Keep Eyes on State Legislatures - Voter Suppression Didn't Go Anywhere
As public attention is absorbed by events unfolding in Washington, D.C., Republican state legislators prepare to battle in 2022 and 2024 .... with - you guessed it - more voter suppression
Publisher’s Riff
Special insights heard at #RealityCheckWURD every Mon - Thur, 10am - 1pm ET LIVE at wurdradio.com or WURD TV (1.11.20 edition). Wear your B|E. Get #Proximity, an exclusive conversation series coming soon w/monthly/annual subscriptions
It was peculiar to hear the Georgia House of Representatives is considering a proposal to replace a current statue of Confederate enemy combatant and traitor Vice President Alexander Stephens with a statue of the late great Civil Rights icon Congressman John Lewis (D-GA). This latest effort in the Georgia House is described as being “bipartisan,” with nudging from the chamber’s sizable and even more powerful Black Caucus in the wake of the 2020 election and 2021 U.S. Senate runoff outcomes. Keep in mind Georgia was also one of those 22 state legislative chambers that were identified as battlegrounds or potential flips from one party to another …
Georgia’s state House and Senate were, of course, long shots. But the results of the presidential and U.S. Senate elections drove state Democrats’ to win four seats in the state House while Republicans lost two. Perhaps eager to stave off more electoral doom in the future, state Republicans thought a gesture of symbolism should do the trick in keeping Black Georgians from getting too angry with them.
Still, the proposal to erect a statue of Lewis in the Georgia state House is equally comical and infuriating since it’s occuring at the same time Georgia Republicans are pushing full steam ahead with a fresh round of voter suppression policymaking in preparation for 2022 and 2024 election cycles. As ironic is reported support from Voter Suppressor in Chief himself, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp (R-GA). Why even entertain a statue of Lewis while preparing to destroy everything he worked and, literally, gave blood for? Georgia and Black Democrats, at the moment, seem easily fooled by this chicanery and insult to Lewis’ legacy - rather than make a hard, defiant stand and say “nah, we don’t want your statue” until Republicans agree there will be no future threats against Black Georgian’s voting rights. Period. It’s safe to assume Congressman Lewis would have felt the exact same way.
Unfortunately, this is the emerging norm in state legislatures across the country, especially in those battleground states where Black, Indigenous and Brown voters posed a real electoral threat to Republicans in 2020. Predictably, the GOP strategy for 2022 and 2024 state and federal election cycles is, well, to cheat as opposed to compete … and the best way to do that, for them, is through electoral subterfuge and voter suppression. Of course, focus is on events unfolding in Washington, D.C. in the aftermath of the attack on the U.S. Capitol and there is an obsession with the political future of Donald Trump in relation to the Republican Party. But the public must pay greater, if not equal, attention to a renewed slew of racially-driven attempts by Republicans to dismantle voting rights in key battleground states under the cover of myths like “election fraud” and “a stolen election.” None of these are true - but, what is true is a mounting effort to restrict voting rights by White conservatives who are furious about Black and other diverse community voter effectiveness in 2020. The gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court in 2013 has given Republican state legislatures the latitude they need to make election process changes as often as they want. Instead of resting from relief that Trump was unseated, Democrats and anyone else concerned about the future of voting rights should keep a very close eye on state legislative sessions. Here are several places to worry about …
Georgia
“We have totally lost confidence in our election system this year,” was Georgia state Senate Republican Whip Steve Gooch during a recent hearing on Georgia election outcomes. “I’m here on behalf of those citizens. I have a duty to let you know that this issue isn’t going to go away unless we make some changes.” Still, no evidence in Georgia that fraud took place - in a state where the administration of the election is totally controlled by Republicans.
Mad about losing, the Georgia Senate Republican Caucus is going to "crack down" on a variety of measures that actually opened up the voting franchise to more people …
As the upper chamber of the General Assembly and consistent with our prerogatives for legislative oversight:
We are calling upon the elections officials to engage the GBI to investigate any and all fraudulent activities, including those which were brought to light during Senate committee hearings on December 3, 2020.
We insist that all counties immediately preserve all data from the November 3, 2020 General Election in order to conduct a forensic audit. We also call on these counties to perform a signature audit. We call on the State Elections Board to oversee and monitor that closely.
We will continue to conduct public hearings up to and through January 5, 2021 to ensure that fraud and misconduct do not taint the next election.
We will fully fund the Secretary of State’s call to investigate out-of-state residents who attempt to move here for the sole purpose of voting in our run-off. We will make sure that these criminals are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
We call upon the Secretary of State to immediately release a certified list of all voters in the November 3, 2020 General Election and a certified list of all newly registered voters in Georgia from October 5-December 7, 2020.
As soon as we may constitutionally convene, we will pass legislation to reverse the detrimental effects of the consent decree which was entered into in March 2020.
As soon as we may constitutionally convene, we will reform our election laws to secure our electoral process by eliminating at-will absentee voting. We will require photo identification for absentee voting for cause, and we will crack down on ballot harvesting by outlawing drop boxes.
While being praised as a “hero,” simply for being able to maneuver himself out of being incriminated in an illegal phone call with Trump, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, another Republican, is on the same page. He wants to limit absentee ballots, mail-in voting - both follow ups to his closures of early voting precincts and the purging of 200,000 Georgia voters during the 2020 cycle.
Pennsylvania
Equally enraged about the loss of Pennsylvania to Joe Biden, Pennsylvania Republicans are back at it on voter suppression, too. If it’s not openly refusing to administer the oath of office to PA State Senate and Democrat Jim Brewster (who won his Allegheny County seat by a very slim margin) it’s pushing forward to switch Pennsylvania State Supreme Court elections from statewide contensts to a new judicial district or zone format. Should that bill becomes law (because Republicans hated the way the PA Supreme Court didn’t rule in their favor in 2020), voters would no longer be able to vote statewide for judges in state Commonwealth, Superior, and Supreme Courts, but would vote according to district. That move is designed to essentially 3-D print more Republican judges.
If that wasn’t enough, mail-in balloting worked so well and efficiently in Pennsylvania that many state Republicans, like state Rep. Jim Gregory, want to get rid of it …
Rep. Jim Gregory (R-Blair) today announced intentions to introduce a bill that would repeal the previous expansion of mail-in voting in Pennsylvania. Gregory circulated a co-sponsorship memo explaining his bill would undo the provisions in Act 77 of 2019, which opened mail-in voting to all Pennsylvanians. Under the new law, voters do not need to cite a reason when requesting a ballot. Prior to Act 77, voters needed to give a reason like disability, unexpected illness or last-minute absence to obtain an absentee ballot.
It’s all about an assumption that the more voters turning out automatically means more votes for Democrats - and, instead of just becoming the type of party that appeals to those voters with better policy platforms, Republicans just keep looking for creative ways to alter the rules. “If you're not playing chess in this game and playing checkers, you're going to get left behind,” Rep. Gregory had the audacity to tell ABC News.
Texas
The Lone Star state actually managed to stay politically red in 2020. But, things were so tight for Republicans, who suddenly found themselves competing hard and spending more money than expected, that the state GOP isn’t taking any chances. That’s prompted the Republicans who control that state’s Senate to introduce a ban on sending absentee ballot applications in the mail. The problem here is that Texas has never sent absentee ballots in the mail. Why now? It’s all about getting ahead of the future demographic problem they see. Hence, dismantle early voting systems systematically.
Texas is also where federally indicted Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton led a full, but unsuccessful legal assault with 16 other states Attorneys General in the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the 2020 election.
Arizona
Stinging from an unexpected swing to Biden in 2020, Arizona state Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita (R), who chairs the Government and Elections Committee, is introducing legislation that bans voters from submitting mail-in ballots at polling places. Another bill, just introduced, seeks to significantly curtail early voting by mandating counties create a “permanent early voting list” …
Any voter may request to be included on a permanent list of voters to receive an early ballot for any election for which the county voter registration roll is used to prepare the election register. The county recorder of each county shall maintain the permanent early voting list as part of the oter registration roll.
Legislators continue to use Trump’s completely baseless claims about a stolen election and voter fraud, which provide no evidence anything occurred, as the reason to keep pushing for draconian changes in voter laws. “We kick the can, we don’t deal with the problems in a prospective way, we wait until things blow up and the public’s unhappy and then we go in and fix it. The public is losing confidence,” was what Sen. Ugenti-Rita told The Hill, as if there was this avalance of illegal voting activity that overwhelmed the 2020 cycle. That was, simply, not the case.