Saying “YES” to Virginia’s Redistricting Amendment Is a Great Way to Say “NO” to Republicans’ Voter Suppression Tricks

By Karen Kinard, Bridge2Blue

The special election for Virginia’s temporary redistricting amendment has been flooded with misleading texts, advertisements, and mailers sent by Republican PACs. One example, misrepresenting former President Barack Obama’s words, arrived in mailboxes as this article was being written – falsely asserting that Obama is against this measure. In fact, Obama – and also Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger – have both publicly endorsed Virginia’s redistricting in the press and in videos. Unfortunately, while Republicans’ mailers and texts in the past few weeks have been especially distasteful and untrue, such tactics are not new for them — Republicans have used similar unscrupulous strategies in the past. This time around, Virginians can effectively push back and counter their attempts to confuse and mislead by supporting the temporary Redistricting Amendment.

The recent examples of misleading, dishonest flyers and texts in Virginia came from recently (and hastily)-created Republican groups with Orwellian names — “Democracy and Justice PAC” (or is it “Justice for Democracy”?) and “Virginians for Fair Maps.”   It’s hard not to see these groups’ messaging as a modern application of what was once termed “the soft bigotry of low expectations” aimed at voters.  Specifically, this ploy assumes that voters can be fooled by intentionally deceptive mailers and text messages with a disconnected phone number. In this case, the right-wing PACs’ first barrage of mailers seemed aimed to mislead Black voters that they would lose their voices, calling the redistricting Jim Crow 2.0. Perhaps they thought these voters and the press wouldn’t notice. If so, they miscalculated: reporters and Black leaders were on it immediately.

Now, personally, I’m an old white lady who has watched a lifetime of election-season mischief. I’m not old enough to remember the lethal suppression of the 1940s and early 1950s, but I did grow up watching the Civil Rights Movement — and their victories that reshaped the country. I also grew up in a time when books about the shameful parts of our history weren’t being banned simply because they made White people uncomfortable.

By my late twenties, I was following politics closely enough to watch the Republican National Committee (RNC) get hit with a nationwide court decree in 1982 that barred it from voter-intimidation tactics for 36 years. That decree didn’t come out of nowhere. It came after the infamous New Jersey gubernatorial race, where the GOP created a “Ballot Security Task Force,” sent armed off-duty officers to polling places, and robocalled Black and Latino voters with intimidating messages. A federal court stepped in, and the RNC spent nearly four decades under strict supervision.

You would think that kind of legal history would teach a lesson. But no.

In 2020, far-right operatives Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman revived the old Republican playbook, blasting out robocalls aimed at misleading Black voters in several Northeast and Midwest cities. Their efforts earned them penalties totaling millions of dollars in New York, Ohio, and Michigan — and a $5.1 million Federal Communication Commission (FCC) fine.

According to NBC News, the New York case alone involved 5,000 calls with a recording that featured a woman identifying herself as “Tamika Taylor of Project 1599,” who falsely warned that voting by mail would expose voters to police tracking, debt collection, and even mandatory vaccinations. “Don’t be finessed into giving your private information to the man,” the call said. “Stay home safe and beware of vote by mail.”

Wohl and Burkman didn’t stop there. They also tried to manufacture fake “Me Too” allegations against Democratic leaders and even against Special Counsel Robert Mueller. They racked up financial-fraud convictions along the way. Their pattern was clear: deception as a political tool.

And sadly, they were not alone. Right-wing efforts to mislead or suppress Black voters have appeared again and again, often echoing earlier tactics — the “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes” we’ve been warned about.

Consider just a few examples:

• 2004 Ohio “Voter Challenge” Lists (GOP) – Republican operatives compiled lists of Black voters in Cleveland to challenge their eligibility at the polls. A federal court intervened to block the plan.
• 2010 Maryland Robocall Scheme (Republican gubernatorial aides) – Robocalls targeted Black voters in Baltimore and Prince George’s County telling them the election was already decided and they could “relax.” Two GOP operatives were convicted.
• 2016 North Carolina “Voter Fraud” Mailers (State GOP) – Misleading mailers were sent to heavily Black precincts claiming voters were under investigation.  The state board found the mailers deceptive.
• 2020 Georgia “Voter Purge” Lists (GOP-aligned groups) – Investigations found Black voters disproportionately targeted for removal using flawed data. Federal suits alleged intentional racial targeting.
• 2024 Virginia voter purge (Gov. Youngkin administration) – Over 1,600 voters — disproportionately minorities — were removed within the 90-day quiet period before a federal election. A federal district judge blocked the purge. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed it to proceed anyway, despite evidence that many purged voters were naturalized citizens or had been misclassified due to omissions on Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) forms.

Against this backdrop, the recent Virginia mailers opposing redistricting stand out for their brazenness. The PACs that paid for them were fronted by a Black former Republican legislator, while their treasurer is a longtime White Republican accountant who supports other GOP PACs. According to the Virginia Public Access Project website on political donations, the “Justice for Democracy” PAC has received $425K from the American Future Fund, a group that does not reveal its contributors. One of the PACs’ mailers used 1950s-era images of Klansmen and civil-rights protesters — imagery meant to provoke fear, not inform. Another mailer’s text messages falsely implied that VA Governor Spanberger opposed the redistricting amendment – when she and former President Barack Obama publicly endorsed it. (If you called the phone number on the text, you got a message that the line was not in service.)

Black members of the Virginia General Assembly, the NAACP and Virginia Attorney General quickly condemned the mailers’ claims of silencing Black voices. These PACs may have hoped to slip something past the public, but Virginia’s voters, press and leaders were paying attention.

As we witness ever more aggressive measures to undermine our democracy and our elections process, Natalie Louise Lucas (Shorter), granddaughter of Senate President Pro Tempore L. Louise Lucas, summed up the stakes of this redistricting vote and the long history of communities refusing to be sidelined. (The following is from her February 18 Twitter/X post, pre-dating the deceptive mailers.)

“Virginia, Y’all — last night, I was reading Dylan Thomas’ poem to his dying father, and he said, ‘Do not go gentle into that good night.’ I came to a conclusion I can’t keep to myself. He was writing about death. About his father slipping away. But this, this is about our democracy. ‘Do not go gentle into that good night,’ he said. Virginia, we will not.

“‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light.’ And we are. Because here’s the truth nobody wants to say out loud: When Texas’ white leadership gerrymanders the hell out of their state, it was framed as ‘bold.’ It’s ‘savvy.’ It’s ‘playing the long game.’ But when Black leaders in a Southern state fight to protect representation and political power, suddenly it’s ‘unfair.’ Suddenly it’s ‘dangerous.’ Suddenly it’s a crisis.

“The hypocrisy is not subtle. Because how dare we fight partisan gerrymandering and beat them at their own game, right? How dare our leaders stand up for us? For centuries, Black and brown communities were expected to fade quietly. To accept diluted districts. To accept being carved out of influence. To accept leadership that never reflected us. Decisions being made about us, but without us. That era is over. This is about our ailing and dying democracy. This is about refusing to disappear politely. This is about holding onto our light with intensity and grit. Virginia is not ceding even a scintilla’s worth of ground. We will organize. We will compete. We will build power in plain sight and not in the shadows. And we will not go gentle.”

So make sure you Vote YES on or before April 21. Our support for this temporary guardrail for our fair elections will go a long way in protecting our  democracy, including our right to vote, for years to come.