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The union organizing effort at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, appears headed for defeat after the first day of counting ballots. There were 3,215 votes, with the count standing at 1,100 against unionizing to 463 in favor. Voting ended March 29, but before the counting began, hundreds of ballots were challenged, most by the company. If those could be decisive, they will be revisited.
But on the day counting began, we learned more about how far Amazon went to stack the deck in its favor. The National Labor Relations Board had refused Amazon’s request to have a ballot drop box in the facility, citing coronavirus social distancing precautions. But documents obtained by the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union through Freedom of Information Act requests show that Amazon defied that by going to the U.S. Postal Service and asking for a mailbox to be installed on Amazon property which it was, unmarked, the day before voting started.
GOP Lawyer Admits to SCOTUS That Voting Rights Disadvantage Republican Party
Lead counsel for the plaintiff, Michael Carvin, speaks to members of the media in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on April 22, 2014, in Washington, D.C.
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An attorney representing the Arizona Republican Party on Tuesday helpfully admitted outright what has long been obvious to observers of the GOP’s decades-long assault on the franchise: Easier voting makes it harder for Republicans to win elections.
Asked by right-wing Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett to explain the Arizona GOP’s interest in upholding a state law that disqualifies ballots cast in the wrong precinct a restriction that voting rights advocates say discriminates against people of color, an assessment backed up last year by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Republican lawyer Michael Carvin responded that striking down the regulation would put “us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats.”