On an invitation-only call last week, Senator Ted Cruz met with Republican state lawmakers to call them to the battle over the voting rights issue.
Democrats are trying to expand voting rights to “illegal aliens” and “child molesters,” he said, and Republicans must do everything they can to stop them. If they pass far-reaching electoral legislation now in the Senate, the Republican Party will not win elections again for generations, he said.
Asked if there was room to compromise, Cruz was straightforward: “No”.
“HR 1’s sole objective is to ensure that Democrats never again lose another election, that they win and retain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate and state legislatures in the next century,” Cruz told the group organized by the American Legislative Exchange Council , a conservative, corporate-backed group that provides state legislators with model legislation.
Cruz’s statements, recorded by a person on the call and obtained by The Associated Press, capture the growing intensity behind the Republicans’ campaign across the country to restrict access to the polls. From state to Washington, the struggle over who can vote and how – often considered “voting integrity” – galvanized a Republican Party in search of a unifying mission in the post-Trump era. For a powerful network of conservatives, voting restrictions are now seen as a life-and-death political debate, and the struggle has almost eclipsed traditional Republican issues such as abortion, gun rights and tax cuts as an organizational tool.
This force is attracting influential figures and money from across the right, ensuring that the conflict over legislation in Washington is partisan and expensive.
“It looks like a moment of involvement for the conservative movement, when the large-scale movement realizes that the sanctity of our elections is paramount and voter distrust is on the rise,” said Jessica Anderson, executive director of Heritage Action, an influential conservative group. defense of Washington. “We had a rallying cry from the grassroots, encouraging us to choose this fight.”
Several prominent groups recently joined the fray: The anti-abortion rights group, Susan B. Anthony List, partnered with another conservative Christian group to finance a new organization, the Electoral Transparency Initiative. FreedomWorks, a group formed to push for a smaller government, initiated a $ 10 million request for stricter voting laws in the states. It will be directed by Cleta Mitchell, a prominent Republican lawyer who advised former President Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, Heritage Action announced a new effort also focused on changes to state electoral laws. It included a $ 700,000 advertising campaign to support bills written by the Republican Party in Georgia, the group’s first foray into the defense of state policies.
So far, states have been at the center of the debate. More than 250 bills have been tabled in 43 states that would change the way Americans vote, according to a count by the Brennan Center for Justice, which supports expanding access to voting. This includes measures that would limit postal voting, reduce polling station opening hours and impose restrictions that Democrats say are the biggest attack on voting rights since Jim Crow.
That boost was triggered by Trump’s lies that he lost the presidential election due to fraud – claims rejected by the courts and prominent Republicans – and by the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol that these baseless allegations spawned.
But the fight for voting laws now extends far beyond Trump and is moving to Washington, where the Democratic-led Senate will soon consider a series of voting changes. The package, known as HR 1, would require states to automatically register qualified voters, in addition to offering registration on the same day. This would limit the ability of states to remove registered voters from their lists and restore the voting rights of former criminals. Among dozens of other provisions, it would also require states to offer 15 days of early voting and allow voting without justification. Democrats, who are organizing their own resources behind the bill, argue that it is necessary to block what they describe as electoral suppression efforts in the states.
Republicans say it is a handful of long-sought-after Democratic goals aimed at tilting elections in their favor. Cruz said that this would lead to the voting of millions of “criminals and illegal aliens”.
The bill “says America would be better off if more murderers voted, America would be better off if more rapists and child molesters voted,” Cruz said.
He added that he recently participated in a full-day strategic call with national conservative leaders to coordinate the opposition. The leaders agreed that the Republicans would seek to rename the Democratic-backed bill as the “Corrupt Politicians Act,” he said.
The focus on voting is visible throughout the conservative movement, even among groups with no clear interest in the voting debate. In a televised city hall in February, conservative Christian leader Tony Perkins answered several voting questions before addressing topics on the social issues that his Family Research Council typically focuses on.
Perkins answered the question by recalling how the voting laws were tightened in his native Louisiana, after a 1996 Senate race won by Democrats. He noted that the state now votes solidly for Republicans.
“When you have free and fair elections, you will have positive results,” said Perkins before urging viewers to pressure state legislators to “restore electoral integrity”.
Stricter voting regulations have been a conservative goal, driven by old ones – and some say outdated – conventional wisdom that Republicans thrive in elections with less participation and Democrats in those with more voters. This translated into the Republican Party’s efforts to tighten voter identification laws and demand purges from more frequent electoral lists. Both efforts tend to disproportionately exclude black and Latino voters, groups that support Democrats.
In a sign of growing attention to the issue last year, Leonard Leo, a Trump adviser and one of the strategists behind the conservative focus on the federal judiciary, formed the Honest Elections Project to push for voting restrictions and coordinate the Republican Party’s efforts to monitor the 2020 Vote.
But the issue has expanded beyond what many conservatives expected. Since Trump has blamed the fraud for his loss, and he and his allies have lost more than 50 lawsuits trying to overturn the election, his conservative base has become convinced of vague “irregularities” and holes in the voting system.
While Leo’s group, like other parts of the established GOP, kept its distance from such demands, state legislators quickly intervened with bills that aimed to fix phantom problems and restore confidence in the system.
“We are sure that our vote will count, we are sure that our vote is secure, we are sure that our system is fair and does not have any nefarious activity,” said Rep. Of Iowa Bobby Kaufmann, a Republican who wrote a broad – electoral bill that shortened the state ‘s early voting period.
Since then, Leo’s group has released a list of its preferred changes to the voting law.
Likewise, other outside groups soon entered the debate that is disturbing their activists who write the letters, make calls and send small donations that keep the groups relevant.
“It has moved up the chain of priority,” said Noah Wall, executive vice president of FreedomWorks, who trained 60 top activists in Orlando last weekend on voting issues. “If you were to do a poll with our activists now, electoral integrity would be almost at the top of the list. Twelve months ago, that was not the case. “