“The Best Democracy Money Can Buy”

Dear Friends and Allies, ART NOT WAR co-founder David Ambrose co-directed a film about voter suppression this year, and this message is from him. We all need to read it. This happened on our watch, and it will happen again if we don’t confront this in the next few years.

Something really scary happened in 2008 and 2012 to the GOP: they won the white vote in both elections but lost the presidency.

So they did the most logical thing to make sure this wouldn’t happen again. They killed the voting rights act with a lawsuit financed by the Kochs. As soon as the Supreme Court made their ruling, voter ID requirements became law in many states and massive voter purges such as Interstate Crosscheck started wiping out minorities from the voter rolls purging hundreds of thousands every year since 2013. My theory is these purges turn back the clock on the racial demographics of the voter rolls by 50 years.

If it seems like Trump could only win a presidency in 1950’s America it’s because he effectively did.

What can we do?

1. We need to stop the purges.

We need class action lawsuits on the local level brought to the counties and states by the victims of these purges who had their right to vote stripped away and we need to demonstrate racial bias. Make these purges illegal again on the state and local level by suing everyone who is implicated.

These purges where enacted on a local level and we can take them out on the local level. We don’t need the VRA to do this.

2. Change who gets to decide if your vote counts.

In most states it is the Secretary of State who oversees elections and is responsible for voter list maintenance and methodology. For instance the fascist Secretary of State of Ohio, Jon Husted is the guy who gets to decide who votes count and whose doesn’t. He has wiped out over a million voters since 2013 using various methods including 400,000 using Crosscheck alone.

But in NY it is not the Secretary of State, it is a panel of officials who make these decisions so there is less of a partisan impact. They voted not to use Crosscheck.

It is ridiculous to have a partisan politician get to make these decisions. We need state level campaigns starting in the swing states to change this. Use non-partisan panels not the SoS to run elections.

3. Fight the myth of voter fraud. The way that voter suppression tactics get enacted is because people in both parties are scared of voter fraud. There are only a few genuine cases of voter fraud every year and they are used to make it seem like a widespread conspiracy of democrats is going to steal the election. So safe measures like Crosscheck and voter ID get put into place that result in millions of innocent people, mostly of color, losing their vote. We can fight this in the media.

4. Demand the the DOJ investigates Crosscheck and other racial purges. 18 million rising has a petition with 28k signatures demanding so.

SIGN PETITION NOW

5. Re-Registering. Most purges can be stopped by re-registering to vote. So even if you know you are registered you should re-register to make sure your next vote counts. We obviously need to focus in the swing states that have been using these racial purges.

My doc predicts that Trump would win because of voter suppression and explains how it happened before it happened. The writing has been on the wall since the Voting Rights Act decision and it is going to happen again if we don’t do something about it.

The Voting Rights Act was Martin Luther King’s legacy and the result of all the hard work and bloodshed that the civil rights movement gave us and now it is all gone. The supreme court wrote in their decision that we live in a “post-racial america” and that “Jim Crow Voting has been eviscerated”. It’s scary how out of touch they are. Not only should Section 5 of the VRA be reinstated but the 30 states who use racial voter purges should be added for federal pre-clearance.

The GOP sued on the basis that racism is a thing of the past. We need to sue to remind them that is not and that it’s still illegal.

Here is a video I made explaining how Crosscheck works.

Crosscheck is in 30 states(all republican). Here are the latest numbers of it’s effect:

Crosscheck in action:

Trump victory margin in Michigan: 13,107

Michigan Crosscheck purge list: 449,922

Trump victory margin in Arizona: 85,257

Arizona Crosscheck purge list: 270,824

Trump victory margin in North Carolina: 177,008

North Carolina Crosscheck purge list: 589,393

In solidarity,

David Ambrose

co-director of “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy”

Head of Production,

ART NOT WAR