First, the states are in charge of elections, not the president. Most have taken measures to ensure safety against cyberattacks and system failures and both red and blue states have expanded absentee voting.
Second, it’s really really hard to steal an election. Trump’s statements that polls will be watched by law enforcement are alarming but what he’s promising is simply illegal.
Third, voter intimidation is illegal. Trump’s supporters, despite urging from the president, cannot prevent eligible Americans from voting.
Fourth, we’ve gotten used to the idea that we won’t get results on Election Day. With the pandemic and increased safety measures, the American public knows that the count might take longer than usual and it’s nothing to worry about.
Fifth, the system is prepared for challenges to vote counting. There might be challenges from Trump, lawsuits, and press conferences, but election officials and courts are used to it.
Sixth, even the Electoral College has less uncertainty than advertised. The overall thrust of the law favors giving state electoral votes to the popular vote winner.
President Trump is not all-powerful, despite what he says. We have to focus on ensuring all eligible Americans can and do vote this year.
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BREAKING: We’re suing Texas Governor Greg Abbott to block him from limiting absentee ballot drop-off sites to only one per county. His plan will make it unreasonably difficult for Texans to vote by mail, and it goes beyond his legal authority.
The plaintiffs — @ADLAustin, @ADLSouthwest, @ADL Texoma, and @CCauseTexas — argue with only one drop-off location per county, many voters would have to travel far and spend substantial amounts of time to cast their ballots.
“Many of the Texans who qualify to vote absentee have disabilities and are elderly, and they rely on public transportation,” said @antgutierrez.
BREAKING: A U.S. District Court issued an order last night blocking the Trump administration’s attempts to rush the 2020 Census. This is a victory for an accurate census that counts everyone!
Under the Court’s order, the census count will continue through October 31 as the Census Bureau had planned, and its data processing will continue under a timeline that allows for a full, fair, and accurate overall tabulation and reporting of the total population.
The Trump administration’s accelerated census timeline would have cut a crucial four weeks from the actual count and four months from the time for processing and reporting the data.
We mourn the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a trailblazer, cultural icon, and powerful force for good matched by few in American history. Her life testified to the promise of American democracy and the struggle to make real its most compelling ideals.
She fought not just for herself, but for the generations of women to come.
Throughout her career she showed the positive power of the law. Like Thurgood Marshall before her, she was as noteworthy for her work as a pioneering lawyer for women’s equality as for her service on the bench.
BREAKING: A federal appeals court today upheld a Florida law that created wealth-based hurdles to voting. The decision denies voting rights to hundreds of thousands of people with past felony convictions. #Amendment4brennancenter.org/our-work/analy…
The case, Jones v DeSantis, concerned Senate Bill 7066, which was signed into law by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in 2019. This law made voting rights for people with past felony convictions contingent on payment of all legal financial obligations.
It directly undermined Florida voters' overwhelming passage of the Voting Restoration Amendment 4 in 2018, which had restored voting rights to over a million people with past felony convictions.
@TexasNAACP and @ADLSouthwest filed a petition in intervention in State of Texas v. Chris Hollins, a lawsuit seeking to block the Harris County clerk from sending election materials and resources, including ballot-by-mail applications, to the county’s registered voters.
The Texas Attorney General brought the case on August 31, arguing that the interim county clerk, Chris Hollins, lacks the legal authority to conduct the planned mailing. In fact, the clerk has clear authority to implement his plan.
The lawsuit also contends that the mailing will create confusion, and that it will facilitate fraud. The state doesn’t cite any evidence that the planned mailing will likely lead to fraud.
BREAKING: The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California today ordered the Trump administration to cease shutting down its census operations for at least the next twelve days, until a scheduled Sept. 17 hearing.
The order was issued after a hearing Friday in a lawsuit filed by civil rights groups, civil organizations and local governments last month to block the administration's attempt to rush census operations to a close by September 30.
The court acted in response to a motion that the plaintiffs filed last week where they asked for a temporary restraining order after lawyers for the government disclosed they have already begun winding down the census count, ahead of the end of this month as previously announced.