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Voter "Fraud" or voter disenfranchisement?
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real-human



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PostPosted: Wed Sep 07, 2022 5:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://news.yahoo.com/voter-fraud-penalties-often-depend-183900610.html


In Voter Fraud, Penalties Often Depend on Who's Voting


Quote:
WASHINGTON — After 15 years of scrapes with police, the last thing that 33-year-old Therris L. Conney needed was another run-in with the law. He got one anyway two years ago, after election officials held a presentation on voting rights for inmates of the county jail in Gainesville, Florida.

Apparently satisfied that he could vote, Conney registered after the session and cast a ballot in 2020. In May, he was arrested for breaking a state law banning voting by people serving felony sentences — and he was sentenced to almost another full year in jail.

That show-no-mercy approach to voter fraud is what Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has encouraged this year during his reelection campaign.

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“That was against the law,” he said last month about charges against 20 other felons who voted in Florida, “and they’re going to pay a price for it.”

But many of those cases seem to already be falling apart because, like Conney, the former felons did not intend to vote illegally. And the more typical kind of voter fraud case in Florida has long exacted punishment at a steep discount.

Last winter, four residents of Republican-leaning retirement community The Villages were arrested for voting twice — once in Florida and again in other states where they had also lived.

Despite being charged with third-degree felonies, the same as Conney, two of the Villages residents who pleaded guilty escaped having a criminal record entirely by taking a 24-hour civics class. Trials are pending for the other two.

Florida is an exaggerated version of the U.S. as a whole. A review by The New York Times of some 400 voting fraud charges filed nationwide since 2017 underscores what critics of fraud crackdowns have long said: Actual prosecutions are blue-moon events and often netted people who didn’t realize they were breaking the law.

Punishment can be wildly inconsistent: Most violations draw wrist slaps, while a few high-profile prosecutions produce draconian sentences. Penalties often fall heaviest on those least able to mount a defense. Those who are poor and Black are more likely to be sent to jail than comfortable retirees facing similar charges.

The high-decibel political rhetoric behind fraud prosecutions drowns out how infrequent — and sometimes how unfair — those prosecutions are, said Richard L. Hasen, an expert on election law and democracy issues at the UCLA School of Law.

“It’s hard to see felons in Gainesville getting jail terms and then look at people in The Villages getting no time at all and see this as a rational system,” he said.

The Times searched newspapers in all 50 states, internet accounts of fraud and online databases of cases, including one maintained by the conservative Heritage Foundation, to compile a list of prosecutions in the past five years. But there is no comprehensive list of voter fraud cases, and the Times’ list is undoubtedly incomplete.

The number of individuals charged — roughly 1 1/2 per state per year — is infinitesimal in a country where more than 159.7 million votes were cast in the 2020 general election alone.

For all the fevered rhetoric about crackdowns on illegal voting, what’s most striking about voter fraud prosecutions is how modest the penalties for convictions tend to be.

Most fraud cases fall into one of four categories: falsely filling out absentee ballots, usually to vote in the name of a relative; voting twice, usually in two states; votes cast illegally by felons; or votes cast by noncitizens.

Edward Snodgrass, a trustee in Porter Township, Ohio, said he was trying to “execute a dying man’s wishes” when he filled out and mailed in his deceased father’s ballot in the 2020 election. He was fined $800 and sentenced to three days in jail.

Charles Eugene Cartier, 81, of Madison, New Hampshire, and Attleboro, Massachusetts, pleaded guilty in New Hampshire to voting in more than one state, a Class B felony, in the 2016 election. He was fined $1,000 plus a penalty assessment of $240 and had his 60-day prison sentence suspended on condition of good behavior.

At least four Oregonians cast votes in two states in 2016; none were fined more than $1,000, and felony charges were reduced to violations, akin to traffic tickets.

Two federal prosecutors in North Carolina, Matthew G.T. Martin and Robert J. Higdon, made national headlines in 2018 with a campaign to prosecute noncitizens who voted illegally. In the end, around 30 charges were brought, out of some 4.7 million votes cast in 2016. But prison sentences in those cases were few and usually measured in months; fines, usually, were in the hundreds of dollars or less.

Still, there are exceptions, often apparently meant to send a message in states where politicians have tried to elevate fraud to a major issue.

Foremost is Texas, where convictions that would merit probation or fines elsewhere have drawn crushing prison sentences. Rosa Maria Ortega, a green card holder who cast illegal votes in 2012 and 2014, was sentenced to eight years in prison for a crime she said she unknowingly committed. Crystal Mason, who cast a ballot in 2016 while on federal probation for a tax felony, drew five years for violating felon voting laws. The court has been ordered to reconsider her case.

Both prosecutions were the work of the state attorney general, Ken Paxton, perhaps the nation’s most zealous enforcer of voter fraud laws. Paxton runs a $2.2 million-a-year election integrity squad that claims a 15-year record of prosecutions, although some of its high-profile cases, like a lengthy one against a South Texas mayor, ended in acquittals.

Many of the squad’s cases have turned out to be decidedly small-bore affairs. Paxton’s integrity sleuths recorded 16 prosecutions in 2020, all of them Houston-area residents who put wrong addresses on registration applications, The Houston Chronicle has reported. None resulted in jail time.

A handful of states have followed Texas’ lead. In Tennessee, Pamela Moses, a racial justice activist who violated a ban on voting by felons — mistakenly, she said — drew a six-year prison sentence in 2021. Prosecutors abandoned the charge after she won a new trial.

In Florida, Kelvin Bolton, 56 and homeless, attended the same presentation that Conney did and also voted in 2020. He has been awaiting trial in the Gainesville jail for five months, unable to make the $30,000 bond slapped on him by a county judge.

“I said, ‘Kelvin, why did you vote?’” his sister, Derbra Bolton Owete, said in an interview. “And he said, ‘Well, they told me I could vote, so I voted.’ ”

An amendment to the Florida Constitution that voters approved in 2018 restored voting rights to Bolton and other former felons who had completed their sentences. But the Republican Legislature passed a law requiring full payment of fines and court fees to complete a sentence. The state has no central record of what former felons owe, adding another hurdle to their efforts to regain voting rights.

Because Bolton owes fines or court costs, he faces felony charges of perjury and casting illegal votes.

People of means usually fare better.

In Kansas, a Republican member of the House of Representatives, Steve Watkins, railed during his 2020 reelection campaign against a “corrupt” prosecutor after Watkins was charged with illegally misstating his residence for voting and with lying to law enforcement officers, both felonies. Watkins later quietly accepted a diversion plea, escaping a criminal record in return for paying court costs and hewing to requirements like staying out of legal trouble. (Watkins lost his reelection bid.)

In North Carolina, prosecutors have yet to decide after six months of scrutiny the seemingly straightforward question of whether Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff to President Donald Trump and a former North Carolina congressman, essentially did the same thing.

Meadows stated on a 2020 voter registration form that his residence for voting purposes was a mobile home in the western part of the state, although there is no public evidence that he ever actually lived there.

A few prosecutions have approached the sort of broader allegations of fraud that are common in political messaging, though all were local affairs.

A convoluted tale of election shenanigans in the Canton, Mississippi, city government produced charges against at least nine people in 2019, although punishment was minimal, and one woman was cleared.

An absentee-ballot scheme that forced a rerun of the 2018 9th Congressional District race in North Carolina led to seven fraud indictments. The alleged ringleader, Leslie McCrae Dowless, a Republican operative, died before he could stand trial.

In Florida, where attacks on voter fraud have been a staple of DeSantis’ term as governor, prosecutors have adjudicated at least 25 voting law cases since 2017. Until recently, penalties have been mild: probation, small fines, jail time served concurrently with other sentences.

The 20 cases of voting by felons announced last month nearly double that total. But those prosecutions appear endangered because the state itself approved the felons’ applications to vote and even issued them registration cards. The Republican who sponsored the state law requiring felons to pay court costs, state Sen. Jeff Brandes, told The Miami Herald that he believed that those who were charged had no intent to break the law.

Asked about that, a spokesperson for DeSantis noted that the governor said that local election officials vet registration applications, not the state. That contradicts what his own former secretary of state, Laurel Lee, told journalists in 2020, The Herald reported.

“When people sign up” to vote, “they check a box saying they’re eligible,” DeSantis said at a news conference last week. “If they’re not eligible and they’re lying, then they can be held accountable.”

Critics of DeSantis say his goal is less to stop fraud than to make political hay from Republican voters’ obsession with the subject, something the party has relentlessly stoked for years.

“This is political grandstanding,” said Daniel Smith, an expert on elections and voting at the University of Florida. “Individuals are registering, being told they can vote, handed registration cards and then told they’ve committed a felony. It’s tragic.”

Sometimes the focus on voter fraud can become self-fulfilling.

An Iowa woman, Terri Lynn Rote, said she cast two ballots for Trump in 2016 because she believed her first vote would be switched to favor Hillary Clinton.

“I wasn’t planning on doing it twice; it was spur of the moment,” she later told The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier. “The polls are rigged.”

A judge fined her $750 and sentenced her to two years’ probation.

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 07, 2022 6:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://news.yahoo.com/top-state-court-judges-defend-154743640.html



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Reuters
Top state court judges defend their election oversight at U.S. Supreme Court


Quote:
(Reuters) - A group representing the top judges in all 50 states is urging the U.S. Supreme Court not to shield actions taken by state legislatures affecting federal elections - such as reconfiguring electoral districts and imposing voting restrictions - from the scrutiny of state courts.

The bipartisan Conference of Chief Justices filed the brief on Tuesday in a closely watched case involving a map drawn by the Republican-led North Carolina legislature of the state's 14 U.S. House of Representatives districts. The state's top court struck down the map on Feb. 4, concluding that the districts were crafted in a manner intentionally biased against Democrats, diluting their "fundamental right to equal voting power."

The Conference of Chief Justices argued that the U.S. Constitution does not prevent state courts from reviewing such congressional maps for violations of state constitutions, as the Republican state legislators defending the map argue.

The North Carolina Supreme Court rejected the Republican arguments seeking to exempt U.S. congressional electoral maps from legal review in state courts. A lower state court on Feb. 23 rejected a redrawn map submitted by the legislature and instead adopted a different map drawn by a bipartisan group of experts.

The conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case in its next term, which begins in October, with a decision due by June.

The Republican defense of the North Carolina legislature's map relies on a legal theory called the "independent state legislature doctrine" that is gaining traction in conservative legal circles and, if endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court, would vastly increase politicians' control over how elections are conducted.

Under that doctrine, language in the U.S. Constitution called the Election Clause gives state legislatures, not state courts or other entities, authority over election rules including the drawing of electoral districts.

The Conference of Chief Justices in its brief said that argument flew in the face of history and that the Constitution does not bar states from allowing their courts to review state election under their state constitutions.

"The Elections Clause does not derogate from state courts' authority to decide what state election law is, including whether it comports with state and U.S. Constitutions," the conference's lawyers wrote.

Two groups of plaintiffs, including Democratic voters and an environmental group, sued after North Carolina's legislature passed its version of the congressional map last November. The plaintiffs argued that the map violated the North Carolina state constitution's provisions concerning free elections and freedom of assembly, among others.

The dispute is one of numerous U.S. legal battles over the composition of electoral districts, which are redrawn each decade to reflect population changes measured in a national census, last taken in 2020. In most states, such redistricting is done by the party in power, which can lead to map manipulation for partisan gain.

Republicans also have enacted voting restrictions in various states that they say are needed to combat fraud but critics contend are intended to reduce the voting power of Democrats.

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PostPosted: Tue Sep 20, 2022 2:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

hmmm well they copied all hard drives, all votes/ballots and violated the machines.

and well not one report of a single discrepancy between the ballots and the official count, but will cost taxpayers millions as those machines are compromised and could have been loaded with backdoor programs.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/20/us/trump-election-coffee-county-georgia.html


Videos Show Trump Allies Handling Georgia Voting Equipment



Quote:
The footage raises new questions about efforts by Trump affiliates in a number of swing states to gain access to and copy sensitive voting software after the 2020 election.

Give this article


725
Poll pads in an office in Coffee County, Ga., after the 2020 election. It was not immediately clear what specific personal information about voters was on the poll pads, or what, if anything, was done with the data.
Poll pads in an office in Coffee County, Ga., after the 2020 election. It was not immediately clear what specific personal information about voters was on the poll pads, or what, if anything, was done with the data.Credit...Coffee County Elections Office

Danny HakimRichard FaussetNick Corasaniti
By Danny Hakim, Richard Fausset and Nick Corasaniti
Sept. 20, 2022
Updated 11:44 a.m. ET
Newly released videos show allies of former President Donald J. Trump and contractors who were working on his behalf handling sensitive voting equipment in a rural Georgia county weeks after the 2020 election.

The footage, which was made public as part of long-running litigation over Georgia’s voting system, raises new questions about efforts by Trump affiliates in a number of swing states to gain access to and copy sensitive election software, with the help of friendly local election administrators. One such incident took place on Jan. 7 of last year, the day after supporters of Mr. Trump stormed the Capitol, when a small team traveled to rural Coffee County, Ga.

The group included members of an Atlanta-based firm called SullivanStrickler, which had been hired by Sidney Powell, a lawyer advising Mr. Trump who is also a conspiracy theorist.

“We are on our way to Coffee County, Ga., to collect what we can from the election/voting machines and systems,” one of the company’s executives, Paul Maggio, wrote Ms. Powell on that January morning. Weeks later, Scott Hall, an Atlanta-area Trump supporter and bail bondsman who also traveled to Coffee County, said “we scanned every freaking ballot” in a recorded phone conversation.

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Mr. Hall said the team had the blessing of the local elections board and “scanned all the equipment, imaged all the hard drives and scanned every single ballot.”

Image
A nonprofit group that is suing over perceived security vulnerabilities in Georgia’s voting system released the new videos after obtaining them in its litigation.
A nonprofit group that is suing over perceived security vulnerabilities in Georgia’s voting system released the new videos after obtaining them in its litigation.Credit...Coffee County Elections Office

The new videos show members of the team inside an office handling the county’s poll pads, which contain sensitive voter data. (The cases holding the equipment in the footage are labeled with the words “POLL PAD.”) In a court hearing on Sept. 9, David D. Cross, a lawyer for a nonprofit group that is suing over perceived security vulnerabilities in Georgia’s voting system — and that released the new videos after obtaining them in its litigation — told a judge that his group suspected that the “personally identifiable information” of roughly seven million Georgia voters may have been copied.

Charles Tonnie Adams, the elections supervisor of Heard County, Ga., said in an email that “poll pads contain every registered voter on the state list.” It was not immediately clear what specific personal information about voters was on the poll pads, or what, if anything, was done with the data.

Mike Hassinger, a spokesman for Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, said a poll pad “does have voter information but it’s not accessible because it’s scrambled behind security protocols.” He added that there were no driver’s license numbers or Social Security numbers on poll pads at the time.

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The new videos also show that some of the Trump allies who visited Coffee County were given access to a storage room, and that various people affiliated with Mr. Trump’s campaign, or his allies, had access to the building over several days.

The new footage also shows Cathy Latham, then the head of the county’s Republican Party, with members of the Trump team, standing together in an office where the county’s poll pads were laid out on a table. Ms. Latham is among the targets of a criminal investigation in Atlanta, related to her participation as one of an alternate slate of electors who tried to overturn Mr. Trump’s loss in Georgia. That investigation, which is being led by Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, has also touched on what took place in Coffee County.

In a court filing late Monday evening, the plaintiffs in the civil case assailed what they called “the persistent refusal of Latham and her counsel to be straight with this court about the facts.” They accused her of downplaying her involvement with the Trump team when “she literally directed them on what to collect in the office.”

Robert D. Cheeley, a lawyer for Ms. Latham, declined to speak on the record on Monday. This month, he told CNN that his client “would not and has not knowingly been involved in any impropriety in any election.”

Investigators from Mr. Raffensperger’s office also appear in the new videos, raising questions about what they knew. Along with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Mr. Raffensperger’s office is investigating what took place in Coffee County, 200 miles southeast of Atlanta, but voting rights advocates involved in the litigation have questioned why Mr. Raffensperger, the defendant in the civil case, did not move more aggressively.

Mr. Hassinger said the secretary of state’s office had “no idea” why its investigators were at the elections office in Coffee County in early January.

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“We are looking into it,” he said. “Again, we take this very seriously. This investigation is a joint effort between the secretary of state’s office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and if it’s determined that people have committed a crime, they’re going to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Image
The storage room at the Coffee County elections office.
The storage room at the Coffee County elections office.Credit...Coffee County Elections Office

Mr. Hassinger added that at that time, the secretary of state’s office was looking at “vote-counting procedures when Coffee County was unable to certify the results of their election by the time of the deadline.”

In a statement on Tuesday morning, SullivanStrickler said that it had received a subpoena from a special grand jury in Fulton County convened by Ms. Willis.

“We can confirm that SullivanStrickler is not a target of the Fulton County special grand jury’s investigation,” the statement said. “Our firm and our employees are only witnesses in this matter. We will continue to fully cooperate with law enforcement.”

Reached by phone on Monday, Rachel Ann Roberts, the current election supervisor for Coffee County, said she could not comment on the matter of the poll pads because she had started the job after the visit took place.

“I’m not certain about any of that,” she said. “I wasn’t here at the time.”

Georgia is hardly the only state where such activity occurred. In Michigan, a special prosecutor is investigating efforts by Trump allies, including the Republican candidate for attorney general, Matthew DePerno, to gain access to voting machines. And in Colorado, the secretary of state’s office estimated that taxpayers faced a bill of at least $1 million to replace voting equipment in Mesa County after a pro-Trump elections supervisor was indicted on charges that she tampered with the county’s voting equipment after the 2020 election.

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PostPosted: Mon Oct 03, 2022 9:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/montana-judge-knocks-down-republicans-tighter-voting-laws/ar-AA12y5Vw?cvid=d7dfccd30b31423bf080a50012ce97b1&ocid=winp2sv1plustaskbarhover

Montana judge knocks down Republicans' tighter voting laws


Quote:
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A Montana judge struck down as unconstitutional three laws that restricted voting in the state, saying there was no evidence of the widespread voter fraud that the 2021 Republican-sponsored laws ostensibly were targeting.

FILE - Montana District Judge Michael Moses speaks to attorneys during a court hearing on Sept 15, 2022, in Billings, Mont. The judge has struck down state laws that ended same-day voter registration, tightened student identification requirements for elections and restricted third-party ballot collections. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown,File)
FILE - Montana District Judge Michael Moses speaks to attorneys during a court hearing on Sept 15, 2022, in Billings, Mont. The judge has struck down state laws that ended same-day voter registration, tightened student identification requirements for elections and restricted third-party ballot collections. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown,File)
© Provided by Associated Press
The laws ended same-day voter registration, imposed new identification requirements on students and restricted third-party ballot collections. The restrictions were put on hold in April under a temporary injunction later upheld by the Montana Supreme Court.

Election officials declined to say if they would appeal the latest ruling to the state high court. And with the election just over a month away, it's uncertain if justices would render a decision before Nov. 8.

Native American tribes that sued over the laws argued the student ID and ballot collection measures would hurt voters on remote reservations, where many people live far from polling places and are dealing with poverty and other challenges.

Montana Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen, who oversees elections in the state, requested the voting measures last year as Republicans around the country changed voting laws in the wake of the November 2020 election. The moves followed claims made by former President Donald Trump and parroted by his supporters that the election was stolen.

Judge Michael Moses said that the sponsors of the laws showed no proof that voter fraud was a problem following an August trial in which experts and voting officials from across the state testified.

“Voter fraud in Montana is vanishingly rare," Moses wrote in his nearly 200-page Friday ruling. He added that there were “significant signs” that the ballot collection law had a discriminatory purpose against Native American voters, and said the student ID law had been enacted by Republican lawmakers “to reduce voting by young people for perceived political benefit.”


Jacobsen's own witnesses agreed during the trial that voter fraud wasn't a problem in Montana.

A spokesperson for the Republican secretary of state declined to say Monday if she planned to appeal the judge's ruling to the Supreme Court. But Jacobsen is “not going to let down the fight” to make Montana elections secure and accessible, spokesperson Richie Melby said.

If the laws were allowed to stand, they would directly impede the ability of many Native American to vote, said Jacqueline De León with the Native American Rights Fund, representing the Blackfeet Nation, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Fort Belknap Indian Community, the Northern Cheyenne Tribe and native advocacy groups.

She said allowing third parties to pick up and deliver some voters' ballots was crucial for Native Americans unable to get to polling places because of poverty and a lack of transportation.

“These laws exploit the structural deficiencies in Native American communities, and the Legislature knew what the impact would be," De Leon said.

An audit by a previous Republican secretary of state found no problems in Montana during the 2020 election, according to court filings. The conservative Heritage Foundation found just one voter fraud conviction out of millions of votes spanning the past four decades in the state.

The Montana Democratic Party and youth groups also challenged the 2021 laws and argued tthat they were meant to make it more difficult for Native Americans, new voters, the elderly and those with disabilities to vote.

Moses has also declared unconstitutional a law that would not have allowed 17-year-olds who pre-register to vote to receive a ballot, through the mail or otherwise, until they turn 18, even if they would turn 18 on or before Election Day.

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 04, 2022 9:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

another right winger involved in voting lies is charged for vote stealing of data.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ceo-of-election-software-firm-held-on-id-info-theft-charges/ar-AA12BBjq?ocid=winp2sv1plustaskbar&cvid=cc0e4c9820034fac9b1b98b39b01e06f

CEO of election software firm held on ID info theft charges

Quote:
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The founder and CEO of a software company targeted by election deniers was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of stealing data on hundreds of Los Angeles County poll workers.

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PostPosted: Thu Oct 06, 2022 9:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

stop the steal,

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/changes-made-by-postmaster-general-dejoy-before-2020-election-harmed-us-postal-service-judge-rules/ar-AA12FLqU?ocid=winp2sv1plustaskbarhover&cvid=4e6127181e264212aa183b52dedfac7aChanges made by Postmaster General DeJoy before 2020 election harmed US Postal Service, judge rules[/b]

Quote:

Afederal judge in Washington, DC, ruled Thursday that changes Postmaster General Louis DeJoy made to the US Postal Service before the 2020 election hurt mail delivery, and has put in place orders to prevent DeJoy from doing the same again.

The decision, in a years-old lawsuit from Democratic-led state and local governments, is largely a response to mail across the country not being delivered on time at higher rates than normal in 2020. New York state and New York City, Hawaii, New Jersey and San Francisco-area governments argued that the slow-down impacted their ability to stop the spread of the Covid-19 virus, by impeding people from having a reliable alternative to in-person voting.

In mid-2020, the USPS cut back on the number of mail sorting machines it used, and also hindered the ability of workers to make extra postal trips that would result in them being paid for overtime. The changes – which Democratic politicians heavily criticized at the time because they dovetailed with then-President Donald Trump’s vocal opposition to mail-in balloting during the election – hurt on-time mail delivery.

DeJoy had made the changes without consulting the regulatory agency that oversees the post office first, Judge Emmet Sullivan wrote in his 65-page opinion Thursday.

“The evidence demonstrates that [the states and localities] suffered harm by impeding their ability to combat the spread COVID-19, impeding their ability to provide safe alternatives to in-person voting,” and by imposing costs and administrative burdens on state and local governments, Sullivan found.

Sullivan said the USPS couldn’t bar postal workers from making late or extra delivery trips without permission from the Postal Regulatory Commission, an independent federal agency.


[b]

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 25, 2022 5:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I can only imagine they will need to be in solitary confinement... again right wingers convicted of felonies ... again they will be heros to right wingers... that is just how sick right wingrs are.


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/right-wing-operatives-plead-guilty-in-voter-suppression-scheme/ar-AA13mLIn?cvid=4db391c3896347e99231c0d97c74bf36&ocid=winp2sv1plustaskbarhover

Right-Wing Operatives Plead Guilty in Voter-Suppression Scheme


Quote:
Two right-wing political operatives have pleaded guilty in Ohio to a telecommunications fraud charge for arranging thousands of robocalls that falsely claimed that the information voters included with mail ballots could be used by law enforcement and debt collectors, prosecutors said.

Jack Burkman, center, and Jacob Wohl, left, in 2018. Prosecutors said they used robocalls to intimidate residents in minority neighborhoods to refrain from voting by mail in 2020.
Jack Burkman, center, and Jacob Wohl, left, in 2018. Prosecutors said they used robocalls to intimidate residents in minority neighborhoods to refrain from voting by mail in 2020.
© Joshua Roberts/Reuters
The operatives, Jacob Wohl, 24, of Los Angeles, and Jack Burkman, 56, of Arlington, Va., entered their pleas on Monday in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court in Cleveland, prosecutors said.

The men were indicted in 2020 after they were accused of using the robocalls to intimidate residents in minority neighborhoods to refrain from voting by mail at a time when many voters were reluctant to cast ballots in person because of the coronavirus pandemic. The calls also claimed that the government could use mail-in voting information to track people for mandatory vaccination programs, prosecutors said.

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“These individuals infringed upon the right to vote, which is one of the most fundamental components of our democracy,” the Cuyahoga County prosecutor, Michael C. O’Malley, said in a statement announcing the guilty pleas on Monday.

According to the indictment, Mr. Wohl and Mr. Burkman were each charged with multiple counts of bribery and telecommunications fraud. Those charges were merged into one count each of telecommunications fraud under the plea deal in Ohio, James Gutierrez, an assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutor, said in an interview on Tuesday.


https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/law-catches-up-to-2020-right-wing-election-scammers-as-2022-sees-new-intimidation-tactics-151440965975?cid=eml_maddow_20221025&user_email=e73377d3e40790eecbf6a99203e1476ea2a23c644c2045abd739b8f9e629a73b&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=TRMS%2010/25/22&utm_term=Rachel%20Maddow%20Show

Law catches up to 2020 right-wing election scammers as 2022 sees new intimidation tactics


Quote:
Rachel Maddow catches viewers up on the cases against right-wing political activists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman who tried to intimidate Black voters with a robocall ahead of the 2020 election, and looks at new right-wing voter intimidation tactics for the 2022 election that are already being taken to court.

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PostPosted: Sun Nov 20, 2022 9:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

quora
Quote:
MyPillow’s Mike Lindell says he would be “so happy” if Dominion Voting Systems were to sue him and that such a lawsuit “would so make my day because then they would have to go into discovery, and that would make my job a lot easier”. Is he right?
Oh, dear.

Every time I talk about Dominion lawsuits, some Trumpist hits up the comments section parrotting some rightist talking point about “discovery."

I'm going to say this loudly so that the people in the back, including Mr. Lindell who apparently had his head buried in a poorly made pillow last time can hear.

Dominion has hired not just one of the top, but the single, zero question undisputed top Defamation Firm in the country, Claire Locke, to represent them in this matter and their cases are being handled directly by the founding partner in that firm, the foremost expert in the country on Defamation Law, Mr Thomas Claire.

The suits that have been filed make it clear that neither Dominion nor Clare Locke have ANY intention of settling these suits, they are demanding a trial.

This means 2 things.

1.) It means that the top Defamation lawyer in the top Defamation Firm in the country wants his name attached to these suits.

2.) It means that Dominion IS NOT AFRAID OF DISCOVERY.

It means Dominion feels they have NOTHING to hide.

Now.

Let's talk about the latest crack-addled rantings of the My Pillow guy.

This is a guy who had a nice business going for himself, a good back story about pulling himself out of crack addiction to rise and create something big, a real American Success Story. And he's flushing it all down the drain because now he's addicted to licking Donald Trump's ass.

Here is what My Pillow Crackhead just actually said:

“I made a number of claims about Dominion Voting Systems for which I will need them to sue me so that I can get them in discovery so that I will have any evidence to back up my claims.”

You heard that right. He just literally admitted to defaming Dominion without evidence.

Did you hear that? Yeah. I heard the toilet flush too.

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real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14838
Location: on earth

PostPosted: Wed Nov 30, 2022 10:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

this certainly will not be front pages of the media that shows the media is right wing. and right wingers lie about the media every day. these are right wing heros for their lies and will be compensated by right wingers for their hate and illegal activities.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/despicable-ohio-judge-rules-far-right-tricksters-must-spend-500-hours-registering-voters-in-robocall-fraud-case/ar-AA14JROH?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&cvid=560f2289048b47aaea0babcaccd85fd9

'Despicable': Ohio Judge rules far-right tricksters must spend 500 hours registering voters in robocall fraud case


Quote:
During the 2020 election, the team of Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman — two far-right MAGA activists and conspiracy theorists known for their underhanded stunts — were behind racist robocalls aimed at African-American voters. The robocalls, according to prosecutors, were a blatant attempt at voter suppression, trying to convince Black voters that if they voted by mail, the information they provided could lead to legal consequences for unpaid debts.

Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman in August 2020
Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman in August 2020
© provided by AlterNet
But Wohl and Burkman were the ones who ended up facing legal consequences. In late October, both of them pled guilty to a felony count of telecommunications fraud. And on Tuesday, November 29, a sentence was handed down in Ohio by Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge John Sutula.

Sutula, according to Cleveland.com reporter Cory Shaffer, “placed” Wohl and Burkman “on two years of probation, fined each $2500 and ordered them to wear GPS ankle monitors with home confinement beginning at 8 p.m. each day for the first six months of their probation.” And they will be required to “spend 500 hours registering voters in low-income neighborhoods in the Washington, D.C., area,” Shaffer reports.

READ MORE: Judge denies far-right tricksters’ request to pause civil voting rights case until criminal case is resolved

The 71-year-old judge had scathing criticism for Wohl and Burkman, telling the MAGA Republicans, “I think it’s a despicable thing that you guys have done” and comparing their racist robocalls of 2020 to efforts to bully and intimidate African-American voters during the 1960s.

Sutula’s ruling was strictly for a case in Ohio. Wohl and Burkman have also been facing criminal charges in Michigan and a civil lawsuit in New York State in connection with their racist robocalls of 2020.

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Wohl and Burkman weren’t physically present in Judge Sutula’s courtroom in Ohio, but rather, attended the hearing online. And Wohl told Sutula, “I just really want to express my absolute regret and shame over all of this.” Both of them could have been sentenced to up to a year in prison for telecommunications fraud in the Ohio case.

Shaffer notes, “The charge is connected to thousands of robocalls placed in Cleveland in the run-up to the 2020 election between then-President Donald Trump and the Democratic challenger, Joe Biden. The robocalls came at a time when states across the country had expanded the use of mail-in voting as a protective measure during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pair gained notoriety in recent years by throwing press conferences to levy phony sexual misconduct allegations against prominent Democrats and Republicans who are critical of former President Donald Trump. They are also charged in Michigan and are being sued by a civil rights organization in federal court in New York over the same robocalls.”

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real-human



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PostPosted: Wed Dec 21, 2022 9:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gop-congressman-who-questioned-2020-election-results-illegally-voted-in-three-elections-report/ar-AA15xhqX?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&cvid=1982a72d5ede4b888917931df20fff47

GOP congressman who questioned 2020 election results illegally voted in three elections: report


Quote:
According to publicly available voter records, Georgia GOP Rep. Drew Ferguson voted in a county where he no longer lives, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

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© Raw Story
Ferguson, who has voiced concerns in the past about election fraud, voted in person in Troup County during early voting for this year's May primary, the November general election and this month's U.S. Senate runoff after selling his house in April. As AJC points out, it's illegal in Georgia for voters to cast a ballot in a county where they don't live.

On his congressional website, Ferguson says that he lives with his wife in The Rock, which is 63 miles away from his former home in West Point. But voter registration records show that he never changed his address to his new home as required by law.

Related video: Candidate alleges Democratic Primary for congressional seat is case of 'voter suppression' (WTVR Richmond, VA)

THE FIREHOUSE PRIMARY IS A
CASE OF VOTER SUPPRESSION.
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"Congressman Ferguson, previous mayor of West Point and lifelong resident, was registered to vote in his hometown," Ferguson's spokesman, Brian Piper, said in a statement. "Congressman Ferguson is currently in the process of transitioning his residency to his new home in Pike County."

IN OTHER NEWS: Marjorie Taylor Greene calls out Matt Gaetz in new op-ed as battle with fellow Republicans escalates

"Ferguson was one of seven Republican congressmen from Georgia who signed a brief supporting a lawsuit by Texas officials who claimed there were irregularities during the 2020 presidential election — which their candidate Donald Trump lost — and sought to throw out the results. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider the lawsuit," AJC's report stated.

Read the full report over at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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