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  • History of Trump and His Trash-2023
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  • Election Horror

  • Click for an essay on voter suppression​
  • THIS IS VOTER INTIMIDATION There is an unmistakable effort underway to intimidate voters — specifically Democratic voters — when they go to the polls. Right-wing groups are organizing to show up at polls with guns, a development election officials fear will create an unsafe environment for other voters to cast their ballots. In one swing state, an effort to limit the presence of guns at polling locations was met with a court fight and a standoff between the state’s election officials and some members of law enforcement. Only about a dozen states explicitly ban open or concealed carry of firearms at the polls.
  • Undercover video taken at a GOP campaign headquarters in California and "Trump Store" selling merchandise featuring the president shows store employees describing an operation to collect ballots in an unofficial ballot box. It also shows them offering to store ballots for voters in a safe, ostensibly because the ballot box had been moved off premises for ballots to be delivered. 
  • The California Republican Party acknowledged placing containers deceptively marked as “official” mail-ballot drop-boxes in Los Angeles, Fresno and Orange Counties. State election officials said such sites, which could be used to eliminate ballots, were illegal.
  • Trump is telegraphing with clarity that even if he gets blown out, he’ll claim the election was rigged and votes were stolen.
  • FEC TELLS TRUMP: WE DON'T 'GET RID OF' BALLOTS Commissioner Ellen Weintraub of the Federal Election Commission has a news flash for Trump and anyone else who needs to hear it: “In the United States of America, we do not ‘get rid of’ ballots.” The president yesterday attacked mail-in voting, suggesting there would only be a peaceful transition if mail-in ballots are removed. (He has on several occasions claimed mail voting favors Democrats.) “Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a peaceful ... there won’t be a transfer, frankly, there’ll be a continuation,” he said.
  • A top-secret CIA assessment dated Aug. 31 concludes that Vladimir Putin is "probably directing" a Russian foreign influence operation to hurt Joe Biden, WashPost columnist Josh Rogin scoops. The document's hard-hitting lead: "We assess that President Vladimir Putin and the senior most Russian officials are aware of and probably directing Russia’s influence operations aimed at denigrating the former U.S. Vice President, supporting the U.S. president and fueling public discord ahead of the U.S. election in November."
  • Trump has explicitly said that he’s against expanding voting by mail because he believes that the more people who turn out, the more likely it is that Democrats will win.
  • Trump urged voters to vote twice, once by mail and once in person, to test the protections intended to guard against double voting. “I was just testing whether this state can detect voter fraud when I showed up to vote a second time” — is about as good a defense as: “I broke into the bank just to test whether it has a good alarm system.”-Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe.
  • Intent to intimidate voters-Trump talks about sending federal agents to polling places
  • Insists that voting by mail results in fraud, except Florida (gee, is that a swing state?)
  • Deliberately interfering with U.S.P.S. operations in order to create mail chaos-(Guess who appointed the current postmaster general who is cutting back on essential services and operations?) 08.15.20-Mailbox drop boxes were going to be removed around the country until this was stopped by outraged protest. There are still plans to remove dozens of mail sorting machines., cut back on overtime and leave some mail to be delivered later.
  • Wants to stop the Census short, before it counts minorities that would result in correct Congressional representation
  • ​Attempts to restrict number of polling places and voting times
  • Engage in dirty tricks-A New York Times investigation found that Mark Jacoby is an executive at a company called Let the Voters Decide, which has been collecting signatures for the Kanye West campaign in Ohio, West Virginia, and Arkansas. Jacoby was arrested on voter fraud charges in 2008 while he was doing work for the California Republican Party.
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  • The USPS handles 500 million letters a day at Christmas. Mail-in ballots should be easy. 
The fight over voting

Democrats and Republicans are engaged in a furious struggle over voting rights. In almost every instance, Democrats are trying to make it easier for Americans to cast ballots, and Republicans are trying to make it harder.
Much of the fight involves voting by mail, which many people would prefer to do this year, to minimize their risk of contracting the coronavirus at a polling place. Lawyers have already filed more than 300 lawsuits, across 44 states, over issues related to pandemic voting. The most important cases are in the battleground states on which the presidential election or Senate control could hinge.
Here are the latest developments:
Pennsylvania: The state’s highest court has ruled that election officials should count mailed ballots that arrive up to three days after Election Day. Pennsylvania Republicans are trying to get the Supreme Court to reverse the order, so that only ballots received by Election Day will count.
North Carolina: Republicans and the Trump campaign have asked the Supreme Court to block the state’s board of elections from extending the deadline to receive mail ballots. The board has said ballots can arrive until Nov. 12, as long as they were mailed by Election Day.
Wisconsin: The five Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court sided on Monday with Republican officials in Wisconsin, ruling that ballots must arrive by 8 p.m. on Election Day to count. (A lower-court ruling would have allowed state officials to count any mailed ballots postmarked by Election Day and received up to six days later.) In response, the state’s Democratic Party is urging voters to return mail ballots in person — to a drop box or clerk’s office — rather than mailing them.
Nevada: The Trump campaign has sued to stop the counting of absentee ballots in the Las Vegas area, evidently hoping to challenge the signatures on many ballots. Last night, the campaign and Nevada Republican Party filed a separate lawsuit, seeking detailed information on the vote-counting process.
Texas: The state’s top court yesterday upheld a policy announced by Greg Abbott, the Republican governor, which limits each county to a single drop-off box for mailed ballots. The state’s largest county — Harris, which includes Houston — is home to 4.7 million people.
Michigan: A conservative judge yesterday overturned an order by Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, and ruled that people could carry unconcealed guns at polling places on Election Day.
In many of these cases, Republicans have argued that changing voting rules because of the pandemic could lead to fraud (a claim that’s largely baseless) and that allowing ballots to be counted after Election Day leads to confusion and chaos.
Democrats have argued that protecting people’s right to vote, during a national crisis, should be top priority. Democrats have also pointed out that some Republicans have changed their position on the counting of mailed ballots: When late-arriving ballots seemed likely to help George W. Bush in Florida in 2000, Republicans argued that the state should count them.
For more: Factcheck.org catalogs the false statements that President Trump made yesterday about voting. In Lawfare, Zahavah Levine explains the flurry of recent lawsuits. In The Washington Post, the election-law expert Richard Hasen analyzes the Supreme Court’s recent rulings. And The Times offers advice about making sure your mailed ballot counts. (Short answer: Use a drop box.)
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