(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The Fight to Protect the Voting Rights of the Democratic Base Continues [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-01-08 The new year did not start off as we expected. On January 2nd, an Obama-appointed federal judge ruled that True the Vote’s challenge of thousands of voters’ Right to Vote in the Senate runoff elections in Georgia did not violate the Voting Rights Act under SEC. 119(b)’s outlawing of voter suppression. In a 145-page opinion, the judge, Steve C. Jones of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, wrote that the court “maintains its prior concerns” regarding how the group, True the Vote, sought to challenge voters’ eligibility. But he said that Fair Fight, the liberal voting rights group that brought the lawsuit against True the Vote, had failed to show that the efforts were illegal. [...] ...the opinion is likely to encourage conservative activists hunting for voter fraud during the 2024 presidential election. Election officials and voting rights groups have expressed worries about these efforts, warning that an expanded campaign to challenge voters en masse could intimidate people away from the ballot box. True the Vote and similar groups, taking a cue from former President Donald J. Trump, have often spread false theories about election fraud. [...] Voting rights experts said the ruling could raise the bar of what constitutes voter intimidation under the Voting Rights Act, and said it was yet another court decision that chipped away at the protections in the landmark law. True the Vote, the organization behind the election conspiracy movie “2000 Mules,” announced in December 2020 that it would challenge the eligibility of over 364,000 voters based on the NCOA registry. GOP MAGA activists who coordinated with True the Vote did in fact challenge 250,000 voters in 65 of the 159 counties. Local election boards rejected the vast majority of voter eligibility challenges out of hand. Hope Springs from Field PAC, at the request of a lawyer connected to the lawsuit, matched the two lists to the voter file. 88% of the 364k was comprised of minority voters, primarily African-American. 79% of those who were actually challenged by Georgia voters were minority voters. “A unique provision of Georgia state law allows voters to challenge the eligibility of voters in their counties.” During the voter intimidation trial, witnesses testified about how they had to “jump through the hoops,” felt confused or wondered whether they’d “get in trouble for voting.” Which was, and continues to be, the point. There’s little we, as the grassroots, can do about these really onerous voting laws Republicans enact in Red States. But there’s a lot that we can do in response to Voter Suppression actions like this. Hope Spring from Field counters these far-right efforts by including them in our walk lists when we are canvassing. We knock on the doors of voters who were thrown off the voter rolls by the Secretary of State and re-register them. We knock on the doors of voters included in the TTV purge lists to inform them they are on these lists, explain the aspects of the law that makes this weird possibility “legal,” and we make sure they understand that, if their Right to Vote gets challenged, in advance or on Election Day, there are remedies — and to not be afraid. In the areas where TTV had been successful in recruiting challengers, we targeted precincts that had multiple voters on the lists, and set up Election Protection tables outside the polls so we could make sure that everyone understood their Rights to Vote. Hope Springs Voter Protection observation table w/ NGE list True the Vote also maintained it had also “recruited Navy SEALs to oversee polling places.” Now we did not run into any Navy SEALs (there are no SEALs teams based in Georgia) and we took this claim to be another attempt at intimidation. But we did have local law enforcement show up to “monitor” our Voter Protection tables. True the Vote suggested that intimidation was key to its strategy. Earlier it had told its volunteers that the goal was to give voters a feeling “like driving and seeing the police following you.” In short, to replicate the terror of “Voting while Black.” But this is why maintaining on-going, PERSISTENT in-person voter contact is so important, especially in minority areas with histories of intimidation and voter suppression. And purge lists were central to our Voter Protection tables before the primaries. Every VP table we set up in Wisconsin and Georgia had a print-out (often, more than one) of local people who had been registered to vote who had been purged. And we did find family or neighbors who knew people on the lists and offered up information. At least one (perhaps two) voter brought the disenfranchised former voter back to the table. Georgia has clearly been the worst example of this (between the Georgia SOS purge and the TTV-inspired challenges, more than half a million voters were targeted.) Hope Springs from Field PAC is knocking on doors in a grassroots-led effort to increase awareness of the fact that Democrats care about our voters and are working to protect their rights. We are thinking how to mitigate Voter Suppression efforts, get around them and make sure we have "super compliance," helping our voters meet the requirements and get out and vote. We are taking those efforts to the doors of the communities most effected (the intended targets or victims) of these new voter suppression laws. Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopevoteprotect Hope Springs from Field was started by former Obama Field Organizers because field was the cornerstone of our success. The approach we adopted was focused on listening, on connecting voters and their story to the candidate. Repeated face to face interactions are critical. And we are among those who believe that Democrats didn’t do as well in the 2020 Congressional races as expected because we didn’t knock on doors. We are returning to the old school basics: repeated contacts, repeated efforts to remind them of protocols, meeting them were they are. Mentoring those who need it (like first time and newly registered voters). We’ve had success in our Voter Protection efforts. It starts by including these MAGA purge lists in our canvassing targets each week. Especially in Swing States that use the NCOA (National Change of Address) database, and these tend to be states where Republicans serve as their Secretary of State, we include targeted voters as part of our canvass universe. Walking turf that includes voters who have been removed (or about to be removed) from the voter rolls adds to our message that Democrats Care! and that we are doing something about the GOP’s heavy handedness. We have used this process in Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin. While we mark the names and addresses that were on the voter file removal list, we tell everyone we talk to that we are canvassing because Republicans are trying to remove voters in the area. We learned to be inclusive in the messaging when we were doing the same thing in Wisconsin in 2011 and 2012. Making sure that every voter we talk to knows that this is part of why we are knocking on their doors reinforces our messaging, especially in the case of removals due to the National Change of Address database. It encourages people to talk about it to their neighbors, to ask themselves, am I still registered to vote? Are you? When we did find voters who had been removed from the voter rolls, we not only registered them, we also created a “Wrongly Included” Report, documenting their residence at where the state claimed they no longer resided. These reports were defensive in nature, not only for the voter but also lawyers who might be able to use this documentation to defend voter rights and protections in the state. Just as importantly, we found volunteers liked the idea of chasing down people who had been removed from the voter rolls, at least in the manner in which we conduct the search. Volunteers would come and specifically ask for the walk lists that included purged voters. I can’t explain why, and we didn’t create special lists; we simply marked it when there was a voter who had been purged from the rolls. But because we were telling everyone we talked to that we knew that there are people in their neighborhood who had been callously removed, neighbors were often willing to share what they knew. In one apartment complex, a voter was removed because his apartment number was not included in the database. More to the point, his number was included on his voting registration card, but just not on the state’s voter database. And it was hard for the voter and the volunteer not to jump to the conclusion that, “It’s because I’m Black, isn’t it?” Last year, in Georgia (GA SOS released its new list of voters they removed in July), we found and re-registered — and thus returning — another 1,116 voters to the rolls. Partly, this is the result of canvassing now in the Atlanta suburbs. One note (because i know someone will ask): Coffee County, which has become sort of infamous of late, was the only county among those where we have canvassed in Georgia that actually saw a reduction in the number of voters who were removed from its rolls in 2023 than in 2021. I find that weird. In Ohio, where (in a much bigger state) the Secretary of State removed an eighth of the number that the Georgia SOS did, we only found 5 voters who were wrongly removed while we were knocking on doors. In Wisconsin, we found 31 voters (all African-American) and in North Carolina, we found 73 voters, many of whom were under the age of 25. But we found that making these purge lists known, either to the Black Churches we were working with or at our Voter Protection tables, increased interest. Although we were (then and still are) pursuing a “super compliance” strategy, getting people engaged can be easier when they feel aggrieved. And we have found that by tracking down disenfranchised voters and then re-registering them with tracking information (including witnesses) makes it easier. I have seen reports of people who have been wrongly purged taking a couple of years to get back on the voter rolls by themselves. These “Wrongly Included” reports and documentation were also included in our visits to local District, State and County Attorneys as well as the Dep’t of Justice Civil Rights Division where we also delivered the Incident Reports we had collected. We wanted to make everyone aware that we suspect Republican poll watchers, especially of the Election Denier persuasion, might try to make an issue of people who voted who were included on the purge lists. If i haven’t conveyed the point: we do this because Democrats don’t have to accept all the obstacles that Republicans put in the way of our voters, especially minority voters. There are things we can do about it, you know, besides the normal act of complaining. We include looking for removed voters in our walk lists because we find that most people — and, especially, most voters who were removed — don’t know about it. Most voters don’t even realize it can happen. Voter lists should be as accurate as possible, but using databases like the NCOA for purposes they were never designed for does not achieve this. And, like i pointed out above, these efforts reinforce the message that Democrats Deliver. Hope Springs from Field employs a rather traditional approach to GOTV (Get-Out-the-Vote), including election protection. That’s because we are a grassroots (in-person) voter-contact project attempting to reinstall “old fashioned” voter contact before Covid. 2020 was a year where Republicans rapidly advanced and Democrats regressed in the area of voter contact, especially in the area of Election Protection. 2024 will be different, and, as we have demonstrated in Georgia and Ohio, we learned from GOP advancements in the area of voter removal and suppression. Which is why returning to old-school voter contact is so important to continue (and not a replacement for the other areas of voter identification, motivation and mobilization). Like everyone else, we are asking for your financial support for these vital efforts. If you are like me, you are inundated with requests. We don’t have any cute pets, or special treats, to offer up to encourage your support. Nor will we try to guilt you by telling you the threat is real, ongoing and getting more sophisticated. We are all getting tired of it. But if you are able to contribute to our efforts to protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please do. We need your help: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopevoteprotect You can follow that link for our mailing address, as well (for those who would rather send us a check). Thank you for your support! This work depends on you! [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/1/8/2215535/-The-Fight-to-Protect-the-Democratic-Base-Continues?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/