Democracy Is Under Assault Around the World, and Right Here in Texas
“Democracy and pluralism are under assault.” So reads the first line of Freedom House’s annual report card on the standing of liberty around the world, titled “Freedom in the World.” While this...
View ArticleWe Need Universal Mail-In Ballots for the 2020 Election
We’re all now party to the most critical election protection debate in U.S. history, one that has entered the coronavirus stimulus package to the tune of $400 million, which may be just a fraction of...
View ArticleThe GOP Has Every Reason to Want the US Postal Service to Fail
Donald Trump is once again attacking the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). During a recent press briefing, Trump claimed that the agency loses money every time it delivers a package for Amazon and that if it...
View ArticleNot Everyone Can Vote by Mail. Here’s How to Conduct a Safe Election.
As the COVID-19 pandemic spirals out of control, it’s become clear that our traditional Election Day practices aren’t suited for a pandemic. In response, some states have already begun to postpone...
View ArticleMail-In Voting Must Be Made Accessible to Disabled Voters
Today is an offseason Election Day in Michigan, where the vast majority of voters will submit ballots by mail as state officials close polling locations and urge people to stay home due to the COVID-19...
View ArticleFlorida Judge Signals Clear Intent to Strike Down State’s New “Poll Tax” Law
A U.S. district court judge for the state of Florida made it evident on Wednesday in no uncertain terms that he intends to strike down or significantly alter the state’s restrictive rules process for...
View ArticleGeorgia Primary Sends Us a Warning — November Could Be a Voting Rights Disaster
For many years now, voting rights groups have warned that U.S. election infrastructure is crumbling: that low-income residents are facing a growing litany of obstacles to voting, deliberately put in...
View ArticleTrump Wants to Create Election Chaos by Killing the Post Office
President Trump and his Republican advisers appear to be laying the groundwork for presidential election chaos on November 3. Part of the plan seems to be to allow the coronavirus-slammed U.S. Postal...
View ArticleTrump’s Federal Police Surge Could Provoke an Election Day Constitutional Crisis
Courts must end Trump’s paramilitary urban war against Democratic mayors and cities ahead of the November election, voting rights and legal experts tell Truthout, otherwise they leave open the...
View ArticleWisconsin’s Voter Suppression Could Swing 2020 Election in Trump’s Favor
Things look bad for Donald Trump right now. He is behind in the swing states and lagging Joe Biden by double digits in some national polls. His disapproval ratings are consistently in the mid-50s and...
View ArticleVoter ID Law Handed Wisconsin to Trump in 2016. It Could Happen Again in 2020.
Donald Trump’s 2016 Wisconsin win was a shock to the Democratic Party — but then, the Democratic Party is always shocked — because Wisconsin was supposed to be a safe state for Hillary Clinton....
View ArticleGOP Is Waging a War on Voting. Here Are 8 Ways You Can Protect Election 2020.
The 2020 presidential election will not be decided by the popularity of candidates or their ideas. It will not be decided by how many people intend to vote for each candidate. The usual dramas of...
View ArticleTrump Is Laying the Groundwork to Reject the Results of the Election
Last week, as Donald Trump ginned up for the Republican National Convention, he went on Fox News to talk with Sean Hannity about “voter fraud,” be it fraud committed at polling sites or fraud committed...
View ArticleWinner-Take-All Electoral College Could Enable Dreaded Constitutional Crisis
Support for abolishing the Electoral College has reached its highest level in nearly 10 years as calls to reform other minoritarian structures, including the composition of the Senate and the Supreme...
View ArticleTrump’s Hospitalization Hasn’t Diminished the Threat of Election Theft
As Donald Trump’s COVID bout proceeds, so does his cultish march toward a stolen election. Trump and his backers have made clear their intent to denigrate and then defy the popular will in the November...
View ArticleThe Trump Campaign Is Deploying “Army” of Poll Watchers to Intimidate Voters
From his presidential suite at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Monday, President Trump called on his supporters to sign up to volunteer as poll watchers, sharing a link to the URL...
View ArticleTexas Is Limiting Ballot Drop-Off Locations. Activists Are Pushing Back.
Despite a last-minute ruling restricting absentee voting in Texas, voting rights advocates in the state’s hardest hit communities of color are redoubling their efforts to get out the vote amid one of...
View ArticleTrump’s Attacks on Mail-In Voting in Las Vegas Could End Up at the Supreme Court
The Trump campaign and Nevada Republicans have asked a state court to stop Nevada from counting its mailed-in ballots in the diverse Las Vegas/Clark County jurisdiction. The suit joins a wide range of...
View ArticleInstead of Chasing “Swing Voters,” Ohio Organizers Push to Expand Electorate
The storied “swing voter” has long been portrayed as key to electoral victory in the battleground state of Ohio. Much as Moby Dick’s Captain Ahab obsessed over the white whale, traditional democratic...
View ArticleElection Day Mayhem Began Two Years Ago With Massive Voter Purges
You didn’t hear this in the cable TV chatter: In the two years leading up to this election, Georgia’s GOP secretary of state quietly wiped away the voter registrations of 198,351 voters — based on...
View ArticleTrump’s Claims of Widespread Voter Fraud Are Flat-Out Conspiracy Theory
On the afternoon of November 4, we found ourselves in the scenario many feared: a dead-heat election with the incumbent president refusing to accept the results if they do not favor him, declaring...
View ArticlePostmaster General DeJoy Defies Federal Judge as Mail-In Ballots Surge for Biden
At a critical turning point in the 2020 election, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a close Trump consigliere, has defied a federal court order meant to track down and deliver some 300,000 mailed-in...
View ArticleTrump’s PA Strategy Is to Use the Courts to Toss Votes Out. It’s Not Working.
Bethany Hallam, an at-large member of the Allegheny County Council and its elections division, was working a polling place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, when the calls started coming in. Poll workers at...
View ArticleNo, Trump Isn’t Following Stacey Abrams’s “Playbook” in His Refusal to Concede
Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state that is increasingly under fire, has recently sought to draw parallels between Donald Trump and Democrat Stacey Abrams in a bid to perhaps...
View ArticleRaffensperger Stood Up to Trump, But He Also Attacked Voting Rights Groups
Days ahead of the Georgia runoff election, leaked audio of a phone call between President Donald Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has renewed praise for the embattled election...
View ArticleHouse Rejects Cori Bush’s Amendment on Voting Rights for Incarcerated People
In a vote that exposed a deep rift among Democrats over how far to push their agenda on racial justice and voting rights, the House on Tuesday rejected an amendment offered by progressive Democrats to...
View ArticleRight-Wing Supreme Court Justices May Weaken Key Provision of Voting Rights Act
The partisan battle over voting rights is boiling over this week, as conservative Supreme Court justices are poised to uphold two provisions of an Arizona voting law that the Democratic National...
View ArticleDark Money Group Tied to McConnell Plans Ad Blitz Against Voting Rights Act
One Nation PAC, an organization with ties to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), is set to run a series of television and radio ads over the next 10 days against the For the People...
View ArticleGOP Wants Volunteering at the Polls to Come With Risk of Jail Time or Huge Fines
Over the past couple months, GOP legislators in several states have passed legislation purportedly intended to protect the integrity of the vote. In reality, these bills — which GOP governors in...
View ArticleNew Texas Bill Reduces Polling Locations in Blue and Nonwhite Districts
A voter suppression bill currently being considered by the Texas legislature would decrease the number of polling locations in districts that are traditionally Democratic and nonwhite while increasing...
View ArticleGOP Isn’t Holding Back on Voter Suppression. Democrats Must Go on Offensive.
On Tuesday, Senate Republicans voted against the For the People Act, which would have strengthened access to the ballot. If we take this vote at face value, we must acknowledge that Joe Biden’s 47...
View ArticleBiden Is Silent on Filibuster as Texas Dems Face Arrest to Protect Voting Rights
Austin, Texas—Texas Democrats and progressive voting rights advocates at the state capitol expressed disappointment Tuesday after President Joe Biden’s speech on voting rights at the National...
View ArticleThird Parties May Disappear From Ballot Under Freedom to Vote Act Provision
Should a major political party use a voting rights bill to rid itself of minor party competition? That appears to be happening with the recently introduced Freedom to Vote Act (S.2747), now before the...
View ArticleThe Right to Vote Should Be Available to Everyone — Including Prisoners Like Me
People in prison often begin their life in marginalized communities where their families’ right to vote has historically been suppressed. Today, voter suppression of those communities is again on the...
View ArticleRedistricting Threatens Decades of Black Voters’ Hard-Fought Victories
While building back the nation’s infrastructure remains the focus inside the Capital Beltway, congressional inaction on voting rights has the biggest potential to tear down years of progress for Black...
View ArticleDemocrats Are Running Out of Time to Pass Voting Rights Legislation
Racial justice leaders are warning Democrats against leaving Senate this year without passing two landmark voting rights bills, as new restrictions on voting take effect in states across the country....
View ArticleGOP Suppression Efforts Escalate as Voting Rights Bill Fails in Senate
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis did not wait for fellow Republicans to finish blockading federal voting rights legislation in the Senate before ramping up suppression efforts in his home state. Experts and...
View ArticleSuppression of Mail-In Voting Looms Over Texas Primary
Early voting for a March 1 primary election opened yesterday in Texas, where civil rights groups are warning the Republican Secretary of State John B. Scott of a “crisis of confidence” among voters as...
View ArticleRedistricting Tactics Threaten to Suppress Black Representation in Louisiana
The Louisiana Senate recently continued the state’s long history of racial oppression by voting down Sen. Cleo Fields’s congressional redistricting map. What’s more, the Louisiana House voted down Rep....
View ArticleDark Money School Groups Are Trying to Buy the Midterm Elections for the GOP
As the Florida primary election results rolled in, in late August, Gov. Ron DeSantis publicly celebrated big wins in posts that traditionally have flown well-below the radar of governors: those of...
View ArticleArmed Vigilantes in Arizona Are Just the Tip of the Voter-Intimidation Iceberg
This week, a group of “election monitors” in Arizona, called Clean Elections USA, garnered national headlines by sending out armed vigilantes in tactical gear to stand watch over — and film — ballot...
View ArticleTrumpists Are Testing Out New Voter Suppression Tactics in the 2022 Election
Millions of Americans are facing voter suppression during this election season, with consequences ranging from disenfranchisement to prison time. New and old tactics to make it harder to vote...
View ArticleGeorgia’s Governor Deputized GOP Vigilantes to Challenge 149,000 Voters
Maj. Gamaliel Turner was more than upset. Assigned by the Pentagon to the Naval base at Port Hueneme, California, Turner had called his hometown registrar in Columbus, Georgia, to find out about his...
View ArticleOcasio-Cortez Cautions: “Don’t Fall for” GOP Lies About Mail-In Ballot Counting
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) cautioned Twitter followers on Tuesday not to trust in lies that the Republicans Party will likely amplify on election night that election results aren’t...
View ArticleRight-Wing Dark Money Flooded the Midterm, But Young Voters Beat the Red Wave
Dark money groups aligned with the GOP spent big trying to generate a “red wave” in the 2022 election, but they lost big, with a few notable exceptions. Outside groups spent at least $2.1 billion in...
View ArticleThe Right Has Expanded Its Dark Money Strategy for Dominating School Boards
Following the November elections, staffers from several dark money anti-public school groups — Moms for Liberty (M4L), Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) and Parents Defending Education (PDE) — took to...
View ArticleA 2023 Wave of “Election Subversion” Bills Threatens 2024 Results
Despite the predictable howling of certain Republicans, the 2022 midterm elections largely went off without a hitch, a much-needed reprieve from the chaos that erupted in 2020 as former President...
View ArticleVirginia “Voting Rights Restoration” Process May Be a Form of Voter Suppression
Records received in response to a lawsuit pertaining to Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R) voting rights restoration process expose that the process is completely lacking in consistency or clear...
View ArticleFederal Court Guts Enforcement of Voting Rights Act in “Catastrophic” Ruling
On Monday, a conservative three-judge panel on the United State’s most right-wing federal court struck down the primary enforcement mechanism of the Voting Rights Act in a ruling that experts are...
View ArticleWisconsin Supreme Court Hears Arguments Over “Wildly Gerrymandered” Maps
The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday regarding the legality of political boundaries in the state widely considered to have been drawn to benefit Republican lawmakers in the state...
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