For more than two decades, the Bladen County Improvement Association has campaigned for the interests of the black community in its poor, heavily rural county in southeastern North Carolina. In addition to speaking out for fair housing and against discrimination, the group’s political arm, which leans Democratic, assists and encourages people to vote in an area where access to polls has had a fraught history, according to its political action committee president, Horace Munn.
“A lot of our voters in Bladen County are afraid to go to the polls and a lot of elderly voters can’t get to the polls,” Munn said. “So if they have an absentee ballot we assist with that, or, for early voting, we’ll assist by bringing them to the polls to vote.”
For its entire existence, Munn’s group has worked in almost total obscurity, having rarely received attention outside the state’s sparsely populated southeastern edge. Yet last week that suddenly changed, as Munn’s group found itself the unlikely center of thunderous accusations from the state’s embattled Republican governor.
Falling behind his Democratic rival in a razor-thin margin after the November 8 election, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory took a page out of Donald Trump’s playbook and launched a vigorous campaign to cast doubt on the results of his state’s election by alleging pervasive voter fraud perpetrated by minority-focused voting groups.
In this effort, McCrory made dire — and highly public — accusations against black voting activists in Bladen County, although no formal investigation into the group has been completed. In a statement posted to the governor’s website November 15, McCrory alleged that Munn’s group had orchestrated “a massive voter fraud scheme” so large as to call the entire state election into question.
North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory holds a news conference with fellow members of the Republican Governors Association at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Feb. 23, 2015, in Washington, D.C.
Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
“The staggering evidence of voter fraud in Bladen County,” an attorney for the Pat McCrory Committee Legal Defense Fund said in a statement, “and the number of similar PACs that the North Carolina Democratic Party donated to shortly before the start of early vote requires close examination throughout the state.”
In the following days, it was reported that McCrory’s campaign had lodged complaints against 11 other Democratic get-out-the-vote groups in the state mostly focused on outreach among African-American voters. Facing questions about whether Republicans were targeting minority communities, a spokesperson for the governor doubled down on the accusations, asserting that “we didn’t pick the places the Democrats seem to have chosen to commit voter fraud.”
McCrory’s vote protests have since spread to roughly half the state’s counties, and yesterday, he cited pervasive election rigging in demanding a statewide recount. Given the closeness of the race, his charges of fraud carry high stakes.
Liberal observers see McCrory’s invocation of election fraud as an attempt to steal a seat that he’s on the cusp of losing. If the governor succeeds in having the election deemed sufficiently contested, the results could be turned over to the Republican-dominated legislature, which could simply hand the governorship to McCrory, even if he remains behind in the popular vote.
And whether or not McCrory prevails in his quest to retake his governor’s seat, his accusations against voters in black communities could have lasting effects. Having been cast as a criminal enterprise by the state’s most powerful politician, Munn’s group is facing the prospect of a prolonged, Republican-backed voter fraud inquiry into its work.
Arguing that his organization acted only in good faith in getting out the vote, Munn says the Bladen County Improvement Association has been targeted by partisan politics.
“The voter can ask for assistance and a person can assist them up to marking the ballot — that’s the law,” Munn said. “For years and years we’ve acted as advocates for voting, get-out-the-vote, and giving assistance.”
Citing the state’s pending investigation of his group, Munn declined to address details of the fraud accusations, but said that he has been deeply concerned by what he sees as a wave of voter intimidation aimed at his community. “I worry about the impact it will have on the voters in this next election,” Munn said. “I worry about people not willing to go through the trouble of getting to the polls through all of the intimidation. Some, probably a lot, will probably say, ‘You know, it’s not worth it, I’ll just stay home.’”
The accusations against Munn’s group were initiated not by law enforcement but by a local politician named McCrae Dowless, who hired a handwriting expert to scrutinize ballots in a local election. Dowless’s complaint, which was later endorsed by the county board of elections, alleges that Munn’s organization helped voters without signing the necessary paperwork. Yet the complaint does not specifically claim that voters’ choices were subverted or manipulated, and stops short of offering actual evidence to support McCrory’s description of widespread voter fraud.
In comments to the Fayetteville Observer last week, Munn indicated that any ballots lacking notations on the part of those who provided assistance to voters could have arisen from simple confusion.
McCrory’s case against the Bladen County activists, an investigation now being pursued by the state board of elections, shares similarities to other recent moves by Republican-backed law enforcement, which has come down hard on minority get-out-the-vote groups for breaking procedural rules regarding ballot handling and providing voter assistance.
Last year, the state of Georgia lost a case against 11 black voting activists who had been accused of breaching technical aspects of voter assistance rules in helping family members and acquaintances to vote in the town of Quitman. Last month in Indiana, Mike Pence’s state police raided the Indianapolis headquarters of the state’s largest minority-focused voter registration drive because some canvassers had turned in faulty or fabricated forms. Weeks later, in Texas, concerns of intimidation were raised when it was revealed that a Tea Party vigilante had worked with the Republican attorney general on a voter fraud investigation that the activist said was aimed explicitly at minority communities in Fort Worth over accusations relating to improper voter assistance.
In some cases, Republicans’ criminal inquiries into minority get-out-the-vote groups can dog activists for years.
In Georgia, Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp still has not closed a criminal investigation pending for more than two years into the state’s largest minority-focused voter registration group, called the New Georgia Project, according to the group, although apparently no charges have been filed in connection with the investigation.
The controversial, Republican-led enforcement actions are often accompanied by elements of vigilantism, which itself is a recurrent worry of Democrats after Donald Trump repeatedly encouraged his supporters to take voting enforcement into their own hands.
In his challenges to elections across the state, McCrory is often relying on “election protests” filed by private individuals, who are permitted under state law to bring formal challenges against votes they believe were illegitimately cast. On Monday, NC Policy Watch reported that attorneys apparently working for the North Carolina Republican Party had worked closely with some of these challengers, quietly supplying them with information on which to lodge their protests.
Reached by phone, Dowless declined to comment on his complaint against Munn’s group and referred all questions to a spokesperson for Gov. McCrory.
Munn’s concerns over this year’s elections extend beyond McCrory’s scrutiny of his group. He says voter intimidation took place at polling sites in his county, including from Trump supporters who shouted out of car windows at voters entering the polling places.
“For some strange reason,” Munn said, “this election has been the worst that I’ve ever been a part of.”
Why would the fraud suddenly stop this year? Answer: it wouldn’t!
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2014/04/03/oh-my-evidence-of-massive-voter-fraud-in-north-carolina-n1818137
Hmmm. This may explain why I was interrogated when I voted this year. I really didn’t think about it until after I’d left the voting station, realizing that this was the first time in my over 40 years of voting that I had been questioned so extensively. When I presented my driver’s license to vote, the clerk looked at it and began asking me questions–what’s my address (it was on the license), do I still live there, what’s the last 4 digits of my social security number. Usually, I just present my id or voter registration card, sign in, and vote. This year, instead of signing my name in a binder filled with pages of voters, she had me sign a separate paper called an application to vote. I do recall questioning her about it–an application to vote? I also pulled out my voter registration card–which they no longer ask for–and asked them should I keep it or toss it. I was told to keep it.
Maybe I should look into this given that the interrogation and the application were new to me. I went on to vote–it was touch screen, and left afterwards. I wish I had thought about this more at the time. Is everyone questioned like that when voting?
Put this clown in jail. And put all of his racist, homophobic, hater posse in jail.
In other words, the GOP is trying to Ku Klux the vote, again.
Loved it! Make me feel like being good because I believe we have to answer to GOD in the end is real! :D
I can not figure this site out. They keep dancing around the voter fraud issue while they and every other site, except Democracy Now, pretend that this documentary below (which came out ‘before’ the election and predicted it all along with providing proof) doesn’t exist.
It would be laughable if it weren’t so sad. Greg Palast was the same reporter hired by the BBC to look into the 2000 Florida election scandal. And while big media was narrowly covering the hanging ‘chad’ issue, Palast’s caught Katherine Harris and crew red handed and showed how they did it. These reports made headline news across Europe & the U.K. , but were suppressed here until, 4 years later, the NY Times decided to finally run the story.
This year Palast released his 2016 pre-election documentary exposing how & who was gaming the votes this election cycle using ‘Interstate Crosscheck of Voter Records’. And showed how the White House would be stolen and more importantly all necessary Republican seats filled.
This is the smoking gun everyone is looking for but conspicuously, for what ever reason, are ignoring (are the Koch Bros really that scary?). He offers up the documentation, he confronts those responsible and everything you hear has already happened so you have what we are living with now to compare the evidence to.
http://thebestdemocracymoneycanbuy.com/petition/
the issues of the day
are reported write away
trying to figure out
what it’s all about
having found the needle in the hay
Since N. Car. Has GOP legislature and GOP governor already, complaints of vote rigging is ludicrous and bears similarity to the concept of Jewish vote rigging during Hitler’s Reich. Vote rigging is invariably done by the dominant powers like Dems in Chicago and GOP in the red states. The efforts to block minority voters in the southern states has been vote rigging for decades and used to be protected until the GOP appointed Supreme Court overturned the limits of the voting rights acts and taking many jurisdictions back to the Jim Crow of the 40s and 50s.
The elites in racist areas are using the propaganda techniques used by authoritarians of calling black as white, and vote rigging is blamed for the legitimate act of increasing participation of all and not just limited to the few active and latent racists in white areas.
Enjoy your worst nightmare come true for the next four years. Crap journalism like this is one of the prime reasons why he got elected. People are getting tired of the BS
“Crap journalism?”
So you say, but you failed to specify one single, solitary turd. Let me help you out. You are one. So are the 62 million (allegedly) who voted to put a sexist pig in the White House.
Rolling On The Floor
Laffing Out Loud
over a load of crap
What better way
to do to the elite mainstay
fo what they’ve done to us
more crap please.
In looking over so stats for Pennsylvanian.
4,062,187, registered democrats. 49% of all voters
3,126,166, registered republicans. 37% of all voters
13, republican US representatives. 72%
5, democratic US representatives. 28%
How does that work?
In Wisconsin which was won by trump by 24,000 votes a Federal judge in July 2016 struck down the Voter ID law and said it affected 300,000 voters. As of September 2016 the Wisconsin DMV was still taking 6-8 weeks to get voters their ID’s. To late for the election.
Vote rigging is never the problem, Hacking voter machines is not a big problem. It the complex details of who and how people are allowed to vote. You can also manipulate the vote on a precinct level by making it hard to vote in the majority opposition precincts. There are dozens of ways to do this.
Even when the courts strike down laws that make it hard for people to vote the state will just drag it’s feet till after election
Hacking machines is more powerful than suppressing votes and potentially a huge problem in a swing-state where a “winner” takes all electoral votes. They say it would be easy to do, so it is a huge problem that the machine code is private and closed to verification, and the security functions are not enabled. Vote suppression is also a problem. How to prosecute the fraud on both sides (Dems in primary too)?
Do you have any idea what hacking voting machines means? You obviously never thought about it. There are so many different kinds of voting machines, each type would need it’s own hack. They aren’t hooked to the internet so to infect them you would have to send a hacker to each precinct to infect them with some form of removable media like a thumb drive. In each precinct you could only change a few ballots other wise some one would notice. So if one precinct had 2000 voters and you changed maybe 100 votes to change 100,000 votes you would have to makes changes at 1000 precincts. It would take to many people with the right skills ( how would you keep them all quite?) to be in to many places on one day.
Of you could do what Florida did in 2000 and just purge 80,000 voters of the voter rolls. That took a handful of people to eliminate those voters.
OMFG!!!!!!
Free advice to democrats..
long version.
Try not offering to draft women to be killed in a fraudulent war started by fraudulent wmd claims with a fraudulent secstate who fraudulent deals weapons for donations then fraudulently riggs an election against Bernie in order to fraudulent turn the sovereignty of the US to a fraudulent committee of wallstreet fraudsters.
short version.
try not to piss everyone off.
You have to ask yourself how does a country with the minority party, that has less than a 50% of the voters end up with the presidency, control of congress, control of a large majority of governorships and state legislatures?
Attacking “get out the vote” organization is one facet of plan of a larger effort to reduce the power of a majority to minority status. Once that is in place the minority party can then reoriented the judicial system to approve methods such as allowing vast amounts of money to flood elections which will maintain a minority party in the majority. The example of that is Texas where the republicans are a 4%-6% majority but control all state wide offices and the both state houses. Democrats have been out spent in state wide offices at a minimum of 9 times and as much as 20 times.
The extreme gerrymandering after 2010 for the US house districts ( in a population that is 1%-2% majority democrat) meant the House has a 13% majority republican. That amounts to a 59 seat majority. You would expect if voting was fair that the democrats would have a 4-8 seat majority. The same thing happened over the next few years in the state legislatures. The result is the democrats even though a majority in the country have been relegated to minority status.
how?
hellary clinton probably pissed a lot of people off
did i forget to mention the fraudulent statements to the f…b…i…?
btw –
WHERE ARE YOUR STATS ON THE WE HATE HILLARY CLUB?
Wow! Democrats are now calling the election rigged!!!!
Hillary has a choice: Concede or Go To Prison.
Hopefully, someone will devise a reliable way to hack voting machines so it will no longer be necessary to suppress anyone’s vote.
Would save money, time, and hassle too. You could vote anywhere or any time with a phone (or someone else’s phone).
Making voting too easy would defeat the purpose – which is to make people believe the act of voting is significant. It’s sort of like a salmon fighting its way upstream; it could just spawn in the ocean, but that would be too easy. People, like salmon, derive meaning in the lives from struggle. So a little voter suppression is a good thing.
However, voter suppression doesn’t guarantee the right result in an election, so hacking is also necessary. In the end, I suppose, the two things complement one another. So my original comment was wrong.
perhaps the rat baster pat mccrory is afraid the new gov is going to get wind of crimes and corruption and be charged with some stuff incl his connection to poisoning the water supply.
Trump would be making a mistake in calling for a special prosecutor against hellary just as Obama made a mistake in not prosecuting bush and cheney and company.
Trump would be making a mistake in calling for a special prosecutorTrump would be making a mistake in NOT calling for a special prosecutor
The reason to cry voter fraud appears obvious in that the related prevention of what in fact does not really exist greatly lowers minority voting.
What does not appear obvious is that when we focus on voter fraud, or even the personalities of either the democratic or republican candidates we are just acting like pawns in the elites control game.
The democrats are as much a bunch of sycophants to the elite as are the republicans, so what does our vote really matter? They fool us election after election, and year after year.
When are we going to wake up and comprehend that winning politically means nothing if it will only continue to ensure we will lose more and more economically?
And for our gullibility we find ourselves facing situations like our children being placed in a state of indentured servitude not seen since before the American Revolution due to student loan debt. And at the same time criminal banksters use their bought politicians to flood their financial institutions with over 17 trillion dollars to hold up their Ponzi scheme.
And for our gullibility we find ourselves facing situations like our children being placed in a state of indentured servitude not seen since before the American Revolution due to student loan debt.
new law
the FREEDOM FROM BONDAGE ACT
Following 7 years upon any debt, that debt may be declared void by the debtee by simple declaration and remittance of property. In no circumstances shall any citizen or works thereof be considered to be the property of any lender, employer, conscriptor except in the case of volutary service to the armed forces.
In the following days, it was reported that McCrory’s campaign had lodged complaints against 11 other Democratic get-out-the-vote groups in the state mostly focused on outreach among African-American voters.
“For some strange reason,” Munn said, “this election has been the worst that I’ve ever been a part of.”
I believe it.
North Carolina is also perhaps the worst state in the union when it comes to ballot access, with its signature requirement of nearly 100,000 valid signatures, or approximately 150-200k signatures to account for any signatures that might be deemed invalid or “invalid”.
I point this out to remind people that voter choice and the freedoms of association and speech are just as equally important components of voter rights as the right to vote itself, otherwise we’re no better than China or North Korea and their sham elections.
For all the Clinton supporters, where was your concern when the Democratic primaries showed irregularities? Yes, that’s what I thought. Here’s how many dollars I’ll give you to help her try to prove the election was stolen: zero. Tell her I said that participating in voter suppression yourself, or at least ignoring it when it helps you, hurts your case like a “dirty word” when you think it might have turned around and bitten you in the butt. It’s called hypocrisy. Hillary didn’t invent it, but she’s a long-time fan.
Trump supporters: this isn’t about him. As much of a narcissist as he is, I bet even he can read the headline and see that this article is about the gubernatorial election in the state of NC. McCrory lost because even some Republicans wanted him out. (Hint: He f’d with their basketball tournaments and football bowl games. Oh yeah, he also robbed the non-rich ones blind tax-wise, but a lot of the white non-rich ones are cool with that as long as he did it to the other races too. See, they are totally for equality, equality of suffering that is.)
McCrory did win the race for revealing many of the citizens of our state as too stupid to see that the “Bathroom Bill” wasn’t actually very much about transgender people and restrooms; it was about making it impossible for people to fight all kinds of discrimination (including age-related: for all you old Trump and McCrory voters, that means you) in state court. Hurting transgender people was just a bonus and a distraction technique that worked pretty well on a lot of the aforementioned stupid people.
He also basically should have just kept accepting his old paycheck from Duke Energy, since he never stopped working for them for one second.
Yes, Pat old boy, it’s possible for Art Pope to buy every election he can in the entire state and still not be able to buy your re-election. That’s how much you suck. Or maybe you’re a scapegoat yourself for all of the Republicans people would have tried to vote out locally if the Republicans themselves hadn’t gerrymandered the crud out of the districts. Being a scapegoat isn’t nearly as much fun as scapegoating other people, is it, Patty old pal?
Here’s what you should do about all of it: go get a job lobbying your buds in the NC legislature on behalf of Duke Energy. It’ll totally feel like you’re still Governor, I promise.
It’s funny to me when folks bring up Smartmatic w/o also discussing Diebold.
But whatever. Partisan consistency has always mattered more than intellectual consistency, across the spectrum.
This time around – – who cares? These rightwing phony dems never do anything about it, so who gives a rat’s ass, really?
And since only a psycho would vote for a Clinton or a Trump, I am gravely unconcerned.
Pat McCrory took a page out of DNC’s playbook.
The article mixes up Republicans’ age-old tactics for suppressing minority voter turnout with McCrory’s attempt to tamper with the vote after the fact.
Jill Stein Pushes For Election Recount In Key States
The Green Party nominee says she needs $2 million to fund recount requests in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jill-stein-election-recount_us_5835e45be4b09b6055fffc64
Hillary Clinton Has Grounds To Challenge Election Results, Activists Say
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-challenge-election-results_us_5834e3a6e4b000af95ed3a34
Clinton Now Leads Trump By More Than 2 Million Ballots In Popular Vote
And her lead is projected to continue increasing.
Hillary Clinton’s popular vote lead surpassed 2 million ?
or about 1.5 percent of the overall vote
ballots in Clinton’s favor:
64,225,863
62,210,612 for DT
2,015,214 vote differential in favor of Hillary Clinton
source: David Wasserman of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-popular-vote_us_5835ba7ae4b01ba68ac3be16
Experts Urge Clinton Campaign to Challenge Election Results in 3 Swing States
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/activists-urge-hillary-clinton-to-challenge-election-results.html
Voter suppression is a serious issue and needs to be addressed to protect our democracy. Unfortunately it seems to be getting worse and not better. Is there a national bi-partisan organization that is working to fight this? I’d like to get involved since this is something I feel is important.
Bi-partisan? That’s part of the problem, the corrupted “two-party system”.
Try FairVote, a NON-partisan organization.
http://www.fairvote.org/
Can the Intercept run a banner on the day it finally begins to stop crying over the election results? This is the one place I go that seemed what, in a perfect world, would be considered mainstream.
Now every article is bellyaching about ‘what went wrong’. A Democratic election took place and your slimey corporate prostitute of a candidate got once again held from her birthright as the first female President, but this time it’s all because of racism. Riddle me this, oh wise ones; what was it when Obama stole her preordained figurehead status in ’08, now can you?
Or hell, maybe you can. The cognitive dissonance and mental gymnastics you inherently end up having to rely on to ineptly try to deny your own false narratives and inherent stupidity never ceases to amaze.
Then again, I’m just another stupid pistol-packing deplorable hillbilly that doesn’t know jack shit, right?
I know one thing though…I would have voted Sanders over Trump in a heartbeat. So would a great many other of us ‘depolable racists’.
Just shut the f*ck already. Identity politics failed. Poor whites hate the system just as much as poor blacks. We wanted Sanders. You offered us the very definition of status quo. When we balked, you called us racists, rednecks, and deplorables. Then you got that smug, sh*t-eating grin wiped off your face in a hurry when we went with plan B instead of the gruel we refused to be spoonfed. Smug lefties are fond of analogies, so there’s one for you self-important, no life-experience having pricks.
Maybe those of us out here in the real world are a bunch of babies that depend on your almighty benevolence even when you’re trying to feed us shit. Just don’t be surprised when the spoon gets knocked out of your hand, and you’re left with the knowledge that not only do you have a bunch of shit to clean up, but those you thought you had the unquestioned loyalty of will turn on you in a second if you f*ck us over. We’re used to it, we’ve been used to it our entire lives, and we know when it’s happening better than anyone.
Don’t pretend we have a voice only to shut us down when we speak because you know what’s better for us than we do.
Now clean that sh*t up and show a little more respect next time; maybe you won’t find yourself in this position four years from now.
This hurts me more than you.
Perhaps read the article before ranting? The article has nothing to do with the presidential election. In fact, you didn’t even need to read the article. It’s right there in the headline.
Perhaps you, UpstateSooner, should read the article before commenting. From the article: “Pat McCrory took a page out of Donald Trump’s playbook”. The article brought Trump in first, not Nathan.
The Intercept did some hit pieces on Hillary Clinton, as well as Donald Trump. It would behoove you to at least take this into consideration.
The reason Trump is receiving the lion’s share of the attention now, is because he is the President-Elect, and not because The Intercept “hates him”. If Hillary Clinton was elected instead, believe me – she would be the one more targeted around here.
Tying together The Intercept with the ultra-liberal tangent of the mainstream media when they attack Trump, when The Intercept has discussed corruption by both Democrats and Republicans, is absolutely false equivalence. I tired of hearing that when the media attacks one side, then it means that they absolutely do support the other side. This may be true most of the time in mainstream media, but definitely not here (or in many other alternate media sources.)
Excellent reporting. Thank you for explaining the allegations in Bladen County. Voter suppression has to be called out. Embarrassing and horrifying to have a defeated politician using banana-republic tactics to discredit his political opponent in order to illegally cling to his seat.
“He says voter intimidation took place at polling places in his county, including from Trump supporters, who shouted out of car windows at voters entering polling sites.”
Oh, please. That’s not voter intimidation and calling it that will cause people to cease to take the issue seriously. The SPLC is doing the exact same thing with dumb acts of rudeness, but they’re audacious enough to call them “hate crimes” which has caused me to lose all respect for that organization. Stop crying wolf. This is a quote from a long essay about how democrats have shot themselves in the foot by crying wolf too often:
“There is no evidence that Donald Trump is more racist than any past Republican candidate (or any other 70 year old white guy, for that matter). All this stuff about how he’s “the candidate of the KKK” and “the vanguard of a new white supremacist movement” is made up. It’s a catastrophic distraction from the dozens of other undeniable problems with Trump that could have convinced voters to abandon him. That it came to dominate the election cycle should be considered a horrifying indictment of our political discourse, in the same way that it would be a horrifying indictment of our political discourse if the entire Republican campaign had been based around the theory that Hillary Clinton was a secret Satanist. Yes, calling Romney a racist was crying wolf. But you are still crying wolf.”
Read the whole thing here: http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/
You must not have ever lived in the south if you don’t think carloads of white guys yelling at black voters is not an example of intimidation or harassment.
Here is an article that looks at the real story behind one of the more interesting conspiracy theories about the 2016 election:
http://viableopposition.blogspot.ca/2016/11/smartmatic-election-story-thats-not.html
Sometimes the real story is even more fascinating than any conspiracy theory.
McCrory is furious that Trump and Burr won the state and he lost. It was because of his stupidity around the HB2 discrimination law and it has cost the state a lot of business. Apparently, if the legislature installs him against the will of the voters, there may be a higher court that can overturn. I love living here in NC and have for 35 years. This is an act of evil.
I am a Trump supporter and I and my wife witnessed nothing more intimidating at the polls than a sea of red hats and red shirts. And yes, they were legion.
I truly doubt that the shouting even occurred. And I cannot see how contesting an election after the polls have closed could possibly result in voter intimidation.
Shame on you.
The point of voter intimidation was brought up, as an additional example of voter suppression – of course a recount cannot then result in voter intimidation afterwards, but it’s possible in theory that the recount process can be rigged to invalidate ballots deemed unfavorable to the GOP – this counts as voter suppression, as those votes are determined to be void by a possibly questionable process.
You cite only Democrat sources. How unbiased of you. State law does NOT permit the person assisting the voter to actually fill out the form. So your source admitted to violating the election laws.
Ballot mills have been uncovered in multiple counties … and this whole thing was triggered when Durham showed up with 90,000 “lost” ballots late on election day, turning a comfortable McCrory win into a small loss. What are the odds that a single tranche of votes would do that?
What are the chances that 90,000 ballots were ever actually lost? That’s a LOT of ballots. And why is it that these “finds” never seem to favor Republican candidates?
This is on the heels of a Virginia appeals court judge determining that we could not ask for ID at the polls … claiming, apparently, that Blacks and other minorities are too stupid, as a group, to have free state-issued ID.
They same ID they use to buy medicine with, to open bank accounts with, to obtain mortgages with, to obtain credit cards with, to cash their paychecks with, to sign up for social security with, to obtain almost ANY federal government benefit with …
But it’s racist to ask them to obtain (with an almost two year notice beforehand) either a drivers license or a free state-issued photo ID or military ID in order to perform that most basic of civic duties … vote?
That is utter dunderheadedness.
Is or does your state ask or require a white person for a state id to vote?
“They same ID they use to buy medicine with, to open bank accounts with, to obtain mortgages with, to obtain credit cards with, to cash their paychecks with, to sign up for social security with, to obtain almost ANY federal government benefit with …”
Yes, that one. The one that up to 10% of voters in some states don’t have.
10% don’t have them? Why is that? It’s been talked about for many years. Why haven’t you and other Democrats worked to get them IDs? Is it because you’d rather have an issue than a solution?
Let’s go over your remarks:
“They same ID they use to buy medicine with”
People can order medicine over the phone.
“to open bank accounts with”
If you are a regular at your bank, they stop asking for your ID, old or young, once they know you. And what if you do not have a bank?
“to obtain mortgages with,”
See the line above.
“to obtain credit cards with,”
You don’t need a credit card- order it through the mail.
“to cash their paychecks with,”
See the remark about banks above.
“to sign up for social security with,”
You can sign up for Social Security online or by mail.
“to obtain almost ANY federal government benefit with …”
Some you need an ID for- others just need a mailed or online application.
Why do they not have IDs? Part is due to lack of places to get them. In Alabama, they recently closed almost have the driver’s license offices. Part is due to lack of available documents. (My grandmother recently had to get a photo ID, as her old license expired- and she had to order her birth certificate from out of state, which took several weeks.) DMV offices are often only open in working hours, which can make it inconvenient to get there- and some are open fewer hours. Licenses can often be costly to get or renew. (Here in SC, photo IDs are free, but only since the state signed a consent decree with the Federal government when the state passed a bill requiring photo ID (as opposed to the older (free) voter registration cards, which were unlikely to be forged).)
I personally see no reason for national voter registration, with appropriate voter registration cards (free) or appropriate photo IDs (free or paid) to be used as ID. I am unsure why people would want to restrict the right of people to vote, unless they feared the people.
As for voter assistance, there is no law that I know of that mandates that someone assisting a voter has to fill out a form. (Here in SC, we have a standard script, and the only ones ineligible to assist (per Federal law) are the person’s employer, an agent of their employer, an officer of their union or an agent of their union. Hillary Clinton could assist a voter and it would be no problem. So could Donald Trump. So could Queen Elizabeth II. So can you. So can I.)
One other thing about IDs. There’s not much of market for fake voter registrations. Fake IDs? Lots and lots of them.
“The voter can ask for assistance and a person can assist them up to marking the ballot — that’s the law,” Munn said. “For years and years we’ve acted as advocates for voting, get-out-the-vote, and giving assistance.”
Read it again. There’s no evidence that anyone assisting a voter has “actually filled out the form.”
Your complaints are the usual factless nonsense trotted out whenever American citizens try to maintain or restore their rights.
It also has to be an ID with an address that matches the district you’re voting in, or you have to show a utility bill or something with the matching address too. I saw two guys get turned away from voting in 2012 in Forsyth County and they were in line forever. The lady was like do you have a paycheck with you? Dude was like no… so they had to leave.