10/31/24

Good morning! It’s Thursday, October 31st.

Halloween!

Ooohhhhh spooookkkkyyyyyy

And now, the news.

Virginia Purges Voters

-via CNN

We are just five days out from Election Day.

News is coming fast and sometimes not great.

So let’s talk about it real quick – like a band aid.

First – in Virginia, the Supreme Court has allowed the state to purge 1,600 voters from its rolls because the state believes them to be noncitizens because they were unable to prove citizenship at the DMV.

Now, voter roll maintenance is common and important.

However, it is not meant to be done within 90 days of an election.

As you may remember, I mentioned that last week when I talked about how Elon Musk was trying to make it seem like Michigan had all these voters on their rolls that weren’t supposed to be there.

They’re going to be purged – outside of the 90 day window.

So the fact that Virginia is able to do this now, a casual five days before the election, is… not awesome.

Virginia’s governor, Glenn Younkin, did announce this would happen at exactly the 90 day mark. Which means they removed those voters after the 90 days, which a US District Judge found to be illegal.

And on Wednesday the Supreme Court was like yeah, no, we don’t care about that. We’re not super big on supporting voters.

Here’s the good news… if you live in Virginia and were erroneously removed from the polls, you can cast a provisional ballot (since this ruling just so happened to come after the state’s registration window was closed… great! Great all around!)

Suspect Capable of Setting More Fires

-via AP News

And the suspect who police believe put the incendiary devices on the two ballot boxes in Portland and Vancouver is still at large and, according to police, may be planning additional attacks.

They believe this because apparently he has a ton of knowledge with welding.

Which, sidenote, is so wild because like… imagine police believing you are capable of a threat to democracy because of a hobby. We gotta catch Kim, she talks about Ted Lasso season 4 too much. It’s a threat to democracy.

No, that would never be the case. They would want to arrest me for talking about it too much though, because of the threat I pose to normal conversation.

Anyway, the suspect is still at large and honestly it’s probably not the worst idea in the world to just deliver your ballot straight to your polling place.

It shouldn’t be like this.

It should not be like this.

But right now we’re just going to do everything we can to get those ballots cast and counted.

And look, those two stories sucked.

But here’s what I want you to know.

Right now, in Vancouver Washington, election workers have identified 500 of the voters whose ballots were destroyed.

They didn’t open the envelopes, but they cleaned, dried, and worked to identify, and contact, those voters.

So that against all odds… those voters can vote.

Because that is what democracy does.

Against all odds… democracy prevails.

All we have to do is work for it.

As well have to do is believe that it is worth it.

When I say that this election is a fight for democracy, I believe it is a worthy fight.