Tag: voter suppression
Mikie Sherrill and Jack Ciattarelli

Yes, New Jersey Primary Turnout Was A Great Sign For Democrats

Last week, Rep. Mikie Sherrill won New Jersey’s hotly contested Democratic gubernatorial primary with 34 percent of the vote in a six-way race. New Jersey is one of just two states holding off-year governor’s races in 2025, the other being Virginia.

Sherrill is now the frontrunner heading into November’s election. Her Republican opponent, former state Rep. Jack Ciattarelli came shockingly close to winning four years ago. But like Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, he benefited from Donald Trump not being on the ballot or in office. This time around, Trump is all in, loudly endorsing Ciattarelli—much to Sherrill’s delight, no doubt.

Sherrill immediately pointed to the sky-high Democratic turnout as both the key to her win and a preview of November.

“We had almost 800,000 people voting in this primary. That’s unheard of,” she told the Washington Post. “It shows you the passion people have, shows you what’s coming in November here.”

And that’s underselling it. Democratic turnout now stands at 814,669, a genuinely extraordinary number. The closest comparison is from 2017, which saw 503,682 votes. In 2021, it was just 382,984 (an unopposed primary), and only 195,171 in 2013.

Republicans also hit a record of 459,574 votes, up from 339,033 in 2021 and the mid-200,000s in 2013 and 2017. But even with this boost, they still lag far behind Democrats’ surge.

This turnout is especially encouraging given New Jersey’s sharp rightward shift in the 2024 presidential election. Vice President Kamala Harris carried the state just 52-46, compared to President Joe Biden’s 57-41 win in 2020—a net 10-point swing to Republicans, largely driven by weak Democratic turnout. That’s clearly been fixed.

Holding New Jersey’s governorship—and reclaiming Virginia’s—matters. But what’s really exciting is what this says about the 2026 midterms.

Conventional wisdom says that the party in the White House gets shellacked in the midterms—especially with an unpopular president. But Biden and Democrats already broke that rule in 2022. Nothing’s carved in stone.

Meanwhile, Republicans got obliterated in Trump’s first term during the 2018 midterms, when Democrats flipped 41 House seats and seven governor seats. His second term is off to an even worse start, and with these early signs of hyper-engaged Democrats, the vibes are good.

Sure, 2026 is still a long way off. But if these numbers spook enough Republicans in swing districts, Democrats might be able to grind this narrowly divided Congress to a halt.

That alone is worth celebrating.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Trump, Harris

If You Want Cheaper Energy, Vote For Kamala Harris

Donald Trump's "drill, baby, drill" mantra portrays fossil fuels as the magic road to lower energy prices. He's exactly wrong. Solar, wind and other renewable sources are.

Renewables already provide electricity to consumers in Europe that's so cheap, it's at times free — this according to The Wall Street Journal, a decidedly non-socialist news source. Such are the rewards of Europe's green energy revolution, supercharged after Russia's invasion of Ukraine caused a spike in oil prices.

Example from the Netherlands: Jeroen van Diesen can get free energy based on whether the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, especially when demand for power is low. Sometimes the price actually dips below zero. Van Diesen says he made about $34 over the past five months charging his car when the price turned negative.

"Wholesale prices swing wildly each hour of the day," the Journal notes. And as more electricity flows from wind and solar installations, the price can go into negative territory. In other words, the prices can swing wildly downward.

The wholesale price in the Netherlands has been down to zero or below for eight percent of the year. In Spain, that's happening 12 percent of the time.

Most of us in the United States pay a fixed price for electricity set by the power company. But in much of Europe, people can sign up with providers who charge hourly prices on the wholesale power market.

Europe also went all in on alternative energy sources like wind and solar power whose generation costs are minimal. Last year, 44 percent of the European Union's electricity was produced by renewables, versus only 21 percent in the U.S.

Back in Europe, energy nerds have set up smart meters in their homes so that when the price of electricity falls, their cars automatically begin to charge. And manufacturers have found ways to send low-priced energy to gas tanks that function like virtual batteries.

The Biden administration has been overseeing massive investment in wind, solar, electrical vehicles and energy storage. These subsidies cost money, but so do most initial investments. As Europe has shown, these outlays can eventually produce handsome returns for the economy.

And so what are Trump's plans for a green-energy future? Well, Trump has vowed — Lord, give me strength — to target offshore wind projects. "They're killing the whales," he hollers, which marine biologists say is baloney. The 2025 Project's blueprint for another Trump term calls for ending all subsidies to promote the development of renewable energy, which, we must add, is also clean energy.

At the debate with Harris, Trump took aim against renewables with another lie, about Germany going back to fossil fuels. A spokesman for Germany's economic ministry swatted down that nonsense. "We already generate more than half of our electricity from renewable energies," he said. "In 2030, it will be 80 percent."

Real time pricing combined with renewable energy would be great for the United States, especially sunny California and the windy Great Plains. U.S. regulators became reluctant to let customers sign up for such plans after a rare winter storm in Texas sent wholesale prices temporarily soaring in 2021. Some are reconsidering.

In Southern California, the wholesale price has been negative for nearly 20 percent of the year, thanks to the region's boom in solar power installations. California has started a pilot program to offer real time pricing.

To be honest, the overall electricity bill wouldn't be zero because there remain costs for generation, transmission, and distribution. But, boy, they could be far, far closer to zero.

So what will it be, American consumers? The clean energy future is also the cheap energy future, and only Harris wants to take us there.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Voter Suppression Outfit Raised Millions — But Where Did The Money Go?

Voter Suppression Outfit Raised Millions — But Where Did The Money Go?

Long before the rise of Donald Trump’s MAGA movement — long before the Big Lie and the January 6, 2021 insurrection — True the Vote made voter suppression its top priority. Founded in Houston in 2009 by far-right Tea Party activist Catherine Engelbrecht, True the Vote has spent 13 years pushing the false narrative that voter fraud is widespread in Democratic areas. And True the Vote has raised millions of dollars with that narrative. But exactly how that money has been spent, according to Mother Jones reporter Cassandra Jaramillo, remains a mystery.

“A review of thousands of pages of documents from state filings, tax returns, and court records…. paints the picture of an organization that enriches Engelbrecht and partner Gregg Phillips rather than actually rooting out any fraud,” Jaramillo reports in an article published on June 8. “According to the documents, True the Vote has given questionable loans to Engelbrecht and has a history of awarding contracts to companies run by Engelbrecht and Phillips.

Within days of receiving $2.5 million from a donor to stop the certification of the 2020 election, True the Vote distributed much of the money to a company owned by Phillips, (attorney James) Bopp’s law firm, and Engelbrecht directly for a campaign that quickly fizzled out.”

True the Vote, according to Jaramillo, has “engaged in a series of questionable transactions that sent more than $1 million combined to its founder, a longtime board member romantically linked to the founder, and the group’s general counsel, an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.”

True the Vote has a shameful history. The group claims that its mission is to “prevent voter fraud,” but its real mission is making it more difficult to vote — especially if one is African-American. Sen. Barbara Boxer of California has been a vehement critic of True the Vote’s efforts to discourage African-Americans and Latinos from voting, saying that a more accurate name for the group would be “Stop the Vote.”

Nonetheless, True the Vote’s voter suppression efforts have made Engelbrecht a star in the MAGA movement and the right-wing media.


“A former PTA mom-turned-Tea Party activist, True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht has played a pivotal role in helping drive the voter fraud movement from the political fringes to a central pillar in the Republican Party’s ideology,” Jaramillo observes. “Casting herself as a God-fearing, small-town Texan, she’s spread the voter-fraud gospel by commanding airtime on cable television, space on the pages of Breitbart News, and even theater seats, as a new feature film dramatizing her organization’s exploits, 2000 Mules, plays in cinemas across the country.”

A "documentary" by far-right conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza, 2000 Mules claims to offer proof that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump. But the movie proves nothing, and D’Souza’s sloppy reporting has drawn widespread criticism. Never Trump conservative Amanda Carpenter, for example, has slammed 2000 Mules as a badly done, embarrassing cash grab on D’Souza’s part.

According to Jaramillo, Reveal’s findings don’t look good for True the Vote.

“The records show: True the Vote regularly reported loans to Engelbrecht, including more than $113,000 in 2019, according to a tax filing,” Jaramillo notes. “Texas law bans nonprofits from loaning money to directors; Engelbrecht is both a director and an employee.”


Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Republican Plan To Disrupt Vote

Video Reveals RNC Scheme To Disrupt Vote In Democratic Precincts

With President Joe Biden continuing to suffer from weak approval ratings and voters expressing considerable frustration over inflation, Democratic strategists fear that the 2022 midterms could bring a major red wave like the red waves of 1994 and 2010. To make matters worse, Republicans have been ramping up their voter suppression campaign. And according to reporting from journalist Heidi Przybyla in Politico, part of the GOP game plan is looking for ways to challenge votes in Democratic-leaning areas.

Politico, Przybyla reports, has obtained “video recordings” of “Republican Party operatives meeting with grassroots activists” that “provide an inside look at a multi-pronged strategy to target and potentially overturn votes in Democratic precincts.” The plan, according to Przybyla, is to “install trained recruits as regular poll workers and put them in direct contact with party attorneys.”

Przybyla writes, “The plan, as outlined by a Republican National Committee staffer in Michigan, includes utilizing rules designed to provide political balance among poll workers to install party-trained volunteers prepared to challenge voters at Democratic-majority polling places, developing a website to connect those workers to local lawyers and establishing a network of party-friendly district attorneys who could intervene to block vote counts at certain precincts.”

The RNC staffer in Michigan that Przybyla is referring to is Matthew Seifried. In a recording of a training session held on October 5, 2021, Seifried told his colleagues, “Being a poll worker, you just have so many more rights and things you can do to stop something than (as) a poll challenger…. It’s going to be an army. We’re going to have more lawyers than we’ve ever recruited, because let’s be honest, that’s where it’s going to be fought, right?”

Seifried, according to Przybyla, “also said the RNC will hold ‘workshops’ and equip poll workers with a hotline and website developed by Zendesk, a software support company used by online retailers, which will allow them to live-chat with party attorneys on Election Day.”

Przybyla notes that “election watchdog groups and legal experts say many of these recruits are answering the RNC’s call because they falsely believe fraud was committed in the 2020 election.”

Nick Penniman, founder and CEO of the election watchdog group Issue One, told Politico, “This is completely unprecedented in the history of American elections that a political party would be working at this granular level to put a network together. It looks like now, the Trump forces are going directly after the legal system itself — and that should concern everyone.”

Penniman believes that the RNC strategy is to “create massive failure of certification” in Democratic precincts.

“The real hope is that you can throw the choosing of electors to state legislatures,” Penniman told Politico.

Law professor Rick Hasen, an expert on election law who also teaches political science professor at the University of California, Irvine, is quite critical of the RNC plan to install poll workers in heavily Democratic precincts.

Hasen told Politico, “You shouldn’t have poll workers who are reporting to political organizations what they see. It creates the potential for mucking things up at polling places and potentially leading to delays or disenfranchisement of voters.”

That is especially true, Hasen added, “if (the poll workers) come in with the attitude that something is crooked with how elections are run.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

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