merrill SoS ala
rww 1119<div>...<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">The pace is already picking up as November 2020 approaches. In many states, election officials will conduct purges of the voting rolls; the Supreme Court has allowed them to kick off voters who’ve skipped two consecutive federal elections, and most Republican-controlled states make use of them, sometimes failing to provide the notice (and opportunity to re-register) that the law requires.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>As did his friend, Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia (second from right), Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill (left) will oversee the administration of his own statewide race</b>. Kemp served as Georgia’s secretary of state, overseeing the gubernatorial election in which he ran against Stacey Abrams. Merrill, one of the nation’s most prolific voter-roll purgers, is running for a U.S. Senate seat. (Photo from Merrill’s Facebook page.)]</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">One of the most prolific purgers, Alabama’s Republican Secretary of State John Merrill, is overseeing his own 2020 campaign for U.S. Senate, currently one candidate in a field of Republicans vying for the nomination to run against Democrat Doug Jones</span>. Merrill has made no secret of his desire to create barriers to Alabamians who want to vote: “As long as I’m secretary of state of Alabama, you’re going to have to show some initiative to become a registered voter in this state,” he told documentary filmmaker Brian Jenkins in 2016. Asked why he opposed automatic registration for eligible citizens over 18, Merrill said, “If you’re too sorry or lazy to get up off of your rear and go register to vote, or to register electronically, and then to vote, then you don’t deserve that privilege.”</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Post-Shelby, states are free to shorten their early voting periods, and to close down more polling places where Democrats live. New laws, some inspired by the latest methods cooked up in states like Tennessee and Florida, will be passed—and most will land in the courts. With Democrats’ attempts to restore the full powers of the Voting Rights Act stymied by Mitch McConnell and the Republican U.S. Senate majority, it will be another election year marked by chaos and uncertainty for voters and local election officials alike. In some states, as in 2016, voters won’t know what kind of ID is required until a court rules in the fall. Some won’t know that they’ve been purged from the voting rolls until they arrive to vote. Some won’t know where to vote; one recent report found that 1,688 polling places have been closed since 2012. Texas alone had 760. African Americans and Latinos know they will have to wait in longer lines. Others will be reading stories about disputes, in states like Georgia, over whether votes will be counted by machine, or by paper ballots that can be recounted and audited.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">This uncertainty creates what Cliff Albright of Black Voters Matter calls a “fog of confusion” around voting—an indirect form of voter suppression that might be more powerful than all the others. “Voter suppression is not just one incident, one policy at a time,” says Renitta Shannon, a Democratic state representative in Georgia. “It’s a collection of actions chipping away at voting rights. If you aren’t directly preventing people from voting, you’re sending a message that it’s going to be a hassle, or that their votes won’t count. Some people are bound to end up saying, OK, why bother?”</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But voting-rights advocates, who had no way of preparing for the voting-rights backlash that followed Obama’s first victory, have begun to counter it by working to broaden voting at the same time that they’re fighting off new forms of suppression. Groups like Move Texas helped triple youth turnout in that state in 2018. In Florida, Gillum has founded an ambitious nonprofit aimed at expanding the vote dramatically, while Abrams has expanded her Georgia operation, now called Fair Fight Action, to 20 states for 2020. And though the courts continued to deliver rulings favorable to voter-suppressors—like October’s Rucho vs. Cunningham decision, in which five conservative Supreme Court justices barred federal courts from hearing partisan gerrymandering claims (as opposed to racial gerrymandering lawsuits)—the key cases aren’t all setbacks.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">...</div>