Armed vote 'watching' in in AZ recalls an awful history of people wielding guns to suppress votes, especially minority votes. 1/4

azfamily.com/2022/10/23/ten…

High voter turnout doesn’t mean that all voters have equal access to the ballot — Wendy Weiser discusses the Brennan Center’s research on the racial turnout gap on Meet the Press Reports. nbcnews.com/meet-the-press…

Thread on Gov. DeSantis's election police abuses

What kind of government makes it impossibly confusing to figure out if you can vote, and then publicly prosecutes you for getting it wrong even after government officials told you otherwise? This is not about the rule of law.

You shouldn't need a criminal defense lawyer (or 10) to figure out if you can vote! To make it easier to help Floridians navigate these unfair laws, we teamed up with Legal Defense Fund ACLU ACLUFL to produce this detailed guide: brennancenter.org/our-work/resea…

Making matters worse, no one knows how much debt each person owes--not even the state or the affected individuals--making it very likely that someone can make a mistake as to their eligibility.

Read the Brennan Center's Gabriella Sanchez on how that is working out brennancenter.org/our-work/analy…

But the FL legislature pushed back, stripping voting rights from any returning citizens who still owe fees and fines--essentially punishing them for being poor. Political scientist Dan Smith found that 79% of affecting Floridians owe at least $500.

Back in 2018, Floridians voted by overwhelming majorities to pass a ballot initiative to restore voting rights to most of the more than 1.4 million citizens with past criminal convictions who had completed their sentences. That should have ended the matter.

Here is the sordid history of that sordid and discriminatory policy: brennancenter.org/our-work/resea…

Florida has long been one of the few places *in the world* that permanently disenfranchise citizens with criminal convictions in their past, including 1 in 4 Black men in the state.

Making matters worse, those targeted for prosecution are being ensnared by a confusing morass of laws that make it extremely difficult for a returning citizen to determine if he or she is eligible to vote.

💣Interesting new read dismantling the so-called 'independent state legislature theory' from a historical perspective, from historian Rosemarie Zagarri : papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

This newest publication shouldn't be missed as SCOTUS prepares to take up the issue on 12/7 🧵👇Brennan Center