Stealing Congress 2014: The Election Shenanigans Liveblog

With one week six five four three two days one day hours remaining until polls close, Republican candidates are even more out of touch than they were in 2010. Republican governors are doing their best to save the Democratic US Senate with failed policies and extreme agendas, but the GOP hopes that voter ID laws, gerrymandering, low turnout, and a compliant media environment will help rescue their decades-old dream of permanent power in Washington.

This blog post will be updated over the next week in an effort to boost awareness of Republican methods for taking power — and their intended uses of what power they can win, seize, or steal. If you have anything to add to this list, please feel free to comment below with a link.

Update 4 November:

• What did I just say about those unreliable touchscreen voting machines that got foisted on the American people after the abomination of the 2000 election? Now they’re switching votes in minority-heavy parts of North Carolina, but I don’t see Katie Pavlich calling it a sinister conspiracy by Democrats
• Minorities consistently face longer lines and waiting times across the nation
• Remember all those voter registrations that went missing in Georgia? People are turning up to vote only to find their names are not on the list

• Sen Ted Cruz says a Republican Senate will get right to work repealing Obamacare and impeaching the president

• Alabama has decided at the last minute that voters can’t use public housing IDs
• If you think Washington, DC is bad now, just wait until there’s a GOP Senate majority in place and a Supreme Court justice to confirm
• A Republican Senate will stop all those silly investigations into CIA spying on the Senate
• Republicans are using Ebola as a dog-whistle for immigration

Update 3 November:

• Media Matters has a great fact sheet on the right wing obsession with fairy tales of voter impersonation
• This is a good time to remind everyone that out of a billion ballots cast, a comprehensive investigation published this Summer found just 31 fraudulent ballots
• The Kentucky GOP is sending out some truly vile, racist mailers

• Kansas Secretary of State Chris Kobach has increased the rate of registration rejection from .03 percent to 20 percent

[youtube]http://youtu.be/aIMgfBZrrZ8[/youtube]

• You have no idea who is paying for that ad or what they really want
• The Kochs know who you are, and they know how you vote! Yet another intimidating “lazy voter” mailer
• Congress stands to become a wholly-owned corporate subsidiary thanks to the Supreme Court 
• How your media fails you: outgoing Senator Tom Harkin isn’t even on the ballot, but today’s news cycle is obsessed with his unfavorable comparison of Joni Ernst to Taylor Swift while ignoring the John Bircher lunacy coming out of Ernst’s mouth

Update 2 November:

• Note how the New York Post calls it “bullying” when the New York State Democratic Committee sends out a mailer that, like the Kochs’, is supposed to encourage ‘lazy’ voters
• Brad Friedman has spent his entire career as a blogger telling us that touchscreen voting is horrible for any candidate on the ballot. But whereas he sees technological insufficiency, “Fast and Furious” fantasist Katie Pavlich sees a conspiracy by Democrats
• Tea party gains in Texas will swing that state even farther right
• New GOP state majorities will probably lead to even more education cuts
• Earl Ofari Hutchison says that a GOP wave “will sink black America“
• The new crop of Senate Republicans will turn Congress even further right
• Norm Ornstein says that a GOP majority would have to choose between its impeachment wing and its governing wing. I bet I know which wing the GOP will default to

• Joni Ernst might be the most John Bircher-friendly US Senator since Jesse Helms — not that the media is talking about it

Update 1 November:

• Allison Lundergan Grimes is suing Mitch McConnell for blatant and incredibly stupid voter intimidation
• New voting restrictions could actually swing the election
• Confusion at one New Mexico registrar’s office led to “illiterate” Navajos being told to speak English if they wanted to vote
• The Iowa GOP is buying Facebook ads that tell potential Republican voters that their neighbors will know how they voted
• The top two states for voter disenfranchisement are Virginia and Kentucky

Previous updates

• Voter ID laws are unconstitutional poll taxes by another name

• During a debate with Democrat Michelle Nunn, Georgia Republican Senate candidate David Perdue admitted that he’s running for office with the intention to prosecute Democrats — and then hilariously claimed that “only 2,000” female employees had sued his former company, Dollar General, for wage discrimination
• Lynne Messinger says her attempt to register to vote in Texas resulted in threats of arrest and intimidation by a state trooper
• A 93-year old veteran has been turned away from early voting in Texas because his driver’s license had expired — and he’s not the only one
• Running for governor of Illinois, Republican Bruce Rauner seems to have an incredibly helpful friend who can kill negative stories at the Chicago Sun-Times
• Conservative hit-man and professional douchebag James O’Keefe III refuses to show us the video of himself getting beclowned by Democratic staffers while trying to create the appearance of voting fraud

• If they win a majority, Republican voters won’t let Republican officeholders govern constructively

• Eric Lyndell Kennie of Austin, Texas tells the Guardian how the state’s new voter ID law is keeping him out of the ballot box
• A veteran in Tennessee explains that the state’s new voter ID law adds unnecessary hurdles
• Voter ID restrictions hit black women hardest
• Arizona’s Secretary of State is running for reelection on a voter ID platform against a county clerk who opposes new requirements
• Right wing news outlets are trumpeting a new study that seems to confirm their fantasy that an army of non-citizens is swinging elections. Too bad the study’s methodology is totally bogus
• The New Mexico Secretary of State has been aware of severe problems in its voter registration system for at least six months, but has yet to take any action
• Remember those coal miners who were forced to attend that Mitt Romney rally? BIPAC specializes in helping corporations tell their employees how to vote
• A Republican Superior Court judge has refused to force Georgia’s Secretary of State to process at least 56,000 voter registration forms turned in by the New Georgia Project
• Disabled? Poor? Don’t drive? Then it’s very difficult for you to vote in Texas

• Greg Palast has analyzed the Crosscheck ‘double-voting’ fraud prevention system and found it riddled with flaws that could disenfranchise millions of mostly-minority Americans

• The Center for American Progress has a report on the racially-discriminatory effects of provisional balloting
• No, racial discrimination doesn’t have to be overt
• Pressure tactics: Alaska residents are receiving mailers from a super PAC-backed group, the Alaska State Voter Program, that claims to be tracking their voting activity
• Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told an all-white, all-male club that “white men who are in male-only clubs are going to do great in my presidency”
• GOP control of the Senate “would be a disaster” for women, minorities, workers, and the environment
• Tennessee’s Amendment 1 will erase reproductive freedom from the state constitution
• A Republican wave election could tip a record number of state legislatures into Republican hands. The 2010 wave in the states led to the worst legislation in the country, including anti-immigrant laws and various targeted efforts against abortion providers, and allowed the GOP to redistrict themselves into a safe House majority
• A friendly reminder: Maine Governor Paul LePage is a bully to everyone but the sovereign citizens in his state