GOP Voter Suppression Tactics

The local constabulary

Context

Like the president, the GOP is anti-democratic and authoritarian. Both are heavily reliant on dark free speech[1] to create false realities and to tear society apart. The GOP ultimate goal is a radical right libertarian movement (RRLM). The RRLM has a vision of a weak, ineffective[2] federal government and weakened civil liberties, with power flowing to state governments from the people and the central government. The RRLM is essentially demagogic, plutocratic and dictatorial with a heavy tinge of vengeful, greedy Christianity exercising its right to feed off a stream of tax dollars. The point of state governments is simple: They are easier to corrupt and subvert than a strong central government with institutions that stand for the rule of law.

The power transfer is falsely billed as return of proper constitutional authority to states. That is a deception. The wealthy plutocrat elites that created and control the RRLM intend to corrupt and control states governments. The elites want the power for themselves.

An important RRLM goal is subversion of voting and democratic participation. Voter suppression is a key tactic that has been underway for years. This OP is about how this is playing out in an obscure federal commission that was intended to help states conduct elections.

Neutering the federal Election Assistance Commission

A ProPublica article, How Voter-Fraud Hysteria and Partisan Bickering Ate American Election Oversight, describes the decline of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). Some congressional republicans want to get rid of the EAC, because it had completed its mission of fixing election problems in the wake of the 2000 voting disaster in Florida. Maybe that was true at one time, but these days, some states are desperately asking for assistance and guidance about how to deal with the upcoming Nov. 3 election. Despite claims to the contrary, the EAC is unable to act. ProPublica writes:

“Election Assistance Commission to plead for help. The EAC is the bipartisan federal agency established for the precise purpose of maintaining election integrity through emergencies, and this was by every account an emergency. In a matter of weeks, the coronavirus had grown from an abstract concern to a global horror, and vote by mail was the only way ballots could safely be cast in the states that had not yet held their primaries. But many officials didn’t know the basics: what machines they would need and where to get them; what to tell voters; how to make sure ballots reached voters and were returned to county offices promptly and securely. “I have a primary coming up, and I have no idea what to do,” Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske said on the call.

She and her colleagues didn’t get the help they were looking for. Of the EAC’s four commissioners, only chair Ben Hovland spoke, and his responses were too vague to satisfy his listeners. The lack of direction was “striking,” said one participant, Jennifer Morrell, an elections consultant and a contractor for The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). “It felt to me that there was no leadership. Nobody was saying, ‘Hey, let’s figure this out.’ Questions just went unanswered.”

Dogged by partisan infighting, the constant threat of elimination and a budget that bottomed out last year at less than half of what it once was, the EAC has long failed to be effective or even relevant. Current commissioners have dramatically decreased the number of votes taken on important issues. The EAC also hasn’t approved a full set of voting machine standards since 2005. In 2018, new machines pegged to the old standards malfunctioned in Indiana, and decades-old machines in Georgia failed to record a stunning 150,000 votes for lieutenant governor, spurring ongoing litigation.”

EAC chairman defended the agency: “[The EAC has] one of the smallest budgets in the federal government, and without a dime of the supplemental funding we requested from Congress [for pandemic response]. Now is not the time for keeping score. It’s time to focus on getting the job done. ... I am confident that when we look back at this year, and where the EAC was coming from, we will be proud of what we accomplished.” The chairman pointed out that distributed $825 million in grants to state election officials in 2020.

The EAC is hamstrung in party by partisan disputes. Two of the four commissioners are repeating the president’s unfounded fraud allegations about voting by mail. There is no evidence to show that voting by mail is significantly fraudulent. ProPublica comments: “Voter fraud is vanishingly rare. .... Voting methods once thought routine, like absentee ballots, became grist for partisan bickering. The escalating fight over voter fraud has crippled the EAC, often sabotaging its most dedicated commissioners while emboldening those who are less effective. .... In 2007, the EAC hired two respected researchers to study voter fraud. But after they found little evidence of a problem, the commission decided not to adopt their report, saying the extent of voter fraud was open to interpretation.”

It is reasonable to believe that GOP-backed voter suppression to advance the RRLM’s goal of undermining democracy is well underway right now. One question is how many voters will be disenfranchised on Nov. 3. For the RRLM, the ends justify all legal means and probably some illegal ones. This is about gaining power and wealth by subverting democracy, not serving the public interest.

Footnotes:
1. Dark free speech: Constitutionally or legally protected (1) lies and deceit to distract, misinform, confuse, polarize and/or demoralize, (2) unwarranted opacity to hide inconvenient truths, facts and corruption (lies and deceit of omission), (3) unwarranted emotional manipulation (i) to obscure the truth and blind the mind to lies and deceit, and (ii) to provoke irrational, reason-killing emotions and feelings, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, cynicism, pessimism and all kinds of bigotry including racism, and (4) ideologically-driven motivated reasoning and other ideologically-driven biases that unreasonably distort reality and reason. (my label, my definition)

2. Based on their acquiescence to how the president has handled it, the ineffectiveness the GOP favors is seen in the failed federal response to the pandemic. The president has used executive power to undermine federal public health activities.

Evangelical Christianity and Its Failing Moral Core

This 18 minute video interview with Reverend Robert Schenck discusses the status of Evangelical Christianity and the influence of its involvement in American politics and culture wars. Schenck is blunt about the losing moral situation the church has put itself in.

Beginning at ~10:30 in the interview, Schenck points out that millions of people under the age of 45 are leaving the church because they see the moral hypocrisy and emotional manipulation the church foists on its flock. Church membership losses have been occurring for the last 13 years straight. At 11:42, Schenck flatly states that fund raisers directly told him that to get money flowing in, he needed to instill fear and anger in his congregation: “The madder they are, the more fearful they are, the more money they are going to send you. .... Well, young people are sick of that.”





Earlier in the interview beginning at ~4:40 Schenck is blunt about why Evangelicals supported the president. Specifically, they want the supreme court packed with a majority of religious Christian judges. They want a solid majority. They are willing to tolerate what they know and privately admitted early on is an immoral president to get the power in government they desperately want for Christianity. But apparently, the Evangelical moral mindset has changed. Beginning  at ~6:16 Schenck says that he does not hear such private admissions any more from other Evangelical leaders.

He interprets this to not mean that Evanelical leaders are drifting away from the president. Instead he sees the leadership as having internalized and accepted the president’s moral poison. Schenck calls this ‘a kind of final conversion’ that he fears puts the president’s Evangelical supporters in danger of losing their immortal souls and the church itself of becoming a relic “and not a good one at that.”

If Schenck is correct in his analysis, there is a potentially lethal moral failure in Evangelical leadership and its involvement in politics and culture wars. The failure flows directly from supporting a vulgar, immoral president. That moral failure is what is driving people away from the Evangelical church, and maybe for some, from all of Christianity.

One thing that merits comment here is the willingness of the Evangelical leadership and what is left of the church to impose their will and morals on a society that increasingly does not share those values. This plays directly into the rise of GOP authoritarianism. The president’s penchant for authoritarianism is clear. Schenck asserts that the political and social culture the president has fomented is extremely dangerous, especially Christians who endanger their souls.

Fortunately, some other Evangelicl leaders have concluded that the president is dangerous. Thirty leaders have written essays on the danger the president represents. The essays are published in the book, The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump.

Conservatives are flocking to a new 'free speech' social media app that has started banning liberal users

 Many of Parler's users have voiced their disapproval of how mainstream platforms such as Facebook and Twitter moderate content.

July 3, 2020

Last week, Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, both announced on Twitter that they were moving to a new social media platform.

"I'm proud to join @parler_app -- a platform gets what free speech is all about -- and I'm excited to be a part of it," Cruz tweeted.

Many others followed suit. Parler, founded in August 2018, touts itself as an "unbiased" social media platform focused on "real user experiences and engagement." In recent weeks, it has become a destination for conservatives who have voiced their disapproval of how mainstream platforms such as Facebook and Twitter moderate content.

But as with every other platform on the internet, Parler's free speech stance goes only so far. The platform has been banning many people who joined and trolled conservatives.

"Pretty much all of my leftist friends joined Parler to screw with MAGA folks, and every last one of them was banned in less than 24 hours because conservatives truly love free speech," a user wrote on Twitter.

Writer and comedian Tony Posnanski also received a ban from the app. "Free speech my a--! I literally said less than here and I got banned," he tweeted.

John Matze, the founder and CEO of Parler, said Thursday in an interview with CNBC that the company remains firm in its promise that it supports free speech.

"Our general premise is that we believe in the good of the American people as a whole and that people should be able to have these discussions," he said. "People don't want to be told what to think. People don't want to be told what to say anymore."

Parler did not respond to a request for comment.

The move to Parler by conservatives comes as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social media platforms remain under pressure from Republicans over how they decide to remove content posted by users. Conservatives for years have claimed that they are unfairly silenced on the platforms, although many Republican politicians and pundits enjoy large audiences on them.

The pressure has increased in recent weeks since Twitter labeled multiple tweets from President Donald Trump as misleading and Snap, the owner of Snapchat, announced that it will stop promoting Trump's content. Facebook, which did not take similar action, has faced both a major advertiser boycott over how it handles hate speech and unrest from employees over how it handled Trump's statements.

Republicans have countered by pushing legislation to curtail the tech industry's legal protections, coupled with an executive order from Trump.

Parler is not the first alternative platform to try to capitalize on displeasure with the major platforms. Its user experience is similar to that of Twitter and other microblogging websites. Users can make posts on the platform and receive likes, comments and shares.

Some people who joined the platform described it as a conservative version of Twitter. Rees Paz, who calls himself a left-leaning centrist in his Twitter bio, tweeted that all of the users recommended for him on the app were conservative figures, from Trump's son Eric to Laura Loomer, a conservative activist who was previously banned from Twitter.

But even some conservatives find fault with the platform, which, in addition to stating that it is a free speech haven, promises to "never [share] your personal data."

Its privacy policy says it "may collect ... information such as your name, email address, username, and profile photo."

For people who choose to join the app's "influencer network," the company may ask for information "such as your Social Security number (SSN) or your tax identification number."

Some users have been dissatisfied with the company's efforts to protect their privacy.

Mindy Robinson, a conservative political commentator, criticized Cruz for endorsing the app.

"The minute it asked for a copy of my driver's license to access normal features Twitter already has ... I knew something was seriously wrong with Parler," Robinson wrote.

She then clarified that she was not able to send a direct message on the app without providing a photo of her driver's license.

Another user wrote: "I signed up prior to it requiring a phone number. It hasn't asked me to provide it yet. The moment it does I'm out."

In his CNBC interview, Matze defended Parler's policy on phone numbers and identification, saying people say "nasty things" online because they can stay anonymous.

"On Parler, people get verified, people have phone numbers related to their accounts. People know they're acting and behaving as they would in a town square," he said.

"We are a town square, not a publication," Matze added. "I think people will come around to this idea more and more — society can solve these problems without regulation of the social media platforms."

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/conservatives-flock-free-speech-social-media-app-which-has-started-n1232844

DO NOT SIGN UP TO CHECK THEM OUT, they require your phone number.

I used to think independence was everything. A pandemic and a goofy little cat taught me otherwise

By Megan Burbank
Seattle Times features reporter

The morning I was supposed to file this story, I was cleaning cat vomit out of the carpet in my apartment, something that I could not have imagined doing three months ago, when the idea of a pet seemed nice, but I couldn’t imagine leaving an animal alone all day. “My lifestyle doesn’t really allow for it,” I would say to friends, as if they were suggesting I adopt a human child and not a self-contained house cat.

What I really meant was: I like living alone and I’m afraid of change and commitment.

Living alone is a privilege, and before the coronavirus pandemic, I loved everything about it. I’ve always been an introvert with a hyperactive imagination, so to spend time alone is not a curse, but a pleasure. I love sleeping alone, watching movies alone, taking walks alone and coming home alone, and doing chores and cooking alone, with a podcast or audiobook in my earbuds for company.

After a busy day of work-related back-and-forth and my phone’s relentless pings, I love nothing more than to put my devices in airplane mode and read a paper-and-ink book, undisturbed, until I’ve truly come home to my own brain again and feel ready to deal with the demands of the outside world once more.

In my 20s, when I was still living in a limbo of roommates and cohabitation, I had taken Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” as literally as some people take the Bible (conveniently ignoring the existence of Leonard Woolf). I am the kind of person who, at the end of a three-year relationship in my late 20s, was devastated AND subtly excited that I could go grocery shopping again without having to make compromises in the frozen foods section at Trader Joe’s.

I took a perverse pride in being responsible for nothing but myself and an ever-growing plant collection. How embarrassing — how domestic — it would be to have to take care of anyone or anything else. My dream was to live alone, or in the event that I fell in love again, down the street from a hypothetical future partner, who would also Live Alone and Like It!

On weekday nights, I’d wipe down countertops in communal kitchens I shared with various sundry roommates, and long for the day when I could dispense with them altogether. If this all sounds mildly sociopathic, it may have been.

It is possible for fierce independence to teeter into its unpleasant cousin, unfettered solipsism, and living alone under a COVID-induced lockdown revealed the weak points in my “No man is an island but I, a woman, am one” routine.

Part of what had allowed me to enjoy being alone was a vast network of friends and family I knew I could call on whenever I needed to, and who frequently called on me. In the early days of Washington state’s “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” order, our interactions were limited to video chats. I could hardly remember the last time I’d been hugged. Living alone had never felt so isolating.

Holden Caulfield laments at the end of “The Catcher in the Rye” that eventually “you start missing everybody.” And it was true. I missed seeing my friends and family in person. I missed high-fives and handshakes. I missed the people I used to see on my bus route. I missed the women in my ballet classes. I even missed my dentist’s office.

I missed everybody. And if I was struggling, I couldn’t imagine what this was like for extroverts. I felt so bad for all of us. I felt so bad I volunteered to foster a cat.

After having no luck at the Humane Society, where my application to adopt an older cat with some emotional challenges joined 900 others, I took in a goofy little cat named Luna for a breed-specific rescue. For the first time in my life, I would be solely responsible for a living thing bigger than a plant.

In the photo from the rescue, Luna wore a severe lion cut, a jaunty bow tie and a sour-looking expression. As it turns out, that’s just what her face looks like.

Luna, who has been described by her vet as “a funny little lady,” is an exotic shorthair whose bottom-line breeding means she has an extremely smooshed face and a teeny-tiny nose, and she’s small for an adult cat. A friend has compared her to a slightly inbred royal with a Habsburg chin but a positive attitude, and this does not seem inaccurate. (Please don’t buy purebred animals.) The effect is a tiny cat who is as friendly as a dog and breathes like a monster. I love her.

She had been surrendered because she was never appropriately socialized as a kitten, and was being aggressive and rude toward the other cats in her home. She needed to be in a space where she would be cared for and loved but where she could be the only cat. I could relate to this petite menace and her need for solitude, and immediately agreed to foster her. No cat is an island.

Luna enjoys: watching “Cheers” on the couch, murdering bugs who have the misfortune of crossing her path, taking luxurious naps on surfaces meant for humans, trying to eat the comb I brush her with weekly.
Luna does not enjoy: eyedrops, her carrier, having her paws handled, the vacuum.

Everyone who meets Luna falls in love with her. She is an objectively adorable cat who gets rave reviews at the vet, with huge amber Halloween eyes and a beautiful gray-white coat with blue markings.

I told myself I was “only fostering” but as we spent our first evening together watching horror movies on the couch side by side, I knew I wanted to keep her.

And so a global pandemic turned me from a “Room of One’s Own” purist into one of those annoying people who make up voices for their pets (Luna’s is sort of like an imperial guard in “Star Wars”) and complain about fireworks’ impact on their animals’ mental health. I am above starting a dedicated Instagram account for Luna, but not too proud to hashtag. I clean up her messes and take her to the vet and sometimes even unhygienically let her sleep at the foot of my bed, which would likely horrify the person I was in my twenties.

I still love being alone, but if the past few months have taught me anything, it’s that the American myth of self-sufficiency and bootstrapping is a dangerous one that reinforces long-fortified systems of oppression. It may be possible to get through this time, but it can’t be done alone. That’s why my neighbors now wear masks to protect strangers they’ll never meet, why they’ve put up homemade Black Lives Matter signs in their windows, why waving kindly at a fellow stranger wearing a mask is the new smile-and-nod.

I always prided myself on being self-sufficient, but the truth is I’m not. No one is. Not really. Mutual care is the only way we survive. It’s a luxury to have a room of one’s own; it is harder to acknowledge your own need for care. It requires more vulnerability, at a time of tremendous, deep-rooted and lasting pain, to accept the importance and imperatives of softness, kindness and communion.

So I am leaning into those things right now — driving my cousin and her newborn daughter home from the hospital; drinking wine with my mom in her yard; paddling lazily across Green Lake with my brother in separate, inflatable dinghies; Venmoing drinking money to furloughed friends; and, yes, occasionally cleaning up cat vomit. No funny little lady is an island.

https://www.seattletimes.com/life/i-used-to-think-independence-was-everything-a-pandemic-and-a-goofy-little-cat-taught-me-otherwise/