It's voter suppression for now. It will be voter intimidation next.
Battle over Republican subpoena for voter information escalates in PA
You have no doubt heard that last week the Republican-controlled Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee in Pennsylvania voted along party lines to subpoena a barge-load of personal information from the state’s 7 million voters. The subpoena is intended to be used in another one of these so-called “forensic audits” of the 2020 presidential vote like the one that is just now concluding nearly a year after last year’s election in Arizona.
The information sought from the office of the Secretary of State, which oversees Pennsylvania elections, includes the names of who voted in last year’s presidential election, their birth dates, addresses, driver’s license numbers, and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro filed a suit in state court today against Senate Republicans in an effort to stop their subpoenas as an unconstitutional violation of voters’ privacy rights. Trying to explain why Republicans are seeking the private information of the state’s voters, the chairman of the committee which issued the subpoena, Republican Chris Dush from Jefferson County, claimed that Republican senators’ phone lines had been “flooded” with calls from voters who were “concerned” about election integrity. They issued the subpoena, he said, “because there have been questions regarding the validity of people who have voted and whether or not they exist. We are not responding to proven allegations. We are investigating the allegations to determine whether or not they are factual.”
In other words, they’re just asking questions about the questions that have been raised by the loser of that election.
The committee chairman refused to say what his committee intended to do with all the information they have subpoenaed about Pennsylvania voters, how they will handle the information, or who they will give it to. In Arizona, the senate committee conducting its 10-month long “forensic audit” hired an outside contractor from Florida called “Cyber Ninjas” to handle the state election records. “Cyber Ninjas” had no background in election security, had never conducted an audit, and had close ties to Republicans in Florida and elsewhere who supported Donald Trump’s allegation that the election “was stolen” from him. As the Arizona “audit” progressed, it developed that “Cyber Ninjas” was being paid with private funds raised from prominent Republican political donors the state senate refused to identify.
State Senator Dush said he couldn’t guarantee that outside contractors hired to go through voter records wouldn’t have connections to political parties or candidates, but that the vendors would be “well vetted.”
Dush and Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman visited Arizona to observe the “forensic audit” and met with the president of “Cyber Ninjas,” the contractor that had been so well vetted by the senate in that state.
I have a prediction I’m going to make about where these “forensic audits” by Republicans are headed. So far, they want voter names, ID information including partial Social Security numbers, addresses, and birth dates. The next thing they’ll be asking for is what party voters belong to, and after that, they will come up with some way to issue subpoenas that will seek to identify who people vote for.
They are engaged in an all-out nation-wide campaign of voter suppression for now. When they discover the limitations of simply making voting more difficult, they’re going to try voter intimidation, and when that isn’t enough, they’re going to go after pressuring people to vote their way, or else. It’s not going to take long for them to ban candidates from the ballot like Putin does in Russia.
We already know they believe the 14th Amendment to the Constitution does not guarantee a right to privacy in your doctor’s office or they wouldn’t be seeking to overturn Roe v. Wade. If you don’t have the right to the privacy of your own body, how long is it going to take them to attack the privacy of the voting booth?
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I wouldn't put anything past these guys. They are no different than the people in third world countries who plot ways to gain permanent power. No scruples, no ethical standards at all and certainly no sense of decency. I fully expected the sham audit jn Arizona to yield a so called win for Trump. yet if the following is true I will be totally amazed. It would mean these guys are actually honest? What a lovely surprise that will be. The review widens Biden's victory margin by 360 votes.
"Maricopa County, Arizona, said Thursday that a draft report from a company in a contentious, partisan review of November's election has confirmed the winners.
The "draft report from Cyber Ninjas confirms the county's canvass of the 2020 General Election was accurate and the candidates certified as the winners did, in fact, win," Maricopa County tweeted Thursday night.
Cyber Ninjas is the Florida-based cybersecurity company leading an effort by Republicans to audit the 2020 presidential election in the Arizona.
The review grew out of Arizona Republican lawmakers' efforts to toss out President Joe Biden's victory in November, and the state and the county have been targeted by those who falsely believe the presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.
Maricopa County did not release the draft.
NBC affiliate KPNX of Phoenix said that it obtained a copy of the report and that the review widens Biden's victory margin by 360 votes.
Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, a Republican who ordered the election review, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday night. She told KPNX that "we will all find out tomorrow" about the contents of the report, but said "there is a lot of information you all need to see."
The findings are scheduled to be released Friday in the state Senate.
The Republican party is the party of sore losers who want to make sure they can lock out anyone who they don't want to vote.
I hope the lawsuit filed against them will shut them down-because once they get that information, the next thing they'll be knocking on one's door and telling one that if you don't vote for them, you'll lose your job, your house and your family. Especially if you're not the right color to them.
I'm not kidding. Not only are they sore losers, they love to blackmail and intimidate people into doing what they want, like in the south...where I'm sure there are a lot of black people who can remember the same thing going on a long time ago..or doesn't it still happen?