SCOTUS To Hear Case That May Redefine ‘One Person, One Vote’ — UPDATED

Tierney Sneed at TPM:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday opted to hear arguments in a case that could redefine "one person, one vote" -- one of the bedrock principles of modern voting rights law. The case could change how electoral districts are drawn across the country, revamping who comprises electoral districts and reshaping the idea of who is ultimately "represented" by elected officials.

The case, Evenwel v. Abbott, originated in Texas and is being spearheaded by a conservative legal group. Legal experts tell TPM that the impact of the case could be far-reaching, especially for Latinos and residents of urban districts.

...

I do not understand how the conservative Justices on SCOTUS, operating in response to politically conservative legal entities like the self-proclaimed "Project on Fair Representation" (yeah, right), believe they can get away with this bullshit indefinitely without provoking a rebellion by people defending the Guarantee Clause of Article IV of the US Constitution. Please read about the Guarantee Clause, then read the above linked article about what the PoFR is appealing to SCOTUS to have imposed on all the states, a procedure that would change the redistricting rules in most of the states and render the phrase "One Person, One Vote" practically meaningless, in a fashion that might guarantee each state, not a (small-r) republican form of government as assumed for at least 50 years based on several prior Court rulings, but in fact a (cap-R) Republican form of government, which is clearly the goal of PoFR.

People who are poor, or Black or Hispanic, or are forcibly redistricted in ways that geographically concentrate their cohort so as to dilute the power of their votes, already have a hard enough time exercising any actual power by casting their votes. These days, most of the people affected by tweaking redistricting are those who tend to vote for Democrats. If the Court rules in this case in favor of the PoFR position, those poor/Black/Hispanic/etc. people are going to be fucked at the polls even worse than they already are, and thus so will be the Democratic Party.

And the Roberts Cadre, the Gang of Five, will have another weapon to join with Citizens United etc. to assure that elections can be bent to their own political liking.

Kuffner

Seriously: how long will it be before the actual majority of Americans, who are mostly not racially white, not male, not young and not wealthy, tire of having their expressed political will deliberately thwarted, and take to the streets? Do the Supremes really think they have enough police lined up to enforce a Republican [sic] government forcibly installed against the will of the popular majority?

Time will tell. Not a very pleasant time, and probably a rather painful tell...

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UPDATE: a bit more detail from Kuffner, who is arguably, and certainly IMHO, the definitive Texas blogger.

Judge Posner Condemns His Own Opinion On Voter ID

Posner

Well-known federal Judge Richard A. Posner, 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, Reagan appointee and arguably signature conservative jurist in the nation (apart from those on the Supreme Court), author of the 7th Circuit's 2008 opinion in Crawford v. Marion County (wiki), the case affirming the constitutionality of Indiana's voter ID law, thus opening the floodgates of voter ID laws enacted by other states, has changed his mind about voter ID laws in general. And he's not shy about it. "Dartagnan" at Daily Kos says this:

Posner, joined by four Judges on the Seventh Circuit, authored the opinion requesting a rehearing en banc by the entire Seventh Circuit Court of appeals in Frank v Scott Walker et al, the recent case assessing the validity of the Wisconsin "Voter ID" statute.  A three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit had already cleared the way for the Wisconsin law to go into effect prior to next month's elections. Posner's request for rehearing split the Judges of that Circuit 5-5, and thus no rehearing was granted. Posner's opinion, which eviscerates every rationale promoted in support of these suppression laws, was relegated to a "dissent." ...

In short, if Posner were not Posner, his request for a rehearing would sink beneath the waves, and we would have draconian voter ID laws for as long as our nation lasts. But Posner is indeed Posner, and even conservatives listen to him. If we assume that we haven't heard the last in court of the GOP's skulduggery perpetrated by voter ID laws, it is reasonable also to assume that judges in further federal cases will pay heed to Posner, even all but the most extreme Supreme Court Justices.

One can hope. It's that, or cede our representative democracy to a band of thieves with an elephant as their emblem...

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UPDATE: I am not the best at reading legal documents, but this one from the Supreme Court site appears to indicate that the Supremes (with Alito, Scalia and Thomas dissenting) have vacated the 7th Circuit's permanent injunction pending a timely petition for, and issuance of, a writ of certiorari by the Supreme Court. So there's more to come on this whole nightmare. I suppose we all know how Alito, Scalia and Thomas will vote, inveterate partisans that they are, but the rest of the Court may be more inclined to hear the appeal.

Comedian Lewis Black, For The ACLU, Says ‘Fv<k Voter Suppression’

State Voter ID Laws Begin To Fall, One By One

In January, it was Pennsylvania. In April, it was Wisconsin. Why? The NYT says of the Pennsylvania case:

Opponents contend that such fraud is rare — in Pennsylvania’s case, the state could not point to a single incident — and that the laws were intended to suppress Democratic turnout, since those who do not possess a state-approved photo ID are more likely to be in groups that tend to vote Democratic.

In Wisconsin, says the AP via TPM,

... [Judge] Adelman sided with opponents, who said it disproportionately excluded poor and minority voters because they're less likely to have photo IDs or the documents needed to get them.

I have to agree with those who say voter ID laws are all about voter fraud: specifically, the GOP's attempt to render whole elections fraudulent by fraudulently eliminating voters who favor their opponents.

These rulings are a good beginning. Now if the courts would just get around to ruling on Texas...

Elections In Miami-Dade Are A Real Pisser

Hunter at Daily Kos explains the messy details, in the post "Miami-Dade blocks voters standing in line from using the bathroom". As the lines in Miami-Dade  sometimes require six hours standing to vote, this effectively disqualifies many people from voting even if they have a voter certificate, an ID and anything else the Florida GOP may see fit to require in a given year.

Not my 2012 polling place, but similar

I remember the 2012 primaries. I voted early, choosing the Fiesta Mart at Kirby and Main, where I also frequently shop. The place was packed. At the time, I was first beginning to notice the problem that would ultimately cost me my foot. The queue of voters snaked through every aisle from the International section to the side of the store nearest Main... between 10 and 15 times across the store, front-to-back. After I voted, I could scarcely walk at all, or even stand, for about three days. I'm sorry, but in a representative democracy that is serious about representing the whole of "we the people," a cripple should not have to cripple him- or herself further just to be able to vote.

People who have to use the bathroom more frequently are similarly disabled. In some cases, medications can induce the problem as they solve a more serious problem; I know this because on the advice of my doctor I just started taking such a medication. It's no fun, but it beats croaking. Republicans, ask yourself: just how much do you hate disabled people? That much? Well, f^<k you too!

‘... They're Taking My Rights Away’ — Laura Troth, 80‑Year‑Old Texan, Denied Voter ID

Via karoli at Crooks and Liars, we have Lisa Falkenberg at the Houston Chronicle (damned subscription required) writing about 80-year-old Texan Laura Troth. Here's karoli quoting Falkenberg:

I wonder what Cathy Engelbrecht from True the Vote would say to this 80-year old woman who just wants to cast her vote the way she has in every election before the last one.

Both times she tried, she was told there was something else, another document, another piece of proof she needed to convince the clerks that she's the woman pictured in her expired Texas driver's license.

"I just don't understand why they're trying to keep me from voting," says Troth, a former licensed vocational nurse who considers herself an independent. "To me, they're taking my rights away."

The feisty mother of seven - grandmother and great-grandmother to many more - doesn't take kindly to such things. Her ordeal started last year, when Troth says she was turned away from her voting precinct because she had only her voter registration card, not a photo ID.

Determined to vote, Troth says she had a friend of the family drive her to the DPS office that day to get a Texas ID. She presented the woman at the front desk with various forms of identification - her old driver license, her Social Security and Medicare cards - but was told she needed her birth certificate.

[...]

Troth says the same "rude" woman was at the front desk and, this time, the woman told her the birth certificate wasn't good enough because the name on it differed from her married name.

"I told them I didn't get married out of the womb," Troth says.

The elderly widow was instructed to come back with her marriage license. And not only that. Because she lives with her other daughter, Alana Troth, that daughter would have to come in person to verify her mother's residency.

Goddamned Republicans have a lot to answer for...

Gallup Poll: Hispanics Overwhelmingly Prefer Democrats

The GOP will have to engage in a lot of gerrymandering, voter suppression and other forms of election theft to overcome this result: per Gallup, both U.S.-born Hispanics and Hispanic immigrants to the U.S. lean strongly to the Democratic Party. Hispanic Americans whose parents were both born in the U.S., by a margin of 64% to 30%, prefer Democrats over Republicans; Hispanic Americans with both parents born outside the U.S. prefer Democrats over Republicans by 57% to 25%.

Look for the Supreme Court to stretch very far to overcome the overwhelming Democratic advantage in rulings involving this large and rapidly growing immigrant population. I suspect the Supremes' tweaking of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was just a beginning of an assault on voting rights in many states, e.g., Texas and Florida. No battle for rights ever stays won, and for all the recent failings of the Democratic Party, Republicans are still the champion deniers of rights and liberties. Get ready for a battle...

Florida GOP Indeed Passed Voter Law With Explicit Purpose Of Suppressing Democratic Vote

Via Mustang Bobby, we have the news from the Palm Beach Post:

A new Florida law that contributed to long voter lines and caused some to abandon voting altogether was intentionally designed by Florida GOP staff and consultants to inhibit Democratic voters, former GOP officials and current GOP consultants have told The Palm Beach Post.

Republican leaders said in proposing the law that it was meant to save money and fight voter fraud. But a former GOP chairman and former Gov. Charlie Crist, both of whom have been ousted from the party, now say that fraud concerns were advanced only as subterfuge for the law’s main purpose: GOP victory.

...

(Read much of the rest at Bobby's place. There are no major surprises.)

So: after the great GOP election theft attempt failed, intraparty recriminations are proving to be their undoing.

GOOD! Damn them all to a Hell of their own making!

Will AZ County Stop The Count? Shades Of Florida 2000!

People have been saying really bad things against Texas lately, mostly regarding our good-haired governor and his buddies spewing all the loose talk about secession. But at least we didn't have any of this shit:

One of the few unresolved congressional races in the nation could come down to whether voters in a heavily Latino precinct in Arizona get their ballots counted this week.

Backed by two high-powered lawyers, a supporter of Republican congressional candidate Martha McSally filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to get election authorities to halt counting of provisional ballots from a heavily Latino area of the state’s Cochise County.

The suit could be pivotal as McSally is trying to unseat Rep. Ron Barber (D) in southern Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District. At last count, McSally was trailing Barber by just 512 votes, but the lead had changed hands multiple times since election night.

Jim Nintzel of the Tucson Weekly reported that Barber campaign manager Jessica Floyd called the lawsuit an “active attempt by Martha McSally’s attorneys to disenfranchise voters in Cochise County.

...

Clearly Arizona GOPers want to enforce what I've always called the Republican Right to Rule: no matter the actual vote count, Republicans win. If they don't win at the ballot box, they win in the courts, but they always win, democracy be damned. Eternal vigilance lawyering is the price of liberty making sure your your vote is counted!

Ohio SoS Jon Husted Sued For Issuing Instruction Defying Judges' Orders Re: Provisional Ballots

I know, I know; in real life, "SoS" stands for "shit on a stick," and that's what it should mean regarding Jon Husted. But Husted is the Republican Secretary of State of the great State of Ohio, and in direct defiance of multiple court orders, Husted issued last-minute instructions to election officials not to fill out one required section of provisional ballots verifying what form of ID was provided by the voter, thereby leaving the information to be filled in by the voter... or not. If the field remains blank, the provisional ballot is automatically disqualified. If voters forced to use provisional ballots are not properly instructed in filling out this field, there is no telling how many will have their otherwise legitimate ballots discarded.

Husted has until Monday to respond to the order in court, which has said it will decide by Nov. 17, which is when provisional ballots are to be counted.

As if that were not enough, poll workers dealing with provisional ballots will be trained by the "Voter Integrity Project" of "True the Vote," a Tea Party org which trains them "beyond" what the SoS instructs. Right. (How can that possibly be legal?)

You know, this is the third presidential election since 2000, the one in which Florida SoS Katherine Harris arranged the theft of the state's vote for GeeDubya Bush, largely as a means of self-promotion. It worked. Bush took office (I'm sure as hell not going to say he was elected, because he wasn't in any meaningful sense) and ended up as de facto president for eight years. Republicans noted the ease with which this was accomplished, and never looked back: election theft has become the primary means of Republican office-taking ever since. Ohio in 2012, like Florida in 2000, is liable to be a critical state for either candidate. Late yesterday, one of the poll-averaging sites reported an average Obama state poll lead in Ohio of about 3 points. If Rmoney, with an assist from Husted, takes the state, we could well end up with another illegitimate president.

Ideally, the judge should order Husted held for contempt of court, in custody without bond and without outside contact until the election is over, and moreover, no Voter Integrity Project member should be permitted to serve as a pollworker. In short, no special Republican instructions should be in force regarding any procedural aspect of voting.

Failing that, if the GOPers steal another presidential election, I'll renounce my commitment to nonviolence. This has got to stop. NOW. We want our democracy back!

Starting Up The Election Theft: The Rmoney Campaign Misinforms Voters In Wisconsin

Think Progress has the details. No time to elaborate, but the article is short; go read it. Each item could at least slow down polling, perhaps enough to depress turnout... and each item involves some fraudulent or at least misleading statement. Damn the GOP to hell, already!

GOP Voter Registration Fraud In Virginia: The Scandal Spreads

Brad Friedman of The Brad Blog, posting on Oct. 25 on Salon, tells us as much as was known a week ago about the voter registration scandal that began with a simple case of a hired Republican voter registrar dumping completed Democratic voter registration forms in a dumpster... and has broadened to include reports of fraudulent voter registrations in Florida as well as reports of additional destroyed Democratic registrations in Colorado and Nevada. And that appears to be just the beginning. I expect to find follow-up information.

H/T Politics Plus
(click for TomCat's post)

A name that threads through all these allegations is Nathan Sproul. Through a series of shell organizations, Sproul set up a GOTV and voter registration organization for the benefit of the Republican Party, then was himself "fired" (but not really), leaving those GOTV/VR org's in place, doing dastardly deeds to voter registrations by prospective Democrats. Even in Texas you could go to jail for that kind of behavior. But apparently Sproul has been at it for years, and no door has clanged shut behind him.

I do not know what I shall do if I become convinced that a presidential election duly won by Obama was stolen by GOP voter registration fraud and GOP manipulation of the votes themselves. But unlike sElection 2000, I shall not take it lying down.

Who Watches The Watchers... And Who Watches Them

Jeebus! It has come to this. Via Christian Dem in NC at Kos, we are directed to an article by Alexander Bolton at The Hill:

International monitors at US polling spots draw criticism from voter fraud groups
By Alexander Bolton - 10/20/12 12:00 PM ET

United Nations-affiliated election monitors from Europe and central Asia will be at polling places around the U.S. looking for voter suppression activities by conservative groups, a concern raised by civil rights groups during a meeting this week. The intervention has drawn criticism from a prominent conservative-leaning group combating election fraud.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a United Nations partner on democratization and human rights projects, will deploy 44 observers from its human rights office around the country on Election Day to monitor an array of activities, ...

Liberal-leaning civil rights groups met with representatives from the OSCE this week to raise their fears about what they say are systematic efforts to suppress minority voters likely to vote for President Obama.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the NAACP and the ACLU, among other groups, warned this month in a letter to Daan Everts, a senior official with OSCE, of “a coordinated political effort to disenfranchise millions of Americans — particularly traditionally disenfranchised groups like minorities.”

...

Astonishing. What's astonishing? First off, to me, the fact that The Hill labels the ACLU and the NAACP "[l]iberal-leaning civil rights groups": really? Is it "liberal" to defend the Bill of Rights and a couple of other amendments? Second Amendment nut-jobs would be surprised to hear themselves categorized as "liberal-leaning." And what, specifically, is "liberal" (or "conservative") about protecting the civil rights of people of color? But The Hill is what the Hill is; one can hardly expect anything else of them. At least they carried the story.

Equally astonishing, again to me, is that anyone thinks True the Vote (no link from here!), King Street Patriots, etc. are a good idea. Most polling place officials are willing to work with these groups as long as they do not repeatedly get in the way of the orderly flow of the voting process. But that is of course their very raison d'être: to interfere with the voting process at polls in neighborhoods likely to contain lots of Democrats... predominantly African-American neighborhoods among them. They're out there to prevent the n[BLEEP]s from voting, however much they may deny it.

So groups like NAACP and ACLU and six others join forces to "watch the watchers," as the old saying has it. After sElection 2000, I recall some leaders of African nations offering America assistance in monitoring elections. But they were joking. We are not. We need the help. Dammit!

If America has reached the point at which it cannot run fair elections with clean polling and counting processes, we may be done for. I'm not ready to quit yet. But if we can't answer the simple question "quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" we are in sad shape indeed.

Bring in the international monitors. Fuck the self-appointed "voter fraud" detectives. If anyone tries to deny my vote, I swear I'll modify their dental work!

Texans: You Can VOTE Starting TODAY!

This is it. In some states it's already been underway; in Texas, early voting starts today. If you need details, start with my early voting information post. If you vote today, expect a crowd, bring a book or magazine and wear comfortable shoes (heh... as if I have comfortable shoes). I am probably voting tomorrow instead.

Sweaters? jackets?
Not in Houston!

And remember to take your list along with your voter registration and, just in case (though it's not officially required), a government-issued photo ID which has your address on it, typically a driver's license. The self-appointed voter patrols (e.g., King Street "Patriots") are supposed to be out, checking up on everybody and making trouble. If someone hovers behind your polling station either to observe how you vote or to "advise" you, turn around and offer them instant dental work: you have an intrinsic right to a secret ballot, but that right is ill-protected in law. The bastards are probably just hungry anyway: offering to feed them a knuckle sandwich will likely make them go away.

If your poll has an e-voting system, in Texas, chances are good it's a Hart InterCivic eSlate. If you're inclined to vote straight-'D', remember that any subsequent selection of a candidate's name after you select the straight-party item de-selects that candidate.

May you be blessed with nothing worse than crowds interfering with your voting!

Texas: It's Almost Time To Vote Early

Basic info and necessary links for Harris County residents are available in my earlier post here. Early voting starts Monday, Oct. 22, and ends Nov. 2. The romance of Election Day voting (Nov. 6) is pretty much gone, superseded by wholly negative practical considerations... long lines, possible voting system failures and "failures," possible voter ID challenges at the polls by Republicans who do not like your skin color, etc. The short version: vote early.

Even if you overcome those obstacles, your vote may or may not be counted. In Texas, more than 200 counties including Harris now use DRE (direct recording electronic) voting machines and systems made by Hart InterCivic, systems not without their problems over the years since their introduction after the 2000 debacle. Even at best, the systems generate no paper trail, and individual votes are aggregated by the polling-place-level system. Your individual vote disappears into the ocean the moment you press "Cast Ballot". But it's too late to request an absentee ballot, and those are fraught with problems of their own.

While not a catalog of the horrors of voting by DRE systems, this NYT article from 2008 has an assortment of examples. The history is not encouraging. Not only is stealing elections made easier than ever, but accidental loss of votes, sometimes whole precincts of them, is a possibility in ways it never was before.

How common is trouble with all sorts of voting systems in America? VerifiedVoting.org has a map of the status of voting systems in all 50 states; only five have the status "good." Expect problems, maybe in your state.

And Republican attempts to steal the election are already underway. Recently, for example, in Virginia, a Pennsylvania man working for a contracting firm in the employ of the Republican Party of Virginia was arrested after being seen tossing completed Virginia voter registrations (presumably by likely Democratic voters) in a dumpster. (The man's name is Colin Small; make of that what you will.) And this happened months after Myth Rmoney sent a letter to the Virginia attorney general asking for an investigation of alleged voter registration fraud by Democratic organizations. What GOPers do themselves is what they accuse their opponents of... isn't there a name for that phenomenon? other than "strategy," I mean...

When the CEO of Diebold, Wally O'Dell, told Republicans in a fundraising letter before the 2004 elections that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year," he gave a warning that all Democrats should heed. Heads up, Democrats (indeed any non-Republicans): your vote is in danger, more than ever before.

(I don't know about you, but I resent like hell having even to think about this. It just isn't right.)

Pennsylvania Voter ID Law... Once More, And With Feeling!

upyernoz of Rubber Hose, who is an attorney, explains his own confusion about the meaning of the judge's ruling. (See previous post.) The crux of the question is whether a voter lacking suitable ID is given a regular ballot or a provisional ballot. If you remember past elections, when individuals were forced to vote on provisional ballots, those ballots often ended up not being counted. So it's possible the judge ruled as a Republican instead of as a fiduciary of the tradition of law that one might expect a judge to be.

If even attorneys are confused by the ruling, the judge should issue a clarification RIGHT NOW. And the substance of the clarification had better be that everyone gets to vote on a regular ballot. Anything less is unacceptable. Anything less is evidence that the GOP is trying to turn Pennsylvania 2012 into Florida 2000.

'Screw The Vote'

The Atlantic offers an article on organizations such as "True the Vote" a Tea-Party-based right-wing voter intimidation squad, and King Street Patriots, a poll-obstructing group that wreaked considerable havoc in Houston in 2010 in its highly dubious attempt to "prevent voter fraud," i.e., to prevent minorities from voting.

Poll tax receipt, Harris County, TX 1960

Some things never change. As Michael Moore suggests on his front page (there's no permanent link to an individual item on that page), this kind of Republican bullshit has been going on at least since the poll tax and literacy tests in the 1920s, continuing through caging and similar abuses, and its primary purpose today is the same as it has always been: to prevent people of color from voting.

If I were African American, I might take along some insurance on my trip to the polls. A driver's license would be good (though 21 million Americans don't have them). A passport? how likely is that in poverty-stricken Black communities, though it may be more common in Hispanic neighborhoods.? A military ID? no good, if it doesn't have your current physical address on it.

A gun? would that help prevent the TPers from stopping people from voting? I remember an incident some years ago in which a local Black militant brought an organized Black paramilitary unit, complete with rifles on their shoulders, to march outside selected polling places in Houston. No violence resulted. I do not know if the effort was successful in protecting the vote, but it certainly got the attention of the media.

Seriously, what will it take to assure democracy for every eligible voter, independent of race, ethnicity, color, and wealth?

Too Good To Pass Up (Probably NSFW)

(H/T 'noz.)

Rep. John Lewis's Speech Against Voter Suppression

... as mentioned recently, found on YouTube, thanks to commenter Blue on Hullaballoo:



Today has been almost a total loss for me. But Rep. Lewis never fails to inspire me even in the worst of times. May good things come to him as he so rightly deserves.

Rep. John Lewis On Voter Suppression And Voter ID: "Iʼve Lived This Before"

If you've ever read Walking With The Wind... the great Democrat from Georgia, Rep. John Lewis's memoir of the civil rights movement... you will know that Lewis is one of the toughest, most indefatigable and unbowed African Americans in our midst, a veritable icon of courage and steadfastness, repeatedly beaten and bloodied and fire-hosed but never subdued in spirit. I am fortunate to have found a used copy of the memoir many years ago; I turn to it when my own spirits need restoration. Lewis never fails to inspire me.

Thus Rep. Lewis is the perfect man to address the often politically untouchable issue of race in American politics. No one living... no one in this world... knows better than Lewis the heartbreaking, outraging consequences of racism once woven into the fabric of our nation's electoral process... and now being rewoven by Republicans today. As Lewis said,

I’ve seen this before. I’ve lived this before. Too many people struggled, suffered and died to make it possible for every American to exercise their right to vote.

The poor. The elderly. And yes, racial, ethnic and selected religious minorities. All those American citizens face deliberate, unrestrained, thinly (if at all) disguised suppression of their votes by today's Republican party, through draconian voter ID laws (e.g., Pennsylvania and Texas), drastic pruning of voter roll in defiance of federal court orders (Florida), direct voter challenges at the polls leading to "provisional" ballots (many states), reduction of hours polls are open (again many states including Ohio), and outright vote-counting fraud executed using electronic voting systems (Ohio among others). Lewis conveys the message in his straightforward, uncompromising style:

Today it is unbelievable that there are Republican officials still trying to stop some people from voting. They are changing the rules, cutting polling hours and imposing requirements intended to suppress the vote. The Republican leader in the Pennsylvania House even bragged that his state’s new voter ID law is ‘gonna allow Gov. Romney to win the state.’ That’s not right, that’s not fair and that is not just.

Do not let this courageous and highly respected American down. Do whatever you can to challenge Republican voter suppression in every state this November. Too much is at stake to let them get away with it. Do NOT permit the return of Jim Crow at the polls!