The Supreme Court recently prevented Republicans from hijacking state and county election boards in its 6-3 ruling against North Carolina Republicans in Moore v. Harper. If the state GOP had been successful, they would’ve been able to run federal-level elections in North Carolina and across the country without any pathway for citizens to challenge unfair election laws. But voting rights are still…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Texas House Republicans passed a voter suppression bill early Friday morning despite a tough fight put up by Democrats, who offered over 130 amendments from late Thursday into the night.
Democrats were able to water down the bill, SB 7, and cut into some of the most punitive proposals, but the final vision retained restrictive proposals like limiting ballot drop boxes and prohibiting counties from sending unsolicited absentee ballots.
The House voted at 3 am to advance the bill, which contained 20 of the provisions proposed by Democrats, who had slim chances of outright stopping the bill. Texas’ House is controlled by Republicans by a wide margin; the bill passed 81-64.
The bill will head to committee to reconcile the differences with the version passed by the Texas Senate and clear another vote in both chambers before it goes to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk. Abbott, a Republican, is expected to sign the bill.
Previous versions of SB 7 had many restrictions that raised alarms for racial justice and disability advocates, including a ban on drive-through voting, restrictions on early voting hours, and limits on polling places in areas with larger populations of Black and Latinx residents.
It also contained language plucked straight out of Jim Crow which was eventually removed from the bill. The original text written by Republicans stated that the bill’s purpose was to “preserve the purity of the ballot box,” which Democratic Rep. Rafael Anchía pointed out was explicitly racist.
“You may have missed it then — and this would’ve been very obvious I think to anyone who looked at that language — that provision was drafted specifically to disenfranchise Black people, Black voters in fact, following the Civil War,” Anchia said, per the Texas Tribune. “Did you know that this purity of the ballot box justification was used during the Jim Crow era to prevent Black people from voting?”
Unfortunately, reconciliation in committee could end up removing the Democrats’ amendments, and much of the restrictions could be put back in place in the final bill. Former federal Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), through Twitter, encouraged Texans to call their representatives and urge them to vote down the ultimate version of the bill.
He also encouraged residents to call their federal senator and voice their support for Democrats’ For the People Act, which could help undo some of the harmful voter suppression legislation that Republicans have been putting forth in states across the country.
“This bill would not only stop voter suppression efforts in Texas, but would do so in Georgia, Arizona, Kansas, etc,” tweeted O’Rourke. “This is the most important thing we can do for voting rights in America.”
Florida was the latest state to pass Republican-led restrictions on elections, joining Georgia in imposing racist voter suppression laws. On Thursday, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Florida) signed a bill acutely limiting ballot drop boxes, banning handing out food and water in voting lines, and empowering partisan poll watchers to challenge ballots.
DeSantis locked out all media except for Fox News when he signed the bill that would affect the millions of voters in his state. Democrats balked at the decision.
“The bill signing of a voter suppression bill by our Governor is a ‘Fox Exclusive’ — when did public policy become an exclusive to any media company, let alone a hyper conservative one?!” wrote Florida Democratic State Rep. Anna Eskamani on Twitter. “This is how fascism works y’all — and if you’re proud about the bill let people see you sign it!”
Several groups have filed lawsuits over the Florida bill. The League of Women Voters of Florida and Black Voters Matters Fund have alleged that the bill is unconstitutional. The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Common Cause soon followed with a lawsuit against the Florida secretary of state, saying that the bill causes undue restrictions on voting. And the League of United Latin American Citizens is suing the state and asking the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the Republicans who sponsored the bill.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law on Thursday imposing new restrictions on voting, such as making it harder to vote by mail and criminalizing the handing out of food and water to people in voting lines.
The governor made the signing of the bill, which would affect millions of voters in his state, a “Fox exclusive,” as a spokesperson said, according to South Florida Sun-Sentinel columnist Steve Bousquet, allowing only the conservative media outlet to show the signing. DeSantis claimed in an interview with “Fox & Friends” that the bill was about “integrity and transparency” even though voting rights advocates have decried the measures that make it harder to vote, especially for nonwhite voters.
The bill, SB 90, adds new ID requirements for those requesting an absentee ballot and requires those requesting an absentee ballot to file a request before each election, rather than allowing them to remain on an absentee voter list. It also limits the number of ballot drop boxes, places restrictions on who can drop off ballots and requires drop boxes to be monitored by an election official.
Democrats and voting advocates have criticized the law, saying that it places undue restrictions on a voting process that had shown no evidence of widespread fraud.
The League of Women Voters of Florida, Black Voters Matters Fund and Florida Alliance for Retired Americans filed a lawsuit against SB 90 on Thursday, saying that multiple elements of the bill, such as banning the handing out of food and water, are unconstitutional and a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Voters from every county in the state also joined the suit.
“SB 90 is a bill that purports to solve problems that do not exist, caters to a dangerous lie about the 2020 election that threatens our most basic democratic values, and, in the end, makes it harder to vote without adequate justification for doing so,” reads the groups’ complaint. “SB 90 does not impede all of Florida’s voters equally. It is crafted to and will operate to make it more difficult for certain types of voters to participate in the state’s elections” — especially nonwhite, older and young or first-time voters.
The bill isn’t about election integrity for Republicans, say the bill’s opponents, but about the continuation of an attack on voting started by former President Donald Trump.
“We are not here because we have a problem with our elections,” said Democratic State Rep. Omari Hardy. “We are here because the Republican former president lost his re-election in November, and, rather than admitting his defeat, he spun a web of lies, radicalized those lies, in an attempt to explain away the loss.” Hardy also described the bill as “the revival of Jim Crow in this state.”
The oppressive nature of the bill was underscored by the fact that the governor wouldn’t allow local news outlets to show the bill’s signing.
“It’s extremely telling that DeSantis claims new Florida voter suppression law intended to boost ‘election integrity’ but barred all media except Fox News from covering bill signing,” wrote Mother Jones reporter Ari Berman on Twitter.
“This isn’t a story about the press being locked out of an event. It’s about Floridians who had their eyes and ears in that room cut off,” wrote Jay O’Brien, a reporter for CBS 12 in West Palm Beach. “Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law today that will impact ALL Floridians. And only some viewers were allowed to see it. That’s not normal.”
Texas is up next for voter suppression bills. The Republican-led HB 6, which would make it a felony for election officials to mail an absentee ballot to a voter who didn’t request one, among other restrictive provisions, advanced to a floor vote on Thursday. Republicans control the House in the state by a wide margin.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Maryland) announced on Monday that all House Democrats have now co-sponsored the 2021 version of the For the People Act, or H.R. 1. House Democrats have said that they will hold a vote on the legislation during the first week of March.
H.R. 1 is a sweeping election reform act that is a bundle of election- and voting-related laws, and it’s been favored by Democrats and progressives for several years now. The law targets corporate campaign finance by exposing “dark money” campaign contributions and ending the Citizens United ruling that unleashed massive amounts of corporate spending in politics.
It also greatly expands voting access by automatically registering eligible voters; making Election Day a holiday for federal employees and encouraging the private sector to do the same; and curbing partisan gerrymandering — which gives Republicans who are in control of a majority of state legislatures an advantage — and voter roll purging. In other words, as many journalists and political experts have said, it could save democracy.
Democrats passed the bill in the House in 2019, but then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to bring it to a vote in the Senate. Republicans — and many organizations that support them in their campaigns — are opposed to the bill.
“Our democracy is in a state of deep disrepair,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California), House Administration Chair Zoe Lofgren (D-California) and Democracy Reform Task Force Chair Sarbanes in a statement when they reintroduced H.R. 1 in January. “Across the country, people of all political persuasions — including Democrats, Independents and Republicans — are profoundly frustrated with the chaos, corruption and inaction that plague much of our politics.”
The lawmakers also point out in their statement that 2020 was a particularly fraught year for elections. Former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party fought hard to undermine and question the election and its results. Those unprecedented attacks on the election have now led to a huge wave of bills introduced in states by Republicans seeking to restrict voting rights.
The Brennan Center for Justice has found that, as of this month, over 165 bills that seek to limit voting have been filed in states, as compared to only 35 at this time last year. They are particularly aimed at limiting mail-in voting, imposing stricter voter ID requirements, restricting voter registration and expanding voter roll purging.
Efforts to limit voting have been particularly egregious in Georgia which turned blue in the most recent election and where Black voters, in particular, were instrumental in clinching the Democrats’ victory. Last month, a Republican lawmaker there attempted to pass a bill that would require voters to send in two copies of their ID when requesting an absentee ballot.
On Friday, Georgia Republicans filed legislation that proposes sweeping changes to election laws as well as further restrictions to absentee and early voting. It would impose more restrictions on voter IDs when requesting an absentee ballot and limit the window for voters to request and counties to send out the ballots. It also prohibits counties from conducting early voting on Sundays, which NPR reports is traditionally a day with more turnout from Black voters through “souls to the polls” events.
The Nation said that this drive from Republicans to limit voting is voter suppression that is, in many cases, specifically aimed at Black voters. “At the beating heart of the Big Lie — the deranged fantasy that the 2020 election was stolen from its loser, Donald Trump — is the Republican belief that the votes of Black people shouldn’t count,” wrote The Nation’s Elie Mystal. “The new laws cover everything Republicans could think of to make it harder for people to cast a vote.”
Republicans seem to be specifically targeting mail-in voting and early voting after many states opened both massively to avoid crowds and gathering on election day because of COVID-19. These bills follow the many attempts by Republicans to quash voting before the election last year where they tried every which way to limit who could vote, as well as when and where they could vote.
Polling shows, however, that the expanded voting access in the 2020 election due to COVID was quite popular among voters from both parties. Seventy percent of voters support the adoption of no-excuse absentee voting that many states allowed last year and two-thirds support expanding early voting periods before the election, according to a new poll by Strategies 360 and Voting Rights Lab.
H.R. 1 also enjoys wide support among the public; according to polling from Data for Progress and Equal Citizens, 67 percent of Americans support the legislation, including 77 percent of Democrats and 56 percent of Republicans.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.