And here we go.
Courtesy of The Root:
According to WCSC 5, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Democratic National Committee, and South Carolina Democratic Party filed the “Four Pillars” lawsuit in a U.S. Federal Court in Columbia, S.C. on Saturday. The suit alleges that stipulations around mail-in voting—which generally say that the only people who qualify are people 65 and older; people with disabilities or underlying health issues; and people in the military serving overseas—unfairly require voters to risk exposure to a deadly virus in order to vote in South Carolina’s primary on June 9 and in the general election in November.
“We won’t allow this pandemic to be used as an excuse to undermine our democracy,” DNC chairman Tom Perez said in a statement, according to The State. “It’s the job of our leaders to defend our right to vote, not to create unnecessary, unconstitutional burdens.”
The suit also alleges that, because black people are being killed by COVID-19 infection at higher rates, black voters are disproportionately affected by absentee-ballot restrictions and are being forced to choose between staying home on Election Day or “avoiding needless and serious risk to their health, the health of their friends and family and the broader community.”
I think the Democrats are firmly aware that the only way to hold safe and fair elections in the time of the Coronavirus is to make the mail-in ballot the go-to choice for 2020.
I also think that its success will mean it will be the defacto choice from now on, but let’s wait and see.
https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2020/05/ahmaud-arbery-georgia-jogger-george-barnhill-olivia-pearson-voter-fraud-charges/
“Pearson didn’t think much of the encounter—but it would come back to haunt her. Four years later, after a voter fraud investigation by the secretary of state’s office, Barnhill’s office decided to have Pearson arrested for the incident. When Pearson assisted Robinson, poll workers had asked her to sign a form allowing her to help someone struggling with the machines; she did so, not realizing that by adding her signature, she was agreeing to help only those who were disabled or illiterate. (Robinson was neither.) The district attorney’s office charged Pearson with felony voter fraud and threatened her with 15 years in prison. The day she was indicted, “I was just devastated,” she told me over the phone this week.”
“Barnhill’s office brought Pearson to trial not once but twice, before she was acquitted.”
“Pearson believed prosecutors targeted her because of her political activism: She was the first Black woman elected to the city commission in 1999. Her mother was a top official with the local NAACP and helped sue the city in the 1970s to gain better political representation for Black residents.” – “What hurts the most is: Douglas is home. I’ve worked in this community trying to do good for people all my life,” she tells me. “Achieving justice in south Georgia is a very difficult task when you’ve got people in the district attorney’s office like these people we got.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoL8g0W9gAQ
USPS: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
In the Constitution
Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution, known as the Postal Clause or the Postal Power