Julia Conley at Common Dreams writes—We've Never Seen Anything Like This': Unprecedented Early Voting Gives Progressives Hope:
President Donald Trump has traveled the country in recent weeks telling crowds in states including Texas, Florida, and Arizona that a vote for Republican politicians is a vote for his agenda—and high early turnout among typically Democratic groups suggests that anti-Trump voters are taking in that message as well.
Early voting turnout is breaking records and vastly exceeding expectations in several closely-watched states, with Democrats hopeful that enthusiasm among young people, African-Americans, and Latino voters will lead to Democratic victories and deliver a strong message of resistance to Trump.
"We've never seen anything like this," Michael McDonald, a professor of political science at the University of Florida, told the Brennan Center for Justice, sharing research showing that voters in North Carolina, Georgia, Minnesota, Texas, Florida, and Nevada have cast twice as many ballots so far as they did four years ago.
Across the country, more than 22 million Americans have already voted in state and federal elections, with six days left to go until Election Day—compared with 83 million total voters who went to the polls in the 2014 midterms. Tom Bonier, CEO of the political data firm TargetSmart, suggested that the high turnout is a result of new levels of enthusiasm for—and against—candidates.
"While early vote has consistently increased over the last decade, early indications are that we're seeing more than an incremental increase in voter participation this cycle," wrote Bonier in a Medium post on Wednesday.
In Texas, where residents have started voting in a number of races including one for Republican Ted Cruz's Senate seat, turnout among voters under the age of 29 has increased 508 percent, while black and Latino voters are going to the polls at more than double the rate they did in 2014. [...]
TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES
QUOTATION
“The election of Donald Trump confirmed everything I knew of my country and none of what I could accept. The idea that America would follow its first black president with Donald Trump accorded with its history. I was shocked at my own shock. I had wanted Obama to be right. I still want Obama to be right. I still would like to fold myself into the dream. This will not be possible.”
~~Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2010—Suppressing the vote:
The late Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Rehnquist cut his political teeth suppressing the vote in Arizona. It was an issue at his confirmation hearings, but it didn't prevent his being seated.
One of the more under-reported stories about the stolen Florida presidential election of 2000 was the racist and partisan purging of legitimate voters, to suppress the Democratic vote count. And in Florida, it didn’t end there […]
We later found out that the Bush White House had been replacing U.S. attorneys for refusing to play along with their attempts to intimidate voters.
In 2007, the Republican Secretary of State of Louisiana purged tens of thousands of mostly minority voters, without going through proper procedures.
This year, groups tied to Koch Industries are continuing their efforts to suppress the vote in Wisconsin, where a champion of campaign reform may lose his Senate seat to a climate denier and enabler of pederasts.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Less than a week to go to the election! Greg Dworkin, Armando, and Joan McCarter analyze a collection of Trumpist flops: the Jacob Wohl trash fire, the Pittsburgh visit, the birthright citizenship fiasco, and the dumbest preexisting conditions lie yet.
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