Reply With Quote
ing racist hole red state / slave state bag Repugs
How to Punish Voters
The prosecution of individual voters for fraud is a trend that seems intended to intimidate.
Aggressive prosecution of black voters, particularly community leaders, for dubious voting "offenses" is one of the several tactics of voter suppression.
Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the chief elections official in the state, is a pioneer of present-day voter suppression.
Mr. Kemp has a record of making it harder for people to register to vote, and more difficult for those voters to remain on the rolls.
Since 2012, his office has canceled more than 1.4 million voter registrations.
In July 2017, over half a million people — 8 percent of the state’s registered voters — were purged in a single day.
As of earlier this month, over 50,000 people’s registrations, filed before the deadline to vote in the coming midterm election, were listed as on hold.
Seventy percent had been filed by black applicants.
Even as Mr. Kemp claims his draconian voting policies are intended to prevent fraud, it’s clear that
his real aim is to weaken black voting power in a state where political affiliation is largely dictated by race.
He has warned his fellow Republicans about Democrats “registering all these minority voters.”
voter suppression also happens in ways that aren’t as well-known, and are even more insidious.
In particular,
local prosecutors have increasingly brought criminal charges against black voters and community activists for small technical infractions.
They’re sending the
frightening message that casting a ballot is risky
— a message that resonates even when the charges turn out to be baseless and the people charged are acquitted.
It began six years ago, on the first day of early voting in Georgia, when a black woman named Diewanna Robinson went to cast her ballot. Ms. Robinson, then 21, had never voted before and didn’t know how to operate the electronic voting machine, reported Buzzfeed. She asked Ms. Pearson, more than 30 years her senior, for help.
Almost four years later, Ms. Pearson received a letter from District Attorney George Barnhill’s office, informing her that she was facing felony charges for improperly assisting Ms. Robinson. The city councilwoman and community leader was arrested and booked.
they insisted that because Ms. Robinson was not illiterate or disabled, she had not been en led to even minimal verbal assistance.
Ms. Pearson’s case is a reminder that it can also take the form of the aggressive prosecution of individual black voters for polling-place offenses — which in many cases appears motivated less by a sincere desire to address fraud than by a desire to intimidate.
can nonetheless be seen as evidence of a disturbing trend. Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said
prosecutors are increasingly preying on “respected community leaders” in rural areas where they “anticipate people will not be able to shine a bright spotlight on what’s happened.”
One Quitman resident, Debra Dennard, was charged with two felonies for helping her partly blind father fill out his absentee ballot.
Lula Smart was accused of assisting voters by carrying their sealed absentee ballots to the mailbox.
She was charged with 32 felony counts.
If convicted, she faced over 100 years in prison.
Mr. Trump, Mr. Kemp and their ilk are worried about is not voter fraud but access to the ballot for minorities and Democrats.
“This was without a doubt a racially motivated targeted prosecution of a woman who was exercising her right to get out the vote in her community,”
“I was tried because I’m black and outspoken,” Ms. Pearson told me.
it was also a victory for voter suppression.
making entire communities question whether it’s worth the risk to engage in one of the most sacred rights in a democratic society.
“Even when these prosecutions result in acquittal, the damage is done.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/31/opinion/election-voting-rights-fraud-prosecutions.html
bag racist Kemp is running for GA gov against black woman
Of course, AL racist JeBo's DoJ remains hands off
