Thread by @Cajsa

Starting this book.

1/ Anderson begins by noting the media's conclusion that African Americans did not show up for Clinton in 2016 because they just weren't that into her is wrong. Republicans systematically made it more difficult for people of color to vote.

2/ 1890: The Mississippi Plan was passed to ensure "voter integrity." Combining poll taxes, literacy tests, voter registration rules, understanding clauses, and good character tests, the goal was to restrict the vote without using race explicitly

3/ But Virginia super-fan Carter Glass understood it perfectly, exulting that it would “eliminate the darkey as a political factor ...in less than 5 years.” Elaborating their intent to discriminate to the extremity permissible to eliminate every Black vote without weakening white

4/ It hurt poor whites, too, but they may have thought that a feature, not a bug, in those days. By 1900, total turnout in Mississippi was 15%. By 1940 only 3% of Black people were registered to vote in the South.

5/ Did you know the poll tax was cumulative? So if you didn't vote for 20 years, but then you wanted to vote, you had to pay for all the years you didn't vote?

6/ If all that were not enough, they had the white-only primaries since parties are private organizations, they argued they didn't have to comply with the 15th Amendment. This was ruled unconstitutional in Allwright v Smith, 1944

6.5/ BTW, in "Mothers of Massive Resistance" Elizabeth Gillespie McRae points out the Supreme Court wrote the US is a "constitutional democracy" so the segregationists began the "US is a republic, not a democracy" routine to justify injustice, used DAR to promote that idea.

7/ South Carolina then went and purged every election law it had running with the idea if it isn't written down, it can't be unconstitutional. You can always count on SC. But terroristic violence was the most powerful impediment.

8/ Klan terrorism and voter suppression might have continued indefinitely if the national government was not being shamed throughout the world by Soviets pointing out the false promise of democracy. SoS Dulles said it was ruining our foreign policy.

9/ The Kremlin argued the US didn't want to export democracy, it wanted to export Jim Crow and subjugate people of color in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The gov't had to choose between keeping the South happy or better foreign policy. They bunted.

10/ Civil Rights Act of 1957 had a brave title and did eff-all. Civil rights leaders mounted increasing pressure. White violence against CRM horrified people and set the stage for more substantial reform.

11) 1965: Voting Rights Act - finally! The big sea-change was identifying where voting had been discriminatory, making sure any changes to their voting laws required Preclearance by the DOJ. This was the key enforcement mechanism that Chief Justice Roberts gutted a few years ago

12) Anderson reviews the several ways they tried to get around the VRA, like in South Carolina, not printing names on the ballot so people had to write them in. City governments changed to at-large so no black neighborhoods could have black representation. (Portland!!!)

13) States tried this, that, and another tack. Administrations were more or less vigorous in enforcing VRA. Many lawsuits laying out arguments that eventually bore fruit in 2013 when white supremacist John Roberts stabbed the VRA in the heart, ending preclearance.

14) Because the VRA worked, states argued we didn't need it anymore, as though being forced not to act racist was the same as not being racist. John Roberts is a liar and the Shelby Co, verdict will taint his legacy forever (that's me, not Anderson, but I bet she agrees)

15) Anderson provides plenty of examples of state attempts between 1965 and 2013 to disenfranchise Black people, attempted blocked by the VRA. Roberts had to ignore all that to decide Shelby which makes him a liar, liar, liar.

16) Anderson recounts the use of the courts against people turning out the Black vote, particularly with absentee ballots. Jeff Sessions 1985 prosecution of civil rights workers is one of the examples.

17) Man, I am so glad Sessions is out. It's my fervent hope that when he dies, people will see out his grave and piss on it.

18) Reviewing 2000 Florida - man, that stuff still makes me sick to my stomach. Not so much Bush v Gore, but that the American people shrugged and did not take to the streets to protest the coup.

19) Anderson reviews NAMUDNO and the Shelby decisions. John Roberts is a shitstain. (Me, again) when he dies, people should seek out his grave to piss on it, too. She ends Chapter 1 by quoting people mystified by the huge drop in African American voters in 2016.

20) Chapter Two is about Voter ID, a topic that I take personally as the Republican lies about fraud led to the passage of all sorts of national legislation requiring proof of citizenship. My Mom could not replace her birth certificate because the Town Hall where she was born

21) burned down. We spent three years trying to replace her birth certificate but she was old, too old to have people who remembered when she was born still living, other than her brother in a nursing home who was unable to go to swear to her citizenship.

22) There were school records but they would not accept them. That she has been a citizen and voting most of her life, etc., it was all meaningless to the bureaucracy. It was one of the few times I knew her to cry. She did not cry when we lost everything in a fire, but this did

23) She cried. She said it feels as though America does not want her anymore. She had a fall and told the hospital she refused food and water and I blame the voter ID Republicans for her decision to die. She felt rejected by America. Republicans killed her.

24) In Chapter 2 Anderson points out how the maladministration, neglect, and incompetence of Republican secretaries of state created long lines, broken down machinery, and confusion at polling places that the GOP lied and labeled as voter fraud.

25) Again and again, claims of voter fraud were made. When investigated, the claims proved false, but it didn't matter because the lies traveled around the world before the truth got out of bed. as they say.

Anderson provides details of the lies and the lying liars who told them. Kit Bond, Thor Hearne, Matt Blunt, Paul Weyrich, John Fund, John Ashcroft and George W Bush, so many malefactors working to persuade the American people that voter fraud was a problem.

27) She notes 3 lessons Republicans learned 2000
1) Demography is NOT destiny if they keep POC from voting
2) Controlling the machinery of elections was essential, deciding the rules and conditions for voting, including machines, precinct size
3) LIE!

28) Antoher big liar was Thor Hearne who created a phony, just for the internet organization with faked research and stock photos to credential him for Congressional testimony where he just made shit up (not her words)

29) Hearne trotted out the dogwhistles, fraud was a problem in urban areas, you know, Black people. Below you can see the hotbeds of voter fraud!

Philadelphia, PA
Milwaukee, WI
Seattle, WA
St. Louis/East St. Louis, MO/IL
Cleveland, OH

And of course, Hearne's organization disappeared from the internet after the narrative was spread about and states began passing Voter ID. Anderson identifies how Voter ID had a disparate effect on African Americans in particular.

To be continued. I am on Chapter 3 in reading but still have some of 2 to tweet.

31) Chapter Two is example after example of GOP efforts to make voter ID as onerous and racially targeted as possible. That is excluded poor whites as well did not matter as their votes were not seen as worthy either.

32) “In 2011 and 2012, therefore, the floodgates for voter ID laws opened and “180 bills to restrict who could vote and how” simultaneously appeared in forty-one states. ” Paul Weyrich of ALEC was behind the drive as he pointed out the more people vote, the poorer GOP perform.

33) “Iowa congressman Steve King lamented the passing of “a time in American history when you had to be a male property owner in order to vote.” Florida governor Rick Scott echoed that sentiment when he also proffered, “You used to have to be a property owner to vote.” ”

34) Shelby and Citizens United, two terrible Supreme Court decisions, set off two floods - one of voter suppression efforts and another of big money and corporate cash both designed to empower the wealthy and disempower the rest of us

35) Meanwhile research proved that voter fraud scaremongering was a lie. , “Law professor Justin Levitt conducted an extensive study and uncovered that from 2000 to 2014, there were thirty-one voter impersonation cases out of one billion votes nationwide.”

Nonetheless, even though voter impersonation is scarce as hen's teeth, Voter ID laws were generally supported by the public, this is because of three things. First, proponents presented it as an urban problem. That's a dog whistle everyone can hear.

37) Then the allegations were presented by people with standing, representatives, senators, and governors. Thirdly, the response sounds reasonable, after all who doesn't have ID?

38) These three things worked together. By making it an urban issue, most people assumed it would not apply to them. Urban means Black and White people are predisposed to believe ill of Black people, maybe especially Black voters.

39) An ID seems like something easy and ubiquitous but you might be surprised. People who don't drive might not bother. Many poor neighborhoods don't have banks and check-cashing places will use employer IDs, for example. If you're poor, you're not flying anywhere,

40) The level of privileged ignorance behind the "you have to show ID to get on a flight, so..." assumes everybody flies. Some people never have. Really, it's amazing how little people think outside their own experience.

41) Now, if they were honestly desirous of people having identification, you might think they would make it easier to get identification, but Alabama closed 31 offices in mostly Black counties to make it that much harder.

42) You would think if they required every voter to have ID they would have more expansive hours, maybe Saturday hours, so people could go without having to take time off work. But they cut hours. In WI, one office is only open 4 hours on the 5th Wed of the month (5 times/year)

43) The Help America Vote Act spelled out what kinds of ID are supposed to be acceptable for voting such as utility bill or social security card and limited it to photo ID, but even some government-issued photo IDs were excluded, like those for public housing

44) In NC, they did a survey to find out what kinds of IDs Blacks did and did not have and then crafted their bill with what the court called "surgical precision" to exclude Blacks.

45) 12 hours after Shelby, TX passed voter ID that made driver's licenses the most important, but also accepted hunting licenses. Not school ID, though. A third of Texas counties have no DMV, voters might have to travel 250 miles to get ID.

46) They've spent millions defending these laws in court because they work.

47) Chapter 3 of Carol Anderson's "One Person No Vote" reviews the effectiveness of voter purges. The Help America Vote Act requires election officials to remove voters who move away or who die. This normal maintenance of voter rolls has been weaponized to remove voters of color