Happy Tuesday, good peoples! Let's call our Reps and Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act, and the Voting Rights Advancement Act (no bill number at this writing). H.R. 1 would enact sweeping voting rights reforms, including campaign finance disclosure, same-day voter registration, automatic voter registration, 15 days of early voting, independent commissions to redraw districts, and an end to those nefarious "address verification forms" that only seem to lead to folks of color getting de-registered. Meanwhile, the Voting Rights Advancement Act would require any state or locality with a record of vote suppression to get pre-clearance from our Justice Department before changing their laws. Neither of these bills are budget-related, so Republicans will be able to filibuster them (unless Senate Democrats get rid of the filibuster, or force Republicans to talk through a filibuster), but I say let them say they're against helping more people vote. That won't go down too well with folks of color, and I dare say it won't go down too well with independents, either.
Meanwhile, Daily Kos helps you tell President Biden to close our detention center at the Guantánamo Bay once and for all. You'll remember that President Obama tried to close it, only to hear a bunch of not-in-my-backyard whining from Congressfolk of both parties (ain't bipartisanship grand?). ZOMG what if one of those terrorists had to be detained in my state? Those would be the "terrorists" our government literally couldn't charge with a crime after 10 years; if you can't charge someone with a crime after detaining them for 10 years, you're either incompetent or a fascist -- or, more likely, a fascist pretending to be incompetent. And don't brook any stupidity about folks we can't even call "terrorists" "returning" to terrorism, for Guantánamo Bay remains a stain on our collective soul as Americans, and we should scrub that stain right out. But remember: we don't locate America's greatness in our "infallibility," for only a coward or a fascist does that. We locate America's greatness in our struggle to right our wrongs. This is more our heritage than whatever OANN teaches is our heritage.
Meanwhile, our U.S. Election Assistance Commission (or EAC) plans to vote soon on the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines 2.0, which would ostensibly enhance election security -- if it didn't plan on allowing voting machines to have wireless devices in them! The standard actually says a voting machine can have a wireless device in it if the voting machine doesn't actually use it, but then why have it? So hackers can exploit the very presence of a wireless device and manipulate elections from afar? Somebody didn't think this through -- or, possibly, someone did. And funny thing, we actually convinced the EAC to include a strong wireless ban in its standards last year -- but now they want to water that standard down so that it's useless! I wonder who got to them. In any event, Public Citizen helps you tell our EAC to reject voting machines with wireless devices in them. Remember: if you don't trust wireless systems to handle your banking (and you shouldn't!), then you certainly can't trust wireless systems with your vote. And yes, elections were pretty secure in 2020, but that doesn't mean we sit back, it means we keep working.
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