Defiant voters

Charles Blow shares what voting felt like in Georgia when he cast his ballot in the run-off election between brain damaged Trumper Hershel Walker and U.S. Senator Rev. Rafael Warnock. Those of us who live in states that make it is easy to vote should be thankful for what we've won.

This is my second election cycle in Georgia, but I still can’t get used to the wait times to vote. It’s a voter suppression tactic in and of itself. It’s a poll tax paid in time. ... I lived more than 25 years in New York, where I took for granted that voting was a casual affair. 

... as I waited, something else occurred to me: Voter suppression is one of the surest cures for apathy. Nothing makes you value a thing like someone trying to steal it from you.
The line, and all the people patiently waiting in it, is a symbol of resilience and perseverance. It is a reminder that people will work hard to overcome obstacles to accomplish things they deem essential.

... These waits can disproportionately affect nonwhite voters. According to a report by Georgia Public Broadcasting and ProPublica before Election Day in 2020, a shrinking number of polling places “has primarily caused long lines in nonwhite neighborhoods where voter registration has surged and more residents cast ballots in person on Election Day.”

According to the report, the nine metro Atlanta counties “have nearly half of the state’s active voters but only 38 percent of the polling places.”

... People who defend voter suppression point to [high turnout] numbers as proof that their critics are simply being hyperbolic and creating an issue where none exists. But that is the opposite of the truth as far as I can see it. From my perspective, voters are simply responding with defiance to the efforts to suppress.

... I have nothing but disdain for the efforts to suppress the vote in my new home state, but I have nothing but admiration for the voters’ determination not to be suppressed.

Democracy is being saved by sheer force of will, by people climbing a hill that should never have been put in front of them.

My friends who worked with UniteHERE in Reno are now on the ground along with so many others, encouraging Warnock supporters to defy a system that wants to shut them out. We'll find out on Tuesday night whether defiant citizens can again prevail.

A warning of civil violence

Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld, a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has described a pattern of developing civil violence that should worry us all. She contends that in societies where political terrorism takes root, there's a pattern.

Violent groups that get involved in politics in other countries follow a common path ... 

At first, politicians recruit experts in violence and intimidation to use those tools as a campaign tactic.  

Later, those violent leaders run for office or take political roles directly, cutting out the political middleman. Usually, what they want is power and impunity, so that they can make money from more lucrative criminal activities, though sometimes they simply want power for its own sake.  

To understand where this can lead: 11 of India’s current national legislators face open cases for murder, 30 have attempted murder charges and 10 serving legislators have been convicted of such serious crimes – a doubling from ten years ago.

In India, with its long history of violent religious sectarian violence, this may not seem so surprising -- though sadly, India once proclaimed itself the world's largest democracy before the current Hindu nationalist government came to power.

In the U.S., we're seeing all too much of Kleinfeld's pattern. In Pennsylvania, the Republican candidate for governor paid for buses to Washington for supporters of Donald Trump's January 6 attempted coup. Doug Mastriano has been subpoenaed to testify about what he did that day.

Here in Nevada, Republican candidates for both U.S. Senate and state governor are adherents to the Big Lie. The GOP candidate for secretary of state (the official who runs elections) insists the vote in 2020 was rigged and that he wouldn't hesitate to overturn a majority vote of Nevadans if he were in office.

Kleinfeld has taken note of ominous developments in the state where we're working on the midterms:

In Nevada, it appears more clear that the Proud Boys are still at the first stage, being recruited by unscrupulous political actors who are using their violence to amass more power for themselves. ... Why would a faction of Republicans still in power or running for office at the federal, state, and local level make common cause with violent criminals? Because violence and intimidation are already bolstering their power. ...

We sometimes look away, but violence from the right has been escalating ever since Barack Obama broke the rule that a Black man could not be elected President.

... Americans may feel that these incidents of political violence are “high politics” that they can avoid if they steer clear of the political arena. That feeling is widespread in countries I have studied where political violence grows to dangerous levels. It Is always a false hope.  

In the United States, it is already far more dangerous to exercise freedom of speech than in the recent past. Driving cars into civilians used to be a tactic favored by overseas terrorists. It had been recorded just twice in the United States before James Alex Fields Jr. murdered Heather Heyer by driving into a crowd of counter-protestors at the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. Yet from George Floyd’s murder on May 25, 2020 through September 30, 2021, at least 139 drivers drove their cars into protests across America, injuring 100 – sometimes severely – and killing four. ... 

... Violence begets violence – once its use mainstreams, moderates who espouse non-violence appear anemic and unable to offer protection to their side. The middle weakens, while violence eventually takes on a rhythm of reprisal far removed from the original causes. ... Even if Trump passes from the scene, the embrace of violence and intimidation as a political tactic by a faction of the GOP will cause violence of all types to rise – against all Americans.

No one is exempt. And our civil society could become a nightmare.

Who is an American?

A reporter asked [Republican Senate Minority Leader] McConnell if he had a message for voters of color who were concerned that, without the John R Lewis Voting Rights Act, they were not going to be able to vote in the midterm. 'Well, the concern is misplaced because, if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans,' McConnell said.

This is what it comes down to: the Republican Party has chosen to be the party for those who think Black and other people of color [and immigrants and queer folks] are not really citizens. That is all. 

These days, the white electorate is about 65-70 percent of voters nationally. A significant minority fraction (35-40 percent) of those white voters are not crazy and know who their neighbors are. The Republicans don't even win all the whites. McConnell's America cannot prevail in a majoritarian country; it only wins majorities in declining pockets (like Kentucky) or when the opportunity to vote is restricted.

Here we are. Nobody is giving up.

Who gets to vote is still up for grabs

The first time I began to understand a bit about how Native Americans' right to vote is frequently denied was in 2004. Not that what I saw that year was anything new ... but it bears remembering.

The Democratic-adjacent political consultancy we were working with in Albuquerque, New Mexico had assigned an eager young man several months before the November presidential election to try to increase the vote coming out of the state's nineteen recognized Pueblos. These tribal entities were deeply rural and isolated, mostly very poor without money jobs except perhaps at a dingy casino, and organized under Native governments. Nowadays, the state of New Mexico advertises them to tourists. Then the Pueblos were just pockets of poverty to be romanticized by whites as historic artifacts and kept out of sight.

Our organizer went to work vigorously. He drove hundreds of dusty miles on dirt roads, held numerous meetings with elders and tribal authorities, and finally persuaded several hundred eligible people to sign up to vote. Then he arranged for their registration forms to be delivered to the appropriate county governments in which their particular pueblos were located.

As Election Day approached, nobody heard anything. The new registrants were not contacted. Finally Democratic Party election lawyers made some calls and were assured that all was well.

On Election Day, our organizer returned to some of the hamlets where he'd worked so hard in order to drive voters to the polls. But his passengers were turned away; there was no record of their registrations. The election lawyers eventually determined that NONE of these 300 or so citizens were entered on the rolls. So they could not vote.

And just to rub it in -- most of the counties where the Pueblos are located were run by white and Hispanic Democrats. It seems that out there in the countryside what disqualified a voter was being a tribal citizen ...

This June, the Native American Voting Rights Coalition issued a report titled: Obstacles at Every Turn.

Not nearly enough has changed since 2004 for Native voters: too many election rules seem designed to make voting very difficult. Potential Native voters are disqualified by not having addresses recognized by the post office, by election offices and polling places which are only open limited hours, by limited numbers of polling places, and by having to take costly drives over long distances on unpaved roads in order to cast a ballot.

And then last week, the Supreme Court approved an Arizona law which strictly limits who can carry a voter's completed ballot to their polling place. This is aimed straight at impeding voting by tribal citizens living far off the beaten path. The highest court has made it abundantly clear that it will not protect against partisan, often racist, restrictions on voting.

National legislation protecting voting rights would seem the obvious remedy -- but it seems we may not get this because of the unwillingness of a few Democrats in the U.S. Senate to use their power to make it happen.

Voting rights for Native Americans still depend on the determination of the people to claim the vote.

Bring on the A-Team

Click to enlarge.

 

The headline for the article reads: Justice Dept. sues state of Georgia over new voting restrictions.

Glad to read the news, but even more delighted to see the lineup of determined, strong women backing up Merrick Garland. With those folks fighting for voting rights, we might just get through this fight.

Juneteenth and all that

I rejoice for those, including most especially Ms. Opal Lee, for whom the new federal holiday is the culmination of a long campaign. The enslaved people of Galveston, Texas had been legally "free" since the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 when they got the news on June 19, 1865 -- but sometimes it takes a long time for reality to catch up with the laws on the books. 

Make that a very long time ...

I reflect on how very different this feels from the long process that led up to the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Hardly a Republican dared go against the Congressional vote on this one, unlike the King holiday which was opposed by such luminaries as Senator John McCain. Back in the day, the U.S. political elite had living memories of the good trouble of the civil rights movement, for better and worse. They aren't carrying any living memories of joyous, free Black Texans. These same GOPers who voted for Juneteenth are doing their damnedest to suppress the votes of the descendants of slaves.

I ruminate on the Juneteenth holiday arriving during what is now known as Pride Month. May it not go the way of what was once Lesbian and Gay Freedom Day, reduced to an opportunity for corporations to advertise how "with it" they are and sell us more stuff.

Especially for white people, but perhaps for all, let's make Juneteenth a moment to rededicate ourselves to a new outburst of freedom. Freedom is powerful stuff indeed. 

Capital weighing in

Ever since the misbegotten 2016 presidential election, I've been haunted by what the graphic above shows. Somehow Donald Trump was able to win despite the fact that Hillary Clinton won the counties which provide 64 percent of the nation's GDP -- a rough measure of economic strength.

The 2020 election pattern was similar: Joe Biden won a few more counties -- counties which provide 66 percent of GDP. Democrats win where the country's wealth comes from. GOPers win all those expanses of land in economically hurting places. Only the Electoral College makes it close.

Now I'm a good loosely left-ish progressive, so I tend to expect that corporate capital gets what it wants, most of the time. I'm not happy about that, but I observe its truth. So I find the electoral pattern a little puzzling. Would capital long be content to be ruled by a party to hails from places that are failing?

Turns out, of course, the GOPers offer lots of goodies to corporate capital, in particular weak regulation and low taxes. And corporations usually donate to both parties, making sure they keep a foot in both camps.

But capital that's winning is far more forward looking than most individual politicians. It has to be, to avoid being a casualty of capitalism's unceasing waves of creative destruction. And hanging in with the parts of the country that are failing economically is backward looking.

There are all sorts of specific circumstances that stand out in the current tiff between Mitch McConnell and such behemoths as Coke and Delta Airlines and Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Major League Baseball. Georgia's voter suppression law is thoroughly rancid and the proposed Texas voting restrictions might turn out to be even worse.

But behind it all, is the reality that business is going to go where the profits are. And that's where the money and the people are. 

There are wedge opportunities for Democrats here. At the very least, we ought to be able to show that it might profit capital to make something like 64 percent of its investment in politicians on the forward looking side. That's both where the votes and the economic opportunity are located. The squishy, but widespread, corporate recoil from outright destruction of democratic rights is a good omen. Corporate capital is showing which way it thinks the wind is blowing.

Don't let the sponsors off the hook

Georgians struggling to preserve their access to the ballot against a deluge of state voter suppression bills know where Republican politicians' weak spots are: among their corporate funders. 

Here's Nsé Ufot from the New Georgia Project Action Fund:

Some of the country’s biggest corporations are getting away with a stunning level of deception in Georgia. 

Companies like Coca-Cola, Delta, UPS, and AT&T have made a public show of supporting voting rights, and the rights of Black voters in particular. With splashy ads and Black History Month campaigns, they’ve tried to curry favor with customers by trading on the history of the Civil Rights Movement and portraying themselves as allies of its modern-day equivalent. 

But behind the scenes, these same corporations have been donating millions of dollars to the politicians who continue to spout racist lies about the 2020 election and who are working feverishly, right now, to roll voting laws back to the Jim Crow era and silence the voices of thousands of Georgia’s voters. 

These companies cannot have it both ways. It’s time for them to take a stand. They either support the freedom to vote or they do not. We will no longer accept empty rhetoric....

In many states where Republican legislators have believed themselves free to roll back civil rights, calling out their corporate ties is a tried and true tactic. Big national corporations often care more about their national brand and "good will" than about retrograde local politicians. 

In Georgia in 2016, LGBT activists fought off a discriminatory anti-gay bill with help from the Walt Disney Co., Marvel Studios, AMC, and Viacom. Georgia's governor decided he didn't want to face a boycott by dozens of pop culture stars.

Arizona, which also flipped from GOPer to Democratic in the 2020 presidential election, is another target for voter suppression by a Republican legislature. Arizona also has experience with corporate push back against right wing state policies. In the early 1990s, this then very conservative state refused to recognize the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday -- and the NFL removed a Super Bowl from Phoenix. In 2014, American Airlines and Marriott hotels joined the opposition to a bill allow discrimination against gays.

This year, Popular Information reports that major Arizona political donors including Union Pacific and Prudential Financial have pushed back against the current restrictive bills. Others have not taken a pro-inclusive voting stance, including Pinnacle West (the Phoenix area electric power provider), Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Farmers Insurance.  

Campaigns to expose corporate sponsors of right wing power grabs have a good track record.

And, of course, Democrats in Congress must pass the For the People Act to stop most all these anti-democratic shenanigans.

Preserving democracy through the ballot

President Biden marked the anniversary of Selma's Bloody Sunday in 1965 -- when Alabama state troopers broke up a peaceful civil rights march with clubs, whips and horses -- with a strong call to protect every citizen's right to vote.

“The legacy of the march in Selma is that while nothing can stop a free people from exercising their most sacred power as citizens, there are those who will do everything they can to take that power away,... Every eligible voter should be able to vote and have it counted, ... If you have the best ideas, you have nothing to hide. Let more people vote.”

Today, the Republican Party has become the enemy of inclusive voting rights. They don't believe they can win if everyone can vote. GOPers have introduced 253 state laws to make voting harder. One version just passed Monday in Iowa. Some really bad state laws are advancing in Georgia.

The Democratic-led House of Representatives has passed, and sent to the Senate, the For the People Act which would create nationwide rules for open and fair federal elections by outlawing many of the tactics that Republicans are using to make voting harder. There's going to be a knock-down, drag-out process which will reveal whether the tiny Democratic majority will act to protect democracy. They'll have to be willing to modify the filibuster rule which enables a minority to block legislation; Senators fear any change would lessen their individual power. Are they for the people, or for their own quaint privileges?

This process is likely to be confusing, so I thought I'd reproduce here an exhaustive catalog from DailyKos Elections of what's in the bill that will be generating all this noise and fury. It's a lot of positive changes. I've divided the list so the various categories of changes are grouped:

Using Congress’ power to regulate Senate and House elections under the Elections Clause and enforce anti-discrimination laws under the 14th Amendment, the bill would:

            Drawing district boundaries: 

    •    Require states to establish nonpartisan redistricting commissions for congressional redistricting;
    •    Establish nonpartisan redistricting criteria such as a partisan fairness provision that courts can enforce starting immediately no matter what institution draws the maps;

           Registration:

    •    Establish automatic voter registration at an array of state agencies;
    •    Establish same-day voter registration;
    •    Allow online voter registration;
    •    Allow 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register so they'll be on the rolls when they turn 18;
    •    Allow state colleges and universities to serve as registration agencies;
    •    Ban states from purging eligible voters' registration simply for infrequent voting;

           Polling places and procedures:

    •    Establish two weeks of in-person early voting, including availability on Sundays and outside of normal business hours;
    •    Standardize hours within states for opening and closing polling places on Election Day, with exceptions to let cities set longer hours in municipal races;
    •    Require paper ballots filled by hand or machines that use them as official records and let voters verify their choices;
    •    Grant funds to states to upgrade their election security infrastructure;

           Voting by mail:

    •    Provide prepaid postage on mail ballots;
    •    Allow voters to turn in their mail ballot in person if they choose;
    •    Allow voters to track their absentee mail ballots;

           Voting rights for prisoners:

    •    End prison gerrymandering by counting prisoners at their last address (rather than where they're incarcerated) for the purposes of redistricting;
    •    End felony disenfranchisement for those on parole, probation, or post-sentence, and require such citizens to be supplied with registration forms and informed their voting rights have been restored; 

Campaign finance:

    •    Provide public financing for House campaigns in the form of matching small donations at a six-for-one rate;
    •    Expand campaign finance disclosure requirements to mitigate Citizens United;
    •    Ban corporations from spending for campaign purposes unless the corporation has established a process for determining the political will of its shareholders;

Honest administration:

    •    Make it a crime to mislead voters with the intention of preventing them from voting.

That's a lot of new rules. People in California already vote under a voting regime much like this, as do quite a few blue states. It's taken some years to get this huge state onto this system; election administration has become more and more professional despite being underfunded. 

There's no reason except that Republicans think it gives them an advantage that any eligible citizens should find voting hard, anywhere in this country.

The stakes in Georgia

Today Georgians vote in the two U.S. Senate elections which will determine whether Republicans or Democrats control that legislative body. If the Rev. Rafael Warnock and Jon Ossoff prevail, our new President will have a chance of getting something done. If the GOPer incumbents win, expect stonewalling of everything, including funds to vaccinate against the coronavirus and to assist economic recovery.

Those are the national implications of this election. But this election also has huge stakes for democracy within Georgia. The New Georgia Project's Nsé Ufot explained what the election means for Georgians in the Atlanta Voice:

For too many years, Georgia’s conservative leaders have gotten used to cherry picking their voters. Instead of trying to appeal to a wider swath of voters, they have worked to deny voting rights to those Georgians whom they don’t care to represent, especially Black people. Thanks to extensive voter suppression tactics — from purging voters from the rolls, to withholding voter registrations under an “exact match” law, to shutting down precincts – these officials have worked, too often successfully, to suppress our votes.

... Even as more than 10,000 Georgians have lost their lives to COVID-19, Georgia Republicans are already working to walk back the measures taken to make voting safer in the face of the pandemic, recently unveiling a plan to restrict vote-by-mail and roll back the election laws that facilitated record-high turnout in the state in November. This move comes on the heels of a decision made by election officials in Cobb County to cut early voting locations by half ahead of the Georgia runoffs, which will disproportionately affect voters of color. 

... These suppression efforts are a response to the shifting power dynamics in Georgia: our representatives are afraid of our power and want to curtail it. Because of a multiracial coalition of Black, Brown, Gold, and progressive white voters, Georgia went blue in November. You see it in the numbers: our state had more than 6.6 million registered voters in 2016; this year, it reached an all-time high of 7.6 million, with registrations among Black, Latino, and Asian voters booming. 

... The defenders of the status quo have seen what Georgians can do when we all turn out to vote, and that’s why they’re scared.

Over the last month, it's been an education and sometimes a pleasure to phone Georgians about their election. UniteHERE callers have been thanked and blessed -- a lot.  Let's hope Georgians who have already voted, and those who turn out today, succeed in building a new, more inclusive future, for everyone, in their state. Just as in Washington, democracy itself is on the ballot in Georgia.

The right that makes all other struggles possible

Need a little inspiration to get you through the remaining 38 days until Election Day? I can't promise it will be all over November 3, but we all can feel that getting there will be a slog. We need all the uplift we can find. And I sure hope you are doing all you can now to save your democracy now.

In the meantime, from Amazon, I want to recommend All In: The Fight for Democracy streaming on Amazon Prime.

You already know the plot: COVID denier Brian Kemp steals the 2018 governor's race from Stacey Abrams by suppressing the votes of Black people, Latinx people, Asian-origin people, young people, and poor people. It should be just a bummer. But the film embeds Stacey's story in the much longer and wider history of oppressed citizens struggling for their right to be heard. And that's not sad at all -- we who believe in freedom just keep coming back again and again.

Some choice quotes from the movie: 

Stacey Abrams: The fundamental power in a democracy lies in the right to vote. And if you protect that right, you provide possibilities for everything else.

Historian Carol Anderson: The reason the vote is contested is because the vote matters.

Stacey Abrams: When elected officials feel they may not have the power anymore, they have two choices. They can either be more responsive to the people they lead or they can eliminate the people they have to answer to.

Alejandra Gomez from the community organization Lucha in Phoenix: the most important part of voter registration is human connection and being able to understand why that person does not trust.

Carol Anderson: Barack Obama scared the be-jeebers out of them ... He brought 15 million new voters to the polls.

Stacey Abrams: stoicism is a luxury and silence is a weapon for those who would quiet the voices of the people.

Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice: It's not going to be the courts that save us. It's not going to be the justices in their robes. It's got to be the people.

Terence Floyd, father of murdered George Floyd: Let's stop thinking that our voice don't matter. And vote! Educate yourself and know who you are voting for. Because there's a lot of us. There's a lot of us. There's a lot of us.

Yes, there are a lot of us.

Check your voter registration NOW!

A couple of days ago, in what seemed just a random conversation on Facebook among friends of friends, I suggested that everyone should check whether they were really registered. I didn't expect much reaction -- these were (apparently) employed, tech-functional people, the kind who always vote. Most of them remembered voting in the various state spring primaries.

To my astonishment, and to several of theirs, out of a couple of dozen, two found they were not recorded as registered. Even though they had voted within the last year.

So -- it looks as if everyone who cares about the upcoming election had better check, probably repeatedly until they have their mail-in ballot in hand or have voted in one of the in-person methods, to make sure they are on the rolls.

Voting methods, rules, and procedures are set by each of the states, sometimes with additional variations by county. Fortunately, there are at least two national websites which enable everyone, anywhere, to find out if they are registered. These get their information for the 50 state offices usually called Secretary of State. Try one or the other right now:

vote.org

voteamerica.com

If you want more in depth information about state deadlines, such as for registration,  mail-in ballot applications, changes to early voting dates and locations, FiveThirtyEight is doing its best to provide. That link leads to a live map (the picture here is NOT live) where you can click on your state to learn about voting rules.

Looks as if every one of us is going to have to fight voter suppression this year by learning the ropes and spreading the word to everyone we know.

Resources for working against voter suppression

A friend asked recently if I could point her to how to work against efforts to suppress voting rights. This is a huge subject. It is complicated by the fact that voting in this country is administered at the state and local level, so one size doesn't fit all. But it seems worth sharing the broad overview I came up with here. There's plenty of scope for any one who wants to work on this. Here's what I wrote:

The go-to source on all matters of voting fairness, voter suppression, and vote by mail is the Brennan Center for Justice.

The nation's top scholar of these matters is Rick Hasen (UC Irvine). The top voting expansion lawyer these days (Democrat) is Marc Elias. Op-ed's by either are always valuable as are news stories that quote them.

There are many groups, many organized as non-profits, that work to expand the vote. At the moment, the underlying impulse is coming from the Democrats because restricting the franchise has become part of the Republican Party's orthodoxy in a moment when it can't seem to adapt to changing demographics.

Fair Fight is working largely in Southern states, seems competent, and reasonably well funded.

Voto Latino, Black Voters Matter, and Rock the Vote work to get people registered, a major hurdle to voting.

The national ACLU Voting Rights Project has been at this forever.

In California, the ACLU in San Diego has taken the voting rights lead.

This might seem old fashioned, but in may localities, the League of Women Voters still does vital voting rights work.

All of us help by knowing as much about voting systems as possible. It seems that citizens would be familiar with election procedures, but in fact it's all sort of a black box for many people who are afraid they don't know enough to take part. You can help simply by understanding your local procedures, where to register, when elections take place ... etc.

Hope this gives you some leads. I suggest jumping in somewhere. Many of these groups want more than your money, though they all want that too.

Jill Karofsky defeats conservative state judge in Wisconsin

"Look, we shouldn’t have had the election on Tuesday," she said. "It was an untenable decision (on whether to vote), but the people of the state of Wisconsin rose up.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

State Republicans thought they'd sewed this one up by forcing voters to either navigate a bureaucratic maze to receive an absentee ballot or venture into hours-long lines to cast an in-person vote at inadequate polling sites. But voters risked their lives to have their say. Notably, in Milwaukee where COVID is mowing down Black citizens, Karofsky ran up a 68-32 percent victory. Her urban and southern margins overwhelmed rural GOP voters. The map of the vote looks a lot like the party distribution of Wisconsin votes before former governor Scott Walker and his merry band of Republican voter suppressors took over the state after 2010. Let's just hope no brave voters pay for this one with their lives!

Next door in Michigan, mid-west voters show how to get it done

Katie Fahey thought there must be something wrong with her state's elections. No matter who won the overall state totals, Republicans always seemed to control the legislature. The 27 year old program coordinator for the Michigan Recycling Center realized the boundaries of their districts had been gerrymandered so the GOPers couldn't lose. So she wrote on Facebook: "I'd like to take on gerrymandering in Michigan. If you're interested in doing this as well, please let me know." Next thing she knew she was leading a citizen group that called itself Voters Not Politicians. After holding 33 local meetings to assess support, they took advantage of Michigan's initiative process to write a law requiring an independent redistricting commission to perform the line-drawing process. Political professionals scoffed. Four thousand volunteers collected over 425,000 (no paid petitioning here!) and put the measure on the ballot for 2018. After court challenges and a tough campaign, the measure prevailed in the November election and so far has withstood repeated Republican-inspired judicial review.

The documentary Slay the Dragon tells the story of Fahey, her associates, the Voters Not Politicians campaign -- and, moreover, how Republican gerrymandering has shaped politics in the upper midwest. Gerrymandering is both simple and brutal, enabling winners to design their own impregnable districts, and also technical, an exercise in big data manipulation and legal fancy footwork. This story makes the process and its grossly undemocratic implications broadly understandable. It offers a remarkable picture of what people feeling a moral imperative can do against powerful, fully funded opponents, including ones wearing judicial robes. One of the elections professionals interviewed here offered a summary which I think applies; when it comes to preserving democracy against greed and the power-hungry,

"We have to be our own saviors."

... I've been following the Voters Not Politicians effort since December 2017, so there was little in this I didn't know. Yet I found the film intellectually satisfying and emotionally gripping, despite running over an hour and half which seem long for something so full of talking heads. This is a very professional project. It's available on YouTube, Amazon, and other streaming platforms. Highly recommended.

When to cast your vote risks death

From the frontlines, Molly McGrath, a voting rights attorney who organizes to let people vote.

The voting tragedy here in Wisconsin is unjust, but my anger has turned into profound sadness that our institutions have failed us so spectacularly. More than ever, all we can do is keep fighting for voters. These are not hypotheticals. These are voters with rights. Here's a few:

An 87-year-old WWII vet named Charles. He tried to request an absentee ballot, but was not able to upload his photo ID, as required by Wisconsin law. He never received his ballot. With no choice, he now plans to vote in person Tuesday.

Just 57% of absentee ballots requested by voters have returned to clerks. Many voters have not even received theirs yet, like my brother and his wife, both under 50. I made them promise not to risk their health and vote in person, even if they don’t get their ballots tomorrow.

Herb, a man who lives alone, has no one to sign as a witness on his absentee ballot. He doesn’t want to leave his house and has no one coming over. In Dane County alone, 70 volunteers w/@WiscVoterID went to homes to try to be witnesses--in a safe way--over the last weeks. Unreal.

I have multiple messages from folks under 30 who planned to be poll workers, but are so afraid of getting sick that they are terrified tonight. But they feel like they especially need to show up, to replace older poll workers who may also be assigned to their polling location.

This fight for voting rights won’t be easy. But we can’t give up. If you have an absentee ballot, get it in Tuesday. If you don’t, and you are in WI or some place else, mourn this injustice, then prepare to fight. Our democracy needs you.

So many are so brave.

From my clutter: annals of floundering democracy

This is a No Coronavirus Zone for today. All portents say that plague will be with us for a long time and that the federal government under the current administration is devoid of capacity to help us weather it. Wash hands and be careful out there.

In Oregon, Democrats have been elected to super-majorities in the state legislature -- 18D-12R in the senate, 38D-22R in the lower house. Most Oregonians want progressive policies. But using a quirk in the state constitution, the remnant GOPers have stymied legislative action on climate change bills, and then on just about everything, as explained by David Roberts. It's a story of institutional failure to figure out how to fight back against extremist wolves in legislative clothing; Democrats and mainstream media act flummoxed:

In national politics, as in Oregon, anti-democratic tactics and rhetoric are escalating on the right, but there is little pushback or accountability. They pay no penalty for lying, violating norms, or taking legislative hostages, so they keep doing it, keep escalating. The institutions around them seem unwilling or unable to draw lines in the sand, and when they do, as when Democrats impeached Trump, they find those lines blown aside by partisan unity.

Republicans learn again and again that if they stick together, they can get away with anything — stolen elections, misbegotten wars, botched disaster responses, recessions, and now an openly criminal president. As long as they are a unified “side,” media and other institutions will treat them as a legitimate side, no matter what they do.

Elsewhere, demographic change grinds on -- and though progressives can't count on the browning of the country to deliver automatic victories, it sure helps when everyone is allowed to vote.

... the portion of the electorate that is white has fallen since 2016. White voters still make up a majority, accounting for 59% of those who identified their race when registering, but that number slipped from 62% four years ago.

Georgia Is in Play

In California, when the electorate breakdown slipped below 60% white, Democrats began to pick themselves up off the floor and gradually take over the state government. (Roughly, with bumps along the way, starting in 2000.) Come on Georgia -- go Stacey!

Meanwhile, Rev. William Barber has an admonition for Democrats.

If past action is a predictor of future actions, the Dem nominee will not wage a fight to win Southern states. If this happens, it’ll be an act of political racism—using black voters in the primary to secure the nomination but then walking away from them in the general election.

— Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II (@RevDrBarber) March 7, 2020

Black southern voters have been the backbone of the national Democratic Party for a generation, yet embedded among white Republican majorities, they get very little for their staunch support. The next Democratic administration better deliver.