Voter intimidation, harassment and armed vigilantes
31st October 2022 · 0 Comments
Repressive voting laws reducing early voting periods or none at all, eliminating “Souls to the Polls,” Sunday voting events, must-have excuse absentee ballot requests, voter list purges, and gerrymandered maps are a few of the voter suppression/dilution tactics elected members of the Grand Old Party (GOP), aka the Republican Party, are using to keep voters from casting ballots for their opponents.
Granted, those measures are a far cry from 19th and 20th Century vote-blocking tactics white people used to disenfranchise Blacks: lynchings, beatings, burning homes, night rider terrorism, grandfather clauses, and ridiculous tests – how many bubbles in a bar of soap or how many jelly beans in a jar – outright intimidation, refusal to allow Blacks to vote, and the mandatory recitation of the Constitution, among other virulent strategies.
We must not forget the Southern strategy of the 50s and 60s because it’s being deployed today by election-denier candidates and the Republican Party, writ large.
In American politics, the Southern strategy was a Republican Party electoral strategy to increase political support among white voters in the South by appealing to racism against African Americans.
Now we’re witnessing the southern strategy on steroids. The smoke-filled back rooms are gone, replaced by Donald J. Trump’s cult members who have embraced his lies about stolen and rigged elections.
Some of Trump’s election deniers are running in the gubernatorial, Senate, and secretary of state elections. They aim to take over electoral politics and ensure that Republicans dominate political offices. The secretary of state is over elections. Trump acolytes are running for those positions in states that Biden narrowly won.
Trump’s big lie about the presidential election being stolen from him in 2020 prompted death threats against officials and poll workers in states Trump thought he should have won.
Trump is trying to keep Georgia red. The Republican Party controls the governor’s office, secretary of state, attorney general, and both chambers of the state Legislature.
Trump and Georgia’s GOP are still in shock over the fact that Georgia voters sent two democrats, the Reverend Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff, to the U.S. Senate in 2021.
Trump is betting that Herschel Walker, a former professional football player, will defeat the Rev. Warnock on November 8. His choice of Walker benefits white Republicans who can deny being racist by voting for this ignorant, unqualified Black man.
Georgia’s GOP elected officials also hope new voting laws will disenfranchise enough Black voters to allow Walker to coast to victory.
Georgia’s Election Integrity Law is causing confusion and disenfranchisement of Black voters at the polls. When Jennifer Jones, a Morehouse School of Medicine doctoral student, tried to vote in Fulton county, Georgia, last week, she was told her voting status was being challenged. Jones couldn’t understand why she couldn’t vote. She had her I.D., precinct card and other documents.
The poll worker, who claimed not to know why Jones was being denied a regular ballot, offered the student a provisional ballot. Jones declined to accept the provisional ballot and called Fair Fight for help.
The armed resistance to fair elections commenced shortly after Trump began crying about the election being stolen. But even before that, white supremacy militias took issue with politicians, like Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, for enforcing measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
Last week, a jury convicted three men of aiding in a plot to kidnap Whitmer in a case that deepened fears about the spread of right-wing extremism and potential violence directed at politicians, The Washington Post reported.
In 2020, other officials and poll workers received death threats from white supremacy groups after Trump lost his re-election bid.
The Southern Strategy – which was once a concerted campaign of hate-filled rhetoric, photos of Black candidates’ faces darkened to ominous degrees, and fears of Blacks and Jews replacing whites – has morphed into insane episodes of physical violence, e.g. the January 6 insurrection, and armed “election integrity” vigilantes stalking voters at the polls and ballot drop boxes.
Last week’s news cycle was filled with images of self-appointed armed militia members who, urging Trump-endorsed politicians running for elected office, are posting up outside of ballot drop boxes across the nation and, most recently, in Arizona.
Six cases of alleged voter intimidation at drop box locations in Arizona have been referred to the Justice Department in Washington, D.C.
“Voter harassment may include gathering around ballot drop boxes, questioning voters, brandishing weapons, taking pictures of people voting, and following or chasing voters attempting to drop off their ballots. It can all be considered voter intimidation. It is unacceptable,” Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said in a release.
These Trump acolytes are not legitimate poll watchers. They are intimidating voters.
Trump’s culture of misinformation has sowed doubt in the U.S. election system and subjected officials from Nevada to Michigan to harassment and threats. The FBI has received more than 1,000 reports of threats against election workers in the past year alone, The Guardian reports.
So, we’re back to the past. People’s lives are being threatened over voting rights.
The Supreme Court of the United States scrapped the Voting Rights Law of 1965. It has taken away women’s rights choose. There is more to come, unless the madness is stopped.
Be part of the solution, VOTE.
This article originally published in the October 31, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
