AUSTIN, Texas (AP) – Republican lawmakers in state houses across the country are moving quickly to attack some of the voting methods that have generated the most turnout for presidential elections in 50 years.
Although most legislative sessions are just beginning, the Brennan Center for Justice, a public policy institute, has already counted more than 100 bills in 28 states designed to restrict access to voting. More than a third of these proposals aim to limit postal voting, while other projects seek to strengthen voter identification requirements and registration processes, as well as allowing more aggressive ways to remove people from the electoral lists.
“Unfortunately, we are seeing some politicians who want to manipulate the rules of the game so that some people can participate and others cannot,” said Myrna Pérez, director of the Brennan Center’s voting rights and elections program.
The proposals are advancing not only in Texas and other traditional red states, but also in places like Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania, which supported Donald Trump four years ago, only to replace Joe Biden in November.
Many Republicans said the new bills aim to boost public confidence after Trump and his Republican allies, with no evidence, criticized the election as fraudulent. These claims were rejected by dozens of courts and made even when a group of election officials – including representatives of the federal government’s cyber security agency – called the 2020 presidential election “the safest in American history”. Former Trump Attorney General William Barr also said he saw no evidence of widespread fraud that could change the election results.
In last year’s presidential election, almost 70% of all ballots released across the country came before election day, with an estimated 108 million people voting by mail, in person or delivering absent ballots. The increase came after states expanded access to postal and early voting, with some states sending absentee ballots to all registered voters in response to the coronavirus pandemic that raised security concerns about large crowds at the polls.
In Texas, the nation’s largest republican-controlled state, the 2020 presidential election was considered a resounding success by almost any measure. Millions of people took advantage of the vote in person to break the record of turnout. There were no reports of widespread system breakdowns, loss of voting rights or fraud.
But some Republican lawmakers are looking for new criminal offenses to stop electoral fraud, although real fraud is extremely rare. Other bills prohibit independent groups from distributing registration forms for postal ballots and clarify who can apply for registration. In September, the state sued Harris County, home to Houston, a Democratic bias, to prevent authorities from sending ballot forms to the more than 2 million registered voters there.
Texas Republican Jacey Jetton said he expects lawmakers to pass new regulations to verify voters’ identity for postal voting to ensure that “elections are accurate and that people feel they are conducted fairly, an accurate election result. . ”Absentee voting is already limited in Texas, mostly allowed for voters who are unable to go to the polls on election day because they will be out of town or will have a health problem.
Thomas Buser-Clancy, senior attorney at the Texas ACLU, said the state is already known as a “voter suppression state”, noting that Texas does not allow online voter registration or postal voting.
“I think it is fair to call Texas a state of electoral suppression where electoral laws are largely aimed at making it more difficult, more difficult and frightening for individuals to exercise their fundamental right to vote,” he said.
Buser-Clancy said that laws like banning online voter registration or requiring certain forms of identity create burdens that “fall disproportionately on poor and black communities”, where some individuals may not have the resources and the ability to get out and get or repair items necessary to exercise voting rights.
A bill to eliminate unsolicited postal voting was introduced in Pennsylvania, although the proposal needed approval from the state’s Democratic governor. In Arizona, Republicans introduced bills that would eliminate the state’s permanent early voting list, require postal ballots to be authenticated, require postal ballots to be delivered by hand to a polling place, and allow lawmakers to override the results. presidential elections.
In Georgia, where Biden’s victory was seen in three separate counts, Republicans in the Republican-controlled legislature are preparing to impose new barriers to postal voting, which was used heavily by Democrats in the presidential and second-round elections for the Senate.
A Republican senator introduced a bill that requires voters to make copies of their photo ID documents and send them to election officials twice in order to vote absent. The Republican state governor, deputy governor and secretary of state supported the idea of requiring photo identification for postal voting, although it is unclear whether they support this specific project.
“Despite the fact that Republicans know and understand that there was no fraud, they are afraid of their base,” said Georgia Democratic MP Debra Bazemore. “This is the loyal basis for Donald Trump. If they do nothing, if they are against him, they may not stay in office for long. ”
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Izaguirre reported from Lindenhurst, New York.
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The Associated Press’ voting rights coverage is supported in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
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Acacia Coronado is a member of the Associated Press / Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a national nonprofit service program that puts journalists in local newsrooms to report on covert issues.