ATLANTA (AP) – In Arizona, a Republican state senator was loudly concerned that the voter identification requirements proposed by his party were too “complicated”. But he voted for the project anyway.
In Iowa, the head of the state’s Republican elections made a carefully worded statement that did not say whether he supports his own party’s legislation, making it more difficult to vote in advance.
And in Georgia, Republican Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan left the room while Senate Republicans passed a bill to block early voting for everyone except the Republican Party’s most reliable electoral bloc. Instead, Duncan watched Monday’s proceedings from a television in his office to protest.
That is what it is like to disagree as Republican lawmakers push a wave of legislation through state chambers across the country to make voting more difficult. The projects are fueled by former President Donald Trump’s false allegations of widespread electoral fraud and many are sponsored by his most loyal allies. But support for the effort is much broader than just Trump’s far-right base, and the objections of Republican Party lawmakers are so silent that they can easily be ignored.
“What is happening is terrible,” said former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, who condemned the silence of elected Republican Party officials. “There were no proven and obvious flaws or frauds in the entire system that would require the kind of ‘legislative remedies’ that Republican legislatures are adopting. What the hell are you so afraid of? Black people voting? ”
Experts note that most of the changes under debate would disproportionately affect voters of color, young people and the poor – all groups that have historically voted for Democrats. But Republicans are also pushing restrictions with the potential to place new burdens on Republican-prone groups.
It’s a surprising change for a party whose voters in some states, like Florida and Arizona, embraced absent voting and mail. Several Republican strategists note that the party may be passing laws that only eliminate its own voters.
“There are a lot of states and a lot of demographics where Republicans consistently outnumber Democrats in early voting and absentee voting, and they need to be very careful because they may be shooting themselves in the foot to restrict it and make it more difficult,” said Terry Sullivan, a republican strategist.
If elected Republicans share these concerns, they have done little to date to slow the momentum of major legislation in competitive states like Georgia, Arizona, Florida and Texas, where Republicans control the state legislature and the governor’s office.
Democratic officials, civil rights leaders and supporters of the vote are appalled.
Martin Luther King III said he spent the past weekend in Selma, Alabama, celebrating the 56th anniversary of his father’s bloody march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Rather than being a day of celebration, he said, there was a sense that the civil rights movement was backing down because of Republican voting proposals.
“There is no doubt that this is a higher level than Jim Crow,” King said in an interview. He said he fears that little can be done to stop the Republican effort in the short term.
“I’m not sure what would make Republicans change except to lose (in the next elections,” added King. “There has to be a maximum effort to make that happen. They will receive very few votes from the colored community.”
Republicans who defend the changes insist they are simply trying to help restore public confidence in the US electoral system. There was no evidence of widespread electoral fraud in 2020, but polls suggest that many Republicans doubted the outcome of the election after Trump repeatedly falsely declared that he was the victim of illegal voting.
In an interview, Trump’s ally Ken Cuccinelli used a bad word to describe King’s suggestion that the new laws are designed to deprive African Americans.
“I am very offended by the idea that I am trying to prevent anyone from voting,” said Cuccinelli. “There is no reason for anyone, no matter what color it may be, not to have access to this system if they are a legal and suitable voter.”
In Georgia, the state Senate voted to limit access to postal ballots for people aged 65 and over, people with disabilities and people out of town on election day. Legislation passed by the state chamber would also drastically reduce the first hours of voting, limit the use of hanging boxes for early voting, and make it a crime to give food or water to queuing voters.
During Monday’s Senate vote, several Republicans representing competitive districts in the Atlanta metropolitan area did not vote, including Senator Brian Strickland. He tried to amend the bill on the committee to remove provisions that eliminate voting without justification of absence, but was unable to muster enough support.
If finally approved by both chambers of the legislature, the move would end the wide-ranging, unjustified absentee vote implemented in 2005 by a Republican-led legislature, after more than 1.3 million people voted absent in the mail in November.
In Iowa, Governor Kim Reynolds, a Republican, signed a Republican-backed bill on Monday that requires polling stations to close an hour earlier and shortens the early voting period to 20 days from the current 29. The voters will also be removed from active voting lists if they miss a single general election and do not report a change of address or register again.
Republican Secretary of State Paul Pate, who contradicted Trump’s references to widespread electoral fraud last fall and expanded postal voting during the pandemic, did not oppose the new law, but also offered no endorsement after a Latin defense group. have sued on Tuesday to prevent it from taking effect.
“My office will continue to provide resources to help all Iowa citizens become voters and understand any changes to electoral law,” said Pate. “Our goal has always been to make voting easy, but difficult to cheat.”
And in Arizona, Republicans have presented dozens of bills to impose new voting restrictions, many of them targeting the postal voting system, which accounts for about 80% of Arizona ballots.
Some of the more aggressive proposals died without ceremony. House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a Republican, quietly buried a bill that would have allowed the legislature to override the results of the presidential election and to appoint its own representatives from the Electoral College. But other measures are advancing, some with the support of Republicans who acknowledge discomfort.
The Arizona Senate voted this week to require that identification, such as a driver’s license number or a copy of a utility bill, be included on postal ballots. Republican Senator Tyler Pace said he feared that this would reduce election secrecy and pose a serious barrier for many voters who do not have a printer at home.
“The problem is that each way of looking at it gets complicated,” said Pace during the debate on the bill.
Meanwhile, Steele warned Republican officials that they would face a strong political backlash in next year’s midterm elections and beyond, if they continue to hamper the participation of some voters in the elections.
“If you are silent, you are an accomplice. You are complicit in depriving African American voters in important jurisdictions in the country, ”said Steele. “They will regret the next elections if they stay on this course.”
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Peoples reported from New York and Cooper reported from Phoenix Associated Press writer Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa contributed to this report.