fair fight

Election Connection

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Why This Election is Like No Other

If you’ve watched this space for any length of time, you have seen the call to vote in this once in a lifetime, critical election several times since 2016. It is hard to believe that all of these elections are the most important one in your life. I am sad to say that they are.

For many people, more than you may realize, the outcome of this election is important not only to their well-being, but to their very lives.

Dramatic, I know.

  • But tell that to kids who are being taught BOTH SIDES of the Holocaust.
  • Tell that to kids trying to read The Diary of Anne Frank in Oklahoma, but being told it’s banned due to its being a “graphic” novel. The folks doing the banning think it’s graphic, as in adult when it’s actually really a bound comic book.
  • Tell that to transgender youth who see no way apart from suicide.
  • Tell that to women who have and will die IN HOSPITALS (with doctors beside them) from treatable emergencies because of new anti-abortion/anti-women laws.
  • Tell that to kids and adults with rheumatoid arthritis who can’t get their medication because regardless of their future plans, they are of child-bearing age and can’t get their regular medicine because it MIGHT cause a miscarriage.
  • Tell that to married couples who can’t get birth control because a pharmacist doesn’t agree with contraception. This has already happened recently.
  • And all of this is in addition to the Insurrection on January 6th that this country as yet to come to grips with. Many of the insurrectionists are still SERVING in Congress.

Video was released just last week of Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi on the phone with then-Vice President Pence discussing what was going on in the Capitol. She was telling him to be safe while the President of the United States was encouraging a mob to “find” him. In the room witnessing this were GOP (Republican) leadership who subsequently went out and denounced her for not doing enough. I’m speaking specifically of Rep. Steve Scalise of LA and others. He knew she was taking care of business and lied, trying to blame her for not calling the National Guard, which she is legally not authorized to do.

That is the real problem with today’s elected Republicans. They lie. They’ve lied about things they’ve witnessed, things we’ve seen on video, things we know to be true. If this is their demeanor when we see the lies, what are they saying about things we don’t know first hand?

Have you watched the debate between Georgia Senator, Rev. Raphael Warnock and his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker? It is no exaggeration to say that Walker is barely intelligible. His past and his lies about his past are disqualifying. And in polls, they’re tied.

The hit-job they’re doing on John Fetterman against carpetbagger, Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania is reprehensible. Yes, Fetterman had a stroke and is in recovery, but anyone can see that his cognitive function (and physical for that matter) is equal to what it was before. They refer to his accommodation of using closed captions during interviews as if they don’t use teleprompters or that perhaps they feel the deaf and hard of hearing should be excluded from running from office.

The Supreme Court is outdated, and that’s the least of its problems. It would not be hyperbole to say that two of the nine justices are sitting in stolen seats. Three of those Justices were appointed by a man who tried to and fortunately failed to stage a coup and overthrow the government. This has been painfully shown over and over again through witness testimony under oath to Congress. Most of those witnesses are lifelong Republicans.

I’m begging you: Vote Democratic across the board, from dog catcher to US Senator. We need to hold the House and expand the Senate, not to mention Governors and local legislatures.

We need to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, which would protect elections from voter suppression, gerrymandering, and the continuing sabotage of insurrectionists.
The bipartisan January 6th committee showed us how things could be if honest people work together.

Visit Vote Save America and see what you can do in your region to help save America. Everything begins with voting and free and fair elections.

Other sites to visit and support include:
Fair Fight
Democracy Docket
ACLU
When We All Vote
Vote dot Org

We have 20 days to get it done. Let’s get it done!

Election Connection 2022

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There are exactly forty-three (43) weeks until the next Election Day. This is the mid-terms and we need to keep the House AND the Senate. We have slim majorities in both, and we are already seeing how Senate MINORITY Leader Mitch McConnell has been abusing his power. We need to make Joe Manchin one of one hundred instead of THE ONE who can capsize what the majority of us want for this country and our families.

Yes, this is a mid-term election, but regardless, there are NO OFF YEARS. We need to get in it and STAY in it.

Check out the links below to see what you can do NOW!

NOTE: In the Pennsylvania Senate race, I am not endorsing either candidate, but giving you information and the websites of both candidates who I am familiar with. Both have government experience in local and state positions.

Vote Save America

Vote Save America: No Off Years

Democracy Docket

Fair Fight

Beto O’Rourke for Governor of Texas

Stacey Abrams for Governor of Georgia

Ohio Senate Candidate: Tim Ryan, currently Representative in the House of Representatives

PA Senate Candidate: John Fetterman, currently Lt. Governor of PA

PA Senate Candidate: Malcolm Kenyatta, currently Representative in the PA General Assembly

Election Day is Tuesday, November 8, 2022

Election Connection – Election Day 2022

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Election Day is in 49 Days!

Make a plan to vote.

RIGHT NOW!

We need to ensure that we get every seat we can in order to accomplish the American people’s agenda. Voting Rights. Reproductive Rights. End gerrymandering. Equal Justice. a non-partisan Supreme Court.

We can do it together. Let’s go.

Some places to get you started:

Vote Save America

Vote Save America: No Off Years

Democracy Docket

Fair Fight

Election Connection – Voter Reform NOW

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Visit these websites and keep the vote free and fair for EVERYONE.

Stop Jim Crow 2

Brennan Center – Voter Reform

Fair Fight

Vote Save America

Democracy Docket

Election Connection: Voter Suppression

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Across this country, at least 43 states have over 250 laws proposed by Republicans to limit voting access (source: ACLU mailing), and these predominantly negatively affect minorities and lower income voters.

One of these bills that recently became law in Georgia is SB202, and when asked in Congressional committee about what it does, Stacey Abrams was cut off by Senator John Kennedy (R-LA), so she released a video on Twitter that explained it.

We cannot rest while Republicans continue to keep eligible voters from casting their ballots. Voting is a right and should be accessible to all eligible voters.

Follow Democracy Docket for more legal challenges to these proposals and laws as well as Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight.

The below video of Stacey Abrams is a good example of the preconceived notions and misinformation that GOP lawmakers accept even when experts in voter suppression are willing to explain the situation to them. They just don’t accept it, and are willing to dismiss the voting rights of people unlike themselves (ie. middle class white men).

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Election Connection: Voting Rights

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I thought on November 3rd that this series would be retired.

And then Republicans in Congress went off the rails. They took every conspiracy theory, every half-baked piece of nonsense, and tried to overturn the legal election.

How do people who coined themselves the Tea Party after the original throw-British-tea-in-the-river protesters and become the seditionists and treasonous anti-democratic rioters?

After that, their supporters marched to the Capitol and breached security, injuring over 140 police officers, killing one, directly causing the suicide of two other officers. Four other rioters died in the process. The FBI is still investigating, arresting, and jailing those seditionists.

Meanwhile in Georgia, state Republicans are attempting to pass laws to suppress voters going forward in the future.

We will need to remain engaged in order to keep the fragile democracy we have. We need a larger majority in both Houses if we want to continue to help the American people.

What follows is a starting place for following people who know what they’re doing and what they’re talking about. Please add your own suggestions in the comments.

Marc E. Elias

Democracy Docket

Department of Justice

Dept. of Justice Twitter

Ari Berman

Stacey Abrams

Fair Fight

Vote Save America

Dan Pfeiffer

Dan Pfeiffer’s The Message Box

Election Connection – Georgia Runoff – Why You Should Care About Georgia

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Living in New York, why do I care about a runoff election in Georgia? And more importantly, why should you care?

Two words, one hashtag: #MoscowMitch

Mitch McConnell, Senator of Kentucky and overall partisan hypocrite.

I know, I know, I shouldn’t start out with calling names, but believe me there are much worse that would be applicable that I am refraining from. He has no conscience. He has no shame.

We came out, 80 million + of us and we sent a clear message that we want the Trump Administration and its policies gone. G-O-N-E. With the amount of votes and the states that flipped from 2016 and especially the states flipping that have been Republican strongholds for years, Arizona and Georgia, it is clear that Republican tactics and policies have been rejected out of hand.

Currently, Senator McConnell is the Majority Leader in the Senate. He has single handedly halted legislation in Congress.

The House of Representatives have passed laws for the past two years – hundred of laws – and sent them to the Senate. Mitch McConnell decides what is brought to the floor for debate and to be voted on. He’s brought nearly none of them. Not voting rights, not covid survival checks for struggling American citizens, not state and local government monies to offset their covid spending for police and fire, not money for testing and PPE.

All Mitch McConnell does is confirm judges, most of them unqualified as determined by the American Bar Association. Many of them with less experience than anyone else on the bench. Mitch McConnell blocked most of President Obama’s agenda including judges and one Supreme Court justice.

On the night that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, Mitch McConnell was communicating his intention to confirm a “replacement” justice as soon as possible despite the election coming in mere weeks.

He cried in saying farewell to fellow Senator Lamar Alexander who is retiring and has yet to say any words of condolence for the almost 300,000 Americans who have died during the pandemic this year from covid.

He tells his followers that he doesn’t want to “bail out blue states” while ignoring the reality that the blue states bail out the red states each and every year, and blue states receive less in federal aid than Republican run states.

To put it simply, Mitch McConnell is despicable.

He has already said that he will block Biden’s choices for judges and any Supreme Court justices that are nominated. He will not advance for vote any Cabinet confirmation who he doesn’t agree with.

In other words, McConnell will single-handedly hamstring the Biden Administration that the majority of the country has voted for, has spoken in favor of.

President-elect Biden and Vice-President-elect Harris have been given a mandate to get this country on track and to be better; to move away from corporate welfare and debilitating trade wars and help the people in this country who desperately need the help. They can begin to address the racial disparity that’s been built into our system since its founding.

All that is for naught without the Senate though.

As of this writing (a few days before publishing), 126 House Republicans, 17 Republican Attorneys General, and untold numbers of GOP Senators have signed on, either by name or by silent complicity in attempting to overthrow the will of the people, to have the courts intercede and throw out the election with lies of nonexistent voter fraud and disinformation.

However, we have a chance to nip this un-American, unpatriotic behavior in the bud: if we win the two Senate seats in the Georgia runoff happening on January 5, 2021 and you can help even if you don’t live in Georgia and can’t personally vote for Jon Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock.

Money is still needed.

Volunteers are still needed – for phone calls, for texts, for transporting voters to the polls on January 5th.

We also need to remind people that when they go to the polls during early voting beginning on December 14 (yesterday) and finishing on January 5th, they need to vote for BOTH Warnock and Ossoff. If they are BOTH elected to the Senate, the Senate will be tied 50-50, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will be the deciding vote and the Democrats will control the agenda.

Start by going to Vote Save America’s Georgia Page. It will give you all the information you need to get started in volunteering, in getting out the information, and in getting out the vote.

Next week, I will talk about the current Georgia’s Senators’ blatant corruption.

Vote Save America – Georgia Runoff

Jon Ossoff

Rev. Raphael Warnock

Fair Fight

Election Connection: Georgia Runoff – Registration Deadline is Tomorrow

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IMPORTANT DATES:

Last Day to Register is TOMORROW. Go here for information and to register. 

First Day of Early Voting: December 14

Runoff Election Voting: January 5, 2021

Helpful Links:

New Georgia Project

Fair Fight

Black Voters Matter

Jon Ossoff

Reverend Raphael Warnock

Vote Save America – Adopt Georgia

Vote Save America – Donate

Choose between these two Vote Save America Funds:

Get Mitch or Die Trying – money is divided between Ossoff, Warnock, and Fair Fight

Every Last Vote – money is divided between on the ground orgs in Georgia who work year round.

Election Connection: Georgia Senate Runoff

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One week and one day ago was Election Day. I was under the impression that this series would conclude on that day, but it is 2020, and 2020 doesn’t allow us to simply move forward. It’s been an obstacle course since the beginning of the year.

While Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have won the Presidency and have already begun their transition despite Trump Administration obstacles, we still have a chance to take control of the Senate.

Control of the Senate will ensure that President Elect Biden can choose his own cabinet and pass laws that support his policy priorities without obstruction from current Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. He obstructed much of President Obama’s two terms, and all he cares about is his own power.

We need to get behind Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff who are the two Democratic candidates running in each of the two Georgia Senate runoffs.

Start with Fair Fight, Stacey Abrams organization. More information will be coming next week.

In the meantime, read this Vox article on Sen. David Perdue’s racism and this Judd Legum Twitter thread about Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s corruption.

Both Perdue and Loeffler used the covid pandemic to make money through their stocks instead of helping their constituents get through the health epidemic.

Do your research and help get Warnock and Ossoff into the Senate and Democratic control.

NEW SERIES: Election Connection

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Beginning today, each Tuesday, I will have a post related to the upcoming election. It will focus primarily on the Presidential race, but will also include important local and state races. As we saw in 2018 and 2019, all elections have consequences. We saw in 2016 what complacency and disinformation can do, not to mention foreign interference. We have forty-three (43) weeks until Election Day. It’s a lot less time than it feels right now. As I write this, we are on the cusp of another unnecessary war by an unfit and incompetent President. We cannot let him be re-elected. He does not represent the values that we espouse as Americans and the values we try to raise our children with. Everything he claims to be is a lie, and we need to continue to call out those lies; not just his directly, but all of his surrogates, supporters, and enablers. Voters may still like him and want him as President, and that’s their decision to make and to live with, but we can’t let them continue to lie and to gaslight the rest of us. As a journalist on Twitter reminded me the other day, there are more of us; we are the majority.

You’re probably wondering what you can do in the next 43 weeks?

I hope to share some ideas and advice with you between now and November 3rd.

First, are you registered? If you’re answer is ‘no’ or ‘I don’t know,’ find out and get registered. Right now. I’ll wait.

Second, visit Stacey Abrams organization, Fair Fight 2020 and find a way that you can help ensure that everyone who is entitled to vote will be able to vote and that their votes will not be suppressed. In all likelihood, Stacey Abrams would be governor of Georgia right now if not for the Republican candidate’s voter suppression efforts. He was the Secretary of State for Georgia and made the election rules including where and when polling places would be open, what kind of identification is acceptable, and whether or not and when to certify the election. He is now the Governor. Election fraud and voter suppression hurts everyone.

If you have any ideas to share for voter protection, please put them in the comments.