Bills in Arizona, Mississippi and Wisconsin would end the practice of granting all electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the vote across the state. Instead, they would be distributed according to votes in parliamentary districts – which in Republican states are often confused in favor of Republicans. In Arizona, the legislature would also choose two voters.
In the last election, the measures would have reduced Biden’s total electoral votes by 11 votes.
Nebraska, on the other hand, would do the reverse with a similar party result: the state now rewards presidential voters by electoral district, but the legislation would move the state into the system the winner takes it all. One of Nebraska’s three boroughs voted in Biden in November.
Even Republicans in states where the November elections were not closed are proposing a tightening of voting laws. In Texas, a state with perhaps the country’s strictest voting rules and one of the lowest levels of participation, the state party declared “electoral integrity” the top legislative priority. Among other proposals, lawmakers want to reduce the time allotted for early voting, limit the ability of outsiders to help voters fill out ballots and demand that new voters prove they are citizens.
The Republicans who control the Pennsylvania Legislature have mounted one of the most aggressive campaigns, although any law they enacted would likely have to resist a veto by the state’s Democratic governor.
A handful of Republican state legislators want to abolish voting without excuse just 15 months after the legislature passed it in an electoral bill backed by everyone except two of its 134 Republican Party members who voted. The bill’s main advocate, Senator Doug Mastriano, said Biden’s victory in the state was illegitimate and spent thousands of dollars to take protesters to the January 6 demonstration that ended in the attack on the Capitol.
Reversing the law looks like a long shot. But there seems to be strong Republican support for other measures, including the elimination of boxes for absent votes, the disposal of ballots with technical errors and the end of the grace period for receiving ballots sent by mail until election day.
State Representative Seth Grove, Republican chairman of the committee that holds 14 hearings on electoral practices, said at the initial meeting on January 21 that he was not interested in insisting on the 2020 elections. “We want a better process going forward and we are committed to that, ” Grove said.