Government

GOP, Not Russia, is Greater Threat to Free Elections

Published

6 years ago

May 2, 2019

We all have heard about WikiLeaks and Russian interference in the 2016 election. The report of Special Counsel Robert Mueller has once more put that on the front pages. Too often lost in the furor, however, is the far more damaging TrikiLeaks — the tricks and laws used to suppress the vote by partisans, largely Republicans here at home.

After the Supreme Court’s right-wing gang of five gutted key sections of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby v. Holder, Republican-controlled states immediately ramped up efforts to create obstacles for voting, particularly for people of color. They mandated specific forms of state ID, made it harder for students to vote, eliminated same-day registration, reduced early voting days, closed polling booths in African American neighborhoods leading to long delays, purged voters from the rolls, perfected partisan gerrymandering and more. In some cases, as in North Carolina, their discriminatory intent was so public that the laws were overturned in federal court, but in most places, the new barriers were in place in 2016.

Did it make a difference? Voting rights expert Ari Berman says, “absolutely.” Overall 14 states had new restrictions in place, passed since the Shelby decision. Look at Wisconsin. Trump won by 22,000 votes. In Wisconsin, 300,000 African American voters didn’t have the newly required strict photo ID. Black voter turnout in Milwaukee declined by 51,000 votes from 2012, while as Lawyers Committee President Kristen Clarke noted, voter turnout rates were depressed across the state.

Now we’re headed into 2020. Republican bastions like Texas, Tennessee and Arizona witnessed surges of Democratic support in 2018. Not surprisingly, they are launching new efforts to suppress the vote. In Texas, the secretary of state announced a plan to purge 95,000 people from the voter rolls because they weren’t citizens. Independent research then demonstrated that in Harris County, which includes Houston, 60 percent of the 30,000 people on the list had received citizenship long ago. Some of the supposed research was 25 years old. Once more citizens had to go to court to try to stop the suppression.

In Texas, state lawmakers are also moving to add criminal penalties for people who improperly fill out voter registration forms, an effort to intimidate nonprofit groups that work to register people to vote. In Arizona, Republicans are making it harder to cast an early ballot. In Tennessee, GOP lawmakers are pushing legislation to fine voter registration groups that submit incomplete forms, even by mistake, up to $10,000. Tequila Johnson, co-founder of the Equity Alliance that focuses on registering people of color, called them out: “We have never seen a bill like this on the floor, until we dared to register 86,000 black and brown people to vote. This screams racism.”

Much, much more attention should be paid to this battle. Happily, the new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives has made voting rights a priority. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD.), chair of the House Oversight Committee, has launched an investigation of voter suppression in Georgia in 2018, where the victor, Brian Kemp, oversaw the election as secretary state. And, as Cummings detailed, 1.4 million people were purged from the voting rolls from 2012 to 2016, 53,000 — 80 percent of them people of color — had their registrations put on hold; 214 polling places were shuttered, contributing to lines of more than four hours in heavily black precincts.

Some states, happily, are moving to make voting easier and more accessible. Florida citizens passed a historic referendum restoring the right to vote for felons who have paid their debt to society. (Now, Republicans in the legislature are trying to undermine that initiative). Automatic Voting Registration laws have passed in several states. More states are providing longer times for early voting, adding voting booths to reduce long lines and more. Cases to rollback partisan gerrymandering have been successful in federal courts — and now are headed to the Supreme Court. The Brennan Center reports that bills that expand voting rights have seen some movement in 35 states, while those restricting rights have moved in 10 states.

What’s clear is that interference with our elections and with the right to vote will come far more from the efforts of domestic politicians than it will come from whatever mischief the Russians plan. It is revealing that the Trump White House has little to say about Russians. It is even more telling that the Justice Department is absent without leave in the fight against voter suppression at home. The right to vote — the most basic right of a democracy — is still contested in too many states — and must be fought, state by state, by citizens of conscience.

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

Posts by Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

Barbara Lee

Congresswoman Barbara Lee Reflects on Historic Moment Less Than One Week from Election Day

Congresswoman Barbara Lee (CA-12) today released a piece on Medium reflecting on Vice President Kamala Harris’ historic presidential campaign 50 years after Lee worked on the presidential campaign of Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm.

Published

20 hours ago

November 4, 2024

Oakland Post

Congresswoman Barbara Lee.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee (CA-12) today released a piece on Medium reflecting on Vice President Kamala Harris’ historic presidential campaign 50 years after Lee worked on the presidential campaign of Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm:

“As Election Day approaches, I’m reflecting on a few dates and numbers that mean something to me.

Zero: the number of Black members in Congress 56 years ago. Next Congress, we hope to swear in over 60 members in the Congressional Black Caucus.

Three: The number of Black women to ever serve in the United States Senate since the first Congress in 1789.

Two: The number of Black women that will be elected to the Senate this year alone if we do our job.

1972: The first time a Black woman, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, ran for president in one of the major political parties of the United States.

Zero: the number of Black women to ever serve as president of the United States.

IF we do the work, we can change that with President Kamala Harris.

As I reflect on what would be Congresswoman Chisholm’s 100th birthday next month, I could not help but remember that my first official involvement in U.S. politics was working for her presidential campaign in 1972.

Over 50 years later, I have been involved in every single campaign since. Shirley was my mentor — she was a bold visionary, a progressive woman who understood that working together in coalitions was the only way to make life better for everyone, to build an equitable society and democracy that lived up to the creed of “liberty and justice for all.”

The historic moment we are in today is not lost on me. I have had the privilege to have known Vice President Kamala Harris for over three decades. She, after all, is a daughter of the East Bay. She, like Shirley, truly is a fighter for the people.

And I know she can move our country forward in a new way. As a member of her National Advisory Board, I have campaigned across our country to help take her message, her legacy of service, and her “to-do list,” as she says, to voters who were almost starting to feel hopeless, but are now feeling hopeful once again, captured by the politics joy and the bright possibilities brought upon by a possible Harris-Walz administration.

Recently, I visited churches in North Carolina with members of the Congressional Black Caucus. The chair of our CBC political action committee, Chairman Gregory Meeks from New York’s fifth district, eloquently and powerfully presented a vision of what Dr. Maya Angelou wrote in her famous poem, “And Still I Rise:” “I am the dream and the hope of the slave.”

Meeks remarked that on Jan. 20, 2025, we will observe the birthday of our drum major for justice, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

He also described that on Jan. 20, IF we do the work — if we knock on doors, if we make those phone calls, if we spread our message — standing on the podium at the U.S. Capitol will be the first Black speaker of the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries.

In the wings will be over 60 members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Holding Frederick Douglass’ Bible will be the first African American woman appointed to the highest court of the land, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

She will be swearing-in the first Black woman to serve as president, Kamala Harris, in front of the shining white dome of the United States Capitol, built by enslaved Black people.

In front of her and beyond, the tens of millions of Black men and women who voted for her. The world will witness the hope and the dreams of our ancestors ushering in a new way forward.

As I sat in front of the stage this week at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., as Vice President Harris delivered remarks with the Oval Office behind her, I could not help but feel that our country was ready for this historic moment.

We are not only voting for a Black woman as Commander in Chief of the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world. We are definitively stating that we will not allow the clocks of freedom and justice to be turned back.

We are voting for our ancestors’ hopes and dreams. We are voting for the generations that will come after us, long after we are gone. We are voting for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Let’s get this done.

Oakland Post

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Bay Area

Oakland Awarded $28 Million Grant from Governor Newsom to Sustain Long-Term Solutions Addressing Homelessness

Governor Gavin Newsom announced the City of Oakland has won a$28,446,565.83 grant as part of the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) grant program. This program provides flexible grant funding to help communities support people experiencing homelessness by creating permanent housing, rental and move-in assistance, case management services, and rental subsidies, among other eligible uses.

Published

20 hours ago

November 4, 2024

Oakland Post

Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao

Governor Gavin Newsom announced the City of Oakland has won a$28,446,565.83 grant as part of the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) grant program.

This program provides flexible grant funding to help communities support people experiencing homelessness by creating permanent housing, rental and move-in assistance, case management services, and rental subsidies, among other eligible uses.

Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and the Oakland City Administrator’s Office staff held a press conference today to discuss the grant and the City’s successful implementing of the Mayor’s Executive Order on the Encampment Management Policy.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Bay Area

Pamela Price Appoints Deputy D.A. Jennifer Kassan as New Director of Community Support Bureau

On Monday, District Attorney Pamela Price announced Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Kassan as the new director of the Community Support Bureau. Kassan has over 25 years of experience as an attorney and advisor for mission-driven enterprises including benefit corporations, low-profit limited liability companies, nonprofits, cooperatives, hybrid organizations, investment funds, and purpose trusts.

Published

20 hours ago

November 4, 2024

Oakland Post

Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Kassan. Courtesy photo.

Special to The Post

On Monday, District Attorney Pamela Price announced Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Kassan as the new director of the Community Support Bureau.

Kassan has over 25 years of experience as an attorney and advisor for mission-driven enterprises including benefit corporations, low-profit limited liability companies, nonprofits, cooperatives, hybrid organizations, investment funds, and purpose trusts.

Working in the DA’s new administration since 2023, Kassan was most recently assigned to the Organized Retail Theft Prosecution team.

Kassan has a master’s degree in City Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. She received a National Science Foundation Fellowship from Yale Law School, and graduated from Yale Law School in 1995. She earned her B.A. in Psychology with a minor emphasis in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley.

Kassan’s education, extensive legal background, list of notable accomplishments and impressive resume includes helping to found and lead multiple organizations to support community wealth building including:

Community Ventures, a nonprofit organization that promotes locally-based community economic development,
the Sustainable Economies Law Center, a nonprofit that provides legal information, training, and representation to support sustainable economies
the Force for Good Fund, a nonprofit impact investment fund
Crowdfund Main Street, a licensed portal for regulation crowdfunding
Opportunity Main Street, a place-based ecosystem building organization that supports under-represented entrepreneurs and provides education about community-based investing.

In addition, Kassan served as an elected member of the City Council of Fremont, California from 2018 to 2024, and on the Securities and Exchange Commission Advisory Committee on Small and Emerging Companies.

In 2020 she was named to the list of World-Changing Women in Conscious Business by SOCAP Global.

“We are excited to see Jenny accept the role as the new leader for the Community Support Bureau,” said Price. “She brings a wealth of talent, experience, and a vision to expand our office’s engagement with community groups and residents, that will level-up our

outreach programs and partnerships with local organizations with the aim of promoting crime prevention.

“We thank Interim CSB Director Esther Lemus, who is now assigned to our office’s

Restitution Unit, for her hard work and a great job fostering positive relationships between the DAO and the community.”