Pay attention.
There is a massive, well-funded conspiracy to take away the vote from actual voters. And it's being coordinated by the dark money group Heritage Action.
In video leaked to Mother Jones, Jessica Anderson, the executive director of Heritage Action, BRAGGING about her organization's success in passing voter supression legislation in Iowa.
“Iowa is the first state that we got to work in, and we did it quickly and we did it quietly,” she said on video. “We helped draft the bills. We made sure activists were calling the state legislators, getting support, showing up at their public hearings, giving testimony … little fanfare. Honestly, nobody even noticed. My team looked at each other and we’re like, ‘It can’t be that easy.’”
It was that easy.
Ari Berman of Mother Jones appeared on All In With Chris Hayes on Thursday.
Berman didn't sugarcoat it: “What you have here is one of the most influential dark money groups in Republican circles writing voter suppression laws in secret to make it harder for Black, brown, and young people to be able to vote.”
The leaked video provides a smoking gun, as Anderson brags some more to her donors: "“In some cases, we actually draft [the bills] for them, or we have a sentinel on our behalf give them the model legislation so it has that grassroots, from-the-bottom-up type of vibe.”
Republicans aren't writing this legislation in response to some local statewide issue. They're being told by their funders in the world of dark money to do it, being given "draft" legislation to pass.
And of course, there's big lobbying money to get it done: "To 'create this echo chamber,' as Anderson put it, Heritage is spending $24 million over two years in eight battleground states—Arizona, Michigan, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Nevada, Texas, and Wisconsin—to pass and defend restrictive voting legislation."
They are trying to kill democracy. We must stop them.
