*** "It does not matter how great your candidate is if people cannot vote." ***

[pnwmom]

They want us to be arguing about our preferred candidates -- and not focusing on the most important thing, building up Democratic voter registration and fighting back on efforts to suppress Democratic votes.

And they definitely don't want us to work on how to make our elections safe from Russian interference.

https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/dont-focus-on-georgia-voter-suppression-is-the-issue/article35409425/?ref=https://www.theglobeandmail.com&service=mobile

The priority of the Democrats – or anyone who values freedom and fairness – should be combatting voter suppression. It does not matter how great your candidate is if people cannot vote, and it does not matter what their platform is if millions are disenfranchised. It is very likely that they will be.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court enacted a partial repeal of the Voting Rights Act in June, 2013, many U.S. states have passed new voter ID laws making it more difficult for racial minorities, the poor and the elderly to vote. Voter suppression was so severe in 2016 that it arguably determined the winner in close states such as Wisconsin, where more than 200,000 voters were disenfranchised and Mr. Trump won by 22,748 votes. Even more states will have voter ID laws on the books in 2018, to the delight of the Trump administration, which has placed notorious opponents of civil rights such as Jeff Sessions in powerful roles.

In addition to long-standing GOP tactics such as voter suppression and gerrymandering, the continued threat of Russian interference looms. Last week brought the revelation that the 2016 Russia election cyberattack breached the voting rolls of more than 39 states, and the full extent of the damage has still not been assessed. It may never be: the Trump administration is far more concerned with obstructing the investigation into the interference that benefited them than making sure that future U.S. elections are immune from foreign manipulation.

On top of that, the Trump administration is taking active measures to further voter suppression, creating a "Voter Fraud Commission" based on Mr. Trump's lie that millions of citizens voted illegally. The commission is led by Kris Kobach, an anti-immigrant zealot who has aggressively peddled this myth and will likely use his position to make it more difficult for non-white citizens to cast their ballots.

[Gravitycollapse]

1. Both issues are very important. We can walk and chew gum at the same time.

[pnwmom]

2. What issue? Tearing down each other's potential candidates is an "issue"?

[Gravitycollapse]

3. Working to ensure the best candidate gets the nomination is a legitimate issue.

Part of that work requires us to scrutinize candidates for their actions and beliefs. If people are so deeply offended by this process, they should really not be involved with politics.

[pnwmom]

5. When the "scrutiny" involves racism and sexism, then people should be offended. n/t

[leftofcool]

30. Yea, yea we know

[sharedvalues]

4. So key

This should be reposted every two days.

Voter suppression is the only way the GOP wins going forward.

[Amaryllis]

25. Agree. Post every two days. I have never understood why it is so difficult to get Dem leadership to

pay attention to this! Are they ignorant? In denial? Don't want voters to lose confidence in elections? I know so many people who know the only way Rs can win is to steal.

[sharedvalues]

32. Denial. Why aren't they pushing for election day holiday, or on Sunday??

[Squinch]

6. Kick. This is the most important thing for us to work on.

[L. Coyote]

7. Plus, we don't know who is counting our votes when we can't even see the computer code doing it.

Until elections are transparent, there is no way of knowing if the vote counts reflect the votes.

And one more thing, Republicans rig elections they cannot otherwise win.

[Amaryllis]

24. +1,000,000

[flibbitygiblets]

8. K&R - ending voter suppression is job #1

Job 2 is national mail-in ballots with paper trail, with people auto-registered to vote when they renew driver's license.

We do all this in Oregon. Demand your reps hook you up!

[BainsBane]

9. Voter suppression is definitely the priority of some folks

though I wouldn't call them Democrats.
That's why they are proposing replacing Democratic primaries with caucuses, the lowest-turn out and most restrictive voting system in the country. If the current electorate doesn't produce the results you want, get a new electorate.

[pnwmom]

13. Wow. People are lobbying to go back to caucuses -- the modern version of smoke-filled rooms????

Well, you know whoever's doing that doesn't have the interests of voters at heart.

[BainsBane]

14. Yes

some have decided that "open caucuses" are the only acceptable way of voting and are insisting that states should replace primaries with them.

A lot of people of color have called it out as voter suppression, not unlike voter ID laws since they make it more difficult for the exact same groups of people to vote.

If you do a search under "open caucuses" on Twitter you can see some of the discussion. The topic emerged, or reemerged, with the People's Summit.


So it's not surprising that we see voter suppression as an issue ignored and discounted, when certain elements want to make it harder, not easier, to vote.

[EricJohnson]

10. Voting rights are a top priority

[Igel]

11. Specific numbers are good to look at.

"Wisconsin, where more than 200,000 voters were disenfranchised"

The OP sends people to https://www.thenation.com/article/wisconsins-voter-id-law-suppressed-200000-votes-trump-won-by-23000/ .

But The Nation sends people to https://www.scribd.com/document/347821649/Priorities-USA-Voter-Suppression-Memo . (Why the OP couldn't refer people to the actual source is a mystery. Perhaps they didn't look at basis for the numbers?)

Priorities USA gets their number this way.

First, look at the change in voter turnout from 2012 to 2016. In WI it went down.

Second, look at the change in voter turnout in states without vote ID laws. They went up.

What would the WI turnout have been if their turnout increased as did some other states'? Find the difference between actual and predicted and that's the 200k "disenfranchised" voters.

Assumptions: (1) That everything else was the same. That the 2012 election climate in WI was the same as in the control states. (WI had just finished a recall election, had gerrymandering controversies going on. Anything that bumped WI turnout in 2012 would skew the numbers.) If voter turnout was lower in the control states in 2012 or something else triggered a larger turnout in 2016 that would also affect the numbers. Without saying anything about the law's effect. I don't know enough to say anything meaningful about what voter turnout was or the reasons for it in WI and the control states in 2012 and 2016. But it's clear that this has to be explicit, otherwise the conclusion rests on untested assumptions.

(2) That the effect of the law was entirely due to the law. In Houston, the voter ID law indirectly suppressed turnout even though in a follow-up survey most of those who said they didn't vote because they lacked appropriate ID did, to their surprise, actually have appropriate ID. They'd been told so often, mostly by advocates against the law, that they were in a group that lacked IDs that they believed it without question. It wasn't the law per se that suppressed turnout, it was the rumor mill and hearsay about the law that did most of the damage: Most of the "disenfranchised" weren't disenfranchised except in their own minds. Anti-voter-ID advocates really hated this study, for obvious reasons. But the finding seems reasonable. Again, by the time the study looking at WI data saw the light of day the Houston research was well publicized.

In either even, "disenfranchised" means to me that the right to vote was stripped away. Not simply "not exercised." I was "disenfranchised" when I moved to NYS too close to election day to register to vote. I was not disenfranchised when, the previous spring, I didn't vote in the elections where I lived because I saw no point.

[ProudLib72]

12. I'm beginning to think that vote manipulation is a suppression tactic

Maybe that's a "duh" realization for others. But it stands to reason that, with so much in the news about vote manipulation and so little being done about it, it is part of the grand scheme to keep people home on election day. Here's the thing. If, say, 80% of eligible voters got out and voted and we knew that 60% of them were registered Dems, then the results should be obvious.

[LenaBaby61]

15. Thank You OP for saying this ...

Because I KEEP seeing too many fellow Dems saying that we must start organizing and winning local elections, get younger folks out to vote CONSISTENTLY, get good candidates who stay on message and actually CHALLENGE thuglican rhetoric. But, I don't really hear Dems crowing as much as they SHOULD be about voter-suppression.

IF we Dems are voter-suppressed/gerrymandered and hacked AGAIN by the ruskies in 2018 and 2020, we'll be in worse shape than we are NOW moving forward. We STILL don't know the damage the ruskies did from the 2016 GE. What we do know is that they're still meddling and that a tRumputin Dept. of Homeland Security doesn't CARE if the ruskies hack our already vulnerable voting apparatus, and we know that beauguard (If he's AG in 2018) doesn't want Dem voters to vote at ALL.

thuglicans run every aspect of voting from collecting to tallying votes all across this country. They don't want to give that up, because they want to become THE majority party. Yertle, Eddie & Grandpa Munster don't want Dems to have any input at all.

Back to your original point OP: Dems have MAJOR problems coming in 2018 and 2020 even if we turn out in massive numbers and vote like hell. But, if we're gerrymandered, purged/crosschecked off voting rolls and messed with by the ruskies even worse next time, then what? HOW we solve these problems, I've no clue because we have so little input into our voting mechanisms in this country.

[leftstreet]

16. "They" is the head of the DCCC

They want us to be arguing about our preferred candidates -- and not focusing on the most important thing, building up Democratic voter registration and fighting back on efforts to suppress Democratic votes.

And they definitely don't want us to work on how to make our elections safe from Russian interference.

Then why did the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's Chair, Ben Ray Lujan throw out "There is not a litmus test for Democratic candidates,” and get everybody talking about everything but voter suppression?

[pnwmom]

17. He said that because of all the people who are already negatively targeting candidates for

failing to meet a purity test.

[leftstreet]

18. He should ignore it. Lead the way on voter suppression

After all the shyte we've been through with GOPers and Trump, the Democrats MUST lead. They simply can no longer sit back and say "vote for us, at least we're not Republicans." That ship has sailed

[pnwmom]

19. That's not what any Democrat campaigned on. And 2.9 million more people voted for Hillary,

but our votes didn't count for as much because we lived in the wrong states.

The really scary/infuriating part is that Hillary could have won by 5 million votes, by 10 million votes, or even more -- AND STILL LOST, depending on where her votes were concentrated.

Will you still blame the Dems at that point? Will you still say they lost because they didn't have a good enough agenda?

[Amaryllis]

27. They prefer to endlessly analyze how they need to change their message and ignore the real problem.

WHY is it so hard to get Dem leadership to address this issue?

[leftofcool]

31. Perhaps we could consider who is doing the leading?

[Orsino]

20. Until we all get actual ballots that can be counted and recounted...

...bickering over particular candidates seems petty.

Where are the bills to secure our elections? Where is the opposition to the president's new vote-suppression commission?

[crazycatlady]

26. Vote absentee if possible

[Amaryllis]

28. Ron Wyden has been pushing for national vote by mail for years. It won't solve problems with

corruption; there is always a way to steal if election officials are corrupt, like Kris Kobach, but it does have a lot of benefits.

[L. Coyote]

21. kick for visibility

[Raastan]

22. K + R

[mia]

23. Agree! K&R

Our biggest problem right now. Hope that the Mueller investigation reveals this.

[Amaryllis]

29. People ask why the polls were off. Wrong question. THe right questions is why were the results off?

Why were the results so different from the polls?

[eleny]

33. thank you so much for this posting

to me, this is the main issue and it's hardly discussed. there's so much focus on the distractions and in fighting over our potential candidates. none of it matters if we can't vote or our votes aren't counted.

[Awsi Dooger]

34. Russia is new but not anything else

Preventing votes is exponentially more available and logical than flipping votes. Not much scrutiny whatsoever. Meanwhile our obsession has been in the wrong place throughout. That been true as long as I've been here, which is fall 2002. I've never understood it.

I keep thinking how many millions we wasted with all those negative ads that bounced off Trump with a laugh when that money could have been devoted to making sure prior voters were indeed registered and ID'd, along with registering voters for the first time and making sure they met the ID requirements of the state.