This episode is part of a research study being conducted by The Neoliberal Corporation and Rev. Renaldo McKenzie towards a final project on “Privilege, Power, Position and Status… exploring the strategies of power to establish, extend or maintain its hegemony or position, and the problem this poses for society. We explore answers to the issue concerning whether there was a Democratic Plot to win the 2020 US Elections And are the GOP Justified In Pressing to limit mail, early in-person and Election Day voting?
After the 2020 US elections, there has been approximately 250 - 425 new laws have been
proposed by the GOP in 43 - 49 states to limit mail, early in-person and Election Day voting, after the unsuccessful attempts by Donald Trump and various other Republican officials to overturn it on allegations of voter irregularities which they could not prove.
However, sometime after the elections, in November 2020, I made an anecdotal discovery about how some people voted and wondered if that justified the need for some Republicans who are seeking through the Courts to strengthen election laws surrounding voter identification that some Democrats and Activists call voter suppression. So I decided to do some digging and made an interesting discovery, that I had initially published as a Conspiracy Theory in an article in The Neoliberal Commentary. But if truth be told, it was never a conspiracy theory but based in unverified facts lacking academic research and rigor as it was from a few sources. So, I decided to conduct a deeper study through ethnographic, mixed with some journalism investigation methods. The Neoliberal Corporation (and as part of my research at Georgetown) embarked on a study to explore this conjecture or hypothesis couched in the aforementioned article, that I will outlay later in this commentary. According to Amy Gardner, Kate Rabinowitz and Harry Stevens in a story published in the Washington Post, “The GOP’s national push to enact hundreds of new election restrictions could strain every available method of voting for tens of millions of Americans, potentially amounting to the most sweeping contraction of ballot access in the United States since the end of Reconstruction, when Southern states curtailed the voting rights of formerly enslaved Black men, a Washington Post analysis has found.” Voting laws proposed by Republicans in 43 states would limit voter access - Washington Post. It was six months after the 2020 US elections and a group of us, at The Neoliberal, conducting anthropological and investigative research for a story we are working, was in-between New York, Philadelphia and D.C. neighborhoods living in and going to street corners, community centers and homes to have conversations with some of the men we had formed (anthropological) friendships and relationships with, as we get to understand their voting behaviors and patterns and political interests, given the new inability to scrutinize voting with COVID-19 fears and this practice of social distancing. It was not the traditional way Americans voted which was at the public polling centers. In 2020, most of the voting took place within the homes and ballots were mailed-in boxes. We rapped with the guys on the corners within these locals-Asbury Park NJ, Philadelphia (North, South, Northeast and west), D.C (Prince George) and NYC (Harlem, Bronx and Brooklyn) days and evenings, in hoodies and skullies as if we were one with “them” on the corners, and we found out quickly what we could use to connect with the people in our study, The issue is that “Absentee Ballots” and or “Mail-in Ballots” or “Drop-Boxes” create problems for Democracy. Since Black men and young people don’t vote as much, but their Mammas do, who were influenced by the “Me too” movement and was already against Mr. Trump who they saw as misogynistic. The episode is available in https://theneoliberal.com. Support us https://anchor.fm/theneoliberal/support. Renaldo is Author of Neoliberalism