Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 36,139
After blaming his 2020 loss on mail balloting, Trump tries to make GOP voters believe it’s OK now
By NICHOLAS RICCARDI and MARGERY BECK
Yesterday
Marta Moehring voted the way she prefers in Nebraska's Republican primary Tuesday — in person, at her west Omaha polling place.
She didn’t even consider taking advantage of the state’s no-excuse mail-in ballot process. In fact, she would prefer to do away with mail-in voting altogether. She’s convinced fraudulent mailed ballots cost former President Donald Trump a second term in 2020.
“I don’t trust it in general,” Moehring, 62, said. “I don’t think they’re counted correctly.”
But now Republican officials — even, sometimes, Trump — are encouraging voters such as Moehring to cast their ballots by mail. The GOP has launched an effort to, in the words of one official, “correct the narrative” on mail voting and get those who were turned off to it by Trump to reconsider for this year's election.
The push is a striking change for a party that amplified dark rumors about mail ballots to explain away Trump's 2020 loss, but it is also seen as a necessary course correction for an election this year that is likely to be decided by razor-thin margins in a handful of swing states.
“We have to get right on using these mail-in ballots for the people who can't get there on Election Day,” Rep. Scott Perry, one of Trump's strongest congressional allies in his push to overturn the 2020 election, said at a conservative gathering in his home state of Pennsylvania.
That alarmed GOP strategists who saw mail voting as an advantage in campaigns because it lets them “bank” unreliable votes before Election Day and lowers the risk of turnout plummeting because of bad weather or other unpredictable factors at the polls. Trump's own campaign tried to sell Republicans on casting ballots by mail, but his voters listened to the then-president. In 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Democrats were vastly more likely to cast ballots by mail than Republicans.
The trend continued in 2022, and its costs were starkly illustrated in Arizona.
Three top-of-the-ticket Republican candidates there who echoed Trump's lies about the unreliability of mail ballots encouraged their supporters to vote in person on Election Day. An election machine meltdown that day in one-third of the polling places in the state's most populous county led to huge lines and some would-be voters departing in frustration.
The three top Republicans all lost, including falling 17,000 votes short in the governor's race and 500 votes short in the one for attorney general.
This time, Republicans say they're not going to risk leaving ballots behind. Trump's handpicked chair of the Republican National Committee, his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, has vowed to embrace all sorts of legal election methods to boost turnout that Trump falsely blamed for his 2020 loss, including so-called “ballot harvesting” — letting people turn in mail ballots on the behalf of other voters.
“In this election cycle, Republicans will beat Democrats at their own game, by leveraging every legal tactic at our disposal based on the rules of each state,” Lara Trump said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Turning Point Action, a prominent, pro-Trump group, is launching a $100 million campaign to reach infrequent voters in the swing states of Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin. That will include offering mail voting as one way to make casting a ballot easier, spokesman Andrew Kolvet said.
“We'd love for elections to be run the way they were before,” Kolvet said. “We can spend our time complaining about it or we can get in gear and play by the rules that Democrats, or largely Democrats, used.”
Even Trump himself has started to recommend mail voting, though he frequently bashes it during campaign events and blames it for his 2020 loss. The RNC is also continuing to file lawsuits against various aspects of mail voting around the country.
Nonetheless, Trump recorded a short video telling his supporters that “absentee voting, early voting and Election Day voting are all good options.”
One recent push to publicize mail voting came during last month's Pennsylvania primary, when the Republican State Legislative Committee teamed up with a committee supporting the party's Senate candidate and the state GOP. The goal, said RSLC political director Max Docksey, was “to correct the narrative among Republican voters on mail voting.”
The effort was inspired by what the RSLC saw as a successful effort to increase mail voting among Republicans in the battle for control of the Virginia Legislature in 2023, a fight ultimately won by the Democrats.
The group sent mail ballot applications to 1.5 million GOP voters, sent 475,000 text messages encouraging mail voting and touted the benefits of mail voting at party gatherings.
But at the same time, Pennsylvania Republicans have sued to force the state's mail ballots to be counted at polling places rather than the county election offices, which have the equipment and space to do the job, That's among many lawsuits targeting mail voting filed by Republicans around the country since 2020.
The conflicting messages could make it challenging to swiftly reverse the drop-off in mail voting among Republicans.
In Pennsylvania, Republican operatives were pleased with their effort, which they said led to them adding nearly twice as many voters to the state's mail ballot list as Democrats did during the primary. But the overall share of Pennsylvania mail ballots sent by Republicans remained about the same as in 2020, at only one-quarter of overall ballots, according to data from the secretary of state's office.
Bill Bretz, chairman of the Westmoreland County Republican Party in the western side of the state, said he's noticed voters in his conservative area slowly but steadily warming up to mail voting.
“People understand the consequences of this election,” he said. “There's a lot of buy-in to vote by any method available, and the vote-by-mail bogeyman is beginning to fade.”
__
Riccardi reported from Denver and Beck from Omaha, Nebraska. Associated Press writers Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Martha Mendoza in Santa Cruz, California, and Leah Willingham in Charleston, West Virginia, contributed to this report.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 36,139
Voter outreach groups targeted by new laws in several GOP-led states are struggling to do their work
By AYANNA ALEXANDER
Today
WASHINGTON (AP) — During the presidential election four years ago, the Equal Ground Education Fund hired over 100 people to go door-to-door and attend festivals, college homecomings and other events to help register voters across Florida. Their efforts for this year's elections look much different.
A state law passed last year forced them to stop in-person voter registration, cut staff and led to a significant drop in funding. Organizers aren't sure how robust their operations will be in the fall.
Genesis Robinson, the group's interim executive director, said the law has had a “tremendous impact” on its ability to host events and get into communities to engage directly with potential voters.
“Prior to all of these changes, we were able to operate in a space where we were taking action and prepare our communities and make sure they were registered to vote — and help if they weren’t,” he said.
Florida is one of several states, including Kansas, Missouri and Texas, where Republicans have enacted voting restrictions since 2021 that created or enhanced criminal penalties and fines for those who assist voters. The laws have forced some voter outreach groups to cease operations, while others have greatly altered or reduced their activities.
The Florida law, signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis last May, imposed a $50,000 fine on third-party voter registration organizations if the staff or volunteers who handle or collect the forms have been convicted of a felony or are not U.S. citizens. It also raised the fines the groups could face, from $1,000 to $250,000, and reduced the amount of time they are able to return registration applications from 14 days to 10 days.
A federal judge blocked portions of the law earlier this month, including the one targeting felons and those who are not citizens. Even so, the law had a direct effect on the operations of Equal Ground and other voter advocacy organizations in the state before the ruling.
The League of Women Voters in Florida, one of the plaintiffs, shifted away from in-person voter registration to digital outreach. Cecile Scoon, the league's co-president, said the law stripped the personal connection between its workers and communities. Digital tools aren’t easy to use when registering voters and can be expensive, she said.
These organizations are needed because local election officials don't always provide adequate support and information, said Derby Johnson, a voter in Ormond Beach who attended a recent community event in Daytona Beach organized by Equal Ground. He said it appeared the Florida Legislature was just trying to make it harder for certain communities to register and cast ballots.
“There are parties actively working to suppress the vote, particularly in Black and brown communities, and these groups help educate and register voters to mitigate that," she said.
MOVE Texas, a voting rights group that focuses on voters who are 30 or younger, adjusted to that state's 2021 election overhaul with additional training for their staff and volunteers. Among the provisions drawing concern was one that increased criminal penalties for anyone who receives compensation for assisting a voter, which especially affected the ability to recruit high school and college students for voter registration drives.
“The law contributed to this culture of fear in our elections and being a person who registers voters," said Stephanie Gomez, the group’s political director.
Republicans in Kansas overrode a veto by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly to pass a bill that made it a felony if anyone registering voters impersonated or was assumed to impersonate an election official.
That forced Loud Light Kansas, a voter outreach group that focuses on minority communities, to stop its registration efforts. Would-be voters typically perceived their staff and volunteers as election workers even when told otherwise, said Anita Alexander, the organization's vice president.
“We’re trying to engage impacted people, but we weren’t willing to risk anyone getting charged by doing voter engagement work," she said.
Loud Light and other local voter registration groups sued the Legislature. The Democratic governor said there has been no evidence in the state of widespread voter fraud or instances of individuals impersonating election officials.
In Missouri, the state chapter of the League of Women Voters and the Missouri State Conference of the NAACP sued after the state enacted wide-ranging election legislation in 2022.
Among other things, the new law bans compensation for those who register voters and requires that anyone who helps more than 10 people register must also register with the secretary of state’s office and be a voter themselves. Violators can face criminal penalties.
The completed secretary of state’s forms are public, which presents a privacy concern for many people who might otherwise want to help with voter registration efforts, said Denise Lieberman, director and general counsel of the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition.
“Historically, when those membership lists have been obtained, they’ve been used to intimidate. So, there’s a lot of trepidation, especially in groups that are targeting low-income or communities of color,” she said. “If you just want to volunteer for one hour on a Saturday morning to help out on your college campus or on an Earth Day or anything, you have to go through this whole process.”
The Missouri law is on hold while the legal challenge plays out, with a trial set for August.
Voting rights experts expect to see continued attempts to restrict voting and the activities of voter outreach groups in Republican-controlled states, said Megan Bellamy, vice president of law and policy at the Voting Rights Lab.
"The effort to target third-party voter registration groups is just, unfortunately, one of many policy areas that state legislatures are moving to address,” she said.
___
The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Comments
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Marta Moehring voted the way she prefers in Nebraska's Republican primary Tuesday — in person, at her west Omaha polling place.
She didn’t even consider taking advantage of the state’s no-excuse mail-in ballot process. In fact, she would prefer to do away with mail-in voting altogether. She’s convinced fraudulent mailed ballots cost former President Donald Trump a second term in 2020.
“I don’t trust it in general,” Moehring, 62, said. “I don’t think they’re counted correctly.”
But now Republican officials — even, sometimes, Trump — are encouraging voters such as Moehring to cast their ballots by mail. The GOP has launched an effort to, in the words of one official, “correct the narrative” on mail voting and get those who were turned off to it by Trump to reconsider for this year's election.
The push is a striking change for a party that amplified dark rumors about mail ballots to explain away Trump's 2020 loss, but it is also seen as a necessary course correction for an election this year that is likely to be decided by razor-thin margins in a handful of swing states.
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“We have to get right on using these mail-in ballots for the people who can't get there on Election Day,” Rep. Scott Perry, one of Trump's strongest congressional allies in his push to overturn the 2020 election, said at a conservative gathering in his home state of Pennsylvania.
Republicans once were at least as likely as Democrats to vote by mail, but Trump changed the dynamics in 2020. He preemptively began to argue that mail balloting was bad months before voting began in the presidential race.
That alarmed GOP strategists who saw mail voting as an advantage in campaigns because it lets them “bank” unreliable votes before Election Day and lowers the risk of turnout plummeting because of bad weather or other unpredictable factors at the polls. Trump's own campaign tried to sell Republicans on casting ballots by mail, but his voters listened to the then-president. In 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Democrats were vastly more likely to cast ballots by mail than Republicans.
The trend continued in 2022, and its costs were starkly illustrated in Arizona.
Three top-of-the-ticket Republican candidates there who echoed Trump's lies about the unreliability of mail ballots encouraged their supporters to vote in person on Election Day. An election machine meltdown that day in one-third of the polling places in the state's most populous county led to huge lines and some would-be voters departing in frustration.
The three top Republicans all lost, including falling 17,000 votes short in the governor's race and 500 votes short in the one for attorney general.
This time, Republicans say they're not going to risk leaving ballots behind. Trump's handpicked chair of the Republican National Committee, his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, has vowed to embrace all sorts of legal election methods to boost turnout that Trump falsely blamed for his 2020 loss, including so-called “ballot harvesting” — letting people turn in mail ballots on the behalf of other voters.
“In this election cycle, Republicans will beat Democrats at their own game, by leveraging every legal tactic at our disposal based on the rules of each state,” Lara Trump said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Turning Point Action, a prominent, pro-Trump group, is launching a $100 million campaign to reach infrequent voters in the swing states of Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin. That will include offering mail voting as one way to make casting a ballot easier, spokesman Andrew Kolvet said.
“We'd love for elections to be run the way they were before,” Kolvet said. “We can spend our time complaining about it or we can get in gear and play by the rules that Democrats, or largely Democrats, used.”
Even Trump himself has started to recommend mail voting, though he frequently bashes it during campaign events and blames it for his 2020 loss. The RNC is also continuing to file lawsuits against various aspects of mail voting around the country.
Nonetheless, Trump recorded a short video telling his supporters that “absentee voting, early voting and Election Day voting are all good options.”
One recent push to publicize mail voting came during last month's Pennsylvania primary, when the Republican State Legislative Committee teamed up with a committee supporting the party's Senate candidate and the state GOP. The goal, said RSLC political director Max Docksey, was “to correct the narrative among Republican voters on mail voting.”
The effort was inspired by what the RSLC saw as a successful effort to increase mail voting among Republicans in the battle for control of the Virginia Legislature in 2023, a fight ultimately won by the Democrats.
The group sent mail ballot applications to 1.5 million GOP voters, sent 475,000 text messages encouraging mail voting and touted the benefits of mail voting at party gatherings.
But at the same time, Pennsylvania Republicans have sued to force the state's mail ballots to be counted at polling places rather than the county election offices, which have the equipment and space to do the job, That's among many lawsuits targeting mail voting filed by Republicans around the country since 2020.
The conflicting messages could make it challenging to swiftly reverse the drop-off in mail voting among Republicans.
In Pennsylvania, Republican operatives were pleased with their effort, which they said led to them adding nearly twice as many voters to the state's mail ballot list as Democrats did during the primary. But the overall share of Pennsylvania mail ballots sent by Republicans remained about the same as in 2020, at only one-quarter of overall ballots, according to data from the secretary of state's office.
Bill Bretz, chairman of the Westmoreland County Republican Party in the western side of the state, said he's noticed voters in his conservative area slowly but steadily warming up to mail voting.
“People understand the consequences of this election,” he said. “There's a lot of buy-in to vote by any method available, and the vote-by-mail bogeyman is beginning to fade.”
__
Riccardi reported from Denver and Beck from Omaha, Nebraska. Associated Press writers Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Martha Mendoza in Santa Cruz, California, and Leah Willingham in Charleston, West Virginia, contributed to this report.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
WASHINGTON (AP) — During the presidential election four years ago, the Equal Ground Education Fund hired over 100 people to go door-to-door and attend festivals, college homecomings and other events to help register voters across Florida. Their efforts for this year's elections look much different.
A state law passed last year forced them to stop in-person voter registration, cut staff and led to a significant drop in funding. Organizers aren't sure how robust their operations will be in the fall.
Genesis Robinson, the group's interim executive director, said the law has had a “tremendous impact” on its ability to host events and get into communities to engage directly with potential voters.
“Prior to all of these changes, we were able to operate in a space where we were taking action and prepare our communities and make sure they were registered to vote — and help if they weren’t,” he said.
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Florida is one of several states, including Kansas, Missouri and Texas, where Republicans have enacted voting restrictions since 2021 that created or enhanced criminal penalties and fines for those who assist voters. The laws have forced some voter outreach groups to cease operations, while others have greatly altered or reduced their activities.
The Florida law, signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis last May, imposed a $50,000 fine on third-party voter registration organizations if the staff or volunteers who handle or collect the forms have been convicted of a felony or are not U.S. citizens. It also raised the fines the groups could face, from $1,000 to $250,000, and reduced the amount of time they are able to return registration applications from 14 days to 10 days.
A federal judge blocked portions of the law earlier this month, including the one targeting felons and those who are not citizens. Even so, the law had a direct effect on the operations of Equal Ground and other voter advocacy organizations in the state before the ruling.
The League of Women Voters in Florida, one of the plaintiffs, shifted away from in-person voter registration to digital outreach. Cecile Scoon, the league's co-president, said the law stripped the personal connection between its workers and communities. Digital tools aren’t easy to use when registering voters and can be expensive, she said.
These organizations are needed because local election officials don't always provide adequate support and information, said Derby Johnson, a voter in Ormond Beach who attended a recent community event in Daytona Beach organized by Equal Ground. He said it appeared the Florida Legislature was just trying to make it harder for certain communities to register and cast ballots.
“There are parties actively working to suppress the vote, particularly in Black and brown communities, and these groups help educate and register voters to mitigate that," she said.
MOVE Texas, a voting rights group that focuses on voters who are 30 or younger, adjusted to that state's 2021 election overhaul with additional training for their staff and volunteers. Among the provisions drawing concern was one that increased criminal penalties for anyone who receives compensation for assisting a voter, which especially affected the ability to recruit high school and college students for voter registration drives.
“The law contributed to this culture of fear in our elections and being a person who registers voters," said Stephanie Gomez, the group’s political director.
Republicans in Kansas overrode a veto by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly to pass a bill that made it a felony if anyone registering voters impersonated or was assumed to impersonate an election official.
That forced Loud Light Kansas, a voter outreach group that focuses on minority communities, to stop its registration efforts. Would-be voters typically perceived their staff and volunteers as election workers even when told otherwise, said Anita Alexander, the organization's vice president.
“We’re trying to engage impacted people, but we weren’t willing to risk anyone getting charged by doing voter engagement work," she said.
Loud Light and other local voter registration groups sued the Legislature. The Democratic governor said there has been no evidence in the state of widespread voter fraud or instances of individuals impersonating election officials.
In Missouri, the state chapter of the League of Women Voters and the Missouri State Conference of the NAACP sued after the state enacted wide-ranging election legislation in 2022.
Among other things, the new law bans compensation for those who register voters and requires that anyone who helps more than 10 people register must also register with the secretary of state’s office and be a voter themselves. Violators can face criminal penalties.
The completed secretary of state’s forms are public, which presents a privacy concern for many people who might otherwise want to help with voter registration efforts, said Denise Lieberman, director and general counsel of the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition.
“Historically, when those membership lists have been obtained, they’ve been used to intimidate. So, there’s a lot of trepidation, especially in groups that are targeting low-income or communities of color,” she said. “If you just want to volunteer for one hour on a Saturday morning to help out on your college campus or on an Earth Day or anything, you have to go through this whole process.”
The Missouri law is on hold while the legal challenge plays out, with a trial set for August.
Voting rights experts expect to see continued attempts to restrict voting and the activities of voter outreach groups in Republican-controlled states, said Megan Bellamy, vice president of law and policy at the Voting Rights Lab.
"The effort to target third-party voter registration groups is just, unfortunately, one of many policy areas that state legislatures are moving to address,” she said.
___
The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14