[rad-green] Hunting Season on Voters Opens with Georgia & Wisconsin Purges

*The media focus an inordinate amount of attention on allegations related
to Russiagate, **but *
*largely ignore the facts related to this ongoing corruption of the
American electoral system*
*which has played a major role in determining the outcome of several U.S.
elections.*










*https://www.gregpalast.com/hunting-season-on-voters-opens-with-georgia-wisconsin-purges/
<https://www.gregpalast.com/hunting-season-on-voters-opens-with-georgia-wisconsin-purges/>The
Palast Investigative Fund         December 29, 2019Hunting Season on Voters
Opens with Georgia & Wisconsin PurgesMass Registration Cancellations
ordered by CourtsBy Greg Palast and Zach D Roberts*

Two new court decisions have blessed mass purges of voters in two swing
states, Georgia and Wisconsin. This could be the launch of a new system for
purging masses of voters of color and young voters that is expected to
spread to 20 or more states before the Presidential election.
©Ted Rall 2019


In Atlanta on Friday, Federal Judge Steve Jones ruled against Stacey
Abrams’ organization Fair Fight in its suit to immediately restore nearly
100,000 Georgians to the voter rolls. It turns out that Abrams’ attorneys
were not in a fair fight against this federal judge who refused to even
consider if the purge would cause “irreparable harm.”

Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Ratffensperger, was using a method of
vote suppression, “Purge by Postcard,” created by the Trump’s “vote fraud”
advisor, Kris Kobach of Kansas. Under the guise of “voter list
maintenance,” Georgia sent out postcards, designed by Kobach, that look
like cheap junk mail. When a voter fails to return the card, they lose
their vote.

Yes, the cancelled voter can re-register. But, as we have uncovered in our
film, *The Best Democracy Money Can Buy*, most people won’t know they were
pulled from the list until it’s too late.

Judge Jones made the decision not to restore the Georgians to the voter
rolls, calling on Fair Fight to bring its case in state court where GOP
appointed judges predominate. Judge Jones did, however, express concern
that the state take “additional diligent and reasonable efforts (through
notices on the Secretary of State’s website and press releases) to inform
the general public.”

It’s ludicrous for the judge to say the problem is solved by sticking this
attack on voting rights on a website; as if every Georgian daily checks the
website of the Secretary of State.

The Court also ruled that Fair Fight did not do enough to prove that the
postcard purge was unconstitutional and unfair. However, Judge Stevens did
not give Fair Fight a chance to present testimony from Palast Fund experts
that the purge list was almost entirely erroneous and biased against
low-income and younger voters.

The Palast Investigative Fund
<http://www.palastinvestigativefund.org/?StopThePurge2020> has given
Abrams’ Fair Fight the files from our six-year investigation of racist
voter purges in Georgia including a list of 340,134 Georgians whom the
prior Secretary of State, now-Governor Brian Kemp, wrongly removed from the
voter rolls. Abrams’ non-partisan voting rights group has retained the
Palast team experts to update the list—and have discovered tens of
thousands more wrongly purged. But the judge refused to take the evidence.

In an ominous note, Judge Jones cited Supreme Court Justice Antonin
Scalia’s opinion in Crawford v. Marion Cty. Election Bd., in which the
Court allowed Indiana to force voters to obtain photo voter ID if they did
not have a current drivers’ license.

The now-deceased Justice ruled that “Ordinary and widespread burdens, such
as those requiring nominal effort of everyone, are not severe.” Lawyers
representing the low-income plaintiffs complained that the average county
office where the ID could be obtained was 17 miles from the typical
resident, a major burden for the poor. But Scalia ruled that, “Seventeen
miles is seventeen miles for the rich and the poor.”

Maybe 17 miles was no burden for Scalia. The Judge, we discovered, drove a
BMW in which he (or his chauffeur) could cover 17 miles in a few
air-conditioned minutes. However, the plaintiffs noted that those seeking
the voter ID did not have drivers licenses, which is why they needed
non-driver ID. For non-drivers—Black, poor, students—the average trip
required three busses in each direction and a full day off from work or
school.

Fair Fight CEO Lauren Groh-Wargo said. “We are exploring additional legal
options to compel the Secretary of State to follow House Bill 316,” passed
this year after the scandal of mass, wrongful purges of half a million
Georgians before the November 2018 gubernatorial election.

The Court also noted that “in light of the immediacy of the situation,” it
is within the authority of the Secretary of State to return any cancelled
voters. The likelihood of the Republican Secretary of State returning these
voters to the rolls is nonexistent.

The Palast Fund experts will testify in another federal suit brought by
Fair Fight seeking to overturn the Georgia law that authorized the
purge-by-postcard operation.

*Wisconsin ordered to Purge*
The Georgia ruling comes on the heels of a devastating ruling by a
Wisconsin court which, for the first time ever, orders a state to purge
voters when the state itself has declared the purge list faulty.

On December 13, Wisconsin Ozaukee County judge Paul Malloy ordered the
state elections board to removed 234,000 from the rolls on the petition of
a right-wing group, Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, despite the
board determining that the purge would remove legal voters.

The legal precedent is astonishing, this is the first time a state has been
ordered to remove citizens’ voting rights en masse. In June 2018, the US
Supreme Court allowed states to remove voters on evidence they’ve moved
residence. But no state has been forced to remove voters, especially in
light of evidence that the purge lists are faulty.

And Wisconsin lists are more than faulty: our expert review of the method
used by Wisconsin, same as Georgia’s “purge by postcard,” is no less than
than 70% wrong—and especially biased against voters who move within a
county, i.e. disproportionately young, poor, Black and Hispanic voters.

Palast Fund spoke with Bob Brandon, founder of the Fair Elections Center in
Washington DC who is working with the League of Women Voters to overturn
the ruling. Brandon was hopeful a federal court would intervene as the
state had already sent out postcards to tell voters their rights were safe,
they need not re-register if they had not moved — or provide proof of their
change of address on the day of voting. By the state court ruling, voters
told they need not re-register will, in fact, have been purged from the
rolls.

“We think we can win on the issue of notice,” Brandon said, hoping this
thin thread will prevent the loss of a quarter million registrations.
Donald Trump won Wisconsin by just 29,000 votes in 2016.

While the state estimates the list is substantially wrong, The Palast Fund
is preparing to review the Wisconsin purge list name by name to prove what
we have seen in other states—that the lists are almost entirely false,
wrongly eliminating voters for moving from the state who are in fact still
in their Wisconsin homes.

We spoke with the nation’s most-respected voting rights attorney, Barbara
Arnwine of the Transformative Justice Coalition, Washington, who said,
“This is a national problem, but it seems no one is getting it…the purges
are reaching into the millions.”

*       *       *       *       *

As previously announced, the Palast Investigative Fund experts have been
retained by Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight to challenge mass purges in Georgia.
But with the purge-by-postcard operation moving into an estimated 20
states, we need to perform the same investigation and expert dive into each
state’s purge list.

And while we have terrific pro-bono help, this requires funding we don’t
yet have. I want to truly thank those who recently made a
tax-deductible contribution
to the 2020 Investigation
<http://www.palastinvestigativefund.org/?StopThePurge2020>. This should
allow us to dig into Wisconsin. But that leaves a whole lot of America
exposed to racist purge-mania. Moreover, we need to get our team back on
the ground in Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, North Carolina so we can
document and film our investigation which our excellent media partner, The
Guardian USA, will carry.

So, I’m asking, as 2019 turns into Battlefield 2020, will you help us to
take on every purge-poisoned state?

Here, Palast explains Purge by Postcard:

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