cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/9143573

Voters eligible to cast ballots are already being swept up in a grassroots effort to purge the nation’s registration rolls ahead of the 2024 presidential election, a CBS News investigation has found.

Fueled by doubts about the 2020 election, an army of conservative activists is poring over state voter lists, looking for registration errors that can be used to file what are known as voter challenges — questioning the registrations of thousands of Americans.

The undertaking, which includes the involvement of a lawyer tied to former President Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election, tends to affect minority or younger voters who may be statistically more likely to vote Democrat, according to local election officials.

      • spaceghoti@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        It does in the census, and they use that census data to draw district maps. It’s not a coincidence that they’ve been closing down registration and polling locations in areas dominated by PoC, especially if they also happen to be registered as Democrats.

      • criitz@reddthat.com
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        1 year ago

        They target areas where they know it will predominantly affect PoC (or just democrats in general)

      • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Do you really think that Republican politicians are too stupid to know the demographics of different parts of their own state?

        I don’t think they’re that stupid.

      • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        Name and address goes pretty far, but likely the D or R on your reg will mean the most for these assholes.

      • buddhabound@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        If a district is 80% African American, and African Americans generally vote one 70/30 for Dems, you can select specific districts and remove a large chunk of support for Dems by challenging registrations for that district. Does it also hit some Republican voters? Yes. But this is how packing and cracking works, too - using the marginal gains to swing elections. There are many ways to target demographics without actually having any single piece of demographic information.

  • Telorand@reddthat.com
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    Unsurprising. This has been happening with more regularity since at least 2016. If you’re not regularly checking your voter status, especially before contentious elections (e.g. when abortion is on the ballot), you need to get in the habit yesterday.

    Republicans aren’t playing fair, because they don’t want democracy. Assume they’ll use every dirty trick more than twice at the eleventh hour.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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    There needs to be a way to establish standing to challenge voter elligibility. It can’t just be “people with too much free time.”

    Unless you work for the Secretary of State office and it’s your JOB to determine eligibility, you shouldn’t be able to challenge a goddamned thing.

    • PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Throw it on the massive pile of election reforms that are desperately needed but will never happen because it will lessen the power of neoliberals and the far-right.

      Every person over the age of 18 should be eligible to vote in their district and “moved” or “died” should be the only mechanism for removing a voter from the roll.

      America also needs ranked choice voting, the removal of electoral college and protections against gerrymandering (such as multi member districts).

      Unfortunately any change that is suggested breeds a new reactionary cult that for some reason we’re supposed to politely listen to as they delay progress forever.

  • teamevil@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    They’ve been doing this for a while…the current Governor of Georgia expelled more legitimate voters than his margin of victory.

  • argo_yamato@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Since conservatives to a person are anti-democracy and racist this sounds about right

  • 800XL@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    How the fuck do these conservatives have this kind of time to do this? They should go out and get jobs and contribute to society.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Voters eligible to cast ballots are already being swept up in a grassroots effort to purge the nation’s registration rolls ahead of the 2024 presidential election, a CBS News investigation has found.

    The challenger, a woman named Gail Lee, argued McWhorter improperly registered to vote at a commercial address and snapped photos of his barbershop, which is located inside an Atlanta-area Kroger supermarket, as evidence.

    For example, public records reveal a local Republican Party activist in Virginia who attended a March strategy session, then filed a slate of 43 voter challenges in August, ahead of the November election.

    Activists have also recently filed challenges in Washington state and Michigan, where a public records request revealed a GOP official conducted a “field investigation,” going to dozens of homes to check if voters were registered to the correct address.

    Convinced that rigged voting machines and bloated voter rolls helped deliver Mr. Biden the presidency — though officials found no such evidence — she attended an election integrity conference in Atlanta last year.

    One of the people driving the push for grassroots activists to scrub voter rolls is a medical entrepreneur named John “Rick” Richards, who promotes a new software product that he described as a “Betty Crocker cookbook approach” that would expedite the challenge process.


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