Image Courtesy of The Atlantic

By Shannon Rose Miekka

Nearly six months after Election Day, America is at a crossroads yet again in regards to voting access and restriction. In only the first seven weeks of the new year, nearly 1000 bills in state legislatures are in play, which could reshape the election process entirely.

According to a new report published by the Brennan Center, 253 bills with provisions that restrict voting access in 43 states and 704 bills with provisions that expand voting access in a different set of 43 states.

On a national level, House Resolution 1 passed on March 3 with a near party-line 220-210 vote. The “For the People Act” addresses virtually every aspect of the electoral process. It would restrict partisan gerrymandering, remove obstacles to voting, and foster transparency in our obscure campaign finance system, which currently allows wealthy donors to anonymously fund politics.

But on a local level, voting rights restrictions have advanced in Republican-controlled statehouses across the country.

President Joe Biden is the first Democratic presidential candidate in nearly thirty years to win states like Georgia and Arizona. It comes as no surprise that GOP lawmakers in these newly purple states are trying to understand how such a change could happen. 

Early & mail-in voting

On Monday, Georgia’s Republican state legislature passed a bill with the hopes to limit or even abolish mail-in voting. 

“It’s pathetically obvious to anyone paying attention that when Trump lost the election and Georgia flipped control of the U.S. Senate to Democrats shortly after, Republicans got the message that they were in a political death spiral,” said State Representative Renitta Shannon during a floor debate over the Republican proposals in Georgia last week.

Georgia is not alone. Lawmakers in Arizona introduced at least 11 bills this year that seek to restrict absentee voting. The Iowa state legislature voted to cut absentee and in-person early voting, while simultaneously preventing local elections officials from setting up additional polling locations that make early voting easier.

Fueled by Former President Trump’s rhetoric of widespread voter fraud, it is likely that the stolen election myth has sparked the surge in GOP voting suppression legislation.

However, there is little evidence that greater access to voting by mail benefits either party.

Political scientist Lee Drutman wrote last May, “as states have expanded their use of mailed ballots over the last decade… both parties have enjoyed a small but equal increase in turnout.”

Despite the lack of proof, the Republican party has seemingly folded voting restrictions into the party’s platform with the belief that expansion will benefit Democrats.

During Supreme Court arguments last week, Attorney Michael Carvin for Arizona’s Republican Party admitted that voter expansion “puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats. Politics is a zero-sum game.”

Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini wrote in November, “I’ve been pretty clear for a while that it no longer makes political sense for Republicans to oppose expanded voting access.”

Like everything these days, the new election laws have quickly become partisan. 

Without HR 1, experts say that lawmakers could easily gerrymander Republican House majorities. But the For the People Act faces an uphill battle in the Senate, where ten Republicans would need to vote in favor.

According to Wendy Weiser, Vice President of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center, H.R. 1 would “thwart” nearly all of the more than 200 restrictive voting proposals.

In response to the passage of HR 1, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said from the House floor, “Democrats want to use their razor-thin majority not to pass bills to earn voters’ trust, but to ensure they don’t lose more seats in the next election.”

Is this just thinly-veiled voter suppression?

Last month, the RNC launched the “Committee on Election Integrity”, doubling down on the GOP’s efforts to restrict voting-by-mail, tighten voter ID laws.  

Tiffany Muller, the president of End Citizens United, posits that Republicans “are not even being coy about it. They are saying the ‘quiet parts’ out loud.” 

Source: Greg Burstein, Twitter, seen outside the Georgia Capitol.

Black Americans make up 40% of the electorate in Georgia, and the state’s recent debate acts as a microcosm for examining election law on a national scale.

The main Georgia house bill, HB 531, does not stop voting-by-mail, but would restrict dropbox access and eliminate early voting on Sundays. 

Why Sundays? According to the Brennan Center, Black voters accounted for 36.5% of those voting in person on Sunday in Georgia in 2020, compared to 26.8% of those who voted on other days of the week. This is largely thanks to “Souls to the Polls,” get-out-the-vote drives organized by Black churches.

“A lot of times voter suppression succeeds because people don’t know it’s going on,” said Ari Berman on March 4. “They’re able to pass it under the rug and just think that there won’t be any outrage because people won’t really be following it. That’s not going to happen.”

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee and Arizona Republican Party v. Democratic National Committee. 

These two cases, two of the most aggressive attempts to undermine the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in the post-Jim Crow era, could be “high noon” for the Voting Rights Act.

Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act required states and local governments with a history of racist voting practices to “preclear” any new election rules with officials in Washington, DC. But Section 5 was gutted in 2013, when Chief Justice Roberts deemed it “no longer necessary.”

Section 2, which Roberts argued was sufficient to police discriminatory voting procedures, is the basis of the Arizona Republican Party’s case, marking the first time that the court will examine a state law that has been found to disproportionately deny the right to vote for minorities.

The Brennan Center for Social Justice publishes a monthly Voting Laws Roundup as part of their “Ensure Every American Can Vote” Initiative. Updates to the State Voting Laws Project can be found here.