Why were you kicked off Facebook?
Sometime in late 2021 or early 2022, it was suggested that I
finally join Facebook and post one of the Letters to the Editor that I had
written. We had read many stories of conservative viewpoints being taken down.
I decided to test the waters.
The first and second
postings were taken down as “misinformation” within 24 hours of my posting. I
never knew what happened to the third because when I tried to log in, I was
informed that my membership had been suspended or terminated. Set forth below
is the so-called “misinformation” which was based on official election results,
official filings by each of the states, census information, among a few other
reliable sources for facts as opposed to biased presentations
made to appear as if based on facts.
First
Posting
“You should be careful tarring people who voted for Trump as racist,
idiots, or terrorists. Beware demonizing his followers as solely composed of a
cult of Archie Bunkers leaving the kitchen for political rallies. When another
“outsider” comes along who is not a narcissistic egoist interested only in
himself but rather a simple believer in the need for dramatic change in
America’s elitist political and media arena, Trump’s “ Archie Bunker” voters
(or, in other words, Hillary’s “deplorables”) plus other reasoned conservatives
will overwhelmingly vote him or her into office.
Take notice of the following facts from the 2020 Presidential election
results between a despicable Donald Trump and a senile, corrupt, and
rudderless, Joe Biden.
As of one
week before the 2020 election according to the Census, there were 47 million
registered Democrats and 35 million registered Republicans. Accordingly, if
every Democrat voted for Biden and every Republican voted for Trump, Biden
should have won the popular vote by 12 million votes. However, Biden won the
popular vote by only 7 million. That means that 5 million more non-party
affiliated voters voted for Trump rather than voted for Biden.
Moreover, over 155 million people voted in 2020. That means that, at
least, 73 million people who are independent or not registered as affiliated
with any party voted in the 2020 presidential election. And at least 5 million
more of those people voted for Trump than voted for Biden. (It was undoubtedly
more than that since we know at least 5% of Republicans had identified
themselves as “Never Trumpers.”)
Looked at another
way, Biden won 5 states by over 10 million votes (California by 5 million, New
York by 2 million, and Illinois, Maryland, and Massachusetts by 1 million
each). Since his popular vote margin was only 7 million, that means Trump won
the popular vote in 45 states by 3 million votes. Are the people in those 45
states that voted for Trump all racist? Are they all terrorists? Are they all
idiots whose points of view should be ignored? No, if you want to win the votes
of those folks in the future, you better come armed with arguments that are
convincing and verifiable.”
[All of the foregoing were taken from official election results and
the 2020 U.S. Census. I took advantage of the right of appeal for the first
posting. When I pointed out that each factual statement was from government
records, I was informed that the manner of their presentation was misleading.
When I asked what they thought the point of my posting had been, I was told
that it was to show Trump won the election in 45 states.
I responded that Biden obviously won enough of the remaining 45 states to lead
to an Electoral College victory, but my point related to the demonization of
over 71 million Americans who voted for Trump. The point I was trying to make
was that the use of pejoratives to demonize those with a different political
view is a dangerous, slippery slope. Facebook’s response was to simply cut off
the communication.]
Second Posting
“ Before asserting your position that new voting legislation is aimed at racial
discrimination, I would first review the evidence supporting that argument. For
example, you quote Justice Kagan stating that, “…black voters vote on Sunday 10
times more than white voters.” Had I been the lawyer to whom she was addressing
her comment, I would have asked her to identify the study upon which she
relies. On the other hand, your citation made me curious about the source of
her statement. So, I searched the internet to find a source on which Justice
Kagan could have relied.
I found a
Washington Post article that goes on and on about discrimination against blacks
after the Civil War, ending with a blanket statement that a substantial number
of blacks vote on Sundays (in States where early voting is allowed) in a “Souls
to the Polls” movement. No reference to a study proving that statement was
forthcoming in the article. As an over 40-year reader of the New York Times and
Washington Post (solely because my professional work required that I do so), I
was used to reading journalists who act as if something they want to be true
must be true but never present actual evidence that it is true.
The second
reference came from the Brennan Center for Justice, a source you cite in your
article with respect to a different point. According to Brennan, only 2.7% of
votes cast in Georgia in the 2020 election were cast on a Sunday. Of those,
36.5% were cast by blacks (in a State in which blacks comprise slightly more
than 30% of the overall population). This is decidedly not evidence supporting
Justice Kagan’s “10 blacks vote on Sunday for every white who does.” In
Georgia, it was more like 4 blacks for every 6 whites voting on Sunday.
Maybe Georgia is enacting a law closing its poll for early voting on
Sundays to discriminate against blacks because its legislators “believe” the
same thing the Washington Post writer believed. On the other hand, the only
evidence I found supports the view that it is a waste of money to have voting
polls open on Sundays in Georgia. It costs each city or county money to pay
employees overtime to staff the polls on the weekend. If only 2.7% are voting
on Sundays in Georgia, let them vote on Saturday instead.
Your article
represented the first time I had ever focused on early in-person voting. As
usual, when I hear something new, I research the subject. Perhaps it is a novel
idea that you should try sometime. Accordingly, I began researching early
in-person voting to try to understand how not allowing it on Sundays
discriminated against black voters (outside of Georgia, where the evidence
proved that it most certainly did not). I found the empirical evidence on the subject
in publications by the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Six states do not
allow early in-person voting, so Sunday voting is not an issue (Alabama,
Connecticut, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, and South Carolina). Seven
states have mail-in voting, so early in-person voting is not an issue
(Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Washington – all but
Utah, heavily democrat states). 24 states have early in-person voting,
but do not have polls open on Sundays. No one is claiming all
those 24 states are discriminating against blacks.
Only five states
have laws requiring that polls be open on Sunday for in-person voting. (Alaska,
Illinois, Maryland, New York, and Ohio). Seven other states have laws leaving
the decision whether to open polls on Sunday to the local county governments
(California, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, North Dakota, and
Virginia). Florida’s law opens early in-person voting ten days before election
day, which would include at least one Sunday. Florida leaves the decision
whether to open the polls for in-person voting on Sundays to county
governments.
My conclusion
based on the evidence: allowing or disallowing Sunday in-person voting either
proves that we are indeed governed by a white-supremacy conspiracy led by old
white men (and thus all 37 states that do not provide for Sunday voting are
“racist”), or it proves absolutely nothing about a “racist” motivation by
governmental entities that allow or disallow it.
The next area of your
article of which I had not been aware was the “no excuse absentee voting.”
Since it was being asserted that requiring an excuse for absentee voting was
“racist” or evidenced governmental discrimination against black voters, I was
off on the research trail again. The evidence was in the National Conference of
State Legislature publication once again.
16 states require
an excuse for voting with an absentee ballot. The biggest surprise for me was
to discover that, if requiring an excuse exhibits governmental “racism,” then
Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, and New York all fit that description.
The last time New York or Massachusetts voted for a Republican presidential
candidate was Reagan in 1984 – almost 50-years ago. The last time Connecticut
or Delaware voted for a Republican presidential candidate was in 1988 – over
30-years ago. If you accept the argument that the purpose behind requiring an
excuse to vote absentee is “racist,” then these Democrat-voting states (with
state legislatures controlled by Democrats) have been, and continue to be,
racist.
Finally, I was
unfamiliar with the claim that closing the number of polling places had evolved
as a “racist” strategy, as opposed to an economic one (i.e., saving taxpayer
money required when staffing each polling place in the county). This has never
been a problem where I have lived. Jefferson County Alabama has 48% whites and
47% blacks and Hispanics. There is no early in-person voting and absentee
voting requires a legally recognized excuse (absence from the county, illness,
work shift during voting hours, students attending out of state schools and
polling workers). [Compare that with New York which only allows two excuses –
absence and illness] Polling places in the County have expanded with population
growth; however, you must vote in-person at the polling place to which you are
assigned. My polling place is about one mile away.
After about two hours
of internet research, I found that all articles asserting that closing polling
places was being used to discriminate against minority voters used a study by
the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (civilrights.org). I went
to the study which alleged that Texas, Arizona, and Georgia were the worst
offenders. Since I am familiar with the geography of Georgia (having grown up
in Tennessee and spent the last 36-years in Alabama – both of which abut
Georgia), I researched the five Georgia counties called-out as the worst
offenders in “racist” closing of polling locations.
Lumpkin County Georgia has a
population of 33,488 spread over an area twenty-eight miles by ten miles in the
Blue Ridge mountains of northern Georgia. There are 105 people per square mile
of whom 94% are white, 1% are black, and 4% are Hispanic. Since
2000, the county has voted from 65% to 78% for the Republican presidential
candidate. It is hard to see how centralizing the polling place in Lumpkin
County was aimed at denying blacks or Hispanics a right to vote, especially
since Georgia allows early in-person voting.
Stephens County
Georgia has a population of 26,784 spread over an area eighteen miles by ten
miles in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains in northern Georgia. There
are 146 people per square mile of whom 80% are white, 11% are
black, and 3% are Hispanic. Since 2000, the county has voted from 64% to 78%
for the Republican candidate for president. Where there is early in-person
voting, centralizing polling places hardly seems to support a “racist” motive
in Stephens County.
Butts County (24,936) and
Bacon County (11,096) present the same picture – small populations located in
small geographic ranges that voted from 57% to 86% for Republican candidates
for president. Only Warren County (5,215) presented a different picture. It is
58% black and 38% white and has voted Democratic from 55% to 70% since 1992.
Warren County has three county commissioners who would make the decision
whether to close a polling place. My bet is the elected commissioners did not
close a polling place to make it harder for the slightly over 3,000 blacks to
vote in Warren County.
The conclusion in the study
by the Leadership Conference is flawed. At least as to the claims against
Georgia. And as I taught my young lawyers, if you present a jury with a fact
you intend to prove, that “fact” better not have even the slightest possibility
of deviation in the evidence, or the jury will disbelieve everything else you
tell them. None of the five counties in Georgia cited by the study support the
proposition asserted by the Leadership Conference, so why should I believe the
same assertion against Texas and Arizona.”
[While the first two postings were taken down within 24 hours, I cannot say the
same for the third posting. After I entered the third, I tried to check the
next day only to find when I tried to log in that I had been banished from
Facebook.]
Third Posting
Letter to the
Editor
February 13, 2022
Wall Street
Journal
Please do your
readers a favor and explain to them when, and why, the United States government
stopped using computers to prepare reports to the President and stopped storing
those reports in digital files.
Since the turn of the
century, the only documents that I reviewed were printed from digital copies. I
litigated commercial cases – primarily involving securities fraud allegations –
in which there were hundreds of thousands of pages that had to be reviewed. If
the client did not already have such documents in digital files, then we
scanned those files and created our own digital files. This was done to avoid
any future successful claim by the plaintiffs that we, or our client, had
destroyed relevant documents.
From 2001 until I
retired, I created legal briefs (or edited those generated as drafts for my
review) on my computer. I wrote every letter on my computer (which was then
printed so I could sign if required). Every document we created for the court
or for our opponents was done on computer and stored in digital form.
Accordingly, if staff
saw me ripping a printed document, it was because it contained confidential
attorney client communications or work product and needed to be shredded before
disposal. I assume Trump’s private businesses operated in a similar fashion.
Trump should have been informed that documents he received from the State
Department, the Justice Department, or the CIA had been typed on old electric
typewriters and that he had the only copy. Otherwise, what is this current fuss
about?
Sidney Davis
Birmingham AL
[I assume the posting disappeared with my termination by Facebook.]
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