Republican Voter Fraud In North Carolina, Georgia

The Republican Party, which uses "voter fraud" to justify voter- suppressing voter i.d. laws and purges of voter rolls, has been caught once again committing (allegedly!) voter fraud on a massive scale (our emphasis throughout):

DUBLIN, N.C. — In a low-slung, aging commercial strip across the street from an online-gaming parlor here, a local operative named Leslie McCrae Dowless ran his command center for Republican Mark Harris in the 9th Congressional District primary this spring.  

Dowless sat at a desk at the back of one of the strip’s vacant storefronts, where he oversaw a crew of workers who collected absentee ballots from voters and updated the Harris campaign on the numbers, according to Jeff Smith, who is the building’s owner and a former Dowless friend. [snip]

And, by "collected absentee ballots" they mean "collected and shitcanned Democratic absentee ballots":

Investigators with the bipartisan state elections board — which last week voted unanimously to delay certifying the race — have identified hundreds of potential witnesses to interview, many of them voters whose absentee ballots were never turned in, according to the people familiar with the probe. That raises the possibility of a weeks-long investigation and an uncertain start date for the next congressman from the 9th District. 

That Republican operative at the center of this, Dowless, he's seems nice:

Dowless, 62, who serves as vice chairman of the Bladen Soil and Water Conservation District, has a criminal record. Court records show he was convicted of fraud, perjury and passing a worthless check in the late 1980s and early 1990s. 

He first came under scrutiny from the state elections board in 2016, when officials began investigating similar ballot irregularities, leading to a public hearing. 

That year, in the 9th District primary election, Dowless was on the campaign payroll of Todd Johnson, a Union County insurance salesman who also won a curious number of the mail-in ballots in Bladen County: 211, compared with four for Harris, who was also a candidate that year, and just one for the incumbent, Rep. Robert Pittenger (R), records show. Johnson did not respond to a request for comment. 

There's fishy, and then there's... Fishy (click to enlarge):



There's more data and anecdotal evidence of voter fraud in this North Carolina Congressional District at the link above.  The Democrats are going to court over it., while State election officials are working with the FBI and U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, and the State Bureau of Investigation is also on the case. ("Lock them up, lock them up!")

In Georgia, there's a special runoff election today (!!) with conservaDem John Barrow hoping to reverse some of the egregious voter suppression tactics of "Governor- elect" Brian Kemp. Turnout by Democrats and anyone interested in free and fair elections will be critical. A lawsuit filed by a voting rights group  supporting Democrat Stacey Abrams alleges gross mismanagement of the recent runoff election.  If Barrow is elected today, the lawsuit would provide fertile ground for making changes in Georgia's discriminatory election systems.

The Republican Coup In North Carolina (Cont.)

The Republican coup in North Carolina has now been formalized with outgoing Governor and despicable poltroon Pat "Private Parts Pat" McCrory signing bills limiting the powers of his Democratic successor Roy Cooper, who has vowed to take the Republicans to court to overturn their anti- democratic power grab.  Stay tuned.

In the meantime, pundits are seeing this as a template for stifling opposition and consolidating power by the incoming neo- fascist Russo- Republican (credit Hackwhackers!) administration of Donald "Rump" Trump (h/t Daily Kos):

The Nation

First, after taking power after the 2010 election for the first time since 1870, North Carolina Republicans gerrymandered legislative and congressional districts by resegregating the state politically in violation of the Voting Rights Act.  [snip]

Second, a month after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in June 2013, the North Carolina legislature passed the country’s worst voter-suppression law. [snip]

Third, even after the courts restored a week of early voting in 2016, GOP-controlled county election boards limited early-voting hours and polling locations. [snip]

Fourth, despite all of these suppression efforts, Cooper managed to defeat McCrory—the only race in 2016 where Democrats picked up a governor’s seat in a state Trump carried. [snip] 

The pattern in North Carolina is clear: When Republicans win, they suppress the Democratic vote to solidify power in future elections. And when they lose, they rig the rules to prevent their opponents from being able to fairly exercise and maintain power. This is what happens in a dictatorship, not a democracy. And it’s a preview of what’s to come in Trump’s America. (our emphasis)

The Week

It's not hard to predict how Republicans will attempt to cement their control of political power during the Trump years. Indeed, the tyranny is already some distance towards completion. Part of the plan will be what they have already been doing since they won the 2010 midterms and especially since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013. They'll continue gerrymandering district boundaries to make it as hard as possible for Democrats to win (indeed, the way those selfsame state legislative districts are drawn in North Carolina is already an unconstitutional abrogation of civil rights, according to a federal court). They'll enact further targeted vote suppression measures to disenfranchise as many minorities and white liberals as possible, this time at the federal level if they can manage it. And for Democrats who manage to jump through all the hoops, they'll make it as onerous as possible for them to vote by restricting polling locations and hours in Democratic-leaning locations. 

Finally, as we're seeing in North Carolina, any inconveniently lost elections can be overturned so long as the GOP controls enough other chunks of government. Legislatures can core out a governor's power, or Supreme Court decisions can overturn legislation with reverse-engineered legal argle-bargle. Who knows where it will stop. And from there it's really quite a short distance to stuffing ballot boxes or rigging the election counts. It has all happened before. 

Finally, Samantha Bee wraps it up by telling us to, for one thing, get busy in local politics (via Crooks & Liars):



BONUS:  Infidel 753 gives us one way, through the National Popular Vote initiative, we can act locally right now.

Federal Court Strikes Down North Carolina Voter Suppression Law (UPDATED)

Improving odds of North Carolina going blue again in November:

A federal appeals court has struck down North Carolina’s voter identification law, holding that it was “passed with racially discriminatory intent.” 

The ruling also invalidated changes the state made in 2013 to early voting, same-day registration, out-of-precinct voting, and preregistration.  [snip] 

The state could seek to appeal the decision to the full bench of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals or to the Supreme Court, but it seems unlikely those courts will step in to restore the voter ID law and other voting-related changes in advance of the November election.

Another banana Republican attempt to suppress Democratic voting goes down in flames.  Sad!

UPDATE I: Charles P. Pierce has his inimitable say.

UPDATE II:  The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) editorialized:

North Carolina’s 2013 election law was advertised as preventing voter fraud. Instead, it has been exposed as fraudulent lawmaking – voter suppression in the guise of voting protections. 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit delivered that stinging ruling Friday. A three-judge panel unanimously found that the requirement of a valid photo ID to vote and other election law changes made by the Republican-controlled General Assembly were targeted at illegally suppressing the votes of certain minorities, especially African-Americans. 

North Carolinians heading to the polls this November can put away their photo IDs. The full early voting period will be restored. Out-of-precinct votes will count again. People will once more be able to register and vote on the same day. And North Carolina will go back to being a state that encourages rather than obstructs voting. 

These will all be good restorations for North Carolina, but their return is a stain on the state’s Republican leadership. Not only did the Republicans deny many voters – the primary election saw thousands of votes thrown out under the new law – they claimed they were protecting voter integrity even as they failed to apply a photo ID to absentee ballots, which tend to support Republicans.

UPDATE III:  The Charlotte Observer adds,

We knew. Deep down, most of us knew. 

We knew that North Carolina’s 2013 voter ID law, like similar laws across the country, was not truly about voter fraud, but voter suppression. 

We knew Republicans were less interested in the integrity of elections than in building obstacles for their opponents’ supporters. 

We knew. Some Republicans even admitted it. And last week, in North Carolina, they got called on it.  [snip]

We knew. So did those lawmakers. And now, the 4th Circuit affirmed it: The fraud we needed to be protected from is what happened in the General Assembly.

Wisconsin Republican: Voter Suppression Is Going To Help Us!

Dimbulb (are there any other kind?) Wisconsin Republican congressman Glenn Grothman* unintentionally spilled the beans on the real intent of Wisconsin's voter i.d. law on Tuesday.  Here's Seth Meyers on Republican attempts to make voting as difficult as possible in Wisconsin -- and North Carolina, and Arizona (the best starts around 3:35):



Let's pause to give thanks to the Republican Roberts Supreme Court for its gutting of the Voting Rights Act, because this wouldn't be possible without their "help."

* We think Grothman bears a resemblance to the Stupidest Man on the Internet, right wing blogger Jim Hoft.  Agree?

BONUS:  Here's more on Wisconsin Republicans' cynical voter suppression.

Republican Voter Suppression Well Underway in Alabama, North Carolina

Republican voter disenfranchisement efforts in Alabama and North Carolina are proceeding apace, thanks to the Republican Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act (Shelby County v. Holder).

Alabama:  

On Sept. 30, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency announced that a budget cut of $11 million would force it to close 31 part-time driver's licensing offices across the state. [snip]

While the number of office closures was less dramatic than what the ALEA had threatened in August, when the state legislature was still working out its budget, the state's voter identification requirement for elections means that some eligible voters could be disenfranchised if they are unable to travel far beyond their county to obtain a license. Moreover, many of the areas that will now lack a part-time driver's license office are very low-income, majority African-American counties.

North Carolina:

A data-mining analysis of information publicly available from the North Carolina State Board of Elections has uncovered apparently systematic irregularities in voter registration efforts which are required of the state by the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA; the so-called 'Motor Voter Act'). These irregularities, potentially disenfranchising tens of thousands of poverty-level North Carolina citizens, have all occurred during the Republican administration of North Carolina's current governor, Pat McCrory (R).

Under McCrory (who took office in January of 2013), North Carolina has become the tip of the GOP's spear in efforts to suppress voting by demographic groups which typically do not lean Republican (blacks, Latinos, youth, and the economically disadvantaged). McCrory's efforts culminated in 2013 with his signing into law of the nation's single most draconian voter suppression bill, The Voter Information Verification Act... [snip]

Today, North Carolina's voter registration rolls are missing some 40,000 or more poverty-level citizens (and still counting), due to what may prove to be systematic actions by the McCrory administration, in possible violation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. To put that number of voters in perspective: in the 2014 election, Thom Tillis (R) beat incumbent Kay Hagan (D) for his current U.S. Senate seat by roughly the same number - just 45,608 votes.

Jim Crow is alive and well in the Republican South.  Maybe "Democracy" sounds too much like "Democrats" to them.

Republican Voter Suppression, Cont.

Voter suppression in Virginia:  several hundred thousand may not have the proper i.d. to vote, thanks to a Republican-passed law.

Voter confusion in North Carolina: Koch brothers group sends out thousands of mailers with misinformation about voter registration.

Rigging elections since 2000.  When the only "ideas" you have are so moronic and godawful toxic that you don't expect a majority to support them, you are the current Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid Party.

Smack-Down of the Day

Colin Powell today at a CEO Forum in Raleigh, North Carolina:

"I want to see policies that encourage every American to vote, not make it more difficult to vote.  It immediately turns off a voting block the Republican Party needs.  These kinds of actions do not build on the base. It just turns people away."

Weasel North Carolina Rethug Gov. Pat McCrory, who recently signed a voter suppression law that's being challenged in court, was in the audience for Powell's remarks. 

Today's Dispatches From The Stupid Party

Drawing from an inexhaustible well, we bring up a few buckets of Rethuglican/ New Confederate Party un-distilled stupid:

Even though many Rethugs are calling the latest budget hostage-taking ploy by tea baggers in Congress a "bad idea," there's always Sen. "Tailgunner Ted" Cruz (Anchor Baby-TX) willing to make a last stand at the Alamo Senate well in order to tell the American people that it wasn't Rethugs who shut down the government over Obamacare:

We've got to stand up and make the argument and win the argument that, 'No, that's not true. We have voted to fund the federal government. We want to fund the federal government. Why is President Obama threatening to shut down the federal government? Because he wants force Obamacare down people's throats.'

Please run fly with that, Tailgunner Ted!!  We're certain the general public is with you and won't parse the clever political ju-jitsu you're practicing here.  They'll come to the conclusion that, yes, even though Rethugs have been publicly strategerizing about using Obamacare de-funding as a poison pill in the budget negotiations, it will all be Obama's fault if the gummint shuts down 'cause he dint agree to kill his signature legislative accomplishment!  Brilliant!

Perhaps Tailgunner Ted is relying on the "incurious" intellects of Rethugs, represented by the likes of  North Carolina Gov. Pat "Duh" McCrory, in which case, he may be onto something:

Pat McCrory, the Republican presiding over the dismantling of the state's relatively reasoned approach to race and the law, declared Friday that he was eager to sign the state's restrictive new voting law, the most suppressive of its era, even though he had not read a key part of it. "I don't know enough, I'm sorry," the governor told a reporter who asked about a provision in the pending measure that will preclude pre-registration for those under 18 (because, after all, if there is anything this nation needs to do when it comes to encouraging civic participation it is to make it harder for eager young people to vote).

In his confessed ignorance of the details of a discriminatory voting law in a Southern state, McCrory is no outlier. His incurious approach to such vital legislation is yet another form of the willful ignorance that has animated much of the national debate over voting rights over the past half decade or so.

 "I don't know enough, I'm sorry."  A rare instance of self-awareness by a Rethuglican, but "willful ignorance" is useful if you're advancing the anti-democratic goals of your Stupid Party, no?