@oscarjiminy @carnage4life

I'm not minimizing anything.

People love to gloss over real racism in the electorate, and pretend like the big bad boogeyman of Cambridge Analytica tricked people's parents into voting racist. That's just not what happened.

Those people were enjoying Fox News for 20 years before Cambridge Analytica. Trump won because of extreme voter suppression, clear and simple.

The attitudes of those Trump voters didn't change before or after the election.

@oscarjiminy @carnage4life

The number of Black people that were legally eligible to vote in 2016, but that were illegally prevented from voting, was larger than the entire margin of victory for Trump. But we don't like to talk about that. 🤷🏿‍♂️

People who know that their family members are racist for a long time, pretend that they only started being racist after Cambridge Analytica. That's a lie.

Trump gave people who were racist inside the house permission to be racist outside of the house too.

@mekkaokereke @oscarjiminy @carnage4life Please do talk more about the details of the voter suppression, if and when you're so inclined and have the opportunity.

I have a broad sense of the techniques (ID requirements, date/time/location restrictions, register purges, mail-in restrictions) but not a good sense of the numbers involved.

@georgeeyong @oscarjiminy @carnage4life

I'll give just 2 examples.

1) Black voters in Milwaukee were targeted with racist voter ID laws.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/10/voter-suppression-wisconsin-election-2016/

This caused a 20 point electoral swing to Trump.

2) 17 million voters purged from rolls between 2016 and 2018. Disproportionately Black, in places where Black voters have been intentionally disenfranchised.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/purges-growing-threat-right-vote

The purging was 4 million voters more effective than during Obama's election. 4 *million*. Not a typo

Yes, the election was rigged. Here's the proof.

It starts with this story in Wisconsin.

Mother Jones

@georgeeyong @oscarjiminy @carnage4life

The reason that people like Rachel Bitecofer, me, and most Black folk, are so often right about who's going to win a US election, and people like Nate Silver are so often wrong, is that Nate looks at the stats and polls, which tell you how people *intend* to vote, while we look at turnout/suppression, which tells you how people *are able* to vote.

Voter turnout is all about suppression. And suppression is all about racism. 🤷🏿‍♂️

@mekkaokereke @georgeeyong @oscarjiminy @carnage4life Ohio is going to be bright red this year and maybe cost the Dems a Senate seat and the national media is going to cover it as if the state electorate suddenly got Even More Conservative instead of looking at the effects of new voter suppression laws. (Voting now requires a state issued photo ID, and getting one of those is more difficult and more expensive than in 2016 or 2020)
@q_aurelius @mekkaokereke @georgeeyong @oscarjiminy @carnage4life
When WI made voter ID mandatory, the courts mandated a free option, as well as a way to vote without proper id if the voter was unable to get one. It's not ideal, but not as dire as you fear.

@MHowell @q_aurelius @georgeeyong @oscarjiminy @carnage4life

It is as dire as we fear.

I honestly don't mean to sound harsh, but I need to be very clear about something:

The whole game of voter suppression efforts, is to design attacks to look innocuous, common sense, not racist, and "not that dire" to gullible white citizens.

Meanwhile, Black voters, and white folk that do understand voter suppression and want less of it, try to point out how it will have a huge negative effect.

@mekkaokereke @MHowell @q_aurelius @georgeeyong @oscarjiminy @carnage4life

I think people underplay how hard it is to get to polling places, and the Secretary of State, DMV, and other offices that handle IDs. Also w/ transit issues, not everything we need is along a transit route.

During the 2020 election were setting up transportation for those we helped register to vote. What did Michigan's red legislature do? They reinstated an old law that disallowed transporting multiple ppl to vote

@Kimcpen @mekkaokereke @MHowell @q_aurelius @georgeeyong @oscarjiminy @carnage4life
For people who can drive, and live in nice upper-middle class places, getting a driver license is SO straightforward that it is hard to comprehend the places where it's convoluted. So the factual tales of have to travel 20 miles, have to go once to file and again to pick up, have to call off work (twice), office only open 4 days a YEAR (Sauk City Wisconsin) sound false.

So it's not merely a intentional radical difference in how accessible an ID is, it's so preposterously hard that it sounds untrue.