Thread by @Cajsa

In an effort to refute the "lift all boats" malarkey from the Wilsonian progressive left, I have been thinking about how we go about creating anti-racist agendas in policy-making for health, education, and today, I think voting rights. So, this is going to be stealing from HRC.

Hillary, the only good choice in 2016, had an anti-racist voting right agenda that she introduced as a Senator every new session. And if you are interested in the previous threads, you can find them here.

https://mobile.twitter.com/Cajsa/status/1340439424241319936

Well, the first is an easy one. Restore the efficacy and power of the Voting Rights Act by restoring preclearance. To prevent the Supreme Court from overturning preclearance again, a new formula for how to get on and off preclearance needs to be created. They were able to make a

case because so many on preclearance were states who committed treason. But not all were! And certainly, not all would be now, I'm looking at you, ND, KS, NH, SD, MT, RI.

Plenty of free states joined the anti-voting crusade.

Perhaps any state in which less than 65% of registered voters vote and less than 65% of eligible voters register. I think the number should be higher, but we are starting with miserable stats right now. So, if you're people are not registering & not voting, you're on preclearance

And the only way to get off preclearance is by achieving a strong record of voter participation. Voter participation should be the only metric for getting on and off preclearance.

Next restore voting rights to felons. And in this case, Bernie's right, people in jail should be allowed to vote. By the way, they can vote in Puerto Rico. By the way, it's been 1194 days since PR had full power. As a further aside, do you follow @Deoliver47? No excuses for not.

Indulge me in a story. I was prez of an org that did a lot of organizing around voting and with felons who did a lot of our voter reg outreach. So, World Affairs Forum asked me to talk to a group of about 16 people from other countries, mostly African, about election organizing

This was shortly after DR Congo ratified their constitution in 2005 but before the elections in 2006 so several were from there. Also some from Afghanistan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, etc. When I spoke about how we were unique in organizing former felons to do voter outreach

and proud that OR did not disenfranchise felons, there was shocked silence that they would be disenfranchised at all. The woman from Liberia, I think it was, asked if that meant people in prison could not vote. I said they can't. "You call yourself a democracy!" she said.

It's not like they quit listening, they were interested in our model of figuring out how many contacts lead to how many votes, etc. but they certainly felt they were seeking a far better democracy than ours if they could achieve it.

To me, that was kind of an eye-opener. We take it for granted that people convicted of crimes lose their civil rights, but should they lose all? The Constitution says they should be protected from cruel and unusual punishment. So clearly they do not lose all rights, so why voting

On a tangent, this gives me another opportunity to brag about my senator @SenJeffMerkley and his Abolition Amendment

https://mobile.twitter.com/SenJeffMerkley/status/1334231702965727233

OK, after restoring the VRA and prohibiting the disenfranchisement of felons, the next priority should be universal voter registration or the elimination of voter registration and universal same-day voting. Remember, voters did not register to vote until after the Civil War.

There were some voter rolls in New England states in the early 19th century, but the burden was on the state, not the citizen, to add people to the rolls.

Since voter registration began, its purpose has been to keep certain people from voting. Pennsylvania had the first voter registration system. It only applied to Philadelphia. (That anti-urban bias is in our Constitution and throughout our history)

We could re-imagine our voting system. Every American has a Social Security Number. We could all be issues a national voting card. We get to use it once per election. If the bank knows I ordered zinc lozenges within seconds of my order, then the national voter registry could know

I voted the second I vote. We could all have individual pins and swipe our card and vote and the little machines that are widely dispersed like ATMs could record our votes. That's one idea. We can be smarter than we are but voter registration serves power
time.com/5855885/voter-…

We could limit the amount of time people have to wait to vote to a maximum 45 minutes & the number of miles people have to travel to 10. If the distance is greater than 10, people would automatically qualify for absentee voting and their locality would not have in-person voting

Where my parents used to vote, everyone now votes by mail. That saves a lot of driving and worry about whether there will be a snow storm. They could go by the last in-person election, if the wait was more than 45 minutes on avg, everyone can vote by mail.

Of course, the best answer is universal vote-by-mail in every state. No exceptions. It's so much harder to intimidate people from voting when they vote in their homes.

I realize that is tricky and there are other solutions to reduce wait times like the same number of people per voting machine.

jointcenter.org/how-to-reduce-…

We should eliminate voter registration purges based on minor discrepancies like St. vs Street or Rd. vs. Road. Name similarities cannot be a reason to purge someone. Purging people for not voting should not happen at all.

There should be no caucuses at all ever anywhere.

People can have hand-marked paper ballots that are machine read - such as the optical-scan ballots similar to what people use for standardized tests. We can check that we marked them correctly, mail them in or submit them, and the count will be fast and the recount can be by hand

Absentee and mail ballots should be processed as they come in to avoid the kind of flim-flam that occurred this cycle.

A big part of voting rights should also be the right to fair, un-gerrymandered districts. Nonpartisan gerrymandering is one step toward that.

The US constitution prevents us from even amending the most anti-democratic element in our government, the US Senate. But we can add more states to reduce the overweening and heavily abused power of rural states.

We must prohibit state limitations on voter registration. Texas & Florida have made it nearly impossible to do VR without risking a criminal offense. Automatic VR would eliminate this problem
time.com/5855885/voter-…

Voter ID. Well, I think every citizen should get a Voter Card automatically, like their debit card, but in the meantime. Voter ID is used to keep Black, Indigenous, and Latino people from voting. It was used in ND to keep reservation Indians from voting because no street address

Voter ID requirements are discriminatory. A gun permit is okay but a student ID is not. A driver's license or state picture ID is required. Waiving the ID's cost does not make it any less a poll tax when certified birth certificates are $60

Voter ID is about determining who can vote, not protecting the vote. It's about protecting the white vote only, though for much older people, it can result in the disenfranchisement of all races since records were not centrally kept in many places.

The GOP is already gearing up for more restrictions on voting. But the restrictions are not race-neutral. They never are.
theguardian.com/us-news/2020/d…

Even when turnout helps them, they are afraid of voters voting.
texasmonthly.com/politics/voter…

So, there are other ways Black people are ill-served by how we vote and ways that could be improved. For example, the LA and GA rule that plurality winners must face off in a special election for a majority vote is designed to keep Black people from being elected.

The idea is that Black candidates could win a plurality but never a majority because white voters would coalesce on the white candidate.

The primary election is when many city and county elections are decided. It is also when Black turnout is lowest. This is not a coincidence. These races were moved to the spring election for the purpose of decreasing the power of Black voters.

City and county districting is also subject to gerrymandering - often with greater precision than congressional redistricting.

What other ideas are there to address the systemic inequities in voting. I am dubious about ranked-tier voting at the moment when it requires a majority, as that can make it another strategem for white hegemony.

It is easier for Black candidates to win a plurality than a majority and the requirement for majority often leads to white candidate victories over the candidate who won the plurality.

Meanwhile, here are some orgs working on voting rights
fairvote.org

Brennan Center debunks the voter fraud myth, tracks voter suppression tactics nationwide
brennancenter.org

Here is where the battle for redistricting is waged
democraticredistricting.com

The hero of many election legal fights is @marceelias and his Democracy Docket
democracydocket.com

Please add more.
The ACLU and LWV are active in fighting voter suppression. However, some of the so-called "good government reforms" promoted by the LWV early on were reforms that diluted and reduced the Black vote, so they have some making up to do.

I am speaking of voter registration, spring elections for city/county, and at-large city and county government districts that work to keep Black people out of power.

If you have ideas, suggestions, please add them. Let's think of voting rights not just in how to make voting easier for everyone, but in ways to redress the suppression of BIPOC votes