Wisconsin

Some days it looks like the Red Team has over played their hand, but they never get called on it so congratulations. /s

https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/posts/2231949713615749

Now, there is a move afoot to purge about 240,000 more voters from the rolls, thanks to the old system called “voter caging.” The state sent letters to registered voters, largely in districts that voted Democratic in 2016, and those who did not respond to the letters have been removed from the voter rolls on the argument that the fact they didn't respond to the letters must mean they have moved. Initially, the purge was supposed to happen in 2021, after the election, but a conservative group sued to remove them earlier and a conservative state judge, Paul V. Malloy ordered it done. Malloy’s decision has been appealed to the Wisconsin state supreme court, which has deadlocked over the issue by a vote of 3-3.

On tomorrow’s ballot is a contest for a seat on that court. The Republicans desperately want to reelect their candidate, Justice Daniel Kelly, who recused himself from the voter purge vote pending the election. Trump has endorsed Kelly, who will uphold the purge if he is reelected. Before the pandemic, observers thought Kelly’s opponent had a good chance of unseating him because of expected high turnout among Democrats. But now, of course, all bets are off, especially since the Democratic strongholds in the state are in the cities, where the residents are hunkered down.

The election was originally scheduled for tomorrow, but the pandemic has gummed up the works. A stay-at-home order went into effect in the state on March 25, and more than a million voters have requested absentee ballots. But this huge surge means the state is running behind and hasn’t been able to deliver the ballots. Meanwhile, roughly 7000 poll workers, who are volunteers and often elderly, have said they would not come manage the election, so a large number of polls can’t open. The city of Milwaukee, whose 600,000 people normally would have 180 polling places, will have five. Milwaukee tends to vote Democratic.

Wisconsin governor, at the urging of most mayors in Wisconsin, tried to delay voting or make mail in ballots possible. He called for an emergency session of Congress. A Republican dominated House and Senate rejected any attempt to delay voting or to make mail in ballots possible. (With contempt for human health - some still insisting this virus problem is overblown.) Then voted to adjourn.

Already, Wisconsin is now missing some 7000 poll workers. So many resigned for health reasons since so many poll workers are senior citizens. In the biggest city, Madison, were once 34 (?) polling stations. I believe that will be reduced to four. Extremists are winning at the expense of the most patriotic Americans - moderates.

Griff;1050333 wrote:

Some days it looks like the Red Team has over played their hand, but they never get called on it so congratulations. /s

Correction.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg decried a decision made by the Supreme Court’s majority blocking an extension to the absentee ballot deadline in Wisconsin, where the governor unsuccessfully tried to postpone in-person voting due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The high court on Monday blocked a lower court’s extension of the ballot deadline in a 5-4 decision, just hours after the Wisconsin Supreme Court shut down Gov. Tony Evers’ last-minute executive order postponing voting in Tuesday’s contests.

In her dissent, Ginsburg, who was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, wrote that the ruling “will result in massive disenfranchisement.”

“The question here is whether tens of thousands of Wisconsin citizens can vote safely in the midst of a pandemic. Under the District Court’s order, they would be able to do so. Even if they receive their absentee ballot in the days immediately following election day, they could return it,” RBG wrote.

“With the majority’s stay in place, that will not be possible. Either they will have to brave the polls, endangering their own and others’ safety. Or they will lose their right to vote, through no fault of their own. That is a matter of utmost importance — to the constitutional rights of Wisconsin’s citizens, the integrity of the State’s election process, and in this most extraordinary time, the health of the Nation.”

Still the wrong decision.

And ineffective. When they teach this period in three generations Ruth gets a pat on the back but for my and your lifetime this is a permanent activist [strike]conservative[/strike] partisan court, which will rule against moderate and left wing legislation until a crisis packing or DWI crash by our boy Kavanaugh.

Griff;1050360 wrote:

When they teach this period in three generations ...

then they should also teach Dred Scott. By 7-2, the Supreme Court in 1857 found that neither Scott, his wife, nor any other person of African ancestry could claim citizenship in the United States. So a massive war, followed by the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, was required to restore basic sanity.

Dred Scott was decided based in political rather than fundamental (Constitutional and basic human rights) reasoning.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court met virtually to protect their health in order to demand that people must crowd into polling places if they want their vote to count.

Griff, I'm sorry I sounded combative earlier. It *is* a travesty that the voters in Wisconsin were forced to choose between their best civic duty and their best personal health duty. It's a travesty because that forced choice was not unavoidable.

I found the most egregious statistic about this story to be the fact that the number of polling places in Milwaukee, population approximately 600,000, is normally 180, was reduced to five.

That's 120,000 people per polling place. That makes a socially-distant line of 136 miles long, at each polling place. That is galactically fucked up.

Not a problem man. The polling place situation is unacceptable.

BigV;1050531 wrote:

I found the most egregious statistic about this story to be the fact that the number of polling places in Milwaukee, population approximately 600,000, is normally 180, was reduced to five.

No accident. That clearly reduced the number of Democrats who could vote. After all, communism is about subverting democracy.

Critical in that election was to protect the seat of a right wing Republican on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

One upon a time, the Republican party was full of moderates - the only people who work to advance America. Much of America's civil rights legislation in the 60s exists because of what moderate (patriotic) Republicans did.

Moderates have been driven out of the Republican party. So that government will be partisan - adversarial - with contempt for America. How curious and disturbing. Early days of the Nazi party did the same thing.

Even the US Supreme Court did its part to protect that ring wing Wisconsin Supreme Court justice.

Headline even in The Guardian - a British publication: "Yes, Wisconsin Republicans used the pandemic to stop people from voting".

Therefore the right wing extremist Daniel Kelly defeated Jill Karofsky for that seat.

While anticommunism is helped by subverting cryptocommunists who do not -- can't afford to, so they don't -- admit to being communists. A requirement for membership in that club is not to understand economics -- hence, getting pretty much everything wrong. Bad lifestyle choice.

UG, nothing in this thread has fuckall to do with communism.

You sound like those idiots who yell at the healthcare workers.

I uncloaked tw for a few minutes; it's there. His hallucination about how it's all some Republican Plot of Maximal Nastiness is not borne out on the ground, but is sustained only by the antidemocratic blathering, dogma for tw's false-god religion, of the self-designated Donkey activists, ... not in my view a democratic lot at all, and not collectively deserving of power in a free nation, but instead of jail sentences featuring hard labor at minimum wage. We could have tw stand on a soapbox naked in their midst and talk at them while getting sunburn all over.

Happy Monkey;1050370 wrote:

The Wisconsin Supreme Court met virtually to protect their health in order to demand that people must crowd into polling places if they want their vote to count.

And THAT is 21st century America.