By Thom Hartman
The New Republic
The Republican attorney general of Texas sent armed police officers after Hispanic voters—some in their 80s—to intimidate, threaten, and destroy them financially by forcing them to hire lawyers to defend themselves, even though they are perfectly legal voters.
It’s a manifestation of the new unofficial Republican slogan: “If you can’t win on the issues, cheat. And if cheating doesn’t get you over the top, intimidate!”
As is the case with so many bad Republican ideas (outlawing labor unions, ending welfare programs, banning abortion, gutting women’s voting and economic rights, etc.), this one started during the failure of Reconstruction in the 1870s. White supremacists had taken over the federal government and, in the states, Black voters were routinely threatened with violence and imprisonment when they tried to vote.
We thought those days were over. But in August of 2022, three months before he would face voters for reelection, Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis reprised the neo-Confederate strategy of using the levers of official state power to intimidate Black voters.
DeSantis put together a special police force to go after “voter fraud,” and they executed a number of arrest warrants against Black voters who’d been told by various state officials that they could vote even though they had a felony conviction. They all believed they were eligible, and apparently most were. There was absolutely no effort to commit voter fraud involved.
(With 64 percent support, Florida’s voters had approved a ballot measure in the 2018 election giving voting rights back to the roughly 20 percent of Florida’s Black citizens—1.5 million potential voters—who’d had a felony conviction. The Republican-controlled state legislature then—quietly—essentially overturned the ballot measure in 2020, although many Black voters never got the memo.)
With cameras rolling, around 20 Black former felon voters were arrested for “illegal voting” and paraded before the media in shackles. As a result, many Black voters that November concluded showing up at the polls just wasn’t worth the risk. As the Palm Beach Daily News noted shortly after the 2022 election: “In 2018, before the new voting laws were enacted, the state had a 63 percent turnout among registered voters in the midterms. This year, turnout dropped to 54 percent.…”
What starts in Florida rarely stays in Florida, particularly if it helps a white Republican administration stay in power in a state with a large minority population.
Now Ken Paxton, the notoriously corrupt” Republican attorney general of Texas, desperate to hang onto his party’s majority in this 2024 election, has picked up on DeSantis’s strategy of intimidating minority voters in August to keep them away from the November polls.
After putting 2 million people on the "suspense" list—forcing those mostly urban voters into provisional ballots which won’t be counted unless they take time off work to show up at a county office to confirm their identities in the week after the election—Paxton is now sending police officers into Hispanic neighborhoods to kick in doors and arrest Latino voters.
In 2021, Paxton bragged to right-wing hate purveyor and now-imprisoned criminal Steve Bannon that he’d successfully prevented Harris County—home to Houston and its 2.4 million mostly Democratic voters—from voting by mail in 2020, thus keeping Republicans in charge of the state.
That’s right. The Texas attorney general bragged that Republicans only held power in Texas as a result of voter suppression, and added that if voter suppression were to end, Republicans would never again seize power in that state.
His effort forced the few willing brave souls among Houston’s citizens—fully 14.5 percent of the entire state’s registered voters—to navigate crowded polling places in person during a deadly pandemic before vaccines were available.
“If we’d lost Harris County” by allowing people to vote by mail, Paxton crowed, “Harris County mail-in ballots that they wanted to send out were 2.5 million … and we were able to stop every one of them. Had we not done that, we … would’ve been one of those battleground states … and Donald Trump would’ve lost the election.”
After purging millions of Texas voters, most from big cities, off the voting rolls over the past few years, putting two million on the "suspense" list, and then preventing Houstonians from voting by mail in 2020, Paxton’s newest trick to keep the GOP in charge of Texas is a naked rip-off of DeSantis’s minority voter intimidation strategy.
One of the members of Texas LULAC, or the League of United Latin American Citizens (one of the oldest Latino voting and civil rights groups in the country), retired schoolteacher 87-year-old Lidia Martinez, had publicly spoken out against Paxton when he forbade Texans from getting mail-in ballots in 2020.
He got his revenge this past week.
At six in the morning on August 20, according to The New York Times, nine officers, some with guns, showed up at her home after having broken down a door to raid the home of Manuel Medina, the chair of the Tejano Democrats. Martinez asked who was at the door and, the Times noted, the officers “then pushed open the door” and invaded her home.
All across the state, apparently, police were raiding the homes of Hispanic voters. The head of Texas LULAC, Gabriel Rosales, who was on my radio/TV program Monday, told me and the Times, “It’s pure intimidation.”
When asked for an explanation, Attorney General Paxton told the Times, without a trace of irony: “Secure elections are the cornerstone of our republic.”
We thought those days were over. But in August of 2022, three months before he would face voters for reelection, Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis reprised the neo-Confederate strategy of using the levers of official state power to intimidate Black voters.
DeSantis put together a special police force to go after “voter fraud,” and they executed a number of arrest warrants against Black voters who’d been told by various state officials that they could vote even though they had a felony conviction. They all believed they were eligible, and apparently most were. There was absolutely no effort to commit voter fraud involved.
(With 64 percent support, Florida’s voters had approved a ballot measure in the 2018 election giving voting rights back to the roughly 20 percent of Florida’s Black citizens—1.5 million potential voters—who’d had a felony conviction. The Republican-controlled state legislature then—quietly—essentially overturned the ballot measure in 2020, although many Black voters never got the memo.)
With cameras rolling, around 20 Black former felon voters were arrested for “illegal voting” and paraded before the media in shackles. As a result, many Black voters that November concluded showing up at the polls just wasn’t worth the risk. As the Palm Beach Daily News noted shortly after the 2022 election: “In 2018, before the new voting laws were enacted, the state had a 63 percent turnout among registered voters in the midterms. This year, turnout dropped to 54 percent.…”
What starts in Florida rarely stays in Florida, particularly if it helps a white Republican administration stay in power in a state with a large minority population.
Now Ken Paxton, the notoriously corrupt” Republican attorney general of Texas, desperate to hang onto his party’s majority in this 2024 election, has picked up on DeSantis’s strategy of intimidating minority voters in August to keep them away from the November polls.
After putting 2 million people on the "suspense" list—forcing those mostly urban voters into provisional ballots which won’t be counted unless they take time off work to show up at a county office to confirm their identities in the week after the election—Paxton is now sending police officers into Hispanic neighborhoods to kick in doors and arrest Latino voters.
That’s right. The Texas attorney general bragged that Republicans only held power in Texas as a result of voter suppression, and added that if voter suppression were to end, Republicans would never again seize power in that state.
His effort forced the few willing brave souls among Houston’s citizens—fully 14.5 percent of the entire state’s registered voters—to navigate crowded polling places in person during a deadly pandemic before vaccines were available.
“If we’d lost Harris County” by allowing people to vote by mail, Paxton crowed, “Harris County mail-in ballots that they wanted to send out were 2.5 million … and we were able to stop every one of them. Had we not done that, we … would’ve been one of those battleground states … and Donald Trump would’ve lost the election.”
After purging millions of Texas voters, most from big cities, off the voting rolls over the past few years, putting two million on the "suspense" list, and then preventing Houstonians from voting by mail in 2020, Paxton’s newest trick to keep the GOP in charge of Texas is a naked rip-off of DeSantis’s minority voter intimidation strategy.
One of the members of Texas LULAC, or the League of United Latin American Citizens (one of the oldest Latino voting and civil rights groups in the country), retired schoolteacher 87-year-old Lidia Martinez, had publicly spoken out against Paxton when he forbade Texans from getting mail-in ballots in 2020.
He got his revenge this past week.
At six in the morning on August 20, according to The New York Times, nine officers, some with guns, showed up at her home after having broken down a door to raid the home of Manuel Medina, the chair of the Tejano Democrats. Martinez asked who was at the door and, the Times noted, the officers “then pushed open the door” and invaded her home.
All across the state, apparently, police were raiding the homes of Hispanic voters. The head of Texas LULAC, Gabriel Rosales, who was on my radio/TV program Monday, told me and the Times, “It’s pure intimidation.”
When asked for an explanation, Attorney General Paxton told the Times, without a trace of irony: “Secure elections are the cornerstone of our republic.”
To read the rest of Hartmann's article, click on link below:
20 comments:
If ballot fraud is not a problem why has Gilberto Hinojosa filed so many lawsuits
Folks this voter harvesting has been alive in Cameron county for decades nothing new, so there really is no need to get mad, just ask Gilberto he used this system many times. no need to make believe he didnt or never knew about it. chon y chuy.
This is just the tip of the iceberg to whats happening to democracy in our country. You all know who started this movement in our country. Don’t be blind and naive to the danger this represents to our country and the way of life. Don’t wait till its to late. Yes we all have many freedoms and our own opinions but don’t confuse that from doing whats RIGHT OR WRONG. We all have the ability to make the right decision, DONT BE FOOLED. Just saying
America has a history of interfering in other nation’s elections. They’re very comfortable doing the same right here at home. Voter suppression under
the label of fraud prevention. Texas leading the charge. Shame. ✌️
This is normal with Republicans. Wait for the election day, the scare tactics they will use. They are in the voting center, looking ugly at the voters.... and intimidating all the staff there at the election areas. Also, they say the machines are not working properly and do not start the election on time. Be ready for that: stay calm and wait but do not react.
Look fuckers, I mean fuckers in the good sense of the word, do not vote for Trumputo porque te va a coger. These people are of the philosophy of "by hook or by crook." They will strip you of your rights faster than saying "ay cabron."
Only the ignorant and wealthy support these politicians. The way I view this is that I think that housing and Lone Star are good programs. These programs are a hand up. Financial Aid for college is worth the money. Personally I do not qualify for these programs. I busted my chops to get to where I am at. However, I do not know if my desendents will make use of them. I hope not because I have the work ethic but we never know.
As I write this I think of JD Vance I willing to bet that this puto use all available programs and he is probably one of the first that wants to get rid of them.
Hopefully what I wrote didn't fail to publish. Shit even drunk I stand by what I am saying "don't vote for Trumputo porque nos va coger."
What has changed.
STFU Democrat Party!! You have had plantation Mexicans on your party for a 100 years!! The Democrat party today is no longer the same as Clinton or Kennedys Democrats!!
Of course because the dumbocrats don't use politiqueras
If you believe Kama La La Harris is a better choice you're either deaf , stupid or both. What are her policies? None!
I guess you're one of those drunk drivers that thinks he can drive better drunk.
At what age did Democrats begin their indoctrination on you? People need to start thinking for themselves. The democratic party is no longer the party of yesteryears. Apparently change is difficult for you.
Social service programs exist in order to keep the poor in line. These programs are never monitored and are a waste of taxpayer money. Like the old saying, “you don’t give a person a fish to eat, you teach the person to fish so that he/she can feed themselves.
racist republicans use, los cocos wanna be white, to run their errands. Hey jose get me this and RIGHT AWAY GUEY!!!
6:13
You don't complain about Fortune 500 companies fleecing the treasury at a much higher rate than the social programs. The richest people getting richer at our expense. You're crying over crumbs.
I would think that is a question for Gilberto Hinojosa.
5:31 AM
I drink at home. There is no need to drive. I also don't drink everyday.
SOUNDS FISHY First you need a fishy license abt 40 bucks, next a rod and reel abt 100 bucks than bait another 20 at that bait store, if they have the white flag, than a car to go to the nearest fishing pozo, and than prey if you don't pray you will not catch a fish, and if you do that you need a sarten and manteca some salt and peper and a paper plate and clean hands. bonapitit idiota!!!
GET ON A DIET WANNA BE GRINGA PRIETAS NALGAS YOU LOOK UGLY WITH THAT BLOND PELOS. MESCANS DO NOT HAVE BLOND PELOS.. WELL MAYBE ......
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