Republicans looking to subvert democracy once again https://www.politico.com/states/flo...l-civil-rights-groups-prepare-lawsuit-1068294 DeSantis signs election overhaul; civil rights groups prepare lawsuit TALLAHASSEE — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday quietly signed into law a sweeping elections overhaul that restricts the voting rights of former felons, a measure civil rights groups have already prepared to challenge in court. The law initiates a long list of changes to the state’s election laws after last year’s vote led to a chaotic recount in three statewide races, including DeSantis’ bid for governor. But it also imposes restrictions on ex-felons who want to register to vote, a politically charged provision that has drawn the fury of Democrats and social justice organizations on the eve of the 2020 presidential election. The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, along with the NAACP and the League of Women Voters, are expected to file a federal lawsuit in Gainesville that will challenge the new law as unconstitutional and for targeting African Americans. “We are ready to move forward with litigation,” Micah Kubic, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, told POLITICO this week. The Republican-controlled Florida Legislature added the felon voting provision to the elections bill in the waning moments of session, calling it necessary to implement a voter-approved amendment that ended Florida’s disenfranchisement of ex-convicts. While Republican lawmakers said they were clearing up “ambiguities” in the constitutional amendment, Democrats and voting rights groups sharply criticized the move, saying the provision was meant to limit the number of new voters who could be added to the rolls in the battleground state. DeSantis, in a television interview a few days before he signed the bill, said he agreed with the approach taken by GOP legislators. “I think the controversy to me is not really substantive,” DeSantis told South Florida television station WPLG. “I feel confident that it was done in a way that reflects the will of the people and I think it will be upheld in court.” DeSantis himself had asked lawmakers to clarify Amendment 4 shortly after he took office. In a bill-signing letter, the Republican called it a “mistake” that the amendment restored voting rights to those convicted of violent offenses such as armed robbery and kidnapping. But DeSantis, who leads the state’s clemency board, said he might now consider pushing a policy that would restore other civil rights, such as the right to serve on a jury, to ex-felons convicted of non-violent offenses. Amendment 4 covered only voting rights. In November, more than 5 million Floridians voted in favor of Amendment 4, which restored voting rights to released prisoners once they served their sentences, as long as they had not been convicted of murder or a serious sex offense. By one estimate from The Sentencing Project, the change could make more than 1.4 million people eligible to vote in a state where elections are decided by a razor-thin margins. The measure crafted by legislators requires offenders to pay all restitution owed to victims, as well as fees or fines imposed by the court, to be eligible to vote. Republicans who pushed for the requirements said they were following the intent of the amendment and complained that supporters had agreed with their interpretation before the measure was approved by voters. “They are not trying to play games, they are not trying to keep people entitled to vote from voting,” state Sen. Rob Bradley, a Fleming Island Republican, said during debate on the bill in early May. “They are trying to do what is right.” DeSantis himself had asked lawmakers to clarify Amendment 4 shortly after he took office. Critics have likened the measure’s requirement that fines and fees be paid to a modern-day poll tax, which was still in place in several Southern states into the 1960s. Kubic said the ACLU will argue that requirement that ex-felons pay all their court fines and fees violates equal protection laws. “Your ability to pay should not affect your ability to vote,” Kubic said. The lawsuit will also allege the restrictions are discriminatory and have a disproportionate impact on African Americans. The non-profit Brennan Center for Justice in May released an analysis of Florida voter registration data for the first three months of 2019 that showed a jump in the number of released convicts registering to vote. Forty-four percent identified themselves as black, according to the study. The lawsuit will argue that the restrictions will have a “chilling effect” on voter registration drives organized by the NAACP and League of Women Voters, Kubic said. The battle over felon voting rights has overshadowed the rest of the elections overhaul, which was designed to address criticism that mounted against election officials conducting recounts in two Democratic-heavy counties in South Florida in 2018. Democrats filed numerous lawsuits challenging state election laws as the recount grinded on. The new law moves the date of Florida’s primary election to a week earlier and expands the window of time voters have to request and receive vote-by-mail ballots. It gives voters two days after an election to prove their identity if questions arise about their signature on the ballot envelope. It also establishes ballot design standards to avoid the confusion that occurred in Broward County where the U.S. Senate race was placed directly underneath the ballot instructions.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/...urce=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf Florida Supreme Court Sides With DeSantis Over Felons Vote The Florida Supreme Court ruled Thursday it is fair that convicted felons in Florida must pay off all fines and fees associated with their sentencing before having their right to vote restored, siding with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and the Republican legislature. “The Governor asks whether the phrase “all terms of sentence” encompasses legal financial obligations (LFOs)—fines, restitution, costs, and fees—ordered by the sentencing court,” the very conservative court wrote. “We answer in the affirmative, concluding that ‘all terms of sentence’ encompasses not just durational periods but also all LFOs imposed in conjunction with an adjudication of guilt.” This legal advice relates to Amendment 4, a ballot measure passed overwhelmingly in Florida in 2018. The amendment allows felons — excepting those convicted on murder or felony sex crimes charges — to get back the right to vote after they’ve served their time and paid restitution and court costs. Republicans wasted little time before they tacked on legislative fine print, passing a state law expanding which fees felons must pay before they get their voting rights restored. The law includes purposefully broad language to encompass as many fees and fines as possible, an obstacle to the former felons stacked on top of Florida’s already unusually high court fees. DeSantis signed the law in June 2019. He then asked the state Supreme Court to advise on whether the former inmates would be required to pay off all legal costs incurred during their sentencing. They have now answered in the affirmative. Critics of the Republicans’ moves have likened the payment requirements to a “poll tax” and raised concerns that millions of the newly eligible voters will languish in disenfranchisement, lacking the money to pay off the financial obligations. “The Florida Supreme Court’s decision is disappointing and cuts the 1.4 million people who voters expressly intended to re-enfranchise almost in half,” said Nancy Abudu, deputy legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, in a statement. “By holding Floridians’ right to vote hostage, the Florida Supreme Court is permitting the unconstitutional modern-day poll tax in SB 7066, and redefining an amendment nearly 65 percent of Florida voters approved of in 2018.”
https://theweek.com/articles/930312/donald-trump-trying-steal-election Donald Trump is trying to steal the election Across much of the country, the United States Postal Service is grinding to a halt. In cities like Baltimore, Minneapolis, Chicago, and Philadelphia, residents report that they have not gotten mail for weeks. People are not getting checks, bills, medicines, or other vital necessities, and it only seems to be getting worse. Now, with record numbers of Americans set to vote by mail this November, the Post Office is falling apart because Donald Trump thinks he can steal the election by breaking it. There is no other reason. To be sure, the USPS has had its struggles for some time. As I've noted before, in 2006 Congress clapped the agency with an absurd requirement that it had to pre-fund its retiree health benefits 75 years out — meaning it had to set health care money aside for future employees who weren't even born yet. This drove it immediately into deficit, where it has largely remained for the past 14 years. Second, the coronavirus pandemic also hit traditional mail delivery volume hard. Junk mail advertising — one of the Post Office's key revenue sources — always falls in a recession, and with people largely staying home, there was even less call for it. Nevertheless, neither of these things are enough to cause the problems we are seeing across the country. The decline in junk mail was partly offset by a steep rise in package shipping. More importantly, Trump also prevented the Post Office from getting $75 billion from Congress as part of the CARES Act by threatening a veto. With that help — a tiny fraction of what big corporations got — the USPS for sure could have managed through the rest of the year. Instead, it got only a $10 billion loan, with stiff conditions. What's more, Louis DeJoy, the Trump lickspittle and longtime Republican donor (with a massive financial conflict of interest) now serving as postmaster general, has royally messed up mail service. He implemented a bunch of management changes weeks ago, including orders to restrict overtime, slow down delivery routes, and leave mail behind at distribution centers. Now he has made further sweeping changes that have sidelined longtime USPS staff and centralized power around himself, and instructed states that they will have to pay extra to prioritize their election mail. According to memos obtained by The Associated Press, even greater reductions and the complete closure of some offices could be on the way. The rationalization for all these changes, according to the management consultant Newspeak, is that it's simply what must be done to cut costs and streamline the agency for modern times. It's classic "government should be run like a business" rhetoric. But it stands to reason that when someone says they are trying to improve the efficiency of a service, and the efficiency of that service immediately collapses so badly as to virtually cease to exist in big chunks of the country — particularly big cities, which is where the Post Office makes most of its revenue — that was not what they were really trying to do. So let's turn back to the president. Trump has been telling hysterical lies about mail-in voting for months, falsely portraying it as riddled with fraud, and repeatedly suggesting that the November election tally will not be legitimate as a result. As anyone who thinks about it for five seconds could confirm, simply voting through the mail is no more vulnerable to fraud than doing it in person, because any single person would be a fool to commit a felony for a single vote. In terms of fraud potential, mail-in voting is not meaningfully different from the absentee voting that Trump favors — most of the time, it actually happens through the mail. Real vote fraud happens when political parties control the count. Indeed, the biggest recent example of actual tinpot dictatorship-style election rigging was committed by a North Carolina Republican operative, Leslie McCrae Dowless, on behalf of Mark Harris, GOP candidate for the state's 9th District in 2018. The local GOP and Harris's campaign knew about credible allegations of absentee ballot tampering but sued to have Harris installed in office anyway based on the crooked vote. So here we have a postal service that has been hamstrung at every turn by the president, whose crony running the agency has turned it into a shambles, and which will almost certainly struggle to get ballots delivered in a timely fashion. We also have a president who is notorious for lying, cheating, and stealing; who is far behind in the polls; who may well face prosecution after leaving office on account of the crimes he has confessed to doing; and whose campaign has sued Nevada over switching to universal vote-by-mail, as well as Pennsylvania to stop the state from setting up vote drop boxes. It doesn't take a master detective to put the pieces together on this one. (I am currently making plans to drop my ballot off in person, and I suggest you do the same.) The true talents of Donald Trump can be counted on the fingers of one hand, but one of his most well-developed skills is breaking things and turning the resulting disaster to his own advantage. If he succeeds in wrecking the Post Office, enough Democrats may be unable to vote that he will be able to steal the election. Or if it takes weeks or months for Joe Biden to be declared the winner, Trump will very likely lie about all of Biden's votes being fake, and claim victory for himself. Who is president next year may depend on which side the military takes.