GOP voter suppression efforts in Colorado fail and the DOJ sues Georgia ( updated (June July , 2021)

. GOP voter suppression efforts in Colorado fail and the DOJ sued Georgia.. June 25. Joe Biden continued his efforts to deal with GOP voter suppression efforts through his Department of Justice after the Senate defeated the attempt to set federal standards. The attempt in the Senate to get voting rights bills passed failed the week before and the lawsuit was a plan B for the Biden administration. The DOJ announced it was suing Georgia for their legislature passing voting restriction laws, tailor-making them intentionally to make it harder for African Americans and others of certain language groups to vote. Department of Justice sues Georgia over voting law | TheHill. The crux of the suit is to use part of the existing voting rights act prohibiting racial discrimination. (The Supreme Court earlier had declared the part of the act unconstitutional that required any government pre-approval of changes in state voter laws, but the anti-discrimination portion still remains.) The burden for the DOJ is to show that while the new Georgia law applies to everyone, it is aimed at making it harder for African Americans and other minorities to vote and that was the intent of the lawmakers. The DOJ will also give priority to prosecuting threats to the safety of poll watchers paid or volunteers, and state and local officials. Last week Senate Minority Leader Mitch Mcconnell switched gears from denying these kinds of laws like Georgia's were meant to be suppression of minority voters and instead evoked the old "states rights" argument ) that has been used to keep Jim Crow discrimination practices alive until the voting rights laws of the mid-1960s ended that claim. Expect, too, the Big Lie fueling these laws will come up advocated in cases made by the GOP that these restrictive laws were needed because of widespread fraud in 2020. The Big Lie likely would be slapped down in court. Pres. Trump's personal attorney Rudy Guiliani just had his law license suspended for making such false claims in court and in public.

The Georgia voter suppression effort has been replicated to some extent in all states and the repercussion on pending or passed voter restrictions attempts may be significant. Colorado's Democratic-dominated statehouse already beat down an attempt earlier this spring and an attempt to get suppression tactics on the ballot by Initiative 38 in November also failed. June 2, 2021, the State title board denied the petition to put #38 on the ballot on the basis that it was not a single issue...a requirement in Colorado that an initiative could only address one single issue.

Initiative 38 would have ended mail-in voting in Colorado and require fingerprinting to get a voter registration card, requiring a person to vote in person, end drop boxes. It would have done away with the mail-in voting system in effect since 2013. This initiative would break whatever is considered one of the most fraud-free, largest voter participation systems in the US.

 https://news.yahoo.com/gops-main-voter-bloc-shrinking-153954578.html

That last sentence is particularly interesting.  If the GOP's most solid voter block is over 75, the more the GOP makes it harder to vote by mail, the more that block's ability to vote is suppressed.  In fact, many of the vote-by-mail movements were begun by the GOP in order to maximize votes from their loyal seniors.  Now they are busy reversing that method.  From the article: "A new deep dive into the 2020 electorate by Pew Research contain mostly bad news for Republicans, whose approaching demographic dooms less racial than it is generational. While it shouldn't be news to anyone at this point that young voters are a solidly blue voting bloc, the more worrisome developments for the GOP are the unexpectedly elderly nature of the party's coalition and the unyielding Democratic lean of younger voters as they age. If Pew's numbers are to be believed, the only solidly Republican age demographic last year was 75 and over, meaning that every time the sun comes up, the GOP's struggle to win a majority of American voters gets harder."   

A Facebook friend. and a Trump supporter,  complained that memes get fact-checked but vote results do not. My answer:" The question is who does the fact-checking.? For example, recounts in Georgia were done 3 times, but that was not enough? 80 judges reviewed all of the lawsuits brought by Trumpers alleging fraud or irregularities...and nothing was found..and in fact, many of those lawyers are being disciplined for failure to provide facts regarding their allegations...and that is not enough? Oh, I get it. Only fact checking that is accepted is by the partisan supporters of the losers without observing the chain of possession or other requirements to protect the integrity of the evidence? And only partisan loyalists will be allowed by proposed statutes in some states? Is that what you mean?"

New Colorado election laws expand multilingual voting access, voter registration options - Colorado Newsline    This article is a good contrast between red and blue states on voting laws and an analysis of the recent Supreme Court decision that made suits against suppression laws even more difficult to win

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 Biden's epic remarks on voter suppression< July 13 2021: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/07/13/remarks-by-president-biden-on-protecting-the-sacred-constitutional-right-to-vote/   transcript

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hewILVSXXc

New York Court Suspends Rudy Giuliani's Law License | Georgia News | US News

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Frank Zaveral

Olahoma, leader in rejecting Obamacare, will not get off the hook.

Oklahoma is an ornery cuss. I do not mean just their legendary football teams. I mean their attitudes: non-cooperative with whatever is going on in Washington. I believe I can pick on them with some authority, having been born and raised in that iconic Okie town … Muskogee.

Oklahoma has a history of thumbing its nose at anything federal. It is not a sentiment that is exclusive to their state; they take it to the extreme. One of the last states to remain dry, I recall that the boot-leggers' stills of the night were held in esteem and federal “revenuers” were the enemy. Anti-federal sentiment is just part of their DNA.

That is why I was also not surprised to read in the New York Times on July 29 that Oklahoma planned to thumb its nose at the mandate to require all states to participate in Obamacare. It did so by turning down a $54 million dollar grant to administer the program. Oklahoma was also the first state taking advantage of the ability provided by the Supreme Court decision to opt out of federally paid extension of Medicaid. The Times held Oklahoma up as the pioneer of the rejectionist position. Since then some other states, mostly those with Republican governors, followed Oklahoma's lead.

There is a provision in Obamacare that does not let such states off the hook. If they do not set up their own systems statewide per federal guidelines, the feds can step in and do it for them. Some states hoped the Supreme Court would overturn Obamacare. That did not happen. Then many states besides Oklahoma also gambled the GOP would win in November so that Obamacare would be repealed. They lost that bet. Elections do have consequences, and keeping Obamacare is a big one.

States with Republican-dominated governments are faced with a dilemma: Either let the federal government take over their health care system or partner with them. It is a particularly uncomfortable position for GOP governors in swing states that voted Democratic.

Wisconsin this week opted to let the feds take over; Ohio will take the partner route; Florida is mulling over the partnering. States have until Dec. 14 to announce their intentions, but not providing Obamacare to their citizens is no longer an option.

Fortunately, 15 state legislatures, such as Colorado's, had the foresight to set up their own state-based structure to administer Obamacare, to determine the private sector participants, and to keep health care control local and tailor made for specific state needs. Beginning October 2013, currently uninsured Colorado citizens will have the ability to choose among a large number of private insurance plans that meet certain standards and to be charged according to their income level. Actual coverage begins January 2014.

A colleague of mine from Texas loudly proclaimed at a social gathering post-election that Obamacare would bring down our economy and destroy jobs. She must not have gotten the message: The Congressional Budget Office on July 25 scored repealing Obamacare as adding more to the federal deficit than keeping it would. The Simpson Bowles Commission concluded that Obamacare was a contributor to reducing the deficit because Obamacare provides some very important cost savings that impact federal Medicare and Medicaid costs. A major reason is that continuing to dump uninsured into emergency rooms is a very expensive way to provide health care.

The GOP's “Obamascare” tactics of wrongly implying the savings to the Medicare system would reduce benefits or their touting vouchers to save Medicare had less of an effect than Republicans had hoped.

Those who already have insurance can also be thankful to Obamacare this Thanksgiving that their 18-25 year olds can remain on parents' insurance and pre-existing conditions will no longer be an excuse to deny coverage.

(This also appeared in all editions of www.skyhidailynews.com today)

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