Taniel

After the Civil War, Congress anticipated white lawmakers in the South would use the criminal legal system to stop Black people from voting, so they readmitted southern states under strict conditions. States have been violating those conditions since. boltsmag.org/readmission-ac…

@nlanc I said it in the prior post; there will be a special election just for the GOP primary in advance of November.

@Taniel How does a GOP candidate make it onto that ballot? Is there a separate "primary" ballot that GOP voters get, and they mark a generic "GOP candidate" box that's the alternative to Andrews on the regular ballot? This needs more explanation.

Sudden, major news tonight: Senator Lindsay Graham has passed away. nbcnews.com/politics/polit…

Those are two different things some are conflating. —The gov will appoint someone to replace Graham in senate for end of his term (so the coming months). —There’s a special primary to replace him on the ballot of the already-scheduled November election for the 2027-2032 term.

The winner of the special GOP primary election would then face Annie Andrews, a pedetrician who won the Democratic primary, in November for the already scheduled election to hold the seat through 2032.

My understanding of what is next is that: (1) GOP Governor Henry McMaster will appoint Graham's replacement. (2) Graham's seat was already up this year, & he had secured the GOP nod. This suggests there may have to be a special *primary* election: law.justia.com/codes/south-ca…

Three elections coming up in the next few weeks that you should know about! 1️⃣ the Missouri constitutional amendment that, if passed, would pretty much shut down direct democracy in that state: boltsmag.org/missouri-amend…

Great read…

3️⃣ Majority of Washington supreme court is on ballot at once this year (only state where that’s the case!). These primaries will narrow fields — with GOP-backed candidates wanting to move the state to the right. My rundown (links directly to WA): #WA" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">boltsmag.org/your-state-by-…

2️⃣ Local elections in Arizona in nine days where organizers are working in sweltering heat to help ICE opponents: boltsmag.org/arizona-munici…

the reviews are in: x.com/APClyde89/stat…

It’s Saturday — you finally have time to sit with this fascinating story:

An audit of all 1.11 million ballots cast in Georgia’s runoff elections found just 23 “discrepancies.” Every one of them involved hand-marked paper ballots. #gapol ajc.com/politics/2026/…

The Readmission Acts were “intentionally forgotten to history,” says a civil rights scholar. “People who didn’t like what was being done in Reconstruction made sure they wouldn’t be enforced, because they wanted to establish white supremacy in the South.” boltsmag.org/readmission-ac…

Link on the SoS office website: maine.gov/sos/news/secre…

The Maine secretary of state says Graham Platner *has* formally withdrawn from the Senate race. This is ahead of the Monday deadline, and so the Democratic party will be authorized to replace him, by July 27th.

In February, the Virginia attorney general’s office filed a motion to amend Gibney’s order, arguing that the state is only obligated to let people incarcerated for non-common law felonies register to vote—not necessarily to give them the actual means to vote…

Seriously -read this.

"The Virginia lawsuit is the first federal case to test whether felony disenfranchisement laws in southern states violate the agreements they made after the nation abolished slavery." boltsmag.org/readmission-ac…