Octopus Overlords

Texas’s acting secretary of state, David Whitley (R), resigned Monday just months after leading the botched voter purge of nearly 100,000 suspected noncitizens that erroneously also targeted U.S. citizens, efforts that drew rebukes from a federal judge and numerous voter rights groups.

Whitley’s departure came as the Texas Senate failed to confirm him to the position by a two-thirds majority on the last day of the legislative session. He submitted his resignation letter to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) “effective immediately” just before the final gavel, as reported by the Austin American-Statesman. Abbott accepted his resignation shortly afterward, praising his “moral character and integrity.”

Neither Whitley’s resignation letter nor Abbott’s mentioned the controversy.
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Whitley, a gubernatorial appointee and former aide to Abbott, spent less than six months overseeing Texas elections. He will leave office best known for the disastrous elections-integrity operation that wrongly identified thousands of naturalized citizens as suspected noncitizens illegally registered to vote.

He revealed the investigation in January, causing unsupported fears of rampant voter fraud while emboldening Republican politicians who had made similar voter fraud claims — including President Trump. Whitley’s office had claimed that, of 95,000 suspected noncitizens, 58,000 had voted in at least one Texas election over the last 18 years. Letters sent to all those suspected noncitizens threatened to disenfranchise them unless they proved their citizenship within 30 days.

But there was a problem: Nearly a quarter of those identified as possible noncitizens were actually naturalized citizens ― a realization the secretary of state’s office made just four days after its initial announcement.
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In February, a federal judge blocked Texas from carrying out its “ham-handed” and “threatening” voter purge effort, saying there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud. The letters sent by the secretary of state’s office to thousands of eligible voters threatening to cancel their registration, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery wrote, “exemplifies the power of government to strike fear and anxiety and to intimidate the least powerful among us.”

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Tue May 28, 2019 4:02 pm Texas

“exemplifies the power of government to strike fear and anxiety and to intimidate the least powerful among us.”

Rather than taking responsibility for his screw-up, Whitley blamed the Texas Department of Public Safety, the agency from which he'd obtained the data he used to compile his list. When Dallas state Sen. Royce West asked the secretary of state about potential voter suppression, Whitley was evasive. "Are you familiar with the concept of voter suppression?" West asked Whitley. "Anecdotally, I've heard voter suppression talked about," Whitley replied.

Upon further questioning from West, Whitley refused to say how he defined voter suppression, telling the long-serving senator that it was irrelevant. "You're the secretary of state, sir, and it's relevant to whether I'm going to vote for your confirmation," West shot back. Whitley never answered the question. "I think ensuring accurate voter rolls actually encourages participation," Whitley said, after telling West that "anecdotally" he's heard that voter suppression discourages people from voting.

Now we learn, and I guess it's not exactly a shock, that the governor was the one goosing Whitley to come up with as many names to be purged as possible. The emails emerged from the discovery process—and we love the discovery process—in a batch of lawsuits aimed at reversing the results of the purge. (Eventually, a settlement was reached whereby Texas agreed not to use the phony list and the state ended up paying various plaintiffs a total of $450,000.) The lawsuits also established that the stink of this particular fish began at its head.

Prosecutors say Lerma purchased a birth certificate and Social Security card with that name in 1992. They say he voted illegally for the past 20 years.

Lerma also testified that he supports President Donald Trump and donated to the Republican party.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Sat Aug 24, 2019 12:20 pm I'm surprised Trump isn't Tweeting about the man convicted of voter fraud in California.

Prosecutors say Lerma purchased a birth certificate and Social Security card with that name in 1992. They say he voted illegally for the past 20 years.

Wow! That seems serious. I wonder why no one from the GOP is talking about this.

Lerma also testified that he supports President Donald Trump and donated to the Republican party.

A70-year-old man from Pennsylvania pleaded guilty to casting an illegal ballot for former President Donald Trump during the 2020 election and was sentenced to five years of probation on Friday.

Bruce Bartman, of Delaware County, Pennsylvania, admitted to casting the illegal vote in his dead mother's name and told a court Friday that it was a "stupid mistake."

"I was isolated last year in lockdown," Bartman said to Common Pleas Court Judge George Pagano, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. "I listened to too much propaganda and made a stupid mistake."

Bartman pleaded guilty to two felony counts of perjury and one count of unlawful voting after investigators discovered that he used the driver's license of his dead mother to register her to vote online, and filled out an absentee ballot in her name.

At the time of voting, his mother, Elizabeth Bartman, had been dead for 12 years, the Philly Voice reported.

Bartman also attempted to do the same for his deceased mother-in-law, Elizabeth Weihman, using her Social Security number. However, he did not cast a ballot for Weihman.

The state's voting system flagged Elizabeth Bartman's registration after noting she had been dead for several years, but Bartman signed and sent back a letter asserting she was still alive, the Inquirer reported.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has agreed to review the illegal voting conviction of Crystal Mason, a Tarrant County woman facing a five-year prison sentence for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election while she was on supervised release for a federal conviction.
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The all-Republican court’s decision to review Mason’s case is notable. The Court of Criminal Appeals isn’t required to review non-death penalty convictions, and it rarely grants requests to do so. However, the court indicated it won't hear oral arguments in the case and instead rely on legal briefs.

Mason turned to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals late last year after a state appeals court panel affirmed the trial court’s judgement.

In her petition to the court, Mason’s lawyers argued the appeals court erred in upholding her conviction because the state’s definition of voting illegally requires a person to know they are ineligible to vote and Mason did not. In its ruling, the three-judge appeals panel wrote that the fact Mason did not know she was ineligible was “irrelevant to her prosecution.”

“So now even our Kentucky Derby winner, Medina Spirit, is a junky. This is emblematic of what is happening to our Country. The whole world is laughing at us as we go to hell on our Borders, our fake Presidential Election, and everywhere else!” said Mr Trump on Sunday.

hepcat wrote: ↑Mon May 10, 2021 1:55 pm Trump managed to tie the Kentucky Derby drug test controversy with his lie about Biden's election and border security.

“So now even our Kentucky Derby winner, Medina Spirit, is a junky. This is emblematic of what is happening to our Country. The whole world is laughing at us as we go to hell on our Borders, our fake Presidential Election, and everywhere else!” said Mr Trump on Sunday.

Did I say manage? That's probably not the right word.

Giving computer network router and password information to a firm run by a conspiracy theorist is “mind-numbingly reckless,” the Maricopa County sheriff said.

Georgia’s Election Law, and Why Turnout Isn’t Easy to Turn Off
Making voting convenient doesn’t necessarily translate into more votes, research shows.

Democrats are understandably concerned about a provision that empowers the Republican-controlled State Legislature to play a larger role in election administration. That provision has uncertain but potentially substantial effects, depending on what the Legislature might do in the future. And it’s possible the law is intended to do exactly what progressives fear: reshape the electorate to the advantage of Republicans, soon after an electoral defeat, by making it harder to vote.

And yet the law’s voting provisions are unlikely to significantly affect turnout or Democratic chances. It could plausibly even increase turnout. In the final account, it will probably be hard to say whether it had any effect on turnout at all.

One simple answer is that convenience isn’t as important as often assumed. Almost everyone who cares enough to vote will brave the inconveniences of in-person voting to do so, whether that’s because the inconveniences aren’t really so great, or because they care enough to suffer them.

This supposes a certain reasonable level of convenience, of course: Six-hour lines would change the calculation for many voters. And indeed, long lines do affect turnout.

The implication, though, is that nearly every person will manage to vote if sufficiently convenient options are available, even if the most preferred option doesn’t exist. That makes the Georgia election law’s effort to curb long lines potentially quite significant. Not only might it mitigate the already limited effect of restricting mail voting, but it might even outweigh it.

Another reason is that convenience voting may not be as convenient for lower-turnout voters, who essentially decide overall turnout. Low-turnout voters probably aren’t thinking about how they’ll vote a month ahead of the election, when they’ll need to apply for an absentee ballot. Someone thinking about this is probably a high-turnout voter. Low-turnout voters might not even know until Election Day whom they’ll support. And that makes them less likely to take advantage of advance voting options like no-excuse early voting, which requires them to think about the election early and often: to submit an application, fill out a ballot and return it.

As a result, convenience voting methods tend to reinforce the socioeconomic biases favoring high-turnout voters. The methods ensure that every high-interest voter has many opportunities to vote, without doing quite as much to draw less engaged voters to the polls.

A final reason is that voting restrictions may backfire by angering and energizing Democratic voters.

That doesn’t mean the Georgia law or other such laws are without consequence. Many make voting more difficult, enough to intimidate or discourage some voters. Many outright disenfranchise voters, even if only in small numbers. Perhaps the disenfranchisement of even a single voter merits outrage and opposition, especially if the law is passed on dubious or even fabricated grounds, and with Jim Crow mass disenfranchisement as a historical backdrop.

But setting aside intent, it does mean that many such voting provisions, like that in Georgia, are unlikely to have a huge effect on turnout or Democratic chances.

malchior wrote: ↑Tue May 11, 2021 9:14 am I however strongly disagree with his close. The election was razor thin in 2020. Small changes could impact the election in 2024. That's the point. They are attempting to nibble at the strike zone here.

Republicans launched an all-out assault Tuesday on sweeping voting rights legislation, forcing Democrats to take politically awkward votes spotlighting the increasingly charged national debate over access to ballots.

The measure would bring about the largest overhaul of U.S. elections in a generation, touching on almost every aspect of the electoral process. Democrats say the changes are even more important now as Republican-controlled states impose new voting restrictions after the divisive 2020 election.

Yet it’s a motivating issue for Republicans, too. GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell is so determined to stop Democrats that he’s personally arguing against the measure in Tuesday’s Rules Committee session, a rare role for a party leader that shows the extent to which Republicans are prepared to fight.

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“We’ll hear a lot of flowery language today,” said McConnell. “But we all learned early in life if you can write the rules, you can win the game.”

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Tue May 11, 2021 1:34 pm As promised, my hatred of Mitch McConnell is never ending:

Republicans launched an all-out assault Tuesday on sweeping voting rights legislation, forcing Democrats to take politically awkward votes spotlighting the increasingly charged national debate over access to ballots.

gbasden wrote: ↑Tue May 11, 2021 1:59 pm I've seen this a number of places, and I can't wrap my head around how protecting voting rights are politically awkward votes.

noxiousdog wrote: ↑Tue May 11, 2021 2:07 pm

gbasden wrote: ↑Tue May 11, 2021 1:59 pm I've seen this a number of places, and I can't wrap my head around how protecting voting rights are politically awkward votes.

The vast majority of the electorate is way more afraid of voter fraud than that someone can't get a voter ID.

LordMortis wrote: ↑Tue May 11, 2021 4:06 pm We needed that for four years straight.

Now that we are getting citations (Man, Psaki is friggin good at what she does) "the press" use insinuation as means of avoiding verifiable facts.

http://octopusoverlords.com/forum/viewt ... 1#p2822061

noxiousdog wrote: ↑Tue May 11, 2021 2:07 pm

gbasden wrote: ↑Tue May 11, 2021 1:59 pm I've seen this a number of places, and I can't wrap my head around how protecting voting rights are politically awkward votes.

The vast majority of the electorate is way more afraid of voter fraud than that someone can't get a voter ID.

LordMortis wrote: ↑Tue May 11, 2021 4:11 pm "People are saying" was the preferred communication from the White House to the press and to Twitter from 2017 through 2020. Again, I Psaki. She is the antithesis of everything I hated in communications for Executive Office. Soooo good at what she does and what she is does is not fuck around clouding communication.

That or she is the best bullshitter I have ever heard and I'm too stupid to comprehend how good she is at making up convincing lies on the spot and she's been successful at it for three months straight.

RETIRING ANY PRETENSE: More than 120 retired generals and admirals are firing a major salvo in the partisan wars in the form of an open letter that accuses the Biden administration of committing “direct assaults on our fundamental rights” and pushing the uncorroborated claim that the election was stolen from Donald Trump.

The letter, mostly signed by ex-military leaders who have been out of uniform for decades, was organized by retired Maj. Gen. Joe Arbuckle and an organization called Flag Officers 4 America.

“Under a Democrat Congress and the Current Administration,” they write, “our Country has taken a hard left turn toward Socialism and a Marxist form of tyrannical government which must be countered now by electing congressional and presidential candidates who will always act to defend our Constitutional Republic.”

It also raises questions about “the mental and physical condition of the Commander in Chief.”

Among some of the more notable signatories are retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Boldoc, who is expected to run for U.S. Senate in New Hampshire; retired Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin, a former deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, who stirred controversy for some of his anti-Muslim views; and retired Vice Adm. John Poindexter, who was the deputy national security adviser for President Ronald Reagan convicted in the Iran-Contra Affair.

“That was way worse than I was expecting,” Mary Beth Ulrich, a retired Air Force colonel who teaches civil-military relations at the Army War College and Air Force Academy, told us after reading the letter. “They are perpetuating the big lie about the election. I think it is outrageous. Some of it is very anti-democratic behavior.”

She said she plans to use the letter in her classes. “They are absolutely violating the norm to be apolitical,” she added. “They are being used for partisan purposes. They are going against their constitutional oath.”

“This statement is the first full-blown partisan attack from a large group of retired officers that is not explicitly tied to an election or specific issue,” agreed Jim Golby, a senior fellow at the Clements Center for National Security at The University of Texas at Austin and an expert on civil-military relations. “The tone is shocking, especially because it targets the entire Democratic Party, implies the election was illegitimate and contains a number of verifiable lies.”

Arbuckle defended the effort in an email. “Retired generals and admirals normally do not engage in political actions,” he said, “but the situation facing our nation today is dire. ... We are facing threats greater than at any other time since our country was founded. To remain silent would be a dereliction of duty.”

Several experts said it reminded them of the crisis in civil-military relations in France.