motherjones--2020-04-14--Republicans Are Trying to Kick Thousands of Voters Off the Rolls During a Pandemic

In February , Michelle Mackey , a 53-year-old Milwaukee resident , went to cast her ballot in a local primary for mayor and county executive .
Mackey describes herself as an “ avid voter ” who participates regularly in state and national elections , and took part in voter registration drives in 2016 .
But when she arrived at her polling place at Washington High School , in the city ’ s Sherman Park neighborhood , which is predominantly Black , she said she was told there was no record of her registration .
“ I was mad as hell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she had been purged from the voter rolls—and with good reason .
Just before Christmas , she saw on the news that Wisconsin had identified 232,000 voters it claimed had moved and had been ordered to remove them from its registration lists within 30 days if they did not respond to a mailing .
It ’ s not exactly clear why Mackey was told she was not registered to vote .
Just in case , she ’ d come with her ID and electric bill .
She was able to cast a ballot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was still in the poll book .
But the whole experience left her upset .
The state ’ s effort to remove voters , Mackey said , was “ a slap in the face to minorities and people of color.
” In Milwaukee , which is home to nearly two-thirds of the state ’ s Black population , one in eight registered voters was at risk of being purged .
African American turnout in the city had already plummeted in 2016 after Republicans passed a voter ID law that , according to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , was aimed squarely at Milwaukee and other Democratic-leaning cities .
Fifty-five percent of the registration notices were sent to municipalities where Hillary Clinton had defeated Donald Trump , according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel , and nine of the 10 areas with the highest concentration of voters on the purge list were big cities and college towns that had voted for Clinton .
Milwaukee and Madison , the state ’ s two Democratic strongholds , accounted for 14 percent of the state ’ s registered voters but 23 percent of the names @ @ @ @ @ @ @ predominantly Black neighborhoods or areas with large student populations were nearly twice as likely to be flagged for removal , The Guardian found .
The state ’ s bipartisan elections commission had originally planned to give voters until 2021 to confirm their addresses and registration status before removing them from the rolls .
But in November 2019 , the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty , a conservative group , sued the commission to force it to immediately purge voters who had not responded to the mailing .
A month later , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the group and approved the fast-tracked purge .
That meant 7 percent of the state ’ s electorate could be removed from the voter rolls ahead of what ’ s expected to be a close presidential race in a state Trump won by only 22,000 votes in 2016 .
Nearly three-quarters of the people on the purge list voted in 2016 , suggesting they ’ re likely to want to vote in 2020 .
In late February , a state appeals court blocked the purge , ruling that local election clerks , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for maintaining the state ’ s voter rolls .
But the state Supreme Court could still revive the purge before the November election .
Wisconsin ’ s disastrous election on April 7 showed the extreme lengths Republicans would go to in order to keep their conservative majority on the state Supreme Court .
Despite the raging coronavirus outbreak , Republican legislative leaders rebuffed Democratic Gov .
Tony Evers ’ calls to delay the election or mail a ballot to every registered voter .
While a liberal candidate unseated a conservative justice , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Wisconsin is not the only state taking aggressive action to trim voter rolls .
Days after Malloy ’ s ruling , Georgia ’ s Republican secretary of state , Brad Raffensperger , purged more than 300,000 voters—4 percent of the electorate—whose registrations were deemed inactive or out of date , including 120,000 who were removed because they hadn ’ t voted in several previous elections and hadn ’ t responded to a mailing .
More than 20,000 who had been wrongly labeled inactive were added back to the rolls following a court @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voting rights group founded by 2018 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams .
Like Wisconsin , Georgia has seen rampant voter suppression and razor-thin elections .
Abrams failed to qualify for a runoff against Republican Brian Kemp in the 2018 governor ’ s race by fewer than 18,000 votes , after Kemp—who as secretary of state oversaw his own gubernatorial election—instituted a number of practices that made it harder to vote .
That included putting 53,000 voter registrations on hold before the election—80 percent of them from voters of color—and advising counties on how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 200 precincts closed , primarily in areas with large Black populations .
The purges in Wisconsin and Georgia—and other states , like Ohio , which released a purge list with tens of thousands of errors last year—are part of a decade-long push , by Republican officials and conservative legal groups , that has removed Democratic constituencies and people of color from registration lists .
From 2016 to 2018 , 17 million Americans—8 percent of the nation ’ s electorate—were taken off the voting rolls , according to the Brennan Center for Justice .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ states with a long history of voting discrimination .
The coronavirus outbreak could amplify the impact of these purges by making it even harder for people who have been delisted to reregister .
“ Especially in states like Georgia , where diversifying demographics have us on the precipice of transformative political change , we are seeing Republicans employ voter suppression to limit who has access to the polls , ” says Abrams .
“ Disproportionately , under GOP secretaries of state , this process affects Democrats , particularly in communities of color.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is to strip people of their right to vote.
” It ’ s long been said that elections are decided by turnout , but in 2020 we have to ask a different question : Will tens of thousands of voters in critical battleground states find out they ’ re unable to cast a ballot ?
At the country ’ s founding , there was no voter registration in the United States .
People simply showed up at the polls , offering credentials such as proof of property or residency as needed , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and vouch for them .
Early registration laws , passed in the mid-1800s , when the vote was still mostly limited to white men , were largely designed to prevent rather than encourage political participation .
As historian Alexander Keyssar writes in The Right to Vote , in 1840 the Whig Party in New York passed a voter registration law that applied only to New York City , clearly aimed at Irish Catholic immigrants , who voted Democratic .
Voter registration laws became a widespread tool of voter suppression in the tumultuous era @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to disenfranchise African Americans , and Northern states sought to disenfranchise immigrants .
During the Jim Crow era , literacy tests and poll taxes made it all but impossible for the majority of Black Americans to register to vote , and frequent voter purges kept many who did register from holding onto the right .
Following the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 , the Louisiana legislature formed a Segregation Committee , which advocated widespread voter purges as a way to keep Black Americans from organizing politically .
State Sen. Willie @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Qualification Laws in Louisiana : The Key to Victory in the Segregation Struggle.
” In 1959 , the White Citizens Council of Washington Parish , north of New Orleans , convinced local registrars to remove 85 percent of Black registered voters for alleged defects in their registration cards , but just 0.07 percent of white voters .
A federal court reversed the purge , calling it a “ massively discriminatory ” scheme to “ remove almost all of the Negro voters from the rolls and leave the white voters practically untouched.
” The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of these suppressive laws and tactics , and the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 , known as the “ motor voter ” law , made voter registration far more accessible by allowing people to register at DMVs and other public agencies .
Yet purges persisted as Republicans sought new ways to circumvent protections for voters of color , a growing part of the electorate that favored Democratic candidates .
During a 1981 gubernatorial election in New Jersey , the Republican National Committee used outdated registration lists to send sample ballots to largely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ returned as undeliverable , the RNC created a list of voters to challenge at the polls , stationing armed off-duty cops wearing “ National Ballot Security Task Force ” armbands at heavily Black and Latino polling sites in Newark and Trenton .
The Democratic candidate , Jim Florio , lost the race to Republican Tom Kean by 1,797 votes .
The RNC chair credited the tactic for Kean ’ s victory .
The Democratic National Committee won a legal settlement restricting the RNC ’ s future “ ballot security ” operations , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years later , during a US Senate race in Louisiana , the RNC sent similar mailers to majority-Black precincts and used the returned mail to generate a list of 31,000 mostly Black voters to challenge at the polls .
A committee official said the effort would “ keep the Black vote down considerably.
” ( The settlement expired in 2017 , potentially opening the door to new voter challenges by Republicans in 2020 . )
In 2000 , a purge changed the outcome of a presidential election and the course of American history @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Secretary of State Katherine Harris , Florida sent election supervisors a list of 58,000 people the state believed had felony records .
( At the time , Florida was one of a handful of states that permanently prevented people with past felony convictions from voting . )
But Florida did not stop at purging people convicted of felonies .
People were added to the purge list if 70 percent of the letters in their names matched an entry in the state ’ s felony database .
The list was both discriminatory—African Americans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the state but 44 percent of the purge list—and wildly inaccurate .
After the election—and following the Supreme Court ’ s 5–4 decision stopping the state ’ s recount—an official audit found that as many as 12,000 registered voters had been mislabeled as having felony records , a number 22 times greater than George W. Bush ’ s 537-vote margin of victory .
Instead of backing away from voter purging , the Justice Department under Bush accelerated its use , suing four states for violating a provision of the 1993 motor voter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a reasonable effort to remove ” voters who had died or moved from the official lists .
( The clause had been inserted into the bill to win GOP support . )
The Bush administration interpreted the provision far more aggressively than the Clinton administration had , turning a law that was supposed to help people register to vote into a weapon to remove voters from the rolls .
Missouri was one of the states the administration sued .
Like Florida , Missouri was the site of a disastrous purge in 2000 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the St. Louis election commission sent postcards to all registered voters in the city and reclassified 50,000 voters as inactive after their mail was returned as undeliverable , without notifying them of the change .
That led to chaos on Election Day , when thousands of voters found they were on the inactive list .
Under a legal settlement with the Justice Department , St. Louis agreed to refrain from removing voters from the rolls until after the 2004 election , and to notify any voter moved to inactive status .
But in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republican-appointed US attorney for Western Missouri , the Justice Department sued the state to force it to conduct a purge before the 2006 midterm elections .
A federal court ruled against the Justice Department , but the Bush administration had already laid the groundwork for using the motor voter law to conduct sweeping voter purges .
After Barack Obama took office , former Bush administration lawyers joined a constellation of conservative legal groups with innocuous-sounding names , such as Judicial Watch , the Public Interest Legal Foundation , and the American Constitutional Rights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ letters and filed dozens of lawsuits to try to force states and counties with substantial populations of color to purge their voting rolls .
“ These groups are bullying and pressuring election administrators into purging , ” says Myrna Pérez , director of the Brennan Center ’ s voting rights program .
In January , Judicial Watch sent letters to 19 large counties in California , Colorado , North Carolina , Pennsylvania , and Virginia—all of which voted for Clinton in 2016—warning that they would be sued unless they trimmed their voting rolls @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Allegheny County , where Clinton won by 17 points , immediately began removing 69,000 inactive voters .
Last year , Judicial Watch reached a settlement with California to reassess 1.5 million names on the voter rolls in Los Angeles County .
To justify such purges , Judicial Watch has claimed there are more registered voters than adult citizens in some of these places , opening the door to widespread voter fraud .
It repeated this charge right before the 2020 Iowa caucuses , alleging that “ eight Iowa counties have more voter registrations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In fact , only one of these counties had more registered voters than adult citizens , and voting rights experts say there ’ s little risk of fraud or evidence that people are exploiting out-of-date registrations to impersonate voters who have moved or died .
Even Iowa ’ s Republican secretary of state called Judicial Watch ’ s assertions “ fake news.
” ( Echoing Judicial Watch ’ s unsubstantiated claims of bloated voter rolls , another conservative group , the Honest Elections Project , recently threatened to sue Colorado , Michigan , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of removing voters from the rolls to protect against fraud is nonsensical , ” Abrams says .
“ This is a pretext for blocking voices they do not want to hear.
” The Trump administration has encouraged such tactics .
In June 2017 , the Justice Department sent a letter to 44 states informing them that it was reviewing their voter list maintenance procedures and asking how they planned to “ remove the names of ineligible voters.
” Vanita Gupta , who headed the Justice Department ’ s Civil Rights Division under President @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights , called a mass mailing of this sort “ virtually unprecedented.
” The Supreme Court ’ s conservative majority has abetted these purges every step of the way .
In 2013 , the court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder that states with a long history of voting discrimination no longer needed to get federal approval for changes to their election laws and voting procedures under the Voting Rights Act .
Following that decision , states and counties that were now free to modify their election @ @ @ @ @ @ @ percent higher than elsewhere in the country , according to the Brennan Center .
Georgia , for example , purged twice as many voters from 2012 to 2016—a total of 1.5 million people—as it did from 2008 to 2012 .
Five years after the Shelby decision , the Roberts court voted 5–4 to uphold an Ohio law allowing the state to purge people who had not voted in any election over the previous six years .
Voting rights groups argued that the court was turning the right to vote into a “ use @ @ @ @ @ @ @ One day after that decision , Trump ’ s Justice Department joined a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch that succeeded in forcing Kentucky to begin the process of purging voters labeled ineligible .
The effort to purge inactive voters “ makes voting the only constitutional right an American can lose if they do not express it , ” Abrams says .
“ I don ’ t lose my Second Amendment rights because I don ’ t shoot a gun.
” There ’ s nothing inherently wrong with updating registration lists to remove the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to vote .
“ We want election administrators to have the tools they need to make sure that the records are clean , ” says the Brennan Center ’ s Pérez .
But recent examples show that some purges mislabel thousands of eligible voters , disproportionately Democrats and people of color .
Last year , Ohio ’ s Republican secretary of state released a list of 235,000 voters set to be purged because they had died or moved or had not voted over a six-year period .
Voting rights groups found 40,000 names @ @ @ @ @ @ @ head of the Ohio League of Women Voters , who had voted in three elections in the previous year but was labeled an inactive voter because of faulty government data .
Ohio doesn ’ t have partisan voter registration , but people who voted in Democratic primaries outnumbered Republican voters nearly two to one on the list .
A similar situation played out in Wisconsin .
In 2017 , the state sought to remove 340,000 voters who it said had moved , based on data from government agencies .
But 7 percent of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moved , according to a detailed analysis of voter registration data by the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin .
The city of Milwaukee removed 44,000 voters but later reinstated nearly half of them .
All of this raises questions about the accuracy of the latest purge effort in Wisconsin .
The League of Women Voters , which has challenged the purge in state and federal courts , argued in a brief that the list “ likely once again contains a substantial amount of unreliable and demonstrably inaccurate information.
” Wisconsin has Election @ @ @ @ @ @ @ problems can reregister at the polls .
But they ’ ll need to provide proof of residency , which is not typically required to vote , and voting rights advocates worry that people turned away for lack of proper documentation might not come back .
“ People get so frustrated that they don ’ t even want to go through the process , ” says the Rev .
Greg Lewis of Souls to the Polls Milwaukee , which focuses on Black voter engagement .
“ That ’ s the major concern for us.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ also make it unlikely that people will use Election Day registration , and they might be unable to fix their registration problems through mail-in balloting .
Like Georgia , Wisconsin has already been hit hard by voter suppression .
A University of Wisconsin study found that the state ’ s strict voter ID law blocked or deterred as many as 23,000 residents of Milwaukee County and Madison ’ s Dane County from voting in 2016—a number larger than Trump ’ s margin of victory in the state .
Black voters were three times @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the ID law as a reason they did not cast a ballot .
Neil Albrecht , executive director of Milwaukee ’ s election commission , fears that the purge could have a similar effect this year .
“ This will further the mistrust of election administration in Wisconsin , ” he says .
“ That can affect voter participation .
If people feel like the system is rigged , and more and more people in Milwaukee are starting to feel that way , it has a pretty profound impact on whether or not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ participate in an election.
” After Judge Malloy ordered the purge in December , the Wisconsin Elections Commission voted on whether to remove names from the rolls while the case was being appealed .
The commission , which consists of three Democrats and three Republicans , split along party lines , and the vote to remove the names failed .
A month later , Malloy angrily instructed the commission to begin removing voters immediately and took the unprecedented step of holding the commission and its three Democratic appointees in contempt of court , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ until they started the purge .
It was Malloy ’ s orders that the appeals court blocked and that the state Supreme Court could reinstate .
Mackey , a third grade teacher ’ s assistant and the vice president of a branch of her local teachers union , lives in a majority-Black neighborhood on the north side of Milwaukee where voter turnout decreased by more than 20 percent from 2012 to 2016 .
She had been canvassing the area before the spread of coronavirus and urging people at risk of being purged to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t get any unpleasant surprises like she did .
“ A lot of people are planning to reregister due to the situation on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue , ” she told me .
When I asked Mackey why voting was so important to her , she said that her grandfather had grown up in segregated Mississippi , fought in World War II as a Tuskegee Airman , and marched in Selma for the Voting Rights Act .
“ My ancestors fought for this right , ” she said .
“ They fought in wars @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to vote .
This is our God-given right , and it should not be taken away from us .
”

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In February, Michelle Mackey, a 53-year-old Milwaukee resident, went to cast her ballot in a local primary for mayor and county executive. Mackey describes herself as an “avid voter” who participates regularly in state and national elections, and took part in voter registration drives in 2016. But when she arrived at her polling place at Washington High School, in the city’s Sherman Park neighborhood, which is predominantly Black, she said she was told there was no record of her registration. “I was mad as hell,” she recalled.
She feared she had been purged from the voter rolls—and with good reason. Just before Christmas, she saw on the news that Wisconsin had identified 232,000 voters it claimed had moved and had been ordered to remove them from its registration lists within 30 days if they did not respond to a mailing.
It’s not exactly clear why Mackey was told she was not registered to vote. Just in case, she’d come with her ID and electric bill. She was able to cast a ballot that day, and records show she was still in the poll book. But the whole experience left her upset. The state’s effort to remove voters, Mackey said, was “a slap in the face to minorities and people of color.”
In Milwaukee, which is home to nearly two-thirds of the state’s Black population, one in eight registered voters was at risk of being purged. African American turnout in the city had already plummeted in 2016 after Republicans passed a voter ID law that, according to a Republican Senate aide’s sworn testimony, was aimed squarely at Milwaukee and other Democratic-leaning cities.
Fifty-five percent of the registration notices were sent to municipalities where Hillary Clinton had defeated Donald Trump, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and nine of the 10 areas with the highest concentration of voters on the purge list were big cities and college towns that had voted for Clinton. Milwaukee and Madison, the state’s two Democratic strongholds, accounted for 14 percent of the state’s registered voters but 23 percent of the names on the removal list. Voters in predominantly Black neighborhoods or areas with large student populations were nearly twice as likely to be flagged for removal, The Guardian found.
Roll Reversals
Between 2016 and 2018, more than 17 million names were taken off voter rolls nationwide. On average, states removed 7.6% of their voters, for various reasons. A few states went a lot further:
Indiana: 22.3% of voters removed, 2016-18
Indiana purged nearly half a million voter registrations in 2017 following a lawsuit from Judicial Watch and True the Vote. Three months later, the Indiana legislature passed a law making it even easier for local election officials to purge voter registrations based on a database researchers found to be full of errors. A federal appeals court blocked the law in 2019.
Virginia: 14% of voters removed, 2016-18
Since the Supreme Court’s Shelby decision, the number of registered voters purged in Virginia has sharply increased. Wisconsin: 14% of voters removed, 2016-18
In 2017, Wisconsin officials mailed postcards to 340,000 registered voters thought to have moved, informing them that they would be removed from voter rolls if they did not respond. The state later determined many of the names on the list came from faulty data. Milwaukee reinstated nearly half the registrations it had purged.
Massachusetts: 12.1% of voters removed, 2016-18
Local election officials in Massachusetts conduct an annual census to update voter registrations. People who don’t respond are placed on the inactive list; they can still vote, but they need to bring additional identification to the polls.
Oklahoma: 11.7% of voters removed, 2016-18
Oklahoma’s “use-it-or-lose-it” voter registration law means voters are purged if they don’t vote for several election cycles and don’t respond to a mailing. The state delisted nearly 300,000 voters between January 2017 and 2019. Registered Democrats were purged at disproportionately higher rates.
Maine: 11.2% of voters removed, 2016-18
In 2018, the Brennan Center for Justice alleged that Maine’s list maintenance policy was violating the National Voter Registration Act by failing to provide voters with proper notice, waiting time, and opportunity to respond to notices about their registrations. —Becky Dernbach
The state’s bipartisan elections commission had originally planned to give voters until 2021 to confirm their addresses and registration status before removing them from the rolls. But in November 2019, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a conservative group, sued the commission to force it to immediately purge voters who had not responded to the mailing. A month later, a Republican-appointed judge, Paul Malloy, sided with the group and approved the fast-tracked purge.
That meant 7 percent of the state’s electorate could be removed from the voter rolls ahead of what’s expected to be a close presidential race in a state Trump won by only 22,000 votes in 2016. Nearly three-quarters of the people on the purge list voted in 2016, suggesting they’re likely to want to vote in 2020. In late February, a state appeals court blocked the purge, ruling that local election clerks, not the elections commission, are responsible for maintaining the state’s voter rolls. But the state Supreme Court could still revive the purge before the November election.
Wisconsin’s disastrous election on April 7 showed the extreme lengths Republicans would go to in order to keep their conservative majority on the state Supreme Court. Despite the raging coronavirus outbreak, Republican legislative leaders rebuffed Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ calls to delay the election or mail a ballot to every registered voter. While a liberal candidate unseated a conservative justice, the court’s majority still leans right.
“Republicans employ voter suppression to limit who has access to the polls. The clear intention is to strip people of their right to vote.”
Wisconsin is not the only state taking aggressive action to trim voter rolls. Days after Malloy’s ruling, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, purged more than 300,000 voters—4 percent of the electorate—whose registrations were deemed inactive or out of date, including 120,000 who were removed because they hadn’t voted in several previous elections and hadn’t responded to a mailing. More than 20,000 who had been wrongly labeled inactive were added back to the rolls following a court filing from Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group founded by 2018 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.
Like Wisconsin, Georgia has seen rampant voter suppression and razor-thin elections. Abrams failed to qualify for a runoff against Republican Brian Kemp in the 2018 governor’s race by fewer than 18,000 votes, after Kemp—who as secretary of state oversaw his own gubernatorial election—instituted a number of practices that made it harder to vote. That included putting 53,000 voter registrations on hold before the election—80 percent of them from voters of color—and advising counties on how to close polling places. More than 200 precincts closed, primarily in areas with large Black populations.
The purges in Wisconsin and Georgia—and other states, like Ohio, which released a purge list with tens of thousands of errors last year—are part of a decade-long push, by Republican officials and conservative legal groups, that has removed Democratic constituencies and people of color from registration lists. From 2016 to 2018, 17 million Americans—8 percent of the nation’s electorate—were taken off the voting rolls, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Many of these removals took place in states with a long history of voting discrimination. The coronavirus outbreak could amplify the impact of these purges by making it even harder for people who have been delisted to reregister.
“Especially in states like Georgia, where diversifying demographics have us on the precipice of transformative political change, we are seeing Republicans employ voter suppression to limit who has access to the polls,” says Abrams. “Disproportionately, under GOP secretaries of state, this process affects Democrats, particularly in communities of color.” She adds, “The clear intention is to strip people of their right to vote.”
It’s long been said that elections are decided by turnout, but in 2020 we have to ask a different question: Will tens of thousands of voters in critical battleground states find out they’re unable to cast a ballot?
At the country’s founding, there was no voter registration in the United States. People simply showed up at the polls, offering credentials such as proof of property or residency as needed, and counting on officials or neighbors to recognize and vouch for them. Early registration laws, passed in the mid-1800s, when the vote was still mostly limited to white men, were largely designed to prevent rather than encourage political participation. As historian Alexander Keyssar writes in The Right to Vote, in 1840 the Whig Party in New York passed a voter registration law that applied only to New York City, clearly aimed at Irish Catholic immigrants, who voted Democratic.
Voter registration laws became a widespread tool of voter suppression in the tumultuous era after Reconstruction, as Southern states sought to disenfranchise African Americans, and Northern states sought to disenfranchise immigrants. During the Jim Crow era, literacy tests and poll taxes made it all but impossible for the majority of Black Americans to register to vote, and frequent voter purges kept many who did register from holding onto the right.
Following the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, the Louisiana legislature formed a Segregation Committee, which advocated widespread voter purges as a way to keep Black Americans from organizing politically. State Sen. Willie Rainach authored a pamphlet called “Voter Qualification Laws in Louisiana: The Key to Victory in the Segregation Struggle.” In 1959, the White Citizens Council of Washington Parish, north of New Orleans, convinced local registrars to remove 85 percent of Black registered voters for alleged defects in their registration cards, but just 0.07 percent of white voters. A federal court reversed the purge, calling it a “massively discriminatory” scheme to “remove almost all of the Negro voters from the rolls and leave the white voters practically untouched.”
Even Iowa’s Republican secretary of state called assertions of voter fraud before this year’s caucus “fake news.”
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed many of these suppressive laws and tactics, and the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, known as the “motor voter” law, made voter registration far more accessible by allowing people to register at DMVs and other public agencies.
Yet purges persisted as Republicans sought new ways to circumvent protections for voters of color, a growing part of the electorate that favored Democratic candidates. During a 1981 gubernatorial election in New Jersey, the Republican National Committee used outdated registration lists to send sample ballots to largely nonwhite neighborhoods. When 45,000 mailers were returned as undeliverable, the RNC created a list of voters to challenge at the polls, stationing armed off-duty cops wearing “National Ballot Security Task Force” armbands at heavily Black and Latino polling sites in Newark and Trenton. The Democratic candidate, Jim Florio, lost the race to Republican Tom Kean by 1,797 votes. The RNC chair credited the tactic for Kean’s victory. The Democratic National Committee won a legal settlement restricting the RNC’s future “ballot security” operations, which functioned as unofficial voter purges.
Five years later, during a US Senate race in Louisiana, the RNC sent similar mailers to majority-Black precincts and used the returned mail to generate a list of 31,000 mostly Black voters to challenge at the polls. A committee official said the effort would “keep the Black vote down considerably.” (The settlement expired in 2017, potentially opening the door to new voter challenges by Republicans in 2020.)
In 2000, a purge changed the outcome of a presidential election and the course of American history. Under Republican Gov. Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris, Florida sent election supervisors a list of 58,000 people the state believed had felony records. (At the time, Florida was one of a handful of states that permanently prevented people with past felony convictions from voting.) But Florida did not stop at purging people convicted of felonies. People were added to the purge list if 70 percent of the letters in their names matched an entry in the state’s felony database. The list was both discriminatory—African Americans made up 11 percent of registered voters in the state but 44 percent of the purge list—and wildly inaccurate. After the election—and following the Supreme Court’s 5–4 decision stopping the state’s recount—an official audit found that as many as 12,000 registered voters had been mislabeled as having felony records, a number 22 times greater than George W. Bush’s 537-vote margin of victory.
Instead of backing away from voter purging, the Justice Department under Bush accelerated its use, suing four states for violating a provision of the 1993 motor voter law that required states to make “a reasonable effort to remove” voters who had died or moved from the official lists. (The clause had been inserted into the bill to win GOP support.) The Bush administration interpreted the provision far more aggressively than the Clinton administration had, turning a law that was supposed to help people register to vote into a weapon to remove voters from the rolls.
Missouri was one of the states the administration sued. Like Florida, Missouri was the site of a disastrous purge in 2000. In the runup to the election, the St. Louis election commission sent postcards to all registered voters in the city and reclassified 50,000 voters as inactive after their mail was returned as undeliverable, without notifying them of the change. That led to chaos on Election Day, when thousands of voters found they were on the inactive list.
Under a legal settlement with the Justice Department, St. Louis agreed to refrain from removing voters from the rolls until after the 2004 election, and to notify any voter moved to inactive status. But in 2005, over the objections of the Republican-appointed US attorney for Western Missouri, the Justice Department sued the state to force it to conduct a purge before the 2006 midterm elections. A federal court ruled against the Justice Department, but the Bush administration had already laid the groundwork for using the motor voter law to conduct sweeping voter purges.
“If people feel like the system is rigged… it has a pretty profound impact on whether or not they feel it is even worthwhile to participate in an election.”
After Barack Obama took office, former Bush administration lawyers joined a constellation of conservative legal groups with innocuous-sounding names, such as Judicial Watch, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, and the American Constitutional Rights Union. These groups have sent threatening letters and filed dozens of lawsuits to try to force states and counties with substantial populations of color to purge their voting rolls. “These groups are bullying and pressuring election administrators into purging,” says Myrna Pérez, director of the Brennan Center’s voting rights program.
In January, Judicial Watch sent letters to 19 large counties in California, Colorado, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Virginia—all of which voted for Clinton in 2016—warning that they would be sued unless they trimmed their voting rolls within 90 days. Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County, where Clinton won by 17 points, immediately began removing 69,000 inactive voters. Last year, Judicial Watch reached a settlement with California to reassess 1.5 million names on the voter rolls in Los Angeles County. To justify such purges, Judicial Watch has claimed there are more registered voters than adult citizens in some of these places, opening the door to widespread voter fraud.
It repeated this charge right before the 2020 Iowa caucuses, alleging that “eight Iowa counties have more voter registrations than citizens old enough to register.” In fact, only one of these counties had more registered voters than adult citizens, and voting rights experts say there’s little risk of fraud or evidence that people are exploiting out-of-date registrations to impersonate voters who have moved or died. Even Iowa’s Republican secretary of state called Judicial Watch’s assertions “fake news.” (Echoing Judicial Watch’s unsubstantiated claims of bloated voter rolls, another conservative group, the Honest Elections Project, recently threatened to sue Colorado, Michigan, and Florida.)
“The rationale of removing voters from the rolls to protect against fraud is nonsensical,” Abrams says. “This is a pretext for blocking voices they do not want to hear.”
The Trump administration has encouraged such tactics. In June 2017, the Justice Department sent a letter to 44 states informing them that it was reviewing their voter list maintenance procedures and asking how they planned to “remove the names of ineligible voters.” Vanita Gupta, who headed the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under President Obama and is now president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, called a mass mailing of this sort “virtually unprecedented.”
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has abetted these purges every step of the way. In 2013, the court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder that states with a long history of voting discrimination no longer needed to get federal approval for changes to their election laws and voting procedures under the Voting Rights Act. Following that decision, states and counties that were now free to modify their election laws purged voters at a rate 40 percent higher than elsewhere in the country, according to the Brennan Center. Georgia, for example, purged twice as many voters from 2012 to 2016—a total of 1.5 million people—as it did from 2008 to 2012.
Five years after the Shelby decision, the Roberts court voted 5–4 to uphold an Ohio law allowing the state to purge people who had not voted in any election over the previous six years. Voting rights groups argued that the court was turning the right to vote into a “use it or lose it” privilege.
One day after that decision, Trump’s Justice Department joined a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch that succeeded in forcing Kentucky to begin the process of purging voters labeled ineligible. The effort to purge inactive voters “makes voting the only constitutional right an American can lose if they do not express it,” Abrams says. “I don’t lose my Second Amendment rights because I don’t shoot a gun.”
There’s nothing inherently wrong with updating registration lists to remove the names of people who have become ineligible to vote. “We want election administrators to have the tools they need to make sure that the records are clean,” says the Brennan Center’s Pérez. But recent examples show that some purges mislabel thousands of eligible voters, disproportionately Democrats and people of color.
Last year, Ohio’s Republican secretary of state released a list of 235,000 voters set to be purged because they had died or moved or had not voted over a six-year period. Voting rights groups found 40,000 names that were listed erroneously, including the head of the Ohio League of Women Voters, who had voted in three elections in the previous year but was labeled an inactive voter because of faulty government data. Ohio doesn’t have partisan voter registration, but people who voted in Democratic primaries outnumbered Republican voters nearly two to one on the list.
A similar situation played out in Wisconsin. In 2017, the state sought to remove 340,000 voters who it said had moved, based on data from government agencies. But 7 percent of the people on the list had not moved, according to a detailed analysis of voter registration data by the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin. The city of Milwaukee removed 44,000 voters but later reinstated nearly half of them.
All of this raises questions about the accuracy of the latest purge effort in Wisconsin. The League of Women Voters, which has challenged the purge in state and federal courts, argued in a brief that the list “likely once again contains a substantial amount of unreliable and demonstrably inaccurate information.”
Wisconsin has Election Day registration, so people with registration problems can reregister at the polls. But they’ll need to provide proof of residency, which is not typically required to vote, and voting rights advocates worry that people turned away for lack of proper documentation might not come back. “People get so frustrated that they don’t even want to go through the process,” says the Rev. Greg Lewis of Souls to the Polls Milwaukee, which focuses on Black voter engagement. “That’s the major concern for us.” The spread of the coronavirus could also make it unlikely that people will use Election Day registration, and they might be unable to fix their registration problems through mail-in balloting.
The spread of the coronavirus could also make it unlikely that people will use Election Day registration.
Like Georgia, Wisconsin has already been hit hard by voter suppression. A University of Wisconsin study found that the state’s strict voter ID law blocked or deterred as many as 23,000 residents of Milwaukee County and Madison’s Dane County from voting in 2016—a number larger than Trump’s margin of victory in the state. Black voters were three times as likely as white voters to cite the ID law as a reason they did not cast a ballot.
Neil Albrecht, executive director of Milwaukee’s election commission, fears that the purge could have a similar effect this year. “This will further the mistrust of election administration in Wisconsin,” he says. “That can affect voter participation. If people feel like the system is rigged, and more and more people in Milwaukee are starting to feel that way, it has a pretty profound impact on whether or not they feel it is even worthwhile to participate in an election.”
After Judge Malloy ordered the purge in December, the Wisconsin Elections Commission voted on whether to remove names from the rolls while the case was being appealed. The commission, which consists of three Democrats and three Republicans, split along party lines, and the vote to remove the names failed. A month later, Malloy angrily instructed the commission to begin removing voters immediately and took the unprecedented step of holding the commission and its three Democratic appointees in contempt of court, fining each commissioner $250 a day until they started the purge. It was Malloy’s orders that the appeals court blocked and that the state Supreme Court could reinstate.
Mackey, a third grade teacher’s assistant and the vice president of a branch of her local teachers union, lives in a majority-Black neighborhood on the north side of Milwaukee where voter turnout decreased by more than 20 percent from 2012 to 2016. She had been canvassing the area before the spread of coronavirus and urging people at risk of being purged to confirm their registrations so they don’t get any unpleasant surprises like she did. “A lot of people are planning to reregister due to the situation on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” she told me.
When I asked Mackey why voting was so important to her, she said that her grandfather had grown up in segregated Mississippi, fought in World War II as a Tuskegee Airman, and marched in Selma for the Voting Rights Act. “My ancestors fought for this right,” she said. “They fought in wars for our freedom, for the right to vote. This is our God-given right, and it should not be taken away from us.”


motherjones--2020-04-13--A Doctor on ICE’s Response to the Pandemic: “You Could Call It COVID-19 Torture”

On its website , the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides some commonsense guidelines for prisons and detention centers to curb the spread of COVID-19 .
These facilities , the CDC says , should avoid “ cohorting ” people who have been in contact with someone infected with the virus—that is , quarantining them together .
The reasons are obvious .
Doing so can “ transmit COVID-19 from those who are infected to those who are uninfected.
” Yet Immigration and Customs Enforcement , which detains immigrants and asylum seekers in facilities across the country , is following a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s advice .
ICE is relying heavily on cohorting because it refuses to release large numbers of people , despite admitting that it often lacks the ability to separate detainees it knows have been exposed to the new coronavirus .
ICE usually houses detainees in dorms where dozens of people are held together in close quarters .
Under ICE ’ s COVID-19 policy , symptomatic detainees are removed and placed in isolation .
When someone tests positive , the rest of the dorm is quarantined together , or “ cohorted , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ detention center staff monitor to see if anyone else develops symptoms .
Meanwhile , the quarantined detainees are in close proximity and touching the same surfaces—often without adequate access to soap , cleaning supplies , masks , and gloves .
If another person gets infected , that individual is isolated and the quarantine clock resets .
The process , under ICE guidelines , continues until nobody is symptomatic for two weeks .
The CDC stresses that detention centers “ should make every possible effort ” to avoid such scenarios .
Its website states @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if there are no other available options.
” And ICE does have other options .
As we ’ ve reported , the agency has broad authority to let people out of detention .
( As of July , only one-in-10 ICE detainees had what the agency considered to be a serious criminal conviction ; nearly 60 percent of people detained earlier this month had no criminal convictions at all . )
While ICE says it will avoid group quarantines when individual cells are available , a spokesperson , who requested anonymity , made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not have single rooms available for each detainee.
” Even when there are single cells , a second ICE spokesperson , Bryan Cox , said that people in quarantine will still share common areas .
We asked three infectious diseases experts to weigh in on ICE ’ s coronavirus policy .
Each found serious fault with how the agency was responding to the outbreak within its facilities .
Over Zoom , Dr. Chris Beyrer , the Desmond M. Tutu Professor of Public Health and Human Rights at Johns Hopkins University , raised a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of civil rights .
The Nelson Mandela Rules , adopted by the United Nations in 2015 , require that people in detention have access to the same quality of health care as the surrounding community .
He applied the Mandela principle to ICE ’ s group quarantines .
“ Are people being provided that minimum standard of public health protection , which we have asked all Americans who have to liberty to embrace as a way to control this virus ?
” Beyrer asked .
“ I would say the answer is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the science .
Beyrer said the average person with COVID-19 infects roughly three people , but in crowded settings such as ICE detention centers that number would likely be higher .
“ It can ’ t be lower , ” he noted .
Dr. Carlos Franco-Paredes , a professor in the University of Colorado School of Medicine ’ s infectious diseases division , emphasized that crowded , enclosed spaces are the opposite of social distancing .
By the time ICE quarantines a symptomatic detainee , that person will have likely have already infected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people will transmit the virus to others .
ICE ’ s policy is likely to create a chain of infections .
It is also likely to evoke terror among quarantined detainees forced to watch as the virus spreads among them .
This is not an abstraction .
Infections are mounting within ICE custody .
As of Monday morning , there were at least 91 detainees or ICE detention center employees who have tested positive , up from 40 last Tuesday .
( The real number is higher because the agency doesn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prison companies that run many of its detention centers test positive . )
As a contract employee of the Department of Homeland Security ’ s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties , Dr. Josiah Rich , a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Brown University , is particularly qualified to assess ICE ’ s COVID-19 response .
Rich and Dr. Scott Allen , an expert medical adviser for Physicians for Human Rights and fellow DHS contract employee , came forward as whistleblowers last month , warning in a letter to Congress of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new coronavirus started spreading in immigration detention centers .
( Rich spoke to us in his capacity as a whistleblower being represented by the Government Accountability Project ; not on behalf of DHS . )
ICE ’ s group quarantine approach is similar to what happened on the Diamond Princess cruise ship , Rich said .
In that case , passengers were removed from the ship as they got sick .
More than 700 out of 3,711 people onboard ended up becoming infected with COVID-19 .
Nine had died as of late March @ @ @ @ @ @ @ town where mass testing quickly halted an outbreak .
When testing began in early March , at least 90 out of 3,300 residents were infected .
Testing everyone led to the isolation of six people who were infected but asymptomatic .
Without the testing , those individuals would have likely kept spreading the virus .
ICE has refused to say how many people it ’ s testing .
Last week , Mother Jones reported that a detainee at the LaSalle Correctional Center in Olla , Louisiana , had tested positive for COVID-19 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to say how many people had shared a dorm with that man or whether they will now be tested .
A detainee at ICE ’ s Pine Prairie detention center said in an interview that new people were brought in from LaSalle Correctional after the confirmed infection .
The new arrivals , he said , were being held apart from his unit as part of a roughly 70-person group quarantine .
On their way to Pine Prairie , he added , the LaSalle detainees now under quarantine passed through ICE ’ s Alexandria @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where at least eleven ICE employees have tested positive .
( Cox would neither confirm nor deny that detainees exposed at LaSalle were sent to Pine Prairie , citing unspecified “ operational security ” concerns . )
At San Diego ’ s Otay Mesa Detention Center , at least 12 detainees and five CoreCivic employees have tested positive .
Multiple housing units are under lockdown , according to Dorien Ediger-Seto , a senior attorney with the National Immigrant Justice Center .
“ That is an absolutely inadequate response , ” she said .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ 70 people who were in that pod are fair game for the virus….Just letting large groups of people contract COVID-19 can ’ t be the solution.
” Margaret Cargioli , an attorney with Immigrant Defenders Law Center , said on a call with reporters on Thursday that the question shouldn ’ t be how many people ICE can release or should release , but rather “ Who in ICE custody should be subjected to death ?
And the answer is no one.
” For the past month , public health experts , activists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to release people who are not a threat to public safety , but the agency has largely refused to do so .
When human rights groups have sued for the release of small numbers of at-risk detainees , the Justice Department has fought to keep those people in detention .
Some detainees with medical conditions have been allowed out , but release remains the exception .
For Beyrer , it ’ s essential that the public understand that most ICE detainees could be released without threatening public safety .
In criticizing ICE ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stark terms the conditions for people forced to remain in group quarantines .
“ Cruel and usual punishment , ” he said .
“ That level of anxiety , that level of stress…It ’ s a form of torture , you might say .
A new form of torture .
You could call it COVID-19 torture .
”

On its website, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides some commonsense guidelines for prisons and detention centers to curb the spread of COVID-19. These facilities, the CDC says, should avoid “cohorting” people who have been in contact with someone infected with the virus—that is, quarantining them together. The reasons are obvious. Doing so can “transmit COVID-19 from those who are infected to those who are uninfected.”
Yet Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which detains immigrants and asylum seekers in facilities across the country, is following a rulebook directly at odds with the CDC’s advice. ICE is relying heavily on cohorting because it refuses to release large numbers of people, despite admitting that it often lacks the ability to separate detainees it knows have been exposed to the new coronavirus.
ICE usually houses detainees in dorms where dozens of people are held together in close quarters. Under ICE’s COVID-19 policy, symptomatic detainees are removed and placed in isolation. When someone tests positive, the rest of the dorm is quarantined together, or “cohorted,” for 14 days. From there, detention center staff monitor to see if anyone else develops symptoms. Meanwhile, the quarantined detainees are in close proximity and touching the same surfaces—often without adequate access to soap, cleaning supplies, masks, and gloves. If another person gets infected, that individual is isolated and the quarantine clock resets. The process, under ICE guidelines, continues until nobody is symptomatic for two weeks.
The CDC stresses that detention centers “should make every possible effort” to avoid such scenarios. Its website states, “Cohorting should only be practiced if there are no other available options.” And ICE does have other options. As we’ve reported, the agency has broad authority to let people out of detention. (As of July, only one-in-10 ICE detainees had what the agency considered to be a serious criminal conviction; nearly 60 percent of people detained earlier this month had no criminal convictions at all.)
While ICE says it will avoid group quarantines when individual cells are available, a spokesperson, who requested anonymity, made clear that detention centers “often do not have single rooms available for each detainee.” Even when there are single cells, a second ICE spokesperson, Bryan Cox, said that people in quarantine will still share common areas.
We asked three infectious diseases experts to weigh in on ICE’s coronavirus policy. Each found serious fault with how the agency was responding to the outbreak within its facilities.
Over Zoom, Dr. Chris Beyrer, the Desmond M. Tutu Professor of Public Health and Human Rights at Johns Hopkins University, raised a principle named after another South African champion of civil rights. The Nelson Mandela Rules, adopted by the United Nations in 2015, require that people in detention have access to the same quality of health care as the surrounding community. He applied the Mandela principle to ICE’s group quarantines.
“Are people being provided that minimum standard of public health protection, which we have asked all Americans who have to liberty to embrace as a way to control this virus?” Beyrer asked. “I would say the answer is a clear no.”
Then he got to the science. Beyrer said the average person with COVID-19 infects roughly three people, but in crowded settings such as ICE detention centers that number would likely be higher. “It can’t be lower,” he noted.
Dr. Carlos Franco-Paredes, a professor in the University of Colorado School of Medicine’s infectious diseases division, emphasized that crowded, enclosed spaces are the opposite of social distancing. By the time ICE quarantines a symptomatic detainee, that person will have likely have already infected others, he said. Those infected people will transmit the virus to others.
ICE’s policy is likely to create a chain of infections. It is also likely to evoke terror among quarantined detainees forced to watch as the virus spreads among them. This is not an abstraction. Infections are mounting within ICE custody. As of Monday morning, there were at least 91 detainees or ICE detention center employees who have tested positive, up from 40 last Tuesday. (The real number is higher because the agency doesn’t report when people employed by the private prison companies that run many of its detention centers test positive.)
As a contract employee of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Dr. Josiah Rich, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Brown University, is particularly qualified to assess ICE’s COVID-19 response. Rich and Dr. Scott Allen, an expert medical adviser for Physicians for Human Rights and fellow DHS contract employee, came forward as whistleblowers last month, warning in a letter to Congress of a “tinderbox scenario” if the new coronavirus started spreading in immigration detention centers. (Rich spoke to us in his capacity as a whistleblower being represented by the Government Accountability Project; not on behalf of DHS.)
ICE’s group quarantine approach is similar to what happened on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, Rich said. In that case, passengers were removed from the ship as they got sick. More than 700 out of 3,711 people onboard ended up becoming infected with COVID-19. Nine had died as of late March.
Rich contrasted that with an Italian town where mass testing quickly halted an outbreak. When testing began in early March, at least 90 out of 3,300 residents were infected. Testing everyone led to the isolation of six people who were infected but asymptomatic. Without the testing, those individuals would have likely kept spreading the virus.
ICE has refused to say how many people it’s testing. Last week, Mother Jones reported that a detainee at the LaSalle Correctional Center in Olla, Louisiana, had tested positive for COVID-19. Cox, the ICE spokesperson, declined to say how many people had shared a dorm with that man or whether they will now be tested.
A detainee at ICE’s Pine Prairie detention center said in an interview that new people were brought in from LaSalle Correctional after the confirmed infection. The new arrivals, he said, were being held apart from his unit as part of a roughly 70-person group quarantine. On their way to Pine Prairie, he added, the LaSalle detainees now under quarantine passed through ICE’s Alexandria Staging Facility, a coronavirus hot spot where at least eleven ICE employees have tested positive. (Cox would neither confirm nor deny that detainees exposed at LaSalle were sent to Pine Prairie, citing unspecified “operational security” concerns.)
At San Diego’s Otay Mesa Detention Center, at least 12 detainees and five CoreCivic employees have tested positive. Multiple housing units are under lockdown, according to Dorien Ediger-Seto, a senior attorney with the National Immigrant Justice Center. “That is an absolutely inadequate response,” she said. “It’s saying that the 70 people who were in that pod are fair game for the virus….Just letting large groups of people contract COVID-19 can’t be the solution.”
Margaret Cargioli, an attorney with Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said on a call with reporters on Thursday that the question shouldn’t be how many people ICE can release or should release, but rather “Who in ICE custody should be subjected to death? And the answer is no one.”
For the past month, public health experts, activists, and lawyers have called on ICE to release people who are not a threat to public safety, but the agency has largely refused to do so. When human rights groups have sued for the release of small numbers of at-risk detainees, the Justice Department has fought to keep those people in detention. Some detainees with medical conditions have been allowed out, but release remains the exception.
For Beyrer, it’s essential that the public understand that most ICE detainees could be released without threatening public safety. In criticizing ICE’s coronavirus response, he described in stark terms the conditions for people forced to remain in group quarantines. “Cruel and usual punishment,” he said. “That level of anxiety, that level of stress…It’s a form of torture, you might say. A new form of torture. You could call it COVID-19 torture.”


motherjones--2020-04-13--Gig Workers Are More Undervalued Than Ever Before. Tech Companies Are Spending Like Crazy to Keep It

Gig Workers Are More Undervalued Than Ever Before. Tech Companies Are Spending Like Crazy to Keep It That Way.

Cardell Calloway was at an Uber Eats Driver Appreciation Day pizza party when he realized he was getting screwed .
It was just before Christmas 2017 , and Calloway , who spent up to 80 hours a week delivering food for various gig companies including Uber ’ s food takeout service , had suspected he and his fellow drivers might be getting a bonus .
Instead , an Uber Eats representative told the 40 or so people who ’ d gathered at a Southern California pizza parlor that the company ’ s pay model was changing .
No reason to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , drivers would be paid less per delivery , but this would mean more deliveries , so more money .
“ We pull out our calculators , ” Calloway recalls .
“ We ’ re barely making $ 8 an hour.
” Caught in a flurry of anxious questions from the drivers , the rep got up to order more pizza and never returned .
Uber Eats could leave Calloway and his colleagues hanging because , officially , it wasn ’ t their employer .
In the company ’ s view , they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ use its app to connect with people who wanted takeout .
Never mind that it established how much they were paid per trip or that its business would crumble without them : Because they weren ’ t real employees , Uber owed them none of the benefits of a real job , like overtime pay , workers ’ comp , health insurance , or paid sick leave .
“ See , the thing is , I don ’ t want to eat pizza , ” Calloway says .
“ I want to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ So his interest was piqued when he found a note stuck to his windshield from the Mobile Workers Alliance , a group of gig drivers seeking to make tech companies classify contractors as employees .
MWA began with 20 drivers in 2017 .
Three years later , it claims a network of more than 20,000 members and supporters , some of whom , including Calloway , pushed California ’ s lawmakers to take action .
The result was Assembly Bill 5 , which set up a test to determine if gig workers were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for companies to classify them as contractors if their work is essential to the business .
The bill , which received backing from senators Kamala Harris , Bernie Sanders , and Elizabeth Warren , passed last fall and went into effect January 1 .
Yet most gig companies have stalled in transitioning their contractors to employees .
The result is that , as coronavirus has shut people indoors , delivery workers like Calloway are now on the frontlines of a global pandemic , with few protections to keep themselves safe .
To call @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , low wage tech workers at Instacart , Shipt , and Amazon , have organized strikes—a growing movement questioning the economic ecosystem of gig work .
For their part , gig companies are doubling down on their opposition to the law , which dared to question one of the tenets of Silicon Valley : A business is not defined by the service it provides but by its technology—its platform .
Uber is a platform for “ several different types of digital marketplaces.
” Lyft is a platform “ where persons…seek transportation to certain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drivers are just participants in a “ communications and logistics platform.
” Twitter , Facebook , and Instagram are platforms , so they claim they can ’ t be expected to police misinformation or hate speech .
Platforms exist in a state of sublime innocence , free from any responsibility beyond providing the infrastructure for connecting people .
Even before AB 5 went into effect , Uber and Postmates , another delivery app , sued California to stop the law .
( A federal judge denied the companies ’ initial request . )
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and Postmates have spent $ 110 million to promote and gather signatures for a proposed ballot measure that would essentially exempt many gig companies from the law .
The companies formed a group that recruited what it calls “ app-based drivers ” to serve as spokespeople for the proposition , which will almost certainly appear on the November ballot .
Op-eds written by drivers associated with the campaign called it a matter of “ flexibility.
” The coronavirus appears to have done little to change the minds of company executives .
Uber @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 100 percent ” behind the ballot measure .
And when CEO Dara Khosrowshahi sent a letter to President Donald Trump , arguing that government benefits should go to drivers to help with the economic fallout from COVID-19 , he made it clear he didn ’ t want such benefits to be a case for making Uber employ those drivers .
It would harm , Khsrowshahi argued , their “ flexibility.
” Not so , says Calloway .
When he began driving for Uber in 2014 , at age 60 , he was living @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , about an hour and a half from Los Angeles .
He was , in theory , free to decide where and when he worked .
But “ if I want passengers , I have to drive to Los Angeles to get them , ” he recalls .
At first , he made the 140-mile round-trip drive every weekday .
But when he realized that was a “ losing proposition ” financially , he started living out of his car .
“ What kind of flexibility is that ?
” he asks .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ no fewer than 30 bills to soften or repeal AB 5 .
Lyft has put $ 2 million into Californians for Independent Work , an independent expenditure committee working to unseat pro–AB 5 legislators .
The law ’ s unintended consequences have also ticked off employers and employees in other sectors .
In November , the California Trucking Association sued state officials , arguing that independent truckers regularly carrying loads for companies should stay contractors , not become employees .
Journalists have taken to their natural habitat , Twitter , to complain that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the sports site owned by Vox Media , blamed the law when it laid off its entire California workforce .
A day later , organizations representing freelance writers and photographers sued the state attorney general , calling the law unconstitutional .
Assembly member Lorena Gonzalez , AB 5 ’ s author , says there are legitimate concerns , but chalks up much of the pushback to Republican theatrics and “ corporations paying for disruption.
” But she says the law was necessary .
In the midst of a pandemic , gig workers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protections for long-term unemployment or if a family member gets sick .
And even if AB 5 hadn ’ t become law , many of the same companies now complaining would likely have been forced to make changes due to a 2018 California Supreme Court ruling that set a near-identical standard for defining independent contractors .
So far , there aren ’ t many examples of how the new law has helped gig workers .
Gonzalez says Gov .
Gavin Newsom seems to be unenthusiastic about the law .
“ If I was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” she said , “ I think I ’ d be holding my breath all year.
” There have been some small victories for gig workers .
In September 2019 , the San Diego city attorney took Instacart to court under AB 5 for classifying its shoppers as contractors .
Earlier this month , Senator Warren wrote to major gig companies to reclassify contractors amid the coronavirus pandemic as employees .
A judge recently agreed that workers picking out customers ’ groceries likely “ perform a core function ” for the company @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t help him much now .
Earlier this year , his car , which had 155,000 miles on it , broke down .
He ’ s living in his RV back home , too broke to afford a new car and unable to drive for work anymore .
The gig economy promised freedom for drivers , but it left Calloway worse off than when he ’ d started .
“ They say it ’ s innovative because it ’ s on a platform , ” he says .
“ But when you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is that ?
”

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Cardell Calloway was at an Uber Eats Driver Appreciation Day pizza party when he realized he was getting screwed. It was just before Christmas 2017, and Calloway, who spent up to 80 hours a week delivering food for various gig companies including Uber’s food takeout service, had suspected he and his fellow drivers might be getting a bonus. Instead, an Uber Eats representative told the 40 or so people who’d gathered at a Southern California pizza parlor that the company’s pay model was changing.
No reason to worry, the rep explained: Yes, drivers would be paid less per delivery, but this would mean more deliveries, so more money. “We pull out our calculators,” Calloway recalls. “We’re barely making $8 an hour.” Caught in a flurry of anxious questions from the drivers, the rep got up to order more pizza and never returned.
Uber Eats could leave Calloway and his colleagues hanging because, officially, it wasn’t their employer. In the company’s view, they were just independent contractors who happened to use its app to connect with people who wanted takeout. Never mind that it established how much they were paid per trip or that its business would crumble without them: Because they weren’t real employees, Uber owed them none of the benefits of a real job, like overtime pay, workers’ comp, health insurance, or paid sick leave.
“See, the thing is, I don’t want to eat pizza,” Calloway says. “I want to be able to afford a good meal.” So his interest was piqued when he found a note stuck to his windshield from the Mobile Workers Alliance, a group of gig drivers seeking to make tech companies classify contractors as employees. MWA began with 20 drivers in 2017. Three years later, it claims a network of more than 20,000 members and supporters, some of whom, including Calloway, pushed California’s lawmakers to take action.
The result was Assembly Bill 5, which set up a test to determine if gig workers were de facto employees and made it harder for companies to classify them as contractors if their work is essential to the business. The bill, which received backing from senators Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren, passed last fall and went into effect January 1.
Yet most gig companies have stalled in transitioning their contractors to employees. The result is that, as coronavirus has shut people indoors, delivery workers like Calloway are now on the frontlines of a global pandemic, with few protections to keep themselves safe. To call attention to the precariousness of their situations, low wage tech workers at Instacart, Shipt, and Amazon, have organized strikes—a growing movement questioning the economic ecosystem of gig work.
For their part, gig companies are doubling down on their opposition to the law, which dared to question one of the tenets of Silicon Valley: A business is not defined by the service it provides but by its technology—its platform. Uber is a platform for “several different types of digital marketplaces.” Lyft is a platform “where persons…seek transportation to certain destinations.” Instacart’s grocery delivery drivers are just participants in a “communications and logistics platform.” Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are platforms, so they claim they can’t be expected to police misinformation or hate speech. Platforms exist in a state of sublime innocence, free from any responsibility beyond providing the infrastructure for connecting people.
None of My Business Uber, Lyft, and Instacart aren’t the only companies that don’t want to be defined by what they actually do. Audi: “We are a tech company that happens to make cars.” Zappos: “We’re a service company that just happens to sell shoes.” Big River Steel: “At our core, we’re a technology company. We just happen to make steel.” Shea Homes: “We’re a service company that just so happens to build homes.” Wild Alaskan: “Wild Alaskan is a tech company that happens to sell seafood.” [Read the full list here.]
Even before AB 5 went into effect, Uber and Postmates, another delivery app, sued California to stop the law. (A federal judge denied the companies’ initial request.) Uber, Lyft, Instacart, DoorDash, and Postmates have spent $110 million to promote and gather signatures for a proposed ballot measure that would essentially exempt many gig companies from the law. The companies formed a group that recruited what it calls “app-based drivers” to serve as spokespeople for the proposition, which will almost certainly appear on the November ballot. Op-eds written by drivers associated with the campaign called it a matter of “flexibility.”
The coronavirus appears to have done little to change the minds of company executives. Uber told Mother Jones it was still “100 percent” behind the ballot measure. And when CEO Dara Khosrowshahi sent a letter to President Donald Trump, arguing that government benefits should go to drivers to help with the economic fallout from COVID-19, he made it clear he didn’t want such benefits to be a case for making Uber employ those drivers. It would harm, Khsrowshahi argued, their “flexibility.”
Not so, says Calloway. When he began driving for Uber in 2014, at age 60, he was living in a town in the Mojave Desert, about an hour and a half from Los Angeles. He was, in theory, free to decide where and when he worked. But “if I want passengers, I have to drive to Los Angeles to get them,” he recalls. At first, he made the 140-mile round-trip drive every weekday. But when he realized that was a “losing proposition” financially, he started living out of his car. “What kind of flexibility is that?” he asks.
Since January, state lawmakers have introduced no fewer than 30 bills to soften or repeal AB 5. Lyft has put $2 million into Californians for Independent Work, an independent expenditure committee working to unseat pro–AB 5 legislators.
The law’s unintended consequences have also ticked off employers and employees in other sectors. In November, the California Trucking Association sued state officials, arguing that independent truckers regularly carrying loads for companies should stay contractors, not become employees. Journalists have taken to their natural habitat, Twitter, to complain that AB 5 hurts freelancers. SB Nation, the sports site owned by Vox Media, blamed the law when it laid off its entire California workforce. A day later, organizations representing freelance writers and photographers sued the state attorney general, calling the law unconstitutional.
Assembly member Lorena Gonzalez, AB 5’s author, says there are legitimate concerns, but chalks up much of the pushback to Republican theatrics and “corporations paying for disruption.” But she says the law was necessary. In the midst of a pandemic, gig workers have been driving and making deliveries without protections for long-term unemployment or if a family member gets sick. And even if AB 5 hadn’t become law, many of the same companies now complaining would likely have been forced to make changes due to a 2018 California Supreme Court ruling that set a near-identical standard for defining independent contractors.
So far, there aren’t many examples of how the new law has helped gig workers. Gonzalez says Gov. Gavin Newsom seems to be unenthusiastic about the law. “If I was holding out for this governor to enforce,” she said, “I think I’d be holding my breath all year.” There have been some small victories for gig workers. In September 2019, the San Diego city attorney took Instacart to court under AB 5 for classifying its shoppers as contractors. Earlier this month, Senator Warren wrote to major gig companies to reclassify contractors amid the coronavirus pandemic as employees. A judge recently agreed that workers picking out customers’ groceries likely “perform a core function” for the company.
The changes Calloway fought for won’t help him much now. Earlier this year, his car, which had 155,000 miles on it, broke down. He’s living in his RV back home, too broke to afford a new car and unable to drive for work anymore. The gig economy promised freedom for drivers, but it left Calloway worse off than when he’d started. “They say it’s innovative because it’s on a platform,” he says. “But when you’re cheating everybody, how innovative is that?”


motherjones--2020-04-13--I Tried to Get an Abortion in a Blue State During the Pandemic. It Was Complicated.

A few weeks ago , a friend reached out to me because she had discovered she was pregnant and she was not sure if she could afford—physically , emotionally , or financially—to have another child .
As we spoke that afternoon , COVID-19 was beginning to spread and she was pretty sure she wanted an abortion .
Fortunately , that seemed like a fairly straightforward task ; we live in California , which is known as a haven state for abortion access .
But what unfolded after our first conversation , the barriers presented by health insurance , work , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coronavirus , show that even in such a place , barriers to care exist .
While , of course , it ’ s still harder to get an abortion in a state like Texas , which is using the pandemic as an opportunity to ban most abortion care , it ’ s still important to remember that the issue of access goes beyond draconian laws and the number of clinics in any given state .
This is her story , in her own words , lightly edited for length and clarity .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the home pregnancy test .
I was like , holy shit ; I wasn ’ t expecting it .
I was three weeks late , and something just felt off with me .
I was fatigued , I had some mood swings , but I also had some cramps , so I kept thinking I was right about to get my period .
When the cramps stopped and it still didn ’ t come , that ’ s when I took the test .
When I talked to my husband about it , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like , I don ’ t think I can do this .
I wasn ’ t expecting it , I ’ m not ready for this , it ’ s going to be so much work , there ’ s going to be so little support .
What I had realized with my first kid was that it ’ s a disproportionate amount of work for the mother , even if you have a supportive husband .
My parents live far away , so they can come and stay for some time , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
So there ’ s no , “ Can you watch the kids so I can go on this work trip ?
” or “ I ’ m up against a deadline and need to work late , can you step in ?
” It ’ s just me and my husband , who also has a demanding job .
My husband was supportive of my uncertainty , even though his personal desire was for me to have another kid .
My first pregnancy was really hard and painful , and I think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ want to go through that again .
I had a terrible accident that messed up my back , so during my pregnancy , I was going to a chiropractor twice a week and I was scared of hitting my insurance limits .
I was not in good physical shape during my pregnancy because of my back injury , and it made the whole process scarier .
It was a painful nine months , and I was in labor for 48 hours , with four hours of active pushing .
I didn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that again .
At the end of the day , it ’ s on me : I have to do the physical labor of nourishing and growing the baby inside me , pushing it out , and breastfeeding it after .
There ’ s no way my husband can step in for any of that , and I think that ’ s what got through to him .
I went to see my primary care physician immediately and got the official pregnancy test done .
Then I called Planned Parenthood .
It was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me an appointment for two days out .
Then I discovered Planned Parenthood was out-of-network for my insurance , and a medication abortion would have cost me $ 2,000 , so I canceled .
I think at that time I was probably six weeks .
The next week , I went to an appointment at a big local hospital with an OB-GYN who was in-network .
By that time , I was closer to seven-and-a-half weeks , which she said was their cutoff for a medication abortion there , so it would have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s note : The Planned Parenthood clinic offered medication abortion up to 10 weeks after the start of the last menstrual period ; generally , this is the standard at most women ’ s health clinics . ]
I had to travel soon for work and I didn ’ t want to risk not being at my best for the trip , so I decided to do it afterward .
But when I came home , I discovered that someone at the conference had been diagnosed with the coronavirus , so I had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ When I mentioned that at my next appointment , the doctor literally left the room and came back in full protective gear .
They called the health department , and I was sent home .
By the time I had another appointment scheduled for the abortion , I would have been nearly 11 weeks along .
The doctor told me I had to make a decision because they weren ’ t sure if they would even be able to offer it in the coming days .
What if it became an elective procedure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up backing out of the procedure ; it was later in the pregnancy than I was comfortable with , and I was getting attached to what was happening inside me .
I think if I had been able to get the medication abortion at Planned Parenthood , I would have done it .
It was fast , they had appointments available , they didn ’ t want me to come in five times before I could get the abortion .
The hospital treated it more like surgery , and it freaked me out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and then coming back for the real procedure , felt invasive and scary .
For weeks , I was scheduling and rescheduling over and over , and I wasn ’ t getting anywhere .
In a state like California , I thought it would be easier .
It was not treated like any other medical procedure or surgery .
I think it makes a difference , the easier it is to access care or the way the doctors treat you .
You can tell if someone is judging you .
Some of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ This is a well-placed pregnancy , why don ’ t you want to go through with it ?
Is it because you don ’ t have support ?
What can you do to get support ?
” These are questions I had already answered for myself .
What really made it hard was that I felt like I didn ’ t have anyone I could really talk to about all of it—I ’ m an immigrant , a woman of color , this is not something that is discussed among my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It felt like uncharted territory , and I think fear of the unknown played a factor too .
Certainly , all the disinformation on the Internet didn ’ t help either .
I wouldn ’ t say I feel good or excited about having a baby .
As soon as I made the decision not to abort , I regretted it .
But I ’ ve made my peace with my decision .
I ’ ve never been anti-abortion , but I do feel like this whole experience has made me even more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ procedure , but it ’ s also something that gets more complicated if you ’ re forced to wait longer and longer .
I think I will get excited about the pregnancy—it ’ s a good time for my kid to have a sibling , and my parents and my husband are excited about it .
But for now , I ’ d be lying if I said it wasn ’ t complicated .

A few weeks ago, a friend reached out to me because she had discovered she was pregnant and she was not sure if she could afford—physically, emotionally, or financially—to have another child. As we spoke that afternoon, COVID-19 was beginning to spread and she was pretty sure she wanted an abortion. Fortunately, that seemed like a fairly straightforward task; we live in California, which is known as a haven state for abortion access. But what unfolded after our first conversation, the barriers presented by health insurance, work, misinformation, and, yes, the coronavirus, show that even in such a place, barriers to care exist. While, of course, it’s still harder to get an abortion in a state like Texas, which is using the pandemic as an opportunity to ban most abortion care, it’s still important to remember that the issue of access goes beyond draconian laws and the number of clinics in any given state. This is her story, in her own words, lightly edited for length and clarity.
What I had realized with my first kid was that it’s a disproportionate amount of work for the mother, even if you have a supportive husband.
I told you the day after I took the home pregnancy test. I was like, holy shit; I wasn’t expecting it. I was three weeks late, and something just felt off with me. I was fatigued, I had some mood swings, but I also had some cramps, so I kept thinking I was right about to get my period. When the cramps stopped and it still didn’t come, that’s when I took the test.
When I talked to my husband about it, I was very sure: I was like, I don’t think I can do this. I wasn’t expecting it, I’m not ready for this, it’s going to be so much work, there’s going to be so little support. What I had realized with my first kid was that it’s a disproportionate amount of work for the mother, even if you have a supportive husband. My parents live far away, so they can come and stay for some time, but then they have to go away. So there’s no, “Can you watch the kids so I can go on this work trip?” or “I’m up against a deadline and need to work late, can you step in?” It’s just me and my husband, who also has a demanding job.
My husband was supportive of my uncertainty, even though his personal desire was for me to have another kid. My first pregnancy was really hard and painful, and I think he understood why I didn’t want to go through that again. I had a terrible accident that messed up my back, so during my pregnancy, I was going to a chiropractor twice a week and I was scared of hitting my insurance limits. I was not in good physical shape during my pregnancy because of my back injury, and it made the whole process scarier. It was a painful nine months, and I was in labor for 48 hours, with four hours of active pushing. I didn’t know if I wanted to go through that again. At the end of the day, it’s on me: I have to do the physical labor of nourishing and growing the baby inside me, pushing it out, and breastfeeding it after. There’s no way my husband can step in for any of that, and I think that’s what got through to him.
I went to see my primary care physician immediately and got the official pregnancy test done. Then I called Planned Parenthood. It was all very efficient—they were able to get me an appointment for two days out. Then I discovered Planned Parenthood was out-of-network for my insurance, and a medication abortion would have cost me $2,000, so I canceled. I think at that time I was probably six weeks.
I think if I had been able to get the medication abortion at Planned Parenthood, I would have done it. The hospital treated it more like surgery, and it freaked me out.
The next week, I went to an appointment at a big local hospital with an OB-GYN who was in-network. By that time, I was closer to seven-and-a-half weeks, which she said was their cutoff for a medication abortion there, so it would have to be surgical. [Editor’s note: The Planned Parenthood clinic offered medication abortion up to 10 weeks after the start of the last menstrual period; generally, this is the standard at most women’s health clinics.] I had to travel soon for work and I didn’t want to risk not being at my best for the trip, so I decided to do it afterward. But when I came home, I discovered that someone at the conference had been diagnosed with the coronavirus, so I had to be quarantined for two weeks. When I mentioned that at my next appointment, the doctor literally left the room and came back in full protective gear. They called the health department, and I was sent home.
By the time I had another appointment scheduled for the abortion, I would have been nearly 11 weeks along. The doctor told me I had to make a decision because they weren’t sure if they would even be able to offer it in the coming days. What if it became an elective procedure because of the virus?
I wound up backing out of the procedure; it was later in the pregnancy than I was comfortable with, and I was getting attached to what was happening inside me.
I think if I had been able to get the medication abortion at Planned Parenthood, I would have done it. It was fast, they had appointments available, they didn’t want me to come in five times before I could get the abortion. The hospital treated it more like surgery, and it freaked me out; the appointment for dilating my cervix, and then coming back for the real procedure, felt invasive and scary. For weeks, I was scheduling and rescheduling over and over, and I wasn’t getting anywhere. In a state like California, I thought it would be easier.
It was not treated like any other medical procedure or surgery. I think it makes a difference, the easier it is to access care or the way the doctors treat you. You can tell if someone is judging you. Some of it was nonverbal, but they said, “This is a well-placed pregnancy, why don’t you want to go through with it? Is it because you don’t have support? What can you do to get support?” These are questions I had already answered for myself. What really made it hard was that I felt like I didn’t have anyone I could really talk to about all of it—I’m an immigrant, a woman of color, this is not something that is discussed among my family members or even my friends. It felt like uncharted territory, and I think fear of the unknown played a factor too. Certainly, all the disinformation on the Internet didn’t help either.
For weeks, I was scheduling and rescheduling over and over, and I wasn’t getting anywhere. In a state like California, I thought it would be easier.
I wouldn’t say I feel good or excited about having a baby. As soon as I made the decision not to abort, I regretted it. But I’ve made my peace with my decision. I’ve never been anti-abortion, but I do feel like this whole experience has made me even more pro-choice. It’s a simple procedure, but it’s also something that gets more complicated if you’re forced to wait longer and longer.
I think I will get excited about the pregnancy—it’s a good time for my kid to have a sibling, and my parents and my husband are excited about it. But for now, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t complicated.