep track.)

Anyway, not sure where I was going with that vis a vis voter suppression, but something in beeatnik's reference to Cubans and Venezuelans and a recent conversation with my wife sparked it.

[72gmc]

Thanks, Jorn. I am pro-immigration but I sometimes forget to consider that as people from around the world join us, their experiences with various ends of the political and cultural spectrum also join us. Time to step up and keep learning.

[BBB]

My wife's organization (ICC ICA) has a significant presence in the countries of South America. She's down in Santiago, Chile right now in fact. Oppression has been a big part of their 20th century, more so than free and open society, and the US has been a big part of that. There is a complicated yin-and-yang between fearing the radicalization of the poor by the left and the absolutist purging of intellectuals & scientists from society by the right (and vice versa - hard to keep track sometimes.) Among her colleagues, she probably has slightly more who pay close attention to the right, but there are nearly as many who see the right as a necessary antidote to societal chaos. Most of her colleagues are the more worldly, elite financial minority who hear the gnashing teeth of the poor on the other side of their gates. And you are never quite sure whether the stories you hear are just the ones everyone thinks you want to hear.

Miami though is a sanctuary. They may have investment properties in NYC, but they have homes in Miami. And a lot of them like DeSantis. They don't trust him for a minute, but they like him for his willingness to strong-arm ideas they view as dangerous based on their experiences. So they donate to PACs and other instruments of contribution available to foreigners - if they are foreigners. Many families, as a product of the political upheavels in their countries, are dual US citizens. One of those weird situations where US government support for their country's oppressive regimes drove them out of their home country and to the United States. And these are the wealthy classes - the income gap can be tremendous.

These are all HUGE generalizations when talking about a continent. But the US is so Europe-focused and increasingly Asia-focused, it is like the world ends 50 miles south of the US-Mexico border. Mystifying. You wouldn't think at this point that a Venezuelan living in Miami because he was driven from his country would want a strong-man to lead a government, but where you or I might see a fascist dictator, he sees a great equalizer and defender against social chaos emanating from the left (or vice versa, sometimes hard to keep track.)

Anyway, not sure where I was going with that vis a vis voter suppression, but something in beeatnik's reference to Cubans and Venezuelans and a recent conversation with my wife sparked it.

An intertesting perspective.

We have similar issues with immigrants of various stripes rejecting 'left wing' ideology given their backgrounds and instead they lean towards the right.

While I'm not deriding past experiences, which can often be traumatic, supporting the right doesn't really help. Sure the rich get richer, but right wing ideology, or the environment it creates, is largely busted or dis-credited. GFC anyone?

[echappist]

An intertesting perspective.

We have similar issues with immigrants of various stripes rejecting 'left wing' ideology given their backgrounds and instead they lean towards the right.

While I'm not deriding past experiences, which can often be traumatic, supporting the right doesn't really help. Sure the rich get richer, but right wing ideology, or the environment it creates, is largely busted or dis-credited. GFC anyone?

As mentioned above, a good amount of it is conflation of issues. Left of center gets interpreted as "communism" or "totalitarian socialism", etc. What's peculiar re: Chilean background is that everyone emigrating from there presumably has memories of what the excesses of rightwing totalitarianism looks like, which is to say, Gen. Pinochet "disappearing" the opposition. And they still somehow think that strongman rightwing ideology should get a pass while what's effectively a centrist position should be subjected to close scrutiny. Ineffable...

Another factor that can't be discounted is a self-selecting bias. Those who seek to leave probably tend to be more individualistic and enterprising and would be drawn to rhetoric that plays up those ideals (regardless of whether those rhetoric is actually backed up by action).

[htwoopup]

I have been close with a number of Cubans who came over during the Revolution and somehow became the Miami media mafia who started the first radio, television and newspapers of any real strength in the US which were in Spanish (an industry now dominated by US investors in concert with Mexican origin folk/ companies).

Most of them had the typical immigrant experience of first working way below their training/ education. The fellow who started radio in Spanish in this country was a doctor who ended up selling furniture in a store in the Bronx and his wife was the first female law graduate of the University of Havana and she cleaned houses when they first came to the US. The others had similar stories. They all ended up achieving “The American Dream” when it is defined as money and power.

But to a person, they would say that no Cuban would EVER vote for a Democrat because over 6 decades ago John F Kennedy singlehandedly messed up the Bay of Pigs. And if he, that Democrat, hadn’t personally cocked up the whole thing….

Essentially, voting Republican was an absolute non-negotiable position because of what happened back then.

Now, those in this cohort that are still alive are in their 90’s. I wonder how much of the shift in the Cuban American vote in Miami Dade is due to the age shift of the population/ getting further away from generation of immigrants to once/ twice/ three times removed from the boat trip.

[j44ke]

I'm not saying this is an issue or a problem - it is part of the definition of immigration and being an immigrant. People who immigrate to a new country are not blank slates. They come prepackaged with experiences and all the knowledge, skills, fears and trepidation that comes from those. Too merely present a set of values to people entering the country and say "here is our moral compass - accept it and discard yours" isn't persuasive. In fact, it may mirror the early stages of something they left their home country to escape. However, if you validate their fears as a central part of your political platform and use it to gain their support, that's just pandering to the lowest common denominator and does nothing to elevate anything - it in no way represents "the better angels of our nature".

[j44ke]

...

Now, those in this cohort that are still alive are in their 90’s. I wonder how much of the shift in the Cuban American vote in Miami Dade is due to the age shift of the population/ getting further away from generation of immigrants to once/ twice/ three times removed from the boat trip.

As I've been told, after Gore's loss, the Democrats started working on flipping Florida, and the intransigence of the Cubans and the spillover of their views into the non-Cuban Hispanic (sorry beeatnik) communities in Florida was seen as creating too much volatility (for Democrats) in a state that was too important electorally. The normalization effort was designed to split off the hardcore Cubans who came over in the 1950's from the post-Mariel Boatlift Cubans. The latter still had close living relatives in Cuba, and they wanted to send money home without limits, to be able to call their families directly on the phone, and if possible visit Cuba without risk of arrest by Cuban authorities. Obama raised the transfer limits, began working on visitation rights, and private cellphones (with Florida SIM cards!) became available in Cuba. And in 2012 it worked. When Trump ran against Clinton, he promised to undo all Obama's normalization efforts which solidified the support of the older Cubans and added the support of the increasing number of Venezuelans (and others.) So the Democrats started working on how to win without wasting time & money campaigning in Florida by winning elsewhere.