voter intimidation alive and kicking in virginia

[butters]

Last May, The New York Times reported a national program to train tens of thousands of MAGA faithful to "watch." The report highlighted one recruitment seminar in which a precinct chair in a white suburb of Houston exhorted volunteers to go into the Black, Asian and Latino areas on election day because "that's where the fraud is occurring." That is not true, of course. But it illustrates what they actually have in mind: suppression and intimidation of racial and ethnic minority voters, particularly in urban areas.

That is nothing new. Partisans used such tactics for centuries. I wrote about this years ago here on Salon, including the stunning tale of former Chief Justice William Rehnquist who, as a young lawyer in Arizona, personally applied some ugly racist intimidation against Latino and Black voters in the 1964 presidential campaign. The GOP ran the program in which he participated called "Operation Eagle Eye" throughout the nation.

*
I bring this up again because it's important to remember that Trump didn't invent this stuff. He's never done anything original in his life. People have been at this for a very long time. Trump's just supercharged it.

Over the past half century, the nation had made great strides in controlling the threat of poll watcher intimidation. The majority of states put laws in place to ensure that people felt safe at their polling places. The problem was pretty much snuffed out for several decades. But now it's back.

Virginia has poll watchers by the hundreds ready to go Tuesday. In fact, they have already been on the job during the early voting. In Democratic counties, the poll watchers are 2-1 Republican, many of them trained and organized by the Youngkin campaign. The candidate, who insists he's not a MAGA kind of guy, has been pushing the voter fraud myth like crazy and his voters are out in force. One of the Virginia groups doing training was created by a Republican candidate who lost his election by 23 points in 2020 and refused to concede. According to the Post, other groups involved in similar activities throughout the country are Tea Party Patriots, Americans for Limited Government, No Left Turn in Education and Alliance for Free Citizens, led by former Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach, a vote fraud zealot who Trump once enlisted to prove that Hillary Clinton didn't win the popular vote in 2016. (Needless to say, he failed.) Another group called The Virginia Project, a purveyor of the Big Lie, has been subtly intimidating election officials. At one of its meetings, Joe Flynn, the brother of General Michael Flynn, asked the crowd if they believe Joe Biden won the state of Virginia in 2020. The crowd roared, "No!" Biden won the state by 10 points.

https://www.salon.com/2021/11/01/vi...cation&utm_source=Pushly&utm_campaign=1559112

 

[pecksniff]

Anything they're caught doing along those lines now will alert us to set up defenses in 2022.

 

[KeithD]

I'll practice my "Get out of my way and drop dead" stare today in preparation for going to the Virginia polls tomorrow. DeJoy screwed up mail delivery in my blue county to delay the mail-in vote, so I'll be doing it in person tomorrow.

 

[BabyBoomer50s]

I'll practice my "Get out of my way and drop dead" stare today in preparation for going to the Virginia polls tomorrow. DeJoy screwed up mail delivery in my blue county to delay the mail-in vote, so I'll be doing it in person tomorrow.

Getting a head start on your spin I see. Not even going to wait until voting has concluded? Also, sorry you’re upset that under DeJoy’s leadership, 98.7% of all ballots were delivered on time in the 2020 US election.

 

[Bud_Spencer]

Looks like Younkin and Sears are shoo-ins! I dig her way more than him...they should change places.

 

[Fuzzy1975]

Getting a head start on your spin I see. Not even going to wait until voting has concluded? Also, sorry you’re upset that under DeJoy’s leadership, 98.7% of all ballots were delivered on time in the 2020 US election.

Really, you of all people, bringing up the past? After all your "Trump is not the President" answers. He is talking about the current election, wtf does the past results of DeJoy have to do with the present?