The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Whites Woke to Gaming Ballot Boxes Since 1865

    By NCD on Sat, 10/10/2020 - 12:57pm |

    Ballot box gaming is as old as the Civil War era, 14/15 Amendment, right to vote for all citizens, including freed slaves.

    Well armed Confederate veterans and politicians in the former slave states placed the ballot boxes in a store or property owned by fellow white supremacists.  If a freedman in 1870 tried to drop a ballot at a white controlled box, often the only one in the district, they were threatened with arson of their homes, or murder, by whites stationed to prevent them from voting. see "The Day Freedom Died"

    Ballot box gaming continues now in different, less violent, form by Republican judges.

    Ohio, yesterday, link1, link2:

    Judges Griffin and Thapar sided with LaRose who said that additional ballot drop boxes could create unnecessary security risks. The court struck down claims that limiting drop off boxes was unconstitutional on the basis of impeding voting rights saying the move caused “at most an inconvenience to a subset of voters.” 

    The ruling means that the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections will not be able to go forward with its plans to install ballot drop off  boxes at staffed locations in six county libraries,

    The federal appeals court is now the highest court to have gotten a piece of the case, and gave LaRose — and his Republican allies in the case, including President Donald Trump's campaign and the Republican National Committee — a victory.

    Comments

    Republicans do not like large numbers of people voting.


    by rmrd0000 on Sat, 10/10/2020 - 4:46pm

    GOP/FL court block voters 


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 10/12/2020 - 1:13am

    150 years since the Enforcement Acts. The power at any price Party still gaming hate, decency, the law, the truth and democracy to hold onto unaccountable power.

    The Enforcement Acts were three bills passed by the United States Congress between 1870 and 1871. They were criminal codes that protected African-Americans' right to vote.......


    by NCD on Mon, 10/12/2020 - 8:51am

    except for that "The power at any price Party" somewhere switched from Democrat to Republican somewhere along the line...

    Enforcement act would have been passed by Republicans.

    And even then it all depends upon what you mean by "power" as  people against Reconstruction laws were basically fighting against Federal power and the preferences of wealthy powerful urban business people in the north.

    I guess I'm just not buying what you are trying to say, that it's a continuous unbroken political party line for 150 years, convince me. I see pandering to different demographics switching around. A lot! So much that someone like George Wallace became an Independent, felt he had nowhere to go.

    Edit to add: Currently it would actually be very beneficial to get a better narrative going on this whole thing, as it's very common for anti-Trump Republicans to scream "but we're the party of Lincoln!", hence names like "The Lincoln Project" and yelling about getting their party back from the hooligans who hijacked it. That's the main meme you need to fight, they are not going to buy that they are one solid line from 1870, to them that was the Democrats who were ignorant southern agrarians and they, the Republicans, were the free trading globalist Yankees fighting them. Yadda yadda


    by artappraiser on Wed, 10/14/2020 - 8:37pm

    Lincoln was a Republican. Republicans passed the 13, 14, 15 Amendments. Then the Enforcement Acts, which were sent to oblivion by the Supreme Court, which still in fact had Dred Scott judge(s).

    The crash of 1873 hurt President Grant and Republicans, northerners tired of stationing troops in the Deep South. Blacks actually outnumbered whites in some states, SC, but were soon disenfranchised by white authorities, and terror when federal protection by the US Army ceased.

    "Power" meant whites denying blacks the vote and political power. By the 1880s reconstruction was dead. White power and Democrats were so !inked for so long liberal FDR dared not threaten it. Katznelson, on FDR's solid support in the Deep South, from "Fear Itself":

    "Remarkable in his reelection of 1936 was the degree of support he (FDR) secured across the Deep South. Roosevelt's reelection was endorsed by 87% of voters in Alabama, Georgia and Texas, 89% in Louisiana, and an astonishing 97% in Mississippi and 99% in South Carolina, where some counties reported not one Republican vote."

    Johnson's Civil Rights Act flipped the Deep South racists to the Republicans, as Republicans welcomed them with racist dog whistles,  Willie Horton etc.  Now GOP racism is a fog horn with Trump and the white haters love it.

    So now the Republicans game ballots and ballot boxes not (yet) with guns, but with scarcity, fraud accusations,  and the courts. Racism is the thread that binds.


    by NCD on Wed, 10/14/2020 - 10:52pm

    Ballot gaming, 1870's style. The dead can't vote. A still standing monument in Louisiana.

    .

    Historians aren’t sure how many people died in the end, but while records show that the massacre resulted in the deaths of three white men, it's estimated that anywhere from 60 to 150 African-Americans were killed.

    “The bloodiest single instance of racial carnage in the Reconstruction era, the Colfax massacre taught many lessons, including the lengths to which some opponents of Reconstruction would go to regain their accustomed authority,” historian Eric Foner.... link

    A trial and conviction of the killers in New Orleans for a federal offense under the 15th Amendment of preventing the victims from ever voting again was thrown out by the US Supreme Court, on the grounds that the  US Attorney for Louisiana, James Beckwith, did not prove the white supremacists killed the blacks because of their race.


    by NCD on Wed, 10/14/2020 - 6:27pm


    by artappraiser on Wed, 10/14/2020 - 11:11pm

    ^ I don't know what good it will do, but I for one like Zach's short and sweet spin on it. wink


    by artappraiser on Wed, 10/14/2020 - 11:14pm


    by artappraiser on Thu, 10/15/2020 - 1:10am

    Five Thirty Eight doing a big tracking project too:


    by artappraiser on Thu, 10/15/2020 - 1:40am

    Democrats could try to tie highway or other funds to basic common sense rules on ballot boxes. But the Trump courts would likely rule them unconstitutional, "authority not granted in Constitution, state's rights". Trump courts are already flushing health emergency regulations, 200 years old-since the days of yellow fever quarantines in NYC etc. then it was "health of the people is most important goal of government."

    We can't wait 40 years for a court that will allow progressive, necessary legislation and regulations to meet the challenges of this century. This is not 1965 ot 1870 where we waited or are still waiting 50 or a hundred years for action without endless litigation. Legislation or policy blocked by one or a few arrogant fossils on the Supreme Court putting culture wars over all else (Amy Covid Barrett "I have heard of climate but I'm not a scientist, I'm a textualist.")


    by NCD on Thu, 10/15/2020 - 12:52pm

    Wisconsin can't handle the pandemic but they do seem to have figured one of these problems out:


    by artappraiser on Fri, 10/16/2020 - 3:51pm

    In case it's of interest, here's on what some of those old tyme ballots looked like

    Bureaucratic but not boring: exhibition explores the visual history of US election ballots

    With early voting already underway in the 2020 presidential election, a show at New York's Cooper Union reveals the "power of design in our civic process"

    By GABRIELLA ANGELETI @ theartnewspaper.com, 16th October 2020 19:35 BST

     

     

     


    by artappraiser on Fri, 10/16/2020 - 8:14pm

    All that aside, a little nudge from a Yale history professor:


    by artappraiser on Fri, 10/16/2020 - 9:33pm

    I see there's also this sermon if one prefers that to a lecture.


    by artappraiser on Fri, 10/16/2020 - 10:06pm

    Talk is good, but supplies are essential


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 10/17/2020 - 12:15am

    Absentee ballots not shipping

    https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5f8a4bbfc5b62dbe71c2dcc8


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 10/17/2020 - 11:38am

    Ex-GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger slams California Republican Party

    Video 1.31 minutes, CNN Tonight with Don Lemon. Oct. 16

    In a conversation with CNN's Don Lemon, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger blasted the California Republican Party, which said it will not comply with the state's cease-and-desist order over unofficial ballot drop boxes placed in at least four counties. 


    by artappraiser on Sun, 10/18/2020 - 2:23pm

    good one, gets ya thinking what in the end really does the most damage:


    by artappraiser on Mon, 10/19/2020 - 7:01pm


    by artappraiser on Mon, 10/19/2020 - 7:08pm

    Ballots on fire

    1st fake ballot boxes, then arson

    Crazy, immoral year

    But winning's everything, right Trumpers?

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/19/la-drop-box-fire-ballots...


    by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 10/20/2020 - 3:06am

    Polling 2020 style

    (almost all pollsters adapting to a largely disastrous, even tho largely accurate, 2016. But what if Trump/Russia/Cambridge Analytica/ballot companies simply cheated? How do you model that? "X Dem-leaning ballots will be deleted in these precincts...")


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 10/22/2020 - 2:18am


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 10/22/2020 - 4:55am

    Secret Supreme Court motions


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 10/22/2020 - 4:56am

    That cranks like Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch have some dictatorial omniscience on what is Constitutional is a huge impediment to progress, can set back necessary action/reforms decades or even centuries.

    All judges and all lawmakers in the nation take an oath to defend the Constitution, there is no monopoly on it especially with our ideologically regressive politicized courts. it's why the courts must be balanced ASAP, or we will be breathing smoky air, enduring increasing oligarchy and inequality, and treading water in rising seas for the next 50 years.


    by NCD on Thu, 10/22/2020 - 9:03am

    2016 anti-voter effort (click for even more)
    Why was Manafort passing polling info to the Russians?
    Why were those servers passing data between Alfa Bank & Trump & elsewhere?






    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 10/22/2020 - 3:25pm

    Florida is the origin and national home base of every crook, idiot, shyster, fool, scam, right wing crackpot and experimental territory for GOP system gaming, I have no hope Biden will come out on top there, even if his vote total exceeds Trump.


    by NCD on Thu, 10/22/2020 - 4:52pm

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Man

    https://filmdaily.co/news/florida-man-memes/


    by artappraiser on Thu, 10/22/2020 - 5:15pm

    Omar is pretty much part of the anti-wokee intellectual club, but he does know real racist history as well:

     


    by artappraiser on Thu, 10/22/2020 - 6:55pm

    A rather anachronistic take in the electoral college.

    First, the cotton gin wasn't invented til 1793, quite after the 1787 Constitutional Convention, and indeed slave population decrease up to 1790, and the bigger cotton *territories* weren't even settled til after 1800. So it's unlikely the Founding Fathers in 1787 envisioned the cotton behemoth of 1850.

    https://userpages.umbc.edu/~bouton/History407/SlaveStats.htm

    Second, presidents were chosen by states, not voters - as were Senators til the 17th Amendment. So treating early voting as a way to disenfranchise specific voters ignores the whole context - there was no massive national GOTV effort - the whole system was much more representational, i.e. funneled thru representatives even in selection stage (and it's hard to imagine the practical logistics of a 13-colonies-long direct vote on election day back in pre-steam society.)

    Third, women couldn't vote either. They counted as 5/5th a person, true, but their male relatives had to do the deciding for them till 1919 or so, and women's property rights weren't even settled til 1960-1980 range. Why we turn a blind eye to gender Injustice in all these discussions, as if it's normal that the female half didn't vote now let's talk about blacks - is a bit bizarre but unsurprising in #MeToo era. (yes, a female black would be nonvoting 3/5, and a female white would be non-voting 5/5, and not sure if Cherokee and Choctaw counted at all, nor Chinese)


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 10/22/2020 - 7:32pm

    A clearer way to state it, after 1988, the Democrats won all 7 subsequent presidential elections, by popular vote, except one, 2004.

    Another point: the political power of Deep South white supremacists post-Civil War was expanded nationally. With Jim Crow, blacks still couldn't vote, but for allotting congressional representation,  blacks were now worth 5/5 not 3/5 of a person...!


    by NCD on Thu, 10/22/2020 - 11:29pm


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 10/30/2020 - 3:09am