Trump and Republicans are preparing their excuse for why they lost the
election

While Trump promotes a baseless idea that non-citizens are illegally
casting ballots to rig the election against him, voting-eligible citizens
are being swept up in Republican-led purges across the country, Alex
Woodward reports

ames Stroop applied to work the polls in Alabama on Election Day. He got a
letter from the state on August 23 that he hoped was a response.

Instead, he was �shocked� to discover that he was being purged from the
state�s voter rolls as a �non-citizen�. The 55-year-old was born in Florida
and has lived in Alabama for nearly 50 years.

James Cozzad, 49, had been a registered Republican voter and cast his
ballot in 2016 and 2020 elections without any issue. He also received a
letter from the state: He was being removed from the rolls, for the same
reason as Stroop.

�I�ve been racking my brain to try to figure out how I ended up on the list
of purged voters, but I have no clue,� he said in a federal lawsuit against
the state. �It feels like they are trying to make me think I�ve broken the
law � just for trying to exercise my right to vote. While I hope it was
just a mistake, I think if they were just trying to verify something, they
would have done so long before the election. Now I can understand why some
people feel as though their vote isn�t worth casting.�

Their stories � detailed in litigation from the Department of Justice and
voting rights advocates � are not unique to Alabama. Voting-eligible
citizens have been swept up in recent voter purges from Alaska to Texas.
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Less than a month after the Justice Department�s lawsuit in Alabama, the
agency sued Virginia for a similar effort that has canceled registrations
for thousands of voters in the state.

They join thousands of people across the country who have been targeted for
removal from state voter databases for allegedly registering as a non-
citizen, as part of what civil rights groups fear is a concerted mass
disenfranchisement effort.

Most of those purges appear to stem from errors on paperwork at a state�s
Department of Motor Vehicles offices, which collect voter registration
information.

In Tennessee, more than 14,000 registered voters � many of them citizens �
received letters in June telling them their information �matches with an
individual who may not have been a United States citizen� at the time they
received their driver�s license.

Virginia�s governor Glenn Youngkin has pointed to �illegal� immigration as
he boasts about the removal of more than 6,000 names from the state�s voter
rolls within two years, despite there being no evidence of non-citizens
trying to vote during his term in office.

In Alabama, the state�s Secretary of State Wes Allen is being sued for
illegally removing more than 3,200 people from the state�s voter rolls � a
mass voter purge that falls within a 90-day �Quiet Period� before Election
Day, when states are forbidden from making drastic changes. That leaves
only a narrow window for people who were wrongfully targeted to fix a
state�s mistake.

The Justice Department�s lawsuit in Virginia similarly argues that state�s
efforts �have likely confused, deterred, and removed US citizens who are
fully eligible to vote � the very scenario that Congress tried to prevent
when it enacted the Quiet Period Provision.�

Right-wing media routinely airs myths about �non-citizen� voting, claims
that have been amplified by Donald Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson and
Republican state officials across the US � dovetailing with the former
president�s violent rhetoric around immigration and the US-Mexico border.
Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen is being sued by the Department of
Justice and voting rights advocates for allegedly unlawfully performing a
mass voter purge weeks before Election Day.

Democratic rivals and voting rights advocates fear Republican campaigns are
once again setting the stage for challenges to election results by relying
on the courts and the court of public opinion to build a spurious body of
evidence to undermine the outcome.

And it seems to be working: 52 percent of Americans say they are concerned
that non-citizens are voting this year, despite there being no evidence to
support the idea, according to polling from NPR/PBS News/Marist.

�These lawsuits are in bad faith. They are not strong on the merits. They
don�t have good legal claims. They don�t have good facts,� according to
Protect Democracy counsel Anna Dorman.

�Their sole purpose is to use the legitimacy of the court system to launder
conspiracy theories and make them feel more legitimate, so that if the
election results don�t go the way these people want in November, they have
some additional conspiracies to put forward to try to undermine peaceful
transfer of power,� she told The Independent.

Protect Democracy has labeled the legal challenges �zombie lawsuits� �
dead-on-arrival litigation that has no chance of moving through the courts,
but will likely be used to revive bogus claims of fraud in the aftermath of
what is chalking up to be a close election.

Litigation from the Republican National Committee, Trump�s campaign and
other right-wing groups is once again targeting mail-in ballot deadlines,
as well as voters who are legally casting their mail-in ballots from
overseas � a group that includes US military service members who are
stationed abroad.

Republican groups have filed nearly 100 election-related lawsuits across
the US this year alone.

�They�re part of a messaging strategy, not a legal strategy,� according to
a report from Protect Democracy policy advocate Ben Raderstorf. �Regardless
of whether this legal strategy will get anywhere, in any courtroom, it
telegraphs a clear intent to subvert the election if Donald Trump loses.�

Once the results roll in, and those now-challenged voters and ballots start
to alter the real-time vote count, right-wing groups will point to what
amounts to false evidence to once again cry �fraud,� according to Dorman.
An election worker boxes tabulated ballots inside the Maricopa County
Recorders Office in Phoenix, Arizona, which has become a hotbed for
election conspiracy theories.
An election worker boxes tabulated ballots inside the Maricopa County
Recorders Office in Phoenix, Arizona, which has become a hotbed for
election conspiracy theories. (AP)

A study of 2016�s election results from the Brennan Center for Justice at
NYU Law in 42 jurisdictions found that election officials who oversaw the
tabulation of nearly 24 million votes referred only 30 incidents of
suspected non-citizen voting for further prosecution � or roughly 0.0001
percent of all votes cast.

Even the right-leaning think tank Cato Institute reported that �non-
citizens don�t illegally vote in detectable numbers.�

Meanwhile, voters in eight states this fall will decide whether to
explicitly ban non-citizens from voting � which is already illegal. The
changes, if supported by voters, would have little if any practical effect,
but will likely be wielded as �evidence� by Republican officials as part of
their campaign against so-called �non-citizen voting,� critics have warned.

In a statement responding to the Justice Department�s lawsuit, Alabama�s
secretary of state Wes Allen said it is his �Constitutional duty to ensure
that only American citizens vote for Trump in our elections.�

Stroop, one of the Alabama plaintiffs wrongfully caught up in the vote
purge, believes he once mistakenly marked a box on an unemployment form
identifying himself as a non-citizen. That error was corrected two years
ago. Yet the secretary of state�s office referred him and others purged
from Alabama�s voter rolls for criminal investigation.

�I�m worried that when I apply for a job, a thorough background check will
somehow turn up that I was criminally investigated by the state as part of
the voter purge, and I�ll lose out on the job opportunity,� Stroop said,
according to the lawsuit. �I don�t want to spend my time dealing with a
criminal investigation, being interrogated by law enforcement, or trying to
find a criminal lawyer to deal with any negative repercussions from being
wrongly placed on Secretary Allen�s list.�

A University of Memphis track team member has been charged with rape stemming from an assault that prosecutors say occurred in 2018 while he was a student at the University of Tennessee.

Jerome Nchiyako Dooley Jr., 20, is charged in a three-count presentment returned by a Knox County grand jury Sept 24. Dooley, of La Vergne, Tennessee, was arrested Monday night in Knoxville and has since been released on bond.

The assault occurred in July 2018 against an 18-year-old woman who was "physically helpless at the time," according to the presentment.

https://www.knoxnews.com/gcdn/presto/2019/10/24/PKNS/ea00e1af-0eb4-4b83-b387-ac0ee76bdba4-mugs.jpg?width=300&height=376&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp
Jerome Nchiyako Dooley Jr, Knox County Detention Facility

Dooley's accuser left UT in December 2018, according to campus records.

Knox News does not identify those who report sexual assault cases.

It was not clear from court documents whether the alleged assault occurred on the Knoxville campus.

Dooley, a former track and football standout at Antioch High School in Nashville, briefly joined the UT football program as a walk-on, but left UT and enrolled at the University of Memphis earlier this year, according to his LinkedIn.com profile and UT records.

He currently is listed as a sophomore sprinter and hurdler on the Memphis Tigers' Track and Field roster.

Memphis Track and Field Coach Kevin Robinson declined comment Wednesday when asked about Dooley's status with the team.

"University of Memphis Athletics was made aware of an off-campus incident involving a student-athlete," said a written statement provided by a campus spokesperson. "We are fully cooperating with authorities, and no additional comment will be made while the investigation is ongoing."

Dooley was added to the Vols football roster as a walk-on Feb. 2, 2018, but quit the team April 10, 2018, UT Athletics spokesman Tom Satkowiak confirmed.

"He was never a member of any other Tennessee athletic program, and ... he was not associated with a Tennessee athletic program on the date the alleged assault took place," Satkowiak told Knox News in the written statement Thursday.

Dooley is set for arraignment Nov. 14 in Knox County Criminal Court.

He also faces a misdemeanor vandalism charge stemming from an incident at a Fort Sanders apartment complex in November 2018.

https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/crime/2019/10/24/memphis-track-athlete-charged-knoxville-rape-case-jerome-dooley-university-tennessee/4082194002/