The Purge is Coming
A couple of weeks ago, we addressed impending voter purging in the form of Trump's Election Integrity Commission. Here we review and follow-up on the latest.
A refresher on the commission: After losing the popular vote, Trump used his shortcomings to lie about voter fraud, ad nauseam, and set the stage for a nationwide attempt at voter suppression. After peddling his lie as the truth, he established a voter suppression dream-team - Kris Kobach (who has a long history of outright lying about voter fraud to keep minorities and Democrats from voting), J. Christian Adams, Ken Blackwell, and Hans von Spakovsky - aka the Election "Integrity" Commission.
The group, which had it's first meeting yesterday, is off to a rocky start. And while we all admired the moxie of states that spurned the commission, the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued an even more disturbing request that flew under the radar.
On the same day the commission issued requests, the DOJ issued letters to 44 states demanding that they verify compliance with a single provision of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act; this provision specifies when voters can be dumped from rolls. It would be one thing if the DOJ looked at one or two states to investigate compliance, but this moves indicates that the DOJ is gearing up to facilitate a nationwide voter purge. The scary part is that the DOJ has the expertise and resources to make it happen.
Indeed, another member of Trumps voter suppression team, J. Christian Adams, has written the playbook on using litigation to have minority and Democratic voters purged from the rolls, and his former team is still at it.
It seems that Trump's voter suppression strategy is two-fold: use the commission to gut the 1993 NVRA and make it harder for the poor and minorities to both register and vote AND use the DOJ to facilitate mass purges.
So how can we stop this attack on voters? See action below
What you can do1. CALL your US Representative, Senators and State Representatives (you can find them all here) and tell them to oppose Trump's Voter Suppression agenda being carried out by the DOJ and his sham commission, established based on lies about voter fraud.
Capitol Switchboard 202-224-3121
USE THIS SCRIPT (feel free to ad-lib, of course)
I am calling as a voter to insist that you safeguard my personal information and do not turn over voter information to the federal Kobach-Pense Commission. That Commission, premised on the lie of rampant illegal voting, is nothing more than a partisan attempt to manipulate our voting processes to make it harder for eligible Americans to vote. Furthermore this request by the DOJ seems to be a dangerous coordinated effort with the commission to purge voters. Please issue a statement refusing to comply and call out the DOJ request for what it is - a true danger to our most basic American right to vote.