Florida Voter Suppression Part IV of many–Gerrymandering
Gerrymandering, How We (Finally) Got Here I’m married to a lovely human who was raised and taught to believe that Republicans represented his economic, if not his human, interests. And I’m not gonna lie, it nearly broke us. He didn’t vote for he who must not be named, but he did vote for a unicorn in 2016. And we couldn’t engage around politics at all for months (which in practical terms meant we barely spoke) until it became clear to him that what was playing out on the National stage wasn’t just absurd but was truly and deeply dangerous. In …
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Voter ID, Part 3 of many in a series on voter supression
Let’s start here: When only white people could vote, nobody thought folks needed Voter ID. Everyone showed up at their local precinct, and the volunteers there recognized them, or at least sort of. It was “close enough for government work”, right? But then other citizens were granted access, and who knows who the hell these people are? So now we needed a system, rules, protocols, red tape, poll taxes. How many jellybeans are in the jar? The whole deal. Looking back on it is as embarrassing as hell Folks who don’t drive are required to get driver’s licenses or state …
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Voter Suppression in Florida Part 2: Vote by Mail
As we’ve said, voter suppression in Florida works in many ways, its wonders to behold–many of them contradictory. This is nowhere as true as with Vote by Mail (VBM), which has been available for every Florida voter, with no need for an excuse, since 2001. And to be really clear, VBM is the same thing as Absentee Voting, despite the protestations of a twice-impeached former POTUS. It works fine, and because these are hand-marked paper ballots, they are much less likely to be hacked than ballots fed into voting machines that are connected to the internet. As the system is …
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The Many Faces of Voter Suppression in Florida, Part I of Many
At the end of a longish dinner with a couple we generally enjoy a couple of years ago, the woman, who is a vocal Republican said “I don’t understand how voter suppression works.” We had already paid the check, and I was pretty sure that this not understanding thing was intentional, so I let it slide. But honestly, in Florida, it is sometimes easy to be confused by this. The Florida ruling minority is sometimes very good at enforcing their one-party rule, and sometimes very dumb at it. It’s honestly amazing they’ve kept it going for 20-some odd years. Some …
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