Elections 2020

This episode of Radio Active Magazine gives an overview of some of the issues associated with this year’s elections in the greater Kansas City area. There are local elections in Missouri only on June 2 with primaries and the general election in both states on August 4 and November 3.

The discussion includes safe voting including restrictions on voting by mail in Missouri. Evelyn Maddox with the Missouri Voters Protection Coalition will join us to discuss the lawsuit they’ve filed against the current restrictions.

Missouri Senate Joint Resolution 38 will also be discussed.  People who led the successful “Clean Missouri” constitutional amendment in 2018 call it, “Dirty Missouri”, because they say it’s an effort to replace the 2018 amendment with something worse than what existed before.  The movie “Rigged”, subtitled “The Voter Suppression Playbook” will also be mentioned.  You can watch it online for free two days from this broadcast, May 21, but you need to register at kkfi.org.

SAFE VOTING

The Election Boards of both Kansas City and Jackson County have instituted procedures to protect poll workers and voters during the current pandemic.

Beyond that, thirty of the 50 states, including Kansas, allow no-excuse vote by mail as either an option or the only way voting is allowed.  That’s not true in Missouri.  Current law provides six different reasons for voting absentee.  However, unless you currently reside overseas or are permanently disabled, the law requires you to get your absentee ballot notarized.  On April 15, Missouri Governor Mike Parson said that fear of spreading or contracting COVID-19 are not legally permissible reasons for Missourians to cast an absentee ballot.  The director of the Jackson County Election Board similarly said that “fear of contracting or spreading the COVID-19 virus is not a legal reason to vote absentee in Missouri.”

In fact, it’s not merely illegal to apply to vote absentee under such circumstances.  It is a felony punishable “by imprisonment of not more than five years or by a fine of not less than two thousand five hundred dollars but not more than ten thousand dollars or by both such imprisonment and fine.”

However, with the current COVID-19 pandemic, on April 17, the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri and the Missouri Voters Protection Coalition  filed suit on behalf of the NAACP, the League of Women Voters, three individuals “and all others similarly situated” against the State of Missouri, John R. Ashcroft in his official capacity as Missouri Secretary of State, and others.  The plaintiffs have requested an expedited ruling in the case, especially since the deadline to vote absentee for the June 2 local elections in Missouri is this Wednesday, May 20.

In related news, the Missouri legislature passed last week a bill that would temporarily allow absentee voting for COVID-19 concerns for the August 4 and November 3 elections but not June 2.  However, the ballot would have to be notarized unless the voter is suspected of having contracting COVID-19 or is in one of six different at-risk categories including being 65 years of age or older, living in a licensed long-term care facility, having chronic lung disease or moderate to severe asthma or serious heart conditions, diabetes or liver disease, or being immunocompromised or having chronic kidney disease and undergoing dialysis.  At last report, Governor Parson had not yet signed the bill.

On the other hand, officials with both the Kansas City Election Board and the Jackson County Election Board said that they process without question any absentee voting request they receive on their form for “verification of permanently disabled voter”.  Spencer Graves emailed such a form to [email protected], adding, “I’m 75 years old. The case fatality rate in my age group in 4 different countries ranged from 8 to 25% of those diagnosed with COVID-19, per the Wikipedia article on ‘Coronavirus disease 2019‘.” He called Monday and was assured that they do not question any such disability claims, and he would receive an absentee ballot for June 2.  In theory, Spencer could be arrested and incarcerated for this, and then catch COVID-19 in jail and die. However, officials at both the Kansas City and Jackson County election boards assured him they would not refer any such cases to the Jackson County Prosecutor, even if the judge in NAACP vs. Missouri ruled in favor of the current restrictions on absentee voting. If you want to do something similar for the June 2 election, you need to complete the process at kceb.org or jcebmo.org before the close of business Wednesday, May 20, 5 PM.  If you do that, you must be prepared to suffer the consequences in case you are prosecuted, contrary to what the Election Boards told Spencer Graves, like any act of civil disobedience.

Some legislators like Sen. Mike Cierpiot, Republican representing Lee’s Summit, are concerned that “Mail-in voting is so easy to commit fraud.” That’s a common claim made by Conservatives to justify restricting the franchise at least since Republican strategist Paul Weyrich said in 1980, “I don’t want everybody to vote…. [O]ur leverage in the elections … goes up as the voting populace goes down.” This journalist sent emails on May 8 to Missouri Governor Parson, Secretary of State Ashcroft, and Attorney General Schmitt asking for evidence to support the claim that the state has a substantive problem with that kind of vote fraud.  No reply has been received.  An important review of the available evidence in this regard is the “Findings of fact and ruling of law” in “Fish v. Kobach” by Judge Julie Robinson, who was appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, a Republican.  Then-Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach claimed that the evidence he had of individual vote fraud was just the tip of an iceberg.  Judge Robinson noted that the Kansas Election Voter Information System (ELVIS) included records of 400 people whose birth dates were after the date of registration, indicating they had registered to vote before they were born.  Judge Robinson noted that the records were consistent with administrative error, and the problem was an icicle, not an iceberg.

SENATE JOINT RESOLUTION 38

Last Wednesday, May 13, the Missouri House approved Senate Joint Resolution 38 (SJR38), which its sponsors claim improve the “Clean Missouri” constitutional amendment approved by voters in 2018. SJR38’s supporters claim that “Clean Missouri” puts redistricting in the hands of one of the few Democrats in the Missouri government, Auditor Nicole Galloway, where the resulting redistricting plan “will be devastating to Missouri Republicans“, according to Representative Hannah Kelly.

Republicans hold 70 percent of the seats in the Missouri House and Senate, even though Republicans represent only 45 percent of registered voters.  This suggests that the current system is unfairly biased against Democrats.  If so, then an obvious question for supporters of SJR38 like Representative Kelly is whether “Clean Missouri” redistricting will be unfairly devastating to Missouri Republicans?

Supporters of Clean Missouri say that SJR38 may be the worst gerrymandering plan in the nation.  It will not merely return the redistricting process to its previous level of corruption but will also make it much more difficult for people to challenge any such Republican gerrymandering plan.

On May 18 the Clean Missouri campaign sued to have the summary language presented to voters this fall replaced by language that more accurately describe the anticipated effects of the bill.  The lead plaintiff is Barbara Pippens of St. Louis, who collected more than 700 signatures for “Clean Missouri” in 2018.  The lead defendant is John R. Ashcroft in his capacity as Secretary of State of Missouri.

Gerrymandering is only one of a variety of methods used to skew the electoral process.  A new movie, “Rigged,” discusses many others.

MOVIE “RIGGED”

Two days from this broadcast, on Thursday, May 21, you can watch from your home a free showing of the movie “Rigged”. It’s subtitled “The Voter Suppression Playbook”. The movie will be followed by a panel discussion of some of the issues raised by it. To watch you need to register online at kkfi.org. This is a fund raiser for KKFI, the ACLU of Kansas, and Missouri Jobs with Justice.

Share This Episode