Progressives are often quick to cry "voter suppression!" ̶ even if race-baiters like Jemele Hill have to personally manufacture such claims. Hill told the world via Twitter that she was going to vote in a state that is no longer her place of residence. When she met resistance at her old polling place in Florida, she and a poll worker claimed the "red brigade" and President Donald Trump were trying to deny her the right to cast a ballot.
The race-baiting drama queen, best known for her stormy time at ESPN, recently found employment with The Atlantic magazine and moved to Los Angeles. She flew back to the Sunshine State from California Oct. 21 specifically to vote for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum. She was determined to vote in-person because the political right has been suppressing the vote for a hundred years, she explains in her Tuesday post on The Atlantic:
"I had never been this paranoid about voting before. I checked my voter registration multiple times before flying to Florida for early voting. I traveled across the country to vote, rather than voting absentee. That’s how much I needed the reassurance of physically handing in my vote. Think of this paranoia as the post-traumatic stress of more than a century of blatant, consistent efforts by the right to undermine, discourage, and disenfranchise people of color. All too often, barriers have been placed in the way of our voting—or when election laws are applied, we’ve been held to a different standard."
That cross-country plane trip came Oct. 21, when she tweeted:
Home schoolers are already raising red flags, but New England Sports Network's Marcus Kwesi O'Mard explains what happened next:
"Yet, when Hill arrived at the polling station near her Florida home, she learned her name had been removed from the rolls and was thus given a provisional ballot. She initially received no satisfactory explanation why this happened, but received one an hour later."
“Shortly after I left the polling site, an official from the elections office called me and told me that a tweet I had posted a few weeks earlier had been brought to their attention," wrote Hill, who thinks she is above voting laws:
"Being a journalist means signing up for life as a nomad. I’ve lived in three different cities this year alone. I’ve lived in six different cities over the course of my 21-year career in journalism. Part of the reason I bought a house in Orlando in 2006 was to establish a base of permanent residency—to have a place to call home, wherever I might temporarily reside. I have never rented my home to another person. I get my bank statements sent there. And I pay Florida property taxes."
Also ignoring voting laws, O'Mard and a poll worker came up with a wild theory why Hill's vote was "suppressed":
“… ‘Let’s just say it was a red brigade,' the Florida elections official told Hill. Hill believes her high-profile status put her at odds with supporters of Gillum’s opponent, Ron DeSantis and President Donald Trump. Hill suspects a DeSantis supporter seized upon her much-viewed tweet and reported her to Florida election officials, who struck her from the rolls. The so-called red brigade and the election officials ignored the fact she, like many other journalists, lives a nomadic lifestyle. Yet Hill’s roots remain firmly planted in Florida."
Hill, who last year called Trump a "white supremacist" in a career-damaging tweet, says she does not know if her provisional vote for Gillum will be accepted by Florida election officials. No expert on civics, O'Mard concludes with the lame assertion, "But she’s certain her registration has become a casualty of the hyper-polarization and bare-knuckle politics of 2018."
