Happy Thursday,
After an election fraught with misinformation and lies about fraud, Republicans have doubled with a wave of bills to further restrict access to voting in recent months, according to a new analysis by the Brennan Justice Center.
There are currently 106 pending bills in 28 states that would restrict access to voting, according to the data. It is a sharp increase from almost a year ago, when there were 35 restrictive projects pending in 15 states.
Among the findings of the Brennan Center:
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More than a third of the bills would place new restrictions on voting by mail
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Pennsylvania has 14 proposals pending for new restrictions on voters, most in the country. It is followed by New Hampshire (11), Missouri (9) and Mississippi, New Jersey and Texas (8)
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There are seven bills in four states that would limit registration opportunities on election day
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There are also 406 bills that would expand access to pending votes in 35 states, including New York (56), Texas (53), New Jersey (37), Mississippi (39) and Missouri (21)
The restrictions come shortly after an election in which there was a record turnout and Democratic and Republican election officials said there was no evidence of widespread irregularities or fraud. There have been recounts, audits and lawsuits in many states to support these guarantees. Federal and state officials said the election was “the safest in American history”.
Myrna Pérez, director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center, said the increase in anti-voting legislation was “counter-intuitive,” as there were Republican and Democratic victories in major contests across the country.
“The sheer volume of anti-voter legislation is certainly revealing that a nerve has been hit,” she told me. “Certainly there are people who are sensitive to the idea of further progress … In the end, it all comes down to anxiety about America’s darkening and people in power are afraid of losing their position.”
Attacking voting by mail
Many of the restrictions have to do with placing new barriers around voting by mail, a process that a record number of Americans used in 2020 (46% of Americans voted by mail in 2020, compared to just 19% four years ago. ). In Arizona, a state that Joe Biden has shaken, Republicans are considering measures that would make it easier to remove voters from a permanent voting list and require voters to have their ballots authenticated. In Pennsylvania, there are proposals in the Republican-controlled legislature to get rid of the absent vote without excuse and to make it easier to reject a ballot based on a signature mismatch – an unreliable way to confirm a voter’s identity.
And in Georgia, a state where Democrats won impressive defeats in the presidential race and two contests for the U.S. Senate, Republicans are exploring the possibility of eliminating the absent vote without excuse and requiring voters to present a copy of their identity documents to the vote by mail. Again, this comes after an election in which there was a record postal vote, and the state’s top election official, a Republican, loudly rejected the fraud charges.
In Pennsylvania, Governor Tom Wolf, a Democrat, can veto Republican Party restrictions. But in Georgia and Arizona, Republicans control both the legislature and the governor’s mansion.
There are a number of other voting restrictions that states are considering:
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Ten states are considering new voter identification requirements, including six states that currently do not require voters to present identification at the polls, according to the Brennan Center.
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Two states, Mississippi and New Hampshire, are considering putting new limits on the types of IDs that can be used.
Also worth watching …
Oregon lawmakers are considering a bill that would allow people convicted of a crime to vote while in prison, the Appeal reported. If adopted, Oregon would join Maine and Vermont as the only two states in the country that allow this, as well as the District of Columbia.