Brian Kemp arrested and interrogated black people over "voter fraud" - Polidicks

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/31/opinion/election-voting-rights-fraud-prosecutions.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytopinion Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the chief elections official in the state, is a pioneer of present-day voter suppression. Mr. Kemp has a record of making it harder for people to register to vote, and more difficult for those voters to remain on the rolls. Since 2012, his office has canceled more than 1.4 million voter registrations. In July 2017, over half a million people — 8 percent of the state’s registered voters — were purged in a single day. As of earlier this month, over 50,000 people’s registrations, filed before the deadline to vote in the coming midterm election, were listed as on hold. Seventy percent had been filed by black applicants. In a particularly disturbing case, Olivia Pearson, a grandmother and lifelong resident of Coffee County, Ga., found herself on trial this year on charges of felony voter fraud. It began six years ago, on the first day of early voting in Georgia, when a black woman named Diewanna Robinson went to cast her ballot. Ms. Robinson, then 21, had never voted before and didn’t k now how to operate the electronic voting machine, reported Buzzfeed. She asked Ms. Pearson, more than 30 years her senior, for help. Ms. Robinson would later testify that Ms. Pearson informed her where the card went in the machine and told her to “just go through and make my own selections on who I wanted to vote for.” Ms. Pearson walked away before Ms. Robinson started voting. Almost four years later, Ms. Pearson received a letter from District Attorney George Barnhill’s office, informing her that she was facing felony charges for improperly assisting Ms. Robinson. The city councilwoman and community leader was arrested and booked. She had never been in trouble with the law, but now she found herself facing up to 15 years in prison. Ms. Pearson was not accused of telling Ms. Robinson whom to vote for. She didn’t help her cast her ballot or even touch her machine. Prosecutors did not allege that the brief interaction between the two women impacted Robinson’s decisions in the voter booth. Rather, they insisted that because Ms. Robinson was not illiterate or disabled, she had not been entitled to even minimal verbal assistance. But Ms. Pearson’s case, while extreme, can nonetheless be seen as evidence of a disturbing trend. Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said prosecutors are increasingly preying on “respected community leaders” in rural areas where they “anticipate people will not be able to shine a bright spotlight on what’s happened.” When residents in Quitman County, Ga., elected a majority-black school board for the first time in 2010, Mr. Kemp’s office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation sent armed investigators to interrogate residents about voter fraud and ultimately charged 12 organizers. One Quitman resident, Debra Dennard, was charged with two felonies for helping her partly blind father fill out his absentee ballot. Lula Smart was accused of assisting voters by carrying their sealed absentee ballots to the mailbox. She was charged with 32 felony counts. If convicted, she faced over 100 years in prison. Conservatives often claim there’s a need for new laws and more punishments because of voter fraud. But Mr. Kemp’s own aide testified just last year that they “haven’t had illegal votes in Georgia.” Even the conservative Heritage Foundation’s voter fraud database, intended to showcase “nefarious election activity,” includes less than 20 voter fraud cases in Georgia, over two decades and out of tens of millions of cast votes. This attitude helps explain why Ms. Pearson was apparently the first person ever tried for “improper assistance in casting a ballot,” phrasing that does not even appear in Georgia’s criminal statutes. (Prosecutors eventually dropped that charge, after the defense said that the state had “attempted to fashion a criminal offense by cobbling together parts of four statutes.”) Over the next two years, Ms. Pearson navigated two trials, two defense counsels, three dropped charges and one hung jury. Finally, in late February, after a 20-minute jury deliberation, she was acquitted of all charges. Six years after her brief interaction with Ms. Robinson, she was finally free. This is an opinion piece but I trimmed it to the main information. Lyndon Johnson would be going apeshit at how we've regressed since then in voting rights.

Voting and elections in America are a fucking joke.

A large flaw in our federalist system, it leaves the power over elections to secretaries of state in all states. Federal oversight under a new VRA is actually the number one bill Democrats will create if they take the House this year, but the Senate would never pass it/Trump would veto it.

Man, I read the headline as "Brian Kemp arrested and interrogated by black people over voter fraud", and was briefly confused but much happier.

Arrest and interrogate him please

welcome to the early 1800s.

When residents in Quitman County, Ga., elected a majority-black school board for the first time in 2010, Mr. Kemp’s office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation sent armed investigators to interrogate residents about voter fraud and ultimately charged 12 organizers. One Quitman resident, Debra Dennard, was charged with two felonies for helping her partly blind father fill out his absentee ballot. Lula Smart was accused of assisting voters by carrying their sealed absentee ballots to the mailbox. She was charged with 32 felony counts. If convicted, she faced over 100 years in prison. This is especially fucking disgusting, kemp needs to be thrown in jail for the rest of his life for trying to ruin random people over fucking nonsense.

Honestly, if sovereign citizens weren't total hypocrites, they'd be doing democracy a favor by showing up when people like Kemp try to pull shit like this.

How DARE you vote in a democracy you filthy vermin! get back in your potholes and be grateful they're deep enough for you to live in!

Something something second amendment people

I cant believe racists like this are allowed to exist in public life without being shunned from society.

Not only that, they are welcomed with open arms in a lot of the places you find them.

Anyone who abuses public office in any way should face very serious charges. And the standards those politicians are held to need to be far more stringent than they currently are by many orders of magnitude. Public office is not a place to make profit or pursue personal interests. It's a place to pursue the interests of your constituents. And anyone who fails to do so needs to be removed from office and permanently barred from holding any public office.

its like they've got some anterior motive and no evidence of voter fraud...

Man, the shortened version of "Brian Kemp arrested and interro-" sure got my heart pumping for a moment.

It's very sad but I don't see Abrams winning, neither her or Kemp have enough votes for a majority so it'll go into a runoff, and the libertarian candidate's votes will go to Kemp.

Sovereign Citizenship basically rolls down to not wanting to pay taxes and wanting to drive without a license or insurance.

I always thought Sovereign Citizenship was about harassing and occasionally shooting police officers for doing their jobs. That and carry larger caliber firearms openly in public making everyone around them nervous and uncomfortable. Oh wait, we're both right.

Also trying to get out of mortgages and other debts by claiming they are against the SovCit's paper construct identity created by the national conspiracy and not the living flesh and blood human with bizarre punctuation in their name (JOHN: Sm'ith and any official paperwork sent to "John Smith" is ignored). Basically, Sovereign Citizens think they can be selfish children about everything because they've deluded themselves into believing they've unlocked the magic words to gain diplomatic immunity to domestic laws and adult responsibilities. And when police, judges, or other civil servants try and break through this wall of delusion, the Sov Cit hits back with insane retribution for the "offense" of not letting them do what they want, including filing false liens against the home and property of judges who're trying them or police who ticketed or arrested them. And of course pulling guns and killing cops at routine traffic stops. TL;DR if you ever hear someone utter or see them write the words "Without Prejudice UCC 1-308" next to their signature they are insane.

Sovereign Citizens basically don't recognize the United States Government in it's current form as legitimate, because they believe the federal government was never meant to be superior to the states. They believe that US Citizenship is optional and that ridding themselves of all federal documentation (some even try to renounce their citizenship) makes them a citizen of the state they inhabit, and not subject to US laws or taxes. They also do not recognize any form of law enforcement except local sheriffs, which explains why they get trigger happy around police officers.