Thread by @jallen1985

🧵 The MS Secretary of State revealed today that he is launching a major statewide voter purge.

This and more red flags in Michael Watson's announcement described below. 1/
newsms.fm/secretary-wats…

🚩 PURGING

Watson revealed that he plans to launch a voter purge when he wrote the following:

"Due to the vast amount of misinformation, we will be sending out detailed postcards highlighting changes made due to COVID-19, such as how and where to vote." 2/

Watson's campaign platform was to take over driver-licensing and conduct voter purges.

Lt. Gov. @DelbertHosemann killed legislation Watson proposed to put DMVs under Watson because Hosemann, in his words, doesn't enjoy losing federal lawsuits. 3/
mississippitoday.org/2020/03/03/wat…

The method available to Watson to purge voters is to conduct post-card purges. Most likely, Watson will mail non-forwardable postcards to voters who did not vote in a recent election. He will purge those voters after 30 days unless they return the postcard to him. 4/

This pandemic will make it MORE difficult for voters to receive mail and return postcards, and it is wrong to exploit the pandemic to purge voters. 5/

🚩 EARLY VOTING

Watson proposes that Mississippi allow universal early voting this November IF and ONLY IF we are under a state of emergency declared by the governor at the time. 6/

Watson does not mention that MS law ALREADY gives voters the right to early vote in person if "attendance at the voting place could reasonably cause danger to himself or others." 7/
law.justia.com/codes/mississi…

Either (a) Watson does not believe that provision encompasses social distancing and/or (b) Watson wants us to REDUCE the right to early vote by limiting the right to early vote because of a pandemic to the scope of emergency declared by the governor. 8/

To that end, allowing early voting only to the extent a state of emergency is in place could lead to early voting being allowed in some counties but not others, depending on the terms of the governor's proclamation.

E.g., currently, MS has reopened...except for 7 counties. 9/

Watson's position conflicts with Gov. Barbour's position when he vetoed election legislation after Hurricane Katrina, when the Legislature passed a bill creating a judicial process to modify the time, place, and method of elections during emergencies. 10/
billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/2006/pdf/histo…

In his veto message, Barbour said that those powers belong to the governor under the Mississippi Emergency Management Act, the law our current Gov. Reeves has already used to issue many emergency orders and postpone two elections to June 23. 11/

Since Gov. Reeves ALREADY has emergency powers to expand early voting in emegency circumstances, Watson's proposal appears designed to reduce the right to early vote—to the extent it currently exists in Mississippi —rather than expand it. 12/

Absent from Watson's plan is a proposal to make early in-person voting easier. Early in-person voting in Mississippi may only occur at the county courthouse. For many, the courthouse is a long drive. In many blue counties, the courthouse has little/no parking (e.g. Jackson). 13/

Additionally, most Mississippi courthouses don't have convenient hours for in-person early voters, and in-person early voters in Mississippi must vote by noon on the Friday before the election. Watson makes no proposal to improve service. 14/

🚩 VOTE BY MAIL

Watson remains opposed to vote-by-mail. As I have explained before, Mississippi allows no-excuse vote-by-mail for voters ages 65+ (who swing GOP by 20 points), whereas most younger absentee voters must vote in person. 15/

Watson does not consider VBM to carry a substantial risk of fraud with respect to the older, redder voters who already have the right to VBM.

However, Watson believes that extending VBM to younger, bluer voters carries a prohibitive risk of fraud. 16/

Watson's plan includes no proposal to make VBM easier. For example, to VBM, you must (a) submit a notarized ballot application, (b) receive a ballot, (c) notarize the completed ballot, (d) notarize the return envelope, (e) sign across the envelope flap, and (f) pay postage.17/

The most recent statewide election-law panel found that some Mississippi counties reject nearly half of the ballots cast by mail for failure to sign across the envelope flap. sos.ms.gov/content/docume… 18/

Moreover, ballots cast by mail must be received by the county election official the day before the election, and Mississippi has in the past sent ballots out too late for them to be returned in time to count.

Watson makes no proposal to make this process easier. 19/

Indeed, @LawyersComm and @MSNAACP sued Mississippi over problems with our absentee voting processes in 2018. That lawsuit is alive and in discovery, yet Watson provides no information about it or how/if he will prevent the same problems from recurring. 20/

https://twitter.com/jallen1985/status/1248349173226901520

🚩 REGISTRATION AND PHOTO ID

No one has given any explanation why Mississippi's DMVs remain closed—with no date to reopen schedule—even now that the private sector is fully reopened. Presumably, driver-licensing carries too great a risk of voter registration and voter IDs. 21/

🚩 LYNN FITCH

Watson says that he has discussed these issues with Lynn Fitch, but he does not provide details. Notably, three months ago, Lynn Fitch ended the AG's office longstanding practice of publicly releasing the AG's advisory opinions. 22/

https://twitter.com/jallen1985/status/1246114245177225217

🚩 CINDY HYDE-SMITH

Sen. Hyde-Smith said in 2018: "They remind me that there's a lot of liberal folks...that maybe we don't want to vote. Maybe we want to make it just a little more difficult. I think that's a great idea." 23/

Watson gives us every reason to believe that he is the "they" Cindy referenced in that quote and that he will manipulate ballot access and election procedures for partisan advantage. 24/

🚩 SUPREME COURT IN PLAY

The partisan advantage that Watson wants to gain is GOP control of the MS Supreme Court. Gov. Bryant appointed Kenny Griffis to the court in one of three seats from District 1, Mississippi's liberal supreme court district. 25/

The remaining six seats on the court are from Districts 2 and 3, which are both solidly Republican. However, those six justices include swing votes. That's why the MS GOP does not funnel impact litigation into the supreme court or ask the court to overturn liberal precedents. 26/

If Mississippi has seven conservative justices, the MS GOP believes that it will have a strong enough hold on the court to repackage the GOP agenda as impact litigation, to overturn precedents in the way, and to have at least five votes on the court the whole time. 27/

That's why the MS Supreme Court changed the rules for judicial elections this past December—they changed the rules on an ideological 7-2 vote to allow Griffis to personally coordinate with the MS GOP and with dark-money outside groups with undisclosed financing. 28/

The Wisconsin GOP forced Wisconsin voters to weather a pandemic in order to vote—because they expected that doing so would advantage them in a race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. 29/

The same is true in Mississippi—Michael Watson will exploit this pandemic to keep Kenny Griffis on the MS Supreme Court and to prevent District 1 voters from replacing him with @JudgeL_A_W.

Step 1: Purge the rolls. 30/