Thread by @DavidPepper

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SUPPRESSION ALERT

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There’s a reason I started my book “Laboratories of Autocracy” by describing a traffic jam in Hamilton County.

And it’s because nothing provides a more simple and clear example of the motivation behind relentless…

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…GOP voter suppression than their absurd and ruthless battle against voter drop boxes.

It’s also a clear illustration of how GOP legislatures always learn and adjust from their election losses by quickly changing the rules.

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🚨 I write this today because Ohio Republicans look poised to enact even MORE restrictions on drop boxes this week—after having already limited them to one location per county, which is what led to the traffic jams I describe to open my book. You can take action below 🚨

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Last decade, voter drop boxes popped up in Utah, Alaska, Washington State, Oregon and Colorado. And they located them in convenient places all over communities—libraries, schools, you name it.

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And voters loved them! 

Convenient.  Free. The certainty that the ballot was going directly into the hands of election officials (not the USPS). They even save taxpayer $$.

Some of these states now enjoy the highest voter turnouts in the nation.

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Notably, as this trend spread, no one objected that these drop boxes were problematic as a matter of vote integrity.

No allegations of fraud. Or ballot harvesting. Or impropriety. They were simply a best practice that made the process easier and led to more people voting.

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Then 2020 happened.

Amid COVID (with people wanting to avoid long lines), a slowdown of mail delivery, and a sky-high interest in voting, many more states and cities began adding drop boxes to make voting safe and convenient.

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And again, they proved to be highly popular with voters.

But one pattern arose that changed everything.

In numerous swing states, these never-before-controversial drop boxes turned out to be disproportionately used by Black voters.

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In cities such as Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Cleveland, etc., Black voters disproportionately voted early, and disproportionately used drop boxes—allowing them to avoid the long lines they often face on Election Day or voting in-person early.

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In some close states in 2020, such as Georgia, the sheer volume of votes cast though drop boxes arguably changed the outcome of the election.

Again, no fraud. No ballot harvesting. Just voters opting to use an easy and safe form of voting.

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And ever since, we’ve seen a response dramatically different from when voters enjoyed drop boxes in Salt Lake and Anchorage, for years, with no one uttering a word of protest.

It’s been all out war.

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From Florida to Texas, Georgia to Ohio, legislators have pushed outright bans, restrictions on hours, limitations on locations, and the like

The bill rushing through in Ohio takes an already absurd limitation  of one drop box location per county….and now limits that sole…

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…location to having just a single drop box. (In 2020, elections boards had added multiple boxes at each location to alleviate long lines and traffic congestion).

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Like other states, the bill would also limit the hours of the drop box being available to the hours that the elections office itself is open.

Which of course makes zero sense.

Imagine if the USPS were to do the same with the mailboxes located outside their offices!

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And just like other states, there has not been a single suggestion that drop boxes in Ohio led to voter fraud of any sort.

To the contrary, Ohio officials routinely brag about how fraud-free elections here have been.

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The lesson could not be more clear. The relentless suppression of votes in today’s America is aimed squarely at Black voters—so much so that a once uncontroversial form of voting, viewed as a best practice when white voters predominantly used it, immediately became a target

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of the right-wing vote suppressors once Black voters chose to use it.

And it’s part of a broader pattern of attacking the entire process of voting early once Black and Democratic voters began to disproportionately utilize that broader window.

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Another aspect of the current Ohio bill is to reduce the time voters have to request vote by mail ballots, as well as reducing the grace period that validly and timely cast ballots must arrive to be counted.

This will particularly squeeze military and overseas voters.

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And it’s also part of one other clear pattern: whenever these Laboratories of Autocracy pinpoint a reason that they have lost or risk losing an election (as they learned again in Gaa in 2022), they get to work changing the rules to help their cause before the next election

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Pissed off? You should be.

The fight in Ohio isn’t over.

If this outrages you, please call the Ohio Speaker’s Office and share your outrage. Demand that they stop Voter Suppression.

Call this morning at 614 466-9624!

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