(THREAD) Some people are understandably confused about what's going on in Kentucky, so here's a brief thread on the coming primary that explains how we go to this odd situation: moderates and progressives arguing with one another about *voter suppression*. motherjones.com/politics/2020/…
1/ Kentucky, under Dem leadership, did a *great thing*: increased mail-in balloting substantially. The *only* catch, when one pursues excellent voting reforms like this, is that voters require a long runway and a substantial acclimation period. This has always been so—everywhere.
2/ Some people will find the new system too confusing. Some won't want to break with their usual practice of voting live. Some won't hear about the new option(s) in time. And what well-intended election officials who are screwing up say *every single time* is... "It'll be fine."
3/ Note: what *ill-intended* election officials will often say—nearly always Republicans—is, "Tough luck, *voter*, if you weren't paying enough attention to eldritch voting statutes while trying to make ends meet." Such folks *hate* voters—and voting. There's a long history here.
4/ After mail-in balloting in Kentucky was augmented, it was found that the state had *violently* cut down on live voting sites. So voting rights activists—who've seen this pattern a million times—said that either election officials were *screwing up* or they were *ill-intended*.
5/ The reason that voting rights activists said this is that they *knew* from *decades of experience* across *all 50 states* that when you introduce a new voting practice without *transitioning*—by maintaining the old one at its past level for a *while*—you disenfranchise voters.
6/ So voting rights activists waited to hear what response election officials would give, *knowing* that election officials are as aware of everything I've just explained as anyone in America. This is literally their bread-and-butter: election infrastructure resource allocation.
7/ The first response from election officials to voting rights critics was, "Sorry—but we *increased mail-in balloting*. Did you not hear us? Did we stutter?" And what that said to voting rights activists was that Kentucky officials, for whatever reason, were acting in bad faith.
8/ *Then*, articles like the one atop this thread from MOTHER JONES—also many others, along with many high-traffic social media accounts—started sounding the warning, which you *have* to do urgently in voting rights cases or else *it's too late*. "Disenfranchisement," they cried!
9/ This freaked out Kentucky officials, some of whom were Democrats and felt they'd been acting in good faith. Well, guess what: *many* of the Florida election officials who ruined the 2000 election for Democrats—and much more importantly all America—were well-intended Democrats.
10/ Now under fire, Kentucky officials suddenly had a *brand new* refrain. They said, "*No*, we didn't leave just 1 polling site for 610,000+ mostly black voters because we increased mail-in balloting. We *know* those folks need more polling sites. The problem was... COVID-19!"
11/ Instead of acknowledging this as a tardy (and insufficient) reply to the concerns of voting rights activists, some high-profile Kentucky folks—including some on the left—pretended that the COVID-19 explanation (we couldn't get enough poll workers!) had come at the start.
No.
No.
12/ Had Kentucky election officials said—at the start—"We're headed for a possible disaster in Kentucky during our upcoming primary because we can't find enough poll workers in majority-minority precincts," the response from media and activists would have been *wholly* different.
13/ Given what recently happened in Georgia's primary—which *involved*, but was *not* exclusively due to, issues in getting skilled and experienced poll-workers to certain sites in the middle of a pandemic (as such workers are often older)—the response would've been *supportive*.
14/ There would've been—*could've* been—a huge effort, backed by non-profits and possibly Democrats, to ensure enough poll workers at all *existing* majority-minority precincts, *eliminating* the need to cut any such sites. But as ever, that's not what happened. History repeated.
15/ And here's the history of election bureaucracies: no one who is invested in an election reform *ever* admits they screwed up until *after* the election is over and it's too late.
Let me repeat: *ever*. *Ever*.
That's why Kentucky insisted, "But we expanded mail-in voting!"
Let me repeat: *ever*. *Ever*.
That's why Kentucky insisted, "But we expanded mail-in voting!"
16/ This explains what you're seeing from me—and others—trying to push back against the folks in Kentucky making all the arguments I just said out and somehow, incredibly, thinking they're the first people ever to screw up in this particular way. Or react this way to screwing up.
17/ I'd only add that the *additional* defensive response we're hearing is, "You don't know Kentucky! We're special flowers—and our elections can't be guided by any wisdom learned from decades of voting rights violations across every state and literally *thousands* of elections!"
18/ I'm very willing to say that many of those involved in the new election scheme in Kentucky are well-intentioned. I'm perfectly happy conceding that COVID-19 is a major obstacle. I fully recognize no election is perfect and that there are voting idiosyncrasies in every state.
19/ But the reason voting in America *never improves* is that *every county reinvents the wheel* and *won't listen* to anything voting rights advocates say—*or* what history teaches. The result is the *same errors* get made over and over—and the *same people* get disenfranchised.
20/ It'll surprise no one that the disenfranchised are the poor, the elderly, the less-educated, those with ADA disabilities, minority groups and—too little discussed—first-time (often young) voters. Because the harm is foreseeable *every time*, voting rights activists get angry.
PS/ I cut my teeth as a voting rights advocate in the 2004 election—which not many realize was, in fact, stolen. And we *know* who stole it: Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio's Secretary of State, who somehow managed to close sites and remove machines in *only* majority-minority precincts.
PS2/ So yes, I get pretty heated when, even 16 years later, even after HAVA—which never became a fully funded mandate—we're seeing the *same* issues and hearing the *same* excuses. That some of those making the excuses were well-intended at *this* point means *very* little to me.
PS3/ I'm perfectly happy to acknowledge dissent from within Kentucky and to seek to dismantle it here. Here's a thread worth reading, which I'll respond to right now in these postscripts (i.e., continue reading this thread once you've read what Josh says):
PS4/ The first thing Josh does is pull a bait-and-switch. He impresses you with the "222,000 of 600,000+" figure (wowee! amazing!) while hoping you won't read the small print: *those aren't voters*. *Some* of them are voters—they voted already. Others merely "requested a ballot."
PS5/ As I've laid out here, "Not knowing mail-in balloting is an option" is only *one* reason of *many* that voters historically have required a long runway and a *substantial* acclimation process before live voting options can be curtailed *at all* in favor of a new voting mode.
PS6/ I don't think Josh has his voter estimates right—but we don't need to go there, as he *concedes* his best-case scenario is *50,000 voters* needing to vote in *1 location* in a majority-minority area. And he *concedes* that that's *totally* unacceptable. (Read for yourself!)
PS7/ Josh goes on—mind you, this is... a *defense*... of what Kentucky is doing—to say that what Kentucky is doing is "dangerous." I won't use Josh's euphemisms, though: Kentucky is endangering *black voters' right to vote*—and as Josh has conceded, the harm is *foreseeable now*.
PS8/ Now comes Josh's second bait-and-switch, which I've seen many times before as a voting rights advocate: he focuses on *voters' actions*—how many ballot requests they make—when one of the *chief* issues with a state instituting a new voting mode is *errors made by the state*.
PS9/ *Every* election official who's *ever* disenfranchised a minority voter has proceeded from the at best cynical and at worst spiteful position that the *voters* will make errors, but *they*—the officials—won't. Now do you want to guess how often the errors are the officials'?
PS10/ I appreciate that Josh is well-intended. I appreciate that he concedes, "None of this is ideal. Even with record turnout, it could've been *higher* but for problems, long lines..." That he trusts officials saying "we think lines will be 30 to 45 minutes" is... *terrifying*.
PS11/ In any event, I don't want to pile on, because frankly Josh (who by the way I am quoting because he's an election law professor in Kentucky) basically concedes everything this thread has said. I just think he shouldn't be attacking *others* sounding the Big Alarm right now.
