Hi David, I’m Xakota — I wanted to give you an inside look at the work we’re doing to educate the media and shape the national narrative around voting and democracy. It’s a strategy memo about the threats we face and the work we must do to defend our democracy in the 2024 elections and beyond. We share how we plan to fight back against systemic efforts to disenfranchise voters, particularly voters of color and young voters. We’re calling it our Battleground Democracy program. Keep scrolling to read more about it. Xakota Xakota Espinoza  Date: October 17, 2023 What We’re Up Against: Right now, we are seeing a nationally-coordinated effort by far-right extremists who are using every tool at their disposal to restrict access to the ballot box, attack election administration, and subvert the will of voters. Fair Fight recently hosted the third in our ongoing series of “Battleground Democracy” briefings to provide media with insight into the current landscape for voting access as we approach the 2024 presidential election. Since launching this past May, some of our work through Battleground Democracy has included:
Below, you can take a closer look at some of the key takeaways from our most recent work. You can also follow our efforts in real time at FairFight.com/ Far-Right Groups that Raise Our concerns About Election Subversion and Ballot Access We view efforts by conspiracy theorists and anti-voter extremists to strip eligible voters from the rolls as one of the biggest threats to our democracy as we look ahead to 2024, and believe Georgia has become ground zero for these efforts. Since the 2020 presidential election, more than 350,000 voter challenges have been filed in Georgia. Bad actors are increasingly weaponizing anti-democratic tactics like mass voter challenges and aggressive voter purges — conducted under the guise of “list maintenance” and the need for “clean voter rolls” — to restrict voting access for historically marginalized communities, particularly Black and brown voters. Fair Fight has been tracking this issue closely to support voters, and understand and document the harmful impacts of these anti-voter actions. Since the 2021 passage of SB 202 — Georgia’s extreme anti-voter legislation codifying that any single Georgian can challenge an unlimited number of registered voters in their county — we’ve collected and analyzed information reflecting that at least 100,000 (or approx. 1 in every 70) Georgia voters have had their eligibility challenged by anti-voter conspiracy theorists, the majority of whom are white, far-right men fueled by disinformation and false conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election. According to the data for the vast majority of the challenges tracked by Fair Fight — about 89,000 of 100,000 — were submitted by just six right-wing activists. In our latest Battleground Democracy briefing for the media, we put the spotlight on four groups — the “Election Integrity Network” (EIN), VoterGA, True the Vote (TTV), and Greater Georgia — and our opinion that they have been leading the charge when it comes to training and encouraging individuals to file challenges. Based on what we have heard from voters, counties, and other sources, we believe these groups are at the center of efforts to make mass voter challenges one of the cornerstones of the right’s state-by-state, precinct-by-precinct effort to purge America’s voter rolls of those deemed undesirable. Georgia Is a Battleground and Testing Ground Not only is Georgia a critical political battleground state in 2024, it’s also where the fight to defend our nation’s democracy is currently taking place — so Fair Fight’s work in Georgia will have a ripple effect nationwide. Based on our experience on the ground in Georgia over the last several years, we believe Governor Brian Kemp is a chief architect of modern-day voter suppression. His extreme anti-voter law, Senate Bill 202, has served as the blueprint for voter suppression bills nationwide. And we continue to hear of GOP-led state legislatures across the country that are following Kemp’s lead, working to silence and stifle the political power of voters, especially those in Black, brown, young, and LGBTQ+ communities. In Georgia, the GOP legislature has passed legislation leading to the removal of Black members of county boards of elections, as well as legislation that facilitates the removal of progressive district attorneys. And across the country, GOP-led legislatures have expelled, censured, and taken other actions to silence, remove, and suppress legislators and democratically elected officials. These actions, which have disproportionately targeted Black and queer electeds, represent a disturbing new frontier of the GOP’s assault on democracy. These tactics remind us at Fair Fight of those used by white supremacists post-Reconstruction, relying on state power to suppress and intimidate dissenting legislators and silence the communities they represent. The Path Ahead All of this is happening against the backdrop of the upcoming 2024 elections, magnifying our concern that the far-right GOP is preparing to disrupt elections administration with anti-democratic and anti-voter legislation, an endless barrage of unfunded mandates designed to overwhelm election workers, and challenges to voters and to election results. We are also hearing from voters negatively affected by representatives who seem to be openly lauding their intentions to target Black, Hispanic, and young voters as a means of suppressing the vote. We do not view it as an accident that this is happening as Democratic-leaning blocs of voters are continuing to turn out in record-breaking numbers, and as the electorate is becoming increasingly more diverse. We believe the GOP knows what this shift means for their chances of winning democratically and that, as a result, they may use every tool at their disposal to try to hold on to power. But this strategy not only erodes the freedom to vote, it carries additional consequences like intimidating voters and legislators alike to stop them from showing up and speaking out. As 2024 approaches, we must see these reprehensible tactics for what they are — an attempt to silence our voices, subvert our will, and undermine our fundamental freedoms. These last-ditch power grabs cannot be permitted to succeed; we must stand together, and ensure that our voices are heard. Fair Fight will continue our work to protect the freedom to vote in all of the following ways:
Fair Fight will continue to call out bad behavior by, and take action against, right-wing actors who attempt to hoard power from those to whom it truly belongs — the people of our democracy. Together, we can continue to fight for free and fair elections for all. Together, we can win.
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