Category Archives: Elections & Voting

Inside the Arizona right-wing election ‘fraudit’

Trump’s agents produce more propaganda, not proof. Meanwhile, outside auditors are poised to release more evidence of the election’s accuracy.

Two competing efforts to assess the accuracy of Arizona’s 2020 presidential election results have reached dramatic turning points as July began. An effort led by Republican state senators and pro-Trump activists has erupted in a new wave of false claims about the presidential election results. Meanwhile, an outside effort led by experienced election auditors was poised to release the most detailed factual data yet by which the integrity of the election could be assessed. Continue reading

Supreme Court guts what’s left of the Voting Rights Act

WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court early Thursday morning gutted the little that is left of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by upholding two racist election laws enacted in the 2020 battleground state of Arizona that make it much more difficult for minorities in that state to vote. Continue reading

As Republicans stall election reform in the U.S. Senate, democracy comes under greater strain

Both parties are vying to change who votes and how ballots are cast.

For now, the U.S. Senate Republicans have blocked sweeping election reform. They argued that America’s elections are not in crisis and are best run by rules set by states. Meanwhile, in capitals across battleground states, numerous Republican legislators have been claiming elections face numerous threats and have passed dozens of laws, the most aggressive of which curtail voting options, newly police the process, and empower party loyalists at post-Election Day counting stages. Continue reading

As Arizona wraps up hand count of 2020 ballots, new questions about accuracy arise

The state Senate’s contractors created 15 subtotals. Outside auditors examined 10,341.

The hand count of 2.1 million paper ballots from 2020’s presidential election in Arizona’s most populous county has reached a turning point. Inside Phoenix’s Veterans Memorial Coliseum, the last boxes of ballots—said by observers to hold the final votes that lifted Joe Biden to a 2020 victory in Maricopa County and statewide—have been manually tallied. Continue reading

Global fascists seize on Trump’s election fraud dogma

Fascist candidates around the world have challenged their own electoral losses as the result of “election fraud,” with their parties and supporters using Trumpian language like “Stop the Steal” and “fake election” in attempts to substantiate their groundless claims. Continue reading

Rural teacher Pedro Castillo poised to write a new chapter in Peru’s history

With his wide-brimmed peasant hat and oversized teacher’s pencil held high, Peru’s Pedro Castillo has been traveling the country exhorting voters to get behind a call that has been particularly urgent during this devastating pandemic: “No más pobres en un país rico”—No more poor people in a rich country. In a cliffhanger of an election with a huge urban-rural and class divide, it appears that the rural teacher, farmer and union leader is about to make history by defeating–by less than one percent–powerful far-right candidate Keiko Fujimori, scion of the country’s political “Fujimori dynasty.” Continue reading

Texas Democrats walk off House floor to block ‘one of the ugliest voter suppression bills in the country’

"This is the kind of fight we need from our legislators."

Texas Democrats blocked final passage of a Republican-authored voter suppression bill late Sunday by abruptly walking off the state House floor, denying the chamber’s GOP majority the quorum necessary to proceed to a vote. Continue reading

Arizona analysis shows that many Republicans did not vote for Trump in 2020

At least 75,000 Arizonans voted for Republican candidates, but not for Trump.

About 75,000 Republican-leaning voters in Arizona’s two most populous counties did not vote to re-elect President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, according to an analysis of every vote cast by a longtime Arizona Republican Party election observer and election technologists familiar with vote-counting data. Continue reading

Left says Senate Democrats face existential choice: Kill filibuster or watch democracy die

"This is about to move from an abstract conversation about Senate rules to a very clear choice for Senate Democrats: Protect the 'Jim Crow' filibuster or protect American democracy—they won't be able to do both."

As the Senate Rules Committee convened Tuesday to mark up a sweeping legislative proposal aimed at protecting and expanding voting rights, progressive activists ramped up pressure on the chamber’s Democrats to eliminate an archaic procedural rule that poses a critical threat to the bill’s chances of becoming law. Continue reading

Republicans in Arizona Senate hope to expand 2020 audit as Justice Department may shut it down

A former secretary of state wants a deeper look at digital voting records, but the DOJ appears headed to court saying the exercise violates federal laws.

Arizona’s Republican-led Senate is looking to expand its post-election audit of 2.1 million ballots in the state’s most populous county while Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state and the U.S. Department of Justice appeared headed to federal court to shut down the post-election exercise. Continue reading

Election researchers reveal that flexible voting options boosted 2020 turnout

In the 2020 presidential election, 66 million Americans voted with a mailed-out ballot after most states loosened restrictions on qualifications to vote by mail to make voting safer in the pandemic. Another 36 million people voted in person at an early voting site before Election Day after many states expanded this option. Continue reading

Palestine’s moment of reckoning: On Abbas’ dangerous decision to ‘postpone’ elections

The decision on April 30 by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to ‘postpone’ Palestinian elections, which would have been the first in 15 years, will deepen Palestinian division and could, potentially, signal the collapse of the Fatah Movement, at least in its current form. Continue reading

How to stop Republicans from stealing elections

Republican-controlled state legislatures have introduced over 361 voter suppression bills in 47 states, and some states, like Georgia, have already enacted them into law. Continue reading

The dirty campaign underlying Ecuador’s “free and fair” election

Ecuador’s April 11 election that led to a 5-point victory by conservative banker Guillermo Lasso over progressive candidate Andrés Arauz was not what it appeared to be. On the surface, it was a surprisingly clean and professional election, as our CODEPINK official observer delegation witnessed. But a fraud-free process for casting and counting ballots does not mean that the election was free and fair. Behind the scenes was a monumentally unequal playing field and dirty campaign designed to quash an Arauz win. Continue reading

Our elections are being rigged

Republican lawmakers are stealing our electoral process in broad daylight.

After looking into one of their main issues, I have to agree with Republicans: Our elections are being rigged. Continue reading

The Electoral College is far worse than you think

Majority disenfranchisement isn't its only flaw; it allows fanatical splinter groups to decide elections.

Growing up in a less polarized era, I often heard the conventional wisdom that the Electoral College “has served us well.” To find counterexamples to its reasonableness, you had to go back to the horse and buggy era, and I don’t remember anyone at the time lamenting that Sam Tilden was robbed of the presidency by “Old Eight-to Seven” Rutherford B. Hayes. Continue reading

Who will protect Georgia’s vote count?

The whole world is watching Georgia’s US Senate runoff elections. Set to finish January 5, the elections will decide who controls the balance of power in the pivotal next US Congress. Continue reading

Yes, the election was rigged. No, not like that.

Many (though not nearly all) of my friends on the Republican side of the bipartisan aisle are utterly convinced that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” to produce a fake victory for Joe Biden — that Donald Trump actually won, and had his victory stolen via a vast conspiracy to manufacture false votes and fraudulently switch real ones. Continue reading

Trump got dumped by paper ballots, millennials … and “socialism”

See Trump flail. Continue reading

The petty revenge of a soon-to-be-ex-president

With their pitiful plots to overthrow election results, Trump and the GOP are the lowest.

In Mary L. Trump’s book about her family, “Too Much and Never Enough,” there’s a moment referred to in the index as the “mashed potatoes incident.” Continue reading

Freedom Rider: The real Trump coup

Trump puts whiteness first and that means he will always have support and Republican leaders know it. Continue reading

‘Lindsey Graham must resign’: Outrage grows over GOP senator’s alleged assault on election integrity

Critics called on the Justice Department and various congressional committees to "conduct an immediate and thorough investigation."

As President Donald Trump on Wednesday continued to call his loss to President-elect Joe Biden the result of a “rigged election” without a shred of evidence to support his mounting claims of voter fraud, demands kept piling up for probes—and even the resignation—of Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, in light of his election interference efforts in Georgia. Continue reading

Georgia runoffs: How you can help flip the Senate

The battle for the Senate is far from over. Continue reading

Sen. Graham’s attempt to overturn Georgia results confirm soft coup plans

Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s revelation that Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., pressed him to toss out thousands of valid ballots and urged blocking entire counties from having their mail-in ballots counted at all have raised concern that top GOP lawmakers are in on a plan to try a soft coup denying Joe Biden the presidency he won on Nov. 3. Continue reading

Corporate Democrats are to blame for congressional losses—so naturally they’re blaming progressives

When Rep. Rashida Tlaib talks about "pushing the Democratic Party to represent the communities that elected them," she actually means what she says.

Corporate Democrats got the presidential nominee they wanted, along with control over huge campaign ad budgets and nationwide messaging to implement “moderate” strategies. But, as the Washington Post noted, Joe Biden’s victory “came with no coattails down ballot.” Democratic losses left just a razor-thin cushion in the House, and the party failed to win a Senate majority. Now, corporate Democrats are scapegoating progressives. Continue reading

Why can’t inner-ring Democrats just say ‘no’ to billionaires?

The problem runs even deeper than Donor Class donations.

Have you heard the latest about the strategic political genius of billionaire Michael Bloomberg? Continue reading

Trump is US history’s biggest loser

It’s over!! Continue reading

The biggest loser

Finally, it’s over. Even if we’re concerned about how he’ll depart, if eventually, he’ll leave peacefully or possibly in a straitjacket. And what he might inflict during the remaining days of his tenure. Continue reading

Debunking Trump’s post-election lies

Even though Joe Biden won the highest percentage of the popular vote for any challenger since FDR in 1932, the Trump campaign is fighting in courtrooms across the country in a desperate attempt to overturn the results. Continue reading

It’s not Trump’s country—even in ‘Trump Country’

Progressive ballot initiatives passed handily across the country, even in so-called red states.

Trump may have lost his bid for reelection, but many will still wonder: How has America turned so right-wing that a narcissistic, wannabe-dictator like Trump was even in the running? Continue reading

The frivolous lawsuits of a sore loser

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are indisputably the next president and vice president of the United States. The “Blue Wall,” painted red and shattered by Donald Trump in 2016, has been rebuilt, and as President-Elect Biden, and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris both said in their victory speeches Saturday, Nov. 7: “This is the time to heal in America.” Continue reading

Freedom Rider: The real resistance begins

‘Kamala Auntie’ and Joe from Scranton will do as little as possible so that ‘nothing will fundamentally change’ that would halt endless wars and the Race to the Bottom.

When Pennsylvania announced that Joe Biden won in that state it became clear that he had enough Electoral College votes to become the de facto president-elect. When the news became public, millions of people responded with spontaneous celebrations. There was quite literally dancing in the streets in many cities across the country. The public reaction was unprecedented in its scope and demonstrated the depth of antipathy towards Donald Trump, who is one of the most hated presidents in modern history. Continue reading