Welcome to our new miniseries: Campaign 2018: What Is This Shit, Anyway?

So, someone from the Leisure Senior Center told LaTosha Brown, founder of Black Voters Matter, that the roughly 40 seniors would need to get off the bus that was about to take them to the polls. Black Voters Matter, if you haven't guessed, is a grassroots outreach program whose goal is to help Black people "expand voter engagement." Can't have that in 2018, now can we? Apparently someone from the Senior Center said they'd received a call about a complaint either to or from (these details are fuzzy) the County Commissioner's office about the Black Voters Matter bus, and whether or not it should be allowed to transport the seniors to the polling place. Now, keep in mind, there is no law against any bus, from transporting people to the polls in Georgia. But not wanting to make trouble in the small town, they complied.



So, the bus they'd organized, for which they'd gotten permission ahead of time to bring, already boarded with senior citizens, was unloaded. Even worse, the Senior Center had their own bus they'd arranged to transport the seniors to the polls, but they cancelled that bus in the midst of everything, too. So there was no voting for these senior citizens yesterday. LaTosha Brown describes the details of the events to Roland Martin in the video below, starting around 8 minutes in.

Big up's to Roland Martin for bringing this to light. Certainly, black folks being denied their right to vote by being ordered off a bus gives you Bingo! in your game of Racist Stuff From The 1960s.

Next, from Fox5, Atlanta:

Jerry Hudspeth and his wife went to vote at the Robert E. Fulton Regional Library in Johns Creek. The couple said they stood in line for about 20 minutes with dozens of other voters and noticed the line wasn’t moving. An elections worker then came out to tell voters their computers were down, and they didn’t know when they would be back up. The couple decided to come back to vote another time. The frustrating part is we've had months to get the system right and we just don't understand why you can't make it work," said Hudspeth. Early Monday afternoon, Fulton County Elections officials confirmed issues at libraries. “At this time, Fulton County’s early voting polling locations at libraries are experiencing network technical issues," the Fulton County Department of Registration and Elections said in a statement to FOX 5 Atlanta. "Unfortunately, they are unable to quickly verify voter’s registrations. The county’s Information Technology Department and internet provider are working diligently to resolve the issue.”

The pictures of the frustrated voters accompanying this story are demographically interesting—and, by "interesting" I mean, "completely unsurprising."

Rep. Scott Taylor (R-VA) Getty Images

Episode II: Virginia, from TPM:

Since news first broke in early August that some of Rep. Scott Taylor’s (R-VA) paid campaign staffers had allegedly forged signatures on official election filings, the congressman has promised to hold anyone involved accountable. Filings from Taylor’s campaign Monday night, covering campaign expenses from July 1 through Sept. 30 , show the opposite happened. Taylor’s campaign paid more than $40,000 to four of the staffers involved in the forgery allegations during that period, with payments continuing long after the staffers’ alleged involvement in the massive scheme was public knowledge and the subject of a lawsuit and special prosecutor’s investigation. The payments for all four staffers occurred as recently as Sept. 12, weeks after the staffers’ alleged forgeries were known, after the Democratic Party of Virginia collected affidavits from dozens of voters who alleged that their signatures had been forged, and after a state judge said Taylor’s campaign had engaged in “out and out fraud.” The filings also showed more than $11,000 in payments for legal services to several criminal and election law firms.

Sounds like he's going to need them. Also, a tip here for Congressman Sneaky McDumbass: you don't use paid staffers for this kind of thing. You hire it out to ambitious members of the local college Republicans whom you can cut loose if somebody tumbles to the scam. God, doesn't anybody know the fundamentals anymore?

Stay tuned for our next thrilling installment and, remember, those rats ain't gonna fck themselves.

Update (3:27 p.m.): If you're wondering, "Why all this shit, anyway?", well, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a bit of an answer for you.

Voters across Georgia rushed to the polls on the first day of in-person early voting Monday, with 69,049 people casting their ballots. That’s a sharp increase from the last midterm election in 2014, when 20,898 people showed up on the first day of in-person early voting, according to numbers from the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office.

I still think we're going to need UN observers down there. Jimmy Carter's just up the road, and he probably has the phone number.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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