Or a concealed carry state?


rocktivity

dark beer and saurkraut the night before.....heh heh heh..

Sane can vote republican for the up coming elections

Because anyone that would vote Republican IS insane.

Wisconsin voters should all carry yardsticks to the polls and do the same.

Rachel sure nailed my State with that line.

That's the Texas tea party spin-off that's been busing in white suburbanites to intimidate inner city voters. I don't know if they themselves have been active in Wisconsin, but this is definitely the model that's being followed.

Among other things, the head of True the Vote, Catherine Engelbrecht, is involved with Ginni Thomas's Groundswell. And even more dismaying is that she's part of the same Texas cluster that includes Dan Backer -- the lawyer who brought the McCutcheon case that just overturned campaign donation limits.

It's all part of the same agenda -- empowering the ultra-wealthy while disenfranchising large groups of voters -- and it's being carried out by a very small group of individuals who so far have managed to fly under the radar.


On edit: Yeah, True the Vote was deeply involved in the Wisconsin recall election:
http://www.truethevote.org/news/true-the-vote-joins-effort-to-true-wisconsin-recall-vote
http://www.truethevote.org/news/wisconsin-is-just-the-beginning
http://www.truethevote.org/news/thank-you-wisconsin

http://www.bluecheddar.net/?p=24973

October 25, 2012

How would you like it if a stranger peered over your shoulder to scrutinize your bank statement when you were in line to vote? And how would you feel if that stranger took the liberty of grabbing that same document? That behavior and similar was reported at Wisconsin poll sites on June 5th when white out-of-state True the Vote observers came to non-white neighborhoods in Racine. Now Wisconsin’s G.A.B. is taking steps to create a more voter-friendly space at the polls.

The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board on Tuesday reaffirmed that poll observers can not stand closer than six feet to Wisconsin voters on November 6. The GAB’s standards have been in place since at least 2004, but the GAB reaffirmed them in a 5-1 vote after receiving pressure from a Wisconsin-based conservative group called Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (W.I.L.L.).

Per WILL’s blog, “Under state law, election observers must be positioned so that they can observe “all public aspects of the voting process.””

And per the logic of the WILL blog update, documents consulted by a voter and his or her poll worker are “public” during the exchange and that inserting an observer at that point will not be a “disruption of the voting process”.

True the Vote has been one of the chief groups complaining they were targeted by the IRS. (Dan Backer's TheTeaParty.net has been the other.) I already knew that, but I didn't know that their actions during the Wisconsin recall were part of the problem.

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/05/12114/true-vote-victim-voter-vigilante-group-says-irs-targeted-its-verify-recall-effort

May 21, 2013

True the Vote is best known for hyping unfounded claims of "voter fraud" -- allegedly committed by Democrats -- to justify restrictive voting measures, and training Tea Partiers to act as poll watchers, some of whom have been accused of voter intimidation.

Engelbrecht says that after her group applied for 501(c)(3) charitable status in 2010, the IRS followed up with what she called a "gauntlet" of questions, and three years later has not yet acted on their application.

"This is what the beginning of tyranny looks like," True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht told Breitbart.com.

What has really raised Engelbrecht's hackles is the IRS asking other Tea Party groups about their involvement in "Verify the Recall," a True the Vote-connected effort that recruited Tea Party volunteers from around the country to enter petitions calling for the recall of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker into a massive online database, then analyzing signatures for "fraud."

http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/25/13473761-election-observers-true-the-vote-accused-of-intimidating-minority-voters

Aug 25, 2012

As Jamila Gatlin waited in line at a northside Milwaukee elementary school gym to cast her ballot June 5 in the proposed recall of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, she noticed three people in the back of the room. They were watching, taking notes.

Officially called “election observers,” they were white. Gatlin, and almost everyone in line, was black. . . .

Two of the observers were from a group based more than 1,000 miles away, in Houston, Texas, called True the Vote, an initiative that grew out of the Houston branch of the Tea Party known as the King Street Patriots. The stated goal of True the Vote is to prevent voter fraud, which the group and founder Catherine Engelbrecht claim is preventing “free and fair” elections. . . .

In just three years, True the Vote has moved beyond Texas and established itself as one of the political right's fastest growing and most controversial groups.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/07/groundswell-rightwing-group-ginni-thomas

David Corn
Thu Jul. 25, 2013

Believing they are losing the messaging war with progressives, a group of prominent conservatives in Washington—including the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and journalists from Breitbart News and the Washington Examiner—has been meeting privately since early this year to concoct talking points, coordinate messaging, and hatch plans for "a 30 front war seeking to fundamentally transform the nation," according to documents obtained by Mother Jones. . . .

One of the influential conservatives guiding the group is Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, a columnist for the Daily Caller and a tea party consultant and lobbyist. Other Groundswell members include John Bolton, the former UN ambassador; Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy; Ken Blackwell and Jerry Boykin of the Family Research Council; Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch; Gayle Trotter, a fellow at the Independent Women's Forum; Catherine Engelbrecht and Anita MonCrief of True the Vote; Allen West, the former GOP House member; Sue Myrick, also a former House GOPer; Diana Banister of the influential Shirley and Banister PR firm; and Max Pappas, a top aide to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).


http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/07/groundswell-secret-tape-boehner-issa-benghazi

David Corn
Tue Jul. 30, 2013

As Mother Jones revealed last week, Groundswell, the hush-hush right-wing strategy group partly led by Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, wanted to hype the Benghazi tragedy into a full-fledged scandal for the Obama administration, as part of its "30 front war" on the president and progressives. A secret audio tape of one of Groundswell's weekly meetings shows that prominent members of the group pressed House Speaker John Boehner and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the chair of the House oversight committee, to expand the Benghazi investigation and make this supposed scandal a top-priority for congressional Republicans. This recording indicates Groundswell's mission extends beyond message coordination to scandal-stoking. . . .

The tape has been posted at Crooks and Liars, a progressive web site, and it captured the first 20 minutes of Groundswell's May 8 meeting. (The site does not say how the recording was obtained.) The meeting opened with a prayer ("Father, we thank you for the opportunity to gather here as free Americans&quot , and a roll call was taken. Among those present were former GOP Rep. Allen West, Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, Jerry Boykin of the Family Research Council, Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, Stephen Bannon of Breitbart News, and Ginni Thomas. Catherine Engelbrecht, a founder of True the Vote, led the meeting, and the first order of business was a report on the Benghazi controversy from Boykin and Gaffney.