Tag: GOP using Trump election fraud lie to stop people from voting

Pelosi to offer even split on 9/11-style commission to probe Capitol riot

The Hill logo

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has offered a plan for a bipartisan 9/11-style commission to review the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, backtracking from an earlier proposal that would have allowed Democrats to appoint the majority of the commission’s members.

A source familiar with the discussions told The Hill Pelosi briefed members of her leadership team on the proposal Monday night after efforts to create the commission stalled in the months following the attack.

Pelosi’s plans were first reported by CNN.   Continue reading.

More Than 100 Companies Sign Letter Against Harsher Voting Restrictions

Reuters Logo

More than 100 U.S. companies including Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Ford Motor Co and Starbucks Corp have declared their opposition to voting curbs that a number of states are considering implementing.

Activist groups say the restrictions – outlined in voting rights bills already passed in Georgia and being weighed in, among others, Texas and Arizona – are specifically targeting Black people and other racial minorities.

“We all should feel a responsibility to defend the right to vote and oppose any discriminatory legislation or measures that restrict or prevent any eligible voter from having an equal and fair opportunity to cast a ballot,” the companies said in a letter published as a two-page advertisement (https://nyti.ms/3e0fvnL) in Wednesday’s New York Times. Continue reading.

Hundreds of Companies Unite to Oppose Voting Limits, but Others Abstain

New York Times logo

Amazon, Google, G.M. and Starbucks were among those joining the biggest show of solidarity by businesses over legislation in numerous states.

Amazon, BlackRock, Google, Warren Buffett and hundreds of other companies and executives signed on to a new statement released on Wednesday opposing “any discriminatory legislation” that would make it harder for people to vote.

It was the biggest show of solidarity so far by the business community as companies around the country try to navigate the partisan uproar over Republican efforts to enact new election rules in almost every state. Senior Republicans, including former President Donald J. Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell, have called for companies to stay out of politics.

The statement was organized in recent days by Kenneth Chenault, a former chief executive of American Express, and Kenneth Frazier, the chief executive of Merck. A copy appeared on Wednesday in advertisements in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Continue reading.

Top private law firms plan ‘SWAT teams’ to fight voting restrictions in court

NBC News Logo

Top private law firms plan ‘SWAT teams’ to fight voting restrictions in court

First, it was the businesses. Now, it’s the bar.

More than a dozen of the country’s top law firms have committed to join forces to challenge voting restrictions across the country, adding legal might to the corporate pressure campaign opposing Republican-led attempts to overhaul elections in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s loss.

One of the effort’s leaders, Brad Karp, chairman of the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison of New York, said Monday that 16 firms had signed on so far, including his. The lawyers will act like “SWAT teams” for legal action, he said. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale School of Management professor who is working to help mobilize corporate America against the restrictions, described the legal coalition as an “army of election law experts ready to dispatch at a moment’s notice.”

The group came together from conversations among major law firms about publicly taking a stand against restrictive voting laws like the one enacted in Georgia last month, as well as bills under consideration in Texas, Arizona, Florida and other states. Continue reading.

Video shows Texas GOP official seeking ‘army’ of volunteers to monitor polls in mostly Black and Hispanic Houston precincts

A leaked presentation from the Harris County Republican Party shows an official citing widespread voter fraud in a call for 10,000 poll watchers in Texas. (Common Cause Texas)

Texas faith leaders condemn new election bills as Jim Crow dressed up in a ‘tuxedo’

Faith leaders in Texas are accusing Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republicans of using ‘election integrity’ as an excuse to enact restrictive laws that target voters of color.

Faith leaders in Texas condemned a pair of controversial election bills Wednesday (April 7) working their way through the state Legislature, accusing lawmakers of trying to “dress up Jim and Jane Crow in a tuxedo.”

An array of clergy and other religious leaders assembled outside the Capitol in Austin to express opposition to the bills, known as SB 7 and HB 6. They invoked their respective faiths while criticizing provisions of the proposed legislation such as banning drive-thru voting, shortening early voting hours, sending mail voting applications only to voters who request them and requiring disabled voters to prove their disability with documentation from a physician or the federal government.

“We have those in leadership — in Texas government — (people) who have in their ideological DNA the same mindset of those slave masters who denied the humanity of Black people,” said the Rev. Frederick Haynes III, pastor of Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas. “The same mindset of those individuals who upheld Jim and Jane Crow segregation.” Continue reading.

Texas GOP move to overhaul voting laws: What you need to know

The Hill logo

The war over voting access that has roiled Georgia is headed next to Texas, where Republican legislators are working through an omnibus elections overhaul package that would dramatically change the way some voters cast a ballot in future contests.

The measure has been labeled a priority by both Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R), who controls the state Senate. It follows on the heels of election overhauls that passed in 2017 and failed in 2019, but after a chaotic election held amid a pandemic, it aims to crack down on several practices that supporters say ran afoul of current state law.

“We want a system that people can trust, we want it to be accurate, and we want folks to know that it’s accurate,” said state Sen. Bryan Hughes (R), the measure’s prime sponsor. “If folks don’t trust the system, they’re not going to vote.” Continue reading.

More GOP-led states risk corporate backlash like Georgia’s

The Hill logo

The corporate backlash against Georgia’s new voting law is putting other states on alert.

Texas, Florida and Arizona are among the Republican-led states considering similar legislation, setting the stage for potential clashes with companies headquartered there.

Industry experts are closely watching how things unfold in Georgia to see whether there is a boycott and loss of business similar to what North Carolina experienced with regard to its “bathroom bill” from 2016. That picture became clearer on Friday when Major League Baseball announced it won’t hold this year’s All-Star Game in Georgia as initially planned. Continue reading.

Florida firm hired to oversee Maricopa County, Arizona vote audit promoted Trump’s debunked election fraud lies

AlterNet Logo

Once a deep red state that was synonymous with the GOP conservatism of Sen. Barry Goldwater and his successor, Sen. John McCain, Arizona has evolved into a swing state where Democrats won the 2020 presidential election and now occupy both of its U.S. Senate seats. Democrats have fared especially well in Maricopa County, Arizona, which includes Phoenix — and the Arizona State Senate has hired a technology company to oversee a recount of 2020 general election ballots in that county. According to the Arizona Republic, that company, the Florida-based Cyber Ninjas, has a history of promoting bogus election fraud claims.

Arizona Republic reporters Andrew Oxford, Jen Fifield and Ryan Randazzo explain, “Cyber Ninjas will lead a team that includes three other firms as part of a $150,000 contract the Senate has awarded to conduct an unprecedented audit of the election results in Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous county. But a deleted Twitter account that appears to belong to Cyber Ninjas founder Doug Logan suggests he has already made up his mind about the security of Arizona’s elections. It includes a litany of unsubstantiated allegations about fraud in the last election.”

A Twitter post that Logan shared in late 2020, according to the Arizona Republic reporters, read, “I’m tired of hearing people say there was no fraud. It happened, it’s real, and people better get wise fast.” And Logan, they add, “also appears to have shared posts by Sidney Powell, an attorney who supported former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results, and U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., a prominent proponent of conspiracy theories about the last election.” Continue reading.

Delta faces boycott threats for stance on new Georgia voting law

Washington Post logo

Social media users said they would no longer give the airline their business

Georgia’s new voting law, which puts barriers in place for absentee and mail-in voting and makes it illegal for third-party groups to hand out food and water to voters in line, has earned widespread criticism from Democrats and voting rights advocates. President Biden called it “Jim Crow in the 21st Century.”

Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines, on the other hand, put out a statementon Friday saying the bill — which was signed into law Thursday night — had “improved considerably during the legislative process” and noted some elements for praise.

That statement from CEO Ed Bastian has prompted a #BoycottDelta trend on social media. Continue reading.