The shocking billionaire plot to buy the midterm elections
And their real motivation
Welcome to a Wednesday night edition of Progress Report.
Thank you to everyone who tuned in last night for our stream with Anna Aho Rink, the health care hero who is now running to flip a red seat in the Michigan legislature. It was a really great conversation (because she’s very interesting) and I’ll have a write-up of the whole thing in your inboxes tomorrow.
Tonight, I’m excited to present a project that has been months in the making. This new report, just published at More Perfect Union, exposes the billionaires responsible for Trump’s fascistic voter suppression campaign and the real motivation driving it.
Note: I’ll be honest, this newsletter’s paid subscribers have plummeted since I came back from open-heart surgery. It’s making it hard to do this work, because there are real expenses, including site coding, web hosting, electoral resources, media access, and more. This is a second full-time job, and if you can help make it sustainable, it will allow me to report and amplify stories you won’t find elsewhere.
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We view voting rights mostly through partisan and racial lenses, and for good reason: disenfranchising racial minorities, whether through gerrymandering or laws designed to limit access to the ballot, are now exclusively used by Republicans to elect more Republicans. They are two sides of the same coin: fewer people people of color voting, more Republicans elected.
Even the Supreme Court acknowledged it, in their own slimy way: one of the reasons why the recent Callais decision was so devastating is that it enabled Republicans to claim that districts drawn explicitly to discriminate against people of color were instead motivated by partisan aims, which the Court has deemed beyond the federal judiciary’s purview. Essentially, you can do a racist gerrymander so long as you say it’s strictly for political gain.
I have no doubt that these lawmakers are broadly racist and don’t care about representation for minorities, but the current GOP is not simply motivated by pure bigotry or lust for the trappings of elected office. As always, there is an economic element to this voter suppression push, and thanks to Citizens United and the scourge of dark money, it’s more prominent than ever.
To put it bluntly: the assault on American elections and voting rights is sponsored by a shadowy network of far-right billionaires. The foreign voter myth, the crusade against mail-in voting — it’s all part of a careful, choreographed, richly-funded plan. And as much as anything else, it’s designed to prevent working class people from voting and threatening the elite’s economic hegemony.
And we have the numbers to prove it.
We conducted the first poll designed to measure the impact of Donald Trump’s voter suppression executive orders and the SAVE Act. The results were both what we expected and eye-opening. Watch our big investigation and read an excerpt of our poll below, then click over to More Perfect Union for the whole thing.
President Donald Trump’s executive orders on election administration would create significant — and in many cases, insurmountable — barriers for working- and middle- class Americans to voting, according to a new poll from More Perfect Union and Blue Rose Research.
The poll, which surveyed 3,129 registered voters between April 16 and April 27, found that the proof of citizenship requirements pushed by Trump set a bar for voter registration that most voters would struggle to meet. Just 26% of voters said that they have an up-to-date passport, while nearly a third of voters (32%) said that requiring a passport to register would make it more difficult or prevent them from voting.
Nearly half of voters (46%) said that the $130 fee to purchase a new passport would be a financial burden. Two-thirds of lower-income voters said the $130 cost would be a barrier and nearly half (47%) reported it would prevent or deter them from registering and voting altogether. Among middle-income voters, just over half (53%) said that the price would cause them issues, including just over a third (36%) who said it would make them less likely or unable to vote.
More than a third (35%) of high-income voters also said the $130 fee might cause them problems, including 25% who would be less likely or unable to vote.
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Great article- thank you for presenting it to us. The right to vote is sacred. What angers me as a loyal Democrat is when Dem leaders do not fight back. Gov. Polis in Colorado releasing the election denying official who committed voter fraud and the Dem officials who refused to lower the age of retirement to 70 or 65. in order to save the people's vote from 4 Republican judges. We Dems must demand that Dems in power fight back and work to expand voting access. Demand they combine the local elections with the even year elections as California has done. It saves millions of tax dollars needed to make up for Trump's cuts. IT BOOSTS VOTER TURNOUT. IT RESULTS IN MORE WOMEN AND MORE MINORITIES BEING ELECTED TO LOCAL OFFICES. It helps prevent extremists from taking over school boards. Dems must demand that all blue states pass universal vote by mail like several blue states in the west have done! It BOOSTS VOTER TURNOUT< ESPECIALLY FOR OUR HARD TO REACH GROUPS!!! It saves millions of tax dollars, needed to push universal Pre-K and free community college. Every blue state should pass every reform talked about in the old Pelosi voting rights act. Combining elections means bigger turnouts by our voters so Virginia and New Jersey should combine their odd year elections with their midterm elections as other states have done!!!