Inside the Trump Effort to Keep Black Voters From Polls

[babylonsister]

https://politicalwire.com/2018/05/29/inside-the-pro-trump-effort-to-keep-black-voters-from-voting/

Inside the Trump Effort to Keep Black Voters From Polls
May 29, 2018 at 7:17 am EDT
By Taegan Goddard

Bloomberg: “Bannon’s deployment of the psychological-operations firm Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 campaign drew fresh attention this month, when a former Cambridge employee told a U.S. Senate panel that Bannon tried to use the company to suppress the black vote in key states. [Bruce] Carter’s story shows for the first time how an employee at Bannon’s former news site worked as an off-the-books political operative in the service of a similar goal.”

“Carter’s recollections and correspondence, which he shared after a falling-out with his fellow Trump supporters, provide a rare look inside the no-holds-barred nature of the Republican’s campaign and how it explored new ways to achieve an age-old political aim: getting the right voters to the polls—and keeping the wrong ones away.”

[Uncle Joe]

1. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread babylonsister

[MrScorpio]

2. Kickage

[Snarkoleptic]

3. Trump aide reveals 'three major voter suppression operations'

They can't win without dirty tricks!
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/303034-trump-aide-we-have-three-major-voter-suppression

A senior adviser to Donald Trump's presidential campaign says the GOP nominee's operation has three "voter suppression" drives intended to lower the vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton and provide a path to victory for Trump.

The three efforts are mentioned by the senior adviser in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek.

“We have three major voter suppression operations under way,” the unidentified senior official told Bloomberg.

The efforts are intended to cut down on votes by white liberals, young women and black voters, three blocs important for Clinton, the official said.

[ehrnst]

4. From the original article on Bloomberg:

Breitbart News landed an election scoop that went viral in August 2016: “Exclusive: ‘Black Men for Bernie’ Founder to End Democrat ‘Political Slavery’ of Minority Voters… by Campaigning for Trump.”

If the splashy, counterintuitive story, which circulated on such conservative websites as Truthfeed and Infowars, wasn't exactly fake news, it was carefully orchestrated.

The story’s writer—an employee of the conservative website run by Steve Bannon before he took over Donald Trump’s campaign—spent weeks courting activist Bruce Carter to join Trump’s cause. He approached Carter under the guise of interviewing him. The writer eventually dropped the pretense altogether, signing Carter up for a 10-week blitz aimed at convincing black voters in key states to support the Republican real estate mogul, or simply sit out the election. Trump’s narrow path to victory tightened further if Hillary Clinton could attract a Barack Obama-level turnout.


Bannon’s deployment of the psychological-operations firm Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 campaign drew fresh attention this month, when a former Cambridge employee told a U.S. Senate panel that Bannon tried to use the company to suppress the black vote in key states. Carter’s story shows for the first time how an employee at Bannon’s former news site worked as an off-the-books political operative in the service of a similar goal.

[brer cat]

5. K&R

[Lucky Luciano]

6. Serious question. Is it illegal to manipulate voters through false advertising re politics.

Probably not. There may be other actions that were illegal, but on the face of it, this sounds like standard practice....nonstandard would be inviting foreign agents to help out though...

[unblock]

8. the devil is in the details.

it all depends on how people are divided and how they are then "suppressed".

finding a group of likely democratic voters based on their facebook preferences (say, "i 'like' earth day&quot and them sending them ads or emails that make them more likely to not bother voting, that's just an electronic update of standard politics.


but if you identify your target based on if they're more likely to be of a particular race or gender, e.g., that's certainly more problematic. scandalous, but maybe still not illegal.


if you use the information to help determine how to allocate voting machines in order to create long lines at the districts you don't like, that would certainly be illegal.

[ehrnst]

9. No, clearly not illegal, as we saw in 2016.

But campaign finance laws are pretty clear:

The work Carter says he did, and the funds he was given to do it, also raise questions as to whether campaign finance laws were broken.

The group Carter founded, Trump for Urban Communities, never disclosed its spending to the Federal Election Commission—a possible violation of election law. In hindsight, Carter says, he believed he was working for the campaign so he wouldn’t have been responsible for reporting the spending.

His descriptions of the operation suggest possible coordination between Trump’s campaign and his nominally independent efforts. If there was coordination, election law dictates that any contributions to groups such as his must fall within individual limits: no more than $2,700 for a candidate. One supporter far exceeded that cap, giving about $100,000 to Carter’s efforts.

[Hortensis]

11. And The Hill: "group linked to Breitbart may have broken election law"

Lawrence Noble, who served at the FEC during both GOP and Democratic administrations, told Bloomberg News that descriptions of the group "Trump for Urban Communities" from the group's founder, Bruce Carter, raise questions as to whether the group's financial dealings violated campaign finance laws.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Carter, who previously founded the pro-Bernie Sanders group "Black Men for Bernie," described himself as recruited by Bloomberg News reporter Dustin Stockton supposedly on behalf of the Trump campaign to encourage black voters to either stay home or support Trump over his opponent, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, on election day. ...

“If you can’t stomach Trump, just don’t vote for the other people and don’t vote at all,” Carter described the message the Trump campaign wanted him to spread. “That’s what they wanted, that’s what they got.”

Carter's group did not report its finances, which he says he believed he was not required to do as a member of the campaign. However, his group took donations including at least one as large as $100,000 from a supporter, which far exceeds the $2,700-limit to a group that coordinates with the campaign.

“There are some real problems here,” Noble, who now works at the Campaign Legal Center, told Bloomberg. “I would think this is more than enough evidence for the FEC to open an investigation.” ...

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/389685-pro-trump-group-linked-to-breitbart-may-have-broken-election-law

[betsuni]

7. K&R

[zentrum]

10. If provable, I think

……this is a serious crime that can result in trial and jail time.

[George II]

12. Bruce Carter was originally a Sanders supporter, heading up "Black Men for Bernie".

https://upload.democraticunderground.com/10141576024

'Black Men For Bernie’ Leader Now Backs Trump

[Hortensis]

14. Some are negatively oriented to always be against,

and this guy is very possibly one of those. Sanders and Trump both independently attracted a bunch who were ruled by hostility to Democrats, rather than fealty to a leader or issues, and of course ultimately many moved from Sanders to Trump. Like this unethical jerk.

Even if he doesn't go to prison, he's likely to end up broken by enormous legal bills, and of course his character and judgment will be permanently documented for all to see.

[George II]

15. True. But what about Killer Mike, who didn't seem to support trump until AFTER he was elected?

[Hortensis]

17. Variation on a type possible? After all, he follows Carter's pattern

before Trump became president. Now that he is supporting President Trump, that by definition means he is still opposing Democrats. If he were an example of this pattern, he would be supporting Trump TO continue his hostility to Democrats.

A possibility that seems a lot more likely to me, though, is that he is one of the many black conservatives who are caught between the white Republican rock trying to grind him into the dirt and the Democratic liberal hard place. After all, he identifies himself as from a southern conservative Christian family. Conservative stupidity would explain both the seemingly irrational enmity to Hillary, which he shares with millions of conservatives (and with most Sanders zealots), and his attempts since the election to support Trump.

His black issues agenda would explain how, needing to support a Democratic platform but unwilling to support the despised white woman candidate, he would turn to Sanders as the best of a set of poor-fit choices. He probably was not dumb enough to think Sanders could win, though, which would make him just another of the massively hypocritical jerks who helped shoot their own issues dead and then blame the Democratic Party for it.

Killer Mike in AJC video: “I feel like the Democratic Party has abandoned African-American men.”

Yes, well, we lost by less than 80,000 votes and I think you did. Note the "men," btw.

[cyberswede]

13. ".. an age-old political aim: getting the right voters to the polls--and keeping the wrong ones away"

Heaven forbid they would actually come up with policies that attract people to vote for them.

This infuriates me.

[Me.]

16. Not In The Least Surprised