Voting wars: Inside the Republican Party's most overt voter suppression effort in years
October 30, 2020 in Blogs
By Independent Media Institute
Two countervailing forces are competing to determine the outcome of the 2020 elections’ highest-stakes contests before the close of voting on November 3.
President Trump and his Republican allies are pursuing a full-court press where their success hinges less on winning popular vote majorities and more on disqualifying volumes of absentee ballots via lawsuits to be filed after Election Day—if preliminary results in a few key states are close. The Democratic Party and their allies, meanwhile, have been pushing their party’s more highly motivated voter base to continue their turnout lead seen in early and absentee voting, so Republicans cannot gain traction when they turn to the courts to disqualify late-arriving absentee ballots, or cite other technicalities to disqualify votes.
“We are targeting 8.8 million students, faculty and staff in universities in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas. We have state-specific ads for every one of our campaigns,” said Andrea Miller, executive director of People Demanding Action, which has been turning out voters in communities of color. “And then we are also advertising our election protection tool, ‘See Something, Say Something‘… We have done outreach to nearly 20 million people and the election isn’t over.”
More than 85 million people have already voted as of Friday, October 30, according to the U.S. Elections Project early voting tracking website. So far, more than 55 million absentee ballots have been received by local election officials, 30 million people have voted in person, and another 35.5 million absentee ballots have yet to be returned. According to those voters’ party registrations, Democrats and Republicans have split the in-person voting, but Democrats lead in absentee ballots—where sizable numbers of voters registering as independents have cast ballots.
Whether or not the apparent enthusiasm gap continues through Election Day—or shifts via what the Republicans hope will be a large in-person turnout on November 3—is an open question. However, the Trump campaign and its allies are not counting on popular vote victories to secure a winning margin among state Electoral College delegations. Their litigation strategy arguably has been the Republican Party’s most overt voter suppression effort in years—building on Trump’s ongoing and baseless attacks on the legitimacy of absentee balloting.
The voting wars are legal fights over technicalities in processes that can end up disqualifying—or empowering—blocs of voters to tilt close-margin contests. The 2020 …read more
Source: ALTERNET
Recent Comments