Tag: Voting

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Texas Home Passes Voting Invoice as G.O.P. Nears a Onerous-Fought Victory

Texas House Passes Voting Bill as G.O.P. Nears a Hard-Fought Victory

The House’s vote on Friday most likely signaled the end of drama that began in late May when, in the closing hours of the Texas Legislature’s regular session, Democratic House members fled the chamber to stop Republicans from passing a similar bill.

An irate Mr. Abbott called a special session to begin in early July, urging legislators to consider a voting bill along with proposals to direct more money toward border security, restrict transgender youths’ participation in interscholastic athletics and limit access to abortion, among other conservative priorities. More than 50 House Democrats, led by their progressive wing, organized two charter flights from Austin to Washington, where they were initially greeted as heroes by congressional Democrats in their shared fight to enact new federal voting protections.

Their momentum was short-lived.

In the days after their arrival, groups of Texas House Democrats met with Vice President Kamala Harris and Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a key vote in the push to pass Democrats’ federal voting bills. But before their first week in the capital had ended, several of the Texas lawmakers tested positive for the coronavirus, turning their planned media tour and congressional pressure campaign into a series of videoconferences that failed to attract much attention.

They remained ensconced at a hotel in downtown Washington, unable to use the swimming pool because Republicans had stationed a videographer on the deck waiting to film any of them appearing to violate their pledge to work tirelessly for voting rights.

In the hours after the July special session ended, Mr. Abbott called a second one to begin two days later. But the potential arrests of Democrats who failed to appear in the statehouse chamber, promised by Mr. Abbott and State House Republican leaders, failed to materialize. By then, the Democrats had quietly returned to the state, with many going about their daily lives without incident.

By the end of last week, a trickle of State House Democrats began returning to the State Capitol, ending the walkout and allowing the business of the chamber to resume. While Texas Democrats celebrated their fight against new voting restrictions, Republicans moved swiftly to enact their proposals.

For all of the energy Democrats poured into their flight from Austin and attempts to pressure Congress, the scene inside the Texas State House chamber on Thursday and Friday was largely one of an ordinary day of legislating, devoid of fireworks or protesters in the gallery. Only a somewhat greater number of television cameras hinted at the stakes of the vote.

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Greg Abbott Calls Texas Particular Session, in New Voting Rights Struggle

Greg Abbott Calls Texas Special Session, in New Voting Rights Fight

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas on Thursday called a new special session of the Legislature that is set to begin on Saturday, renewing Republican efforts to overhaul the state’s elections and putting pressure on Democratic lawmakers who left the state for Washington last month to block the legislation.

Mr. Abbott, a Republican, stuck to his pledge “to call special session after special session,” releasing a 17-item agenda for the Republican-controlled Legislature with a new voting bill at the top. The list also included a host of other conservative goals, like restricting abortion access, limiting the ways that students are taught about racism and tightening border security.

His announcement sent national attention swinging back to a hotel in downtown Washington, where several dozen Democrats from the Texas House of Representatives are grappling with a familiar question: Stay or go back?

The Texas Democrats are torn over how much is left for them to accomplish in Washington, with some moderate members of the caucus believing that their point has been made. But more progressive members are pushing to stay in Washington and continue to call attention to voting rights, at least while the U.S. Senate remains in session.

“I’ve been very clear, as it relates to me, that as long as Congress is in town, working on voting rights, I will be here in Washington, D.C., advocating for voting rights,” said State Representative Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democrat who was one of the organizers of the initial flight from Austin.

President Biden’s administration, by contrast, appeared to suggest that it would support a return to Texas by the state lawmakers.

“Certainly, the president believes that, one, they’ve been outspoken advocates and champions of voting rights,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said at a news conference, adding that if the legislative calendar “required them to be there, we would support that.”

The lawmakers’ stay in Washington has amounted to a prolonged period of limbo; their trip has delayed Republicans’ attempt to pass an election bill, but it remains unlikely that it will be a fatal blow.

Federal officials celebrated their arrival in Washington, with Vice President Kamala Harris likening their departure from Texas to the voting rights march in Selma, Ala., and other famous civil rights protests of the 1960s. But the group lost momentum when several vaccinated legislators tested positive for the coronavirus.

In video chats, the Texas Democrats did their best to maintain pressure on both the White House and Democratic senators to find a path forward for federal voting legislation, and eventually coaxed more than 100 state legislators from other states to join them in Washington.

And the lawmakers’ visit to Washington has coincided with the renewal of talks toward a compromise voting bill. Eight Democratic senators, including Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, have been moving closer to a final draft to be introduced later this year. What prompted the end of congressional inertia, however, is unclear, and any federal voting bill would remain unlikely to move quickly through the chambers of Congress.

So now, with the Texas Democrats confronting an uncertain future, they are debating their next moves.

If they return, they could be subject to the as-yet-untested powers of the Republican Statehouse leadership to arrest and detain any lawmakers who do not show up for a legislative session while in the state of Texas.

While Speaker Dade Phelan, a Republican, can issue arrest warrants during a session that has been gaveled in, there has never been a test of that authority when a session has been called by the governor but cannot start because enough lawmakers have declined to show up. Mr. Phelan’s office believes he has the authority to request arrest warrants and send law enforcement officers to retrieve absentee lawmakers even if the session has not started.

Back in Austin, Republican members said they had been maintaining informal discussions with their Democratic colleagues in an attempt to re-establish a quorum and get back to work. The partisan strictures in the Texas Legislature are far less rigid than those in Congress, with no dividing aisle between Republicans and Democrats. Members of the opposing parties intermingle more on the House floor and often form working friendships.

“I can tell you they’ve been going on since they left three weeks ago,” State Representative Jim Murphy of Houston, the chairman of the 83-member House Republican Caucus, said of the largely ad hoc discussions. Most of the conversations were “just personal — largely people want to know if they’re going to return,” he added. “How committed are they? Are there some that are willing to come back? Are there things that need to happen to encourage them to return?”

“I’ve done some texting, some phone calling,” he said, though “not a whole lot.”

At least nine Democrats have remained in Austin for varying reasons, though most, if not all, have embraced their colleagues’ opposition to the voting bill.

But as Democrats consider their immediate future, Mr. Abbott did add a surprise item to the agenda that, while unclear in its scope or likelihood of success, could further complicate their calculations: “Legislation relating to legislative quorum requirements.”

Katie Rogers contributed reporting.

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Biden condemns Trump’s ‘Massive Lie’ in main voting rights speech in Philadelphia

Biden condemns Trump's 'Big Lie' in major voting rights speech in Philadelphia

President Joe Biden on Tuesday delivered a major speech on voting rights in Philadelphia, slamming his predecessor’s “Big Lie” claim that the 2020 election was stolen. 

“It’s clear, for those who challenge the results or question the integrity of the election, no other election has ever been held under such scrutiny or such high standards. The ‘Big Lie’ is just that: a big lie,” Biden said at the National Constitution Center, just steps away from Independence Hall.

The speech comes as his administration faces growing pressure from civil rights activists and other Democrats to do more to combat attacks on voting rights, an issue that Biden called “the most significant test” of American democracy since the Civil War. 

Biden blasted former President Donald Trump’s claims that widespread voter fraud cost him the 2020 election, a claim that has pushed GOP leaders to enact a flurry of new voting laws in key states, including Florida and Georgia. Critics argue the new laws are discriminatory and restrict access to the ballot. 

The president directly denounced these efforts by GOP-controlled legislatures as a “Jim Crow assault” and compared them to behaviors seen in autocracies around the world. 

“To me, this is simple. This is election subversion. It’s the most dangerous threat to voting in the integrity of free and fair elections in our history,” Biden said. “They want the ability to reject the final count and ignore the will of the people if their preferred candidate loses.”

Protecting voting rights

Biden pressed for the passage of federal voting rights legislation during his remarks, saying that the fight to protect voting rights begins with passing the For The People Act.  

“That bill would help end voter suppression in states, get dark money out of politics, give voice to people, create fair district maps and end partisan political gerrymandering,” Biden said. 

He criticized Republicans for opposing the sweeping Democratic voting rights and government ethics bill, which failed to pass in the Senate last month after Republicans deployed the filibuster.

Biden also underscored the importance of passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would “restore and expand voting protections and prevent voter suppression.” He pressured Republican lawmakers to support such Democratic legislation that would protect voting rights. 

“We’ll ask my Republican friends in Congress and states and cities and counties to stand up, for God’s sake, and help prevent this concerted effort to undermine our election and the sacred right to vote,” Biden said. 

The president criticized the Supreme Court’s “harmful” decisions that weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965, noting that the court first gutted a key provision of the act in 2013 and on July 1 it upheld two Republican-backed Arizona voting laws that Democrats say violate the act. 

The court has also limited the ability to “prove intentional racial discrimination,” according to a White House memo sent before the speech, making it difficult for advocacy groups and the Department of Justice to combat restrictive voter laws.

Biden called on Congress to repair the “damage done” by passing voting rights legislation.

Preparing for the midterms

Biden warned that the U.S. will “face another test in 2022” during the midterm elections, adding that the nation needs to prepare for voter suppression and election subversion. 

“We have to prepare now. As I said time and again, no matter what, you can never stop the American people from voting. They will decide, and the power must always be with the people. That’s why just like we did in 2020, we have to prepare for 2022,” Biden said. 

As of mid-June, at least 17 states have enacted laws that restrict access to voting, with more being considered, according to a report from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law. 

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia signed a restrictive election bill into law in March after it was passed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature. The law requires voters to provide identification for mail-in ballots and prohibits people from giving food and water to voters waiting in line, punitive steps that critics say could harm turnout in minority communities. 

Biden’s administration has turned to the courts in response. The Department of Justice sued the state of Georgia on June 25, arguing that the election bill infringed on the rights of Black Georgians. 

Passing new legislation in Congress to protect voting rights would likely require a change to filibuster rules, especially as Democrats hold a razor-thin majority in the Senate. But Biden has backed reforming rather than eliminating the filibuster, making the future of new voting laws uncertain. 

Looking beyond Washington

Now, with Democrats’ legislative efforts stalled, the White House is beginning to look outside of Washington for ways to combat the wave of new voting restrictions. 

Biden has had several meetings at the White House with civil rights groups, who pushed the administration to keep fighting for voting rights despite resistance from Republicans. The groups have opposed the Republican-backed voting restrictions, which critics say are aimed at Hispanic, Black and younger voters. 

Vice President Kamala Harris, who has been tasked to lead the administration’s efforts to protect voting rights, also recently announced a new $25 million investment by the Democratic National Committee to expand its program that will help boost voter engagement in the upcoming midterm elections. 

During the first few months of his presidency, Biden also signed an executive order directing agencies to promote voter access. This includes developing better methods of distributing voting information and increasing opportunities to participate in the electoral process, which includes voters with distinct needs, such as service members, people with disabilities and tribal communities, among others.

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After Marathon Hearings, Texas Republicans Advance Voting Measure

After Marathon Hearings, Texas Republicans Advance Voting Measure

AUSTIN, Texas – The Texas Republicans moved the state electoral overhaul legislation closer to enactment on Sunday, putting aside fierce opposition from the Democrats to gain approval from key House and Senate committees after hearings over the marathon weekend.

The committee’s votes, held just days after a 30-day special session, stick to Governor Greg Abbott’s schedule for swift action against legislation he has identified as a priority for his administration. The Senate, which consists of 31 members, is expected to vote on its bill on Tuesday. The 150-strong house is likely to take up its own version of the measure this week.

The Democrats on both committees united against the bills and prepared for further fighting on the Senate and House floors. Beverly Powell, a Senator from the Fort Worth suburbs who voted against the bill on committee, said Senate Democrats were planning “many” changes during the plenary debate and could try to propose an alternative bill.

It took the Senate State Affairs Committee about 45 minutes Sunday afternoon to approve the bill, known as SB1, in a 6-to-3 party election after modifying the bill slightly with nine Republican amendments. “We feel good about the bill,” said Bryan Hughes, chairman of the Republican committee.

Previously, the committee met for nearly 15 hours, ending at around 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, and heard testimony from more than 200 witnesses, many of whom were against the law.

The House Committee hearings lasted even longer, ending around 7:30 a.m. on Sunday with a vote on the adoption of the bill after nearly 24 hours of debate and public comment. All nine Republicans on the committee supported the bill, while the five Democrats voted against.

Mr. Abbott, a Republican, has said that passing a new electoral law is one of his top priorities. He called the legislature into the special session that began Thursday after the Democrats blocked the law in late May with an 11-hour walkout from the Capitol denying Republicans the quorum.

Hundreds of Texans flocked to the Capitol over the weekend to watch the committee hearings on Republican-sponsored voting laws, part of a national effort by the party to place new restrictions on state electoral systems. Republicans say the restructuring is necessary to improve voter integrity, but opposition Democratic forces are fighting what they call an unprecedented campaign to suppress the vote.

“This is the largest coordinated attack on democracy in our lifetime, and perhaps in the lives of this country,” said Beto O’Rourke, a former US representative and presidential candidate who took and was a leading role for the Democrats in voting on the subject for the hearing in the Capitol.

But Mr. Hughes, the Republican chairman, opened the hearing on Saturday by stating that the law was intended to “create a better electoral process that is safe and accessible”.

House and Senate Democrats have vowed to do whatever it takes to kill the legislature a second time, but their options are limited. They have indicated that they are ready to take another bold step, such as another strike or possibly the more extreme step of fleeing the state.

Studies consistently place Texas at the top of the list of states making it harder to register and vote, which in part explains why the Democrats view the stakes as so high.

Voting laws would, among other things, prohibit 24-hour voting and drive-through polling sites, increase criminal penalties for election workers who violate regulations, limit support for voters, and expand the authority and autonomy of partisan election observers.

But two provisions from the previous session that the Democrats had vehemently opposed were removed: a restriction on the Sunday election and a proposal that would have made it easier to reject an election.

For the weekend hearings, Democrats and opposition to the bill had gathered witnesses from across the state to testify.

State Senator Borris Miles, a Houston Democrat, said two busloads of Witnesses and a caravan of 20 cars had traveled from his district. Both Mr. Miles and Lina Hidalgo, the executive director of Harris County, the state’s most populous district, told reporters that the Houston area’s bills would take a heavy toll by introducing electoral innovations like the 24-hour vote that was tabled , would be reduced in the 2020 election.

“We’re under attack,” said Mr. Miles.

After starting the poll late by spending hours on a bail revision bill, the House committee worked all night to hear many of the nearly 300 witnesses who had pledged to testify. Some who waited in the committee room after sunrise began to joke about the time, thanking Trent Ashby, chairman of the Republican House of Representatives, for not stopping his testimony.

“Good morning, Mr. Chair, thank you for staying,” said Hector Mendez, who represented the Texas College Democrats group. “Good luck at 6:30 am,” said another witness.

Although the Democrats were looking for more time to digest the bill, Ashby said he wanted to move on to a committee vote because of the “compressed nature” of the special session. Before voting on sending the measure to plenary, the committee also rejected eight Democratic amendments, including on party-level votes.

Texas follows several other Republican-controlled battlefield states that have radically revised their electoral laws and introduced new voting restrictions this year. Since January, at least 22 bills have been signed in 14 states that make voting difficult.

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Texas Man Who Waited Hours to Vote Is Arrested on Prices of Unlawful Voting

Texas Man Who Waited Hours to Vote Is Arrested on Charges of Illegal Voting

“He faces the possibility of an extremely harsh sentence,” he said. “Second degree crimes are usually reserved for grievous bodily harm, and to apply it to Mr. Rogers’ case, that only shows how unfair that is.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is under investigation for professional misconduct after challenging President Biden’s victory in court, brought charges against Mr. Rogers. He has made it his business to prosecute cases of voter fraud, which are very rare in the United States and are usually small mistakes when they happen.

“Hervis is a felon who is rightly banned from voting under TX law,” Paxton wrote on Twitter. “I pursue electoral fraud everywhere we find it!”

Republicans on battlefields in Texas and other states have been aggressively pushing to curtail electoral laws since former President Donald J. Trump made false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. On Thursday, Republicans in the Texas legislature presented plans to overhaul the state’s electoral machinery for the second time this year. They outlined a number of proposed new restrictions on voting access that would be among the most far-reaching electoral laws to be passed this year.

For some, Mr. Rogers’ case sparked another recent indictment in the state.

In 2017, Crystal Mason was sentenced to five years in prison for casting a preliminary ballot in the 2016 presidential election while being released under custody for a federal tax fraud crime. Her preliminary ballot was not counted and her case is pending in the Texas Supreme Court of Appeals after Ms. Mason appealed.

After her conviction, Ms. Mason was held in federal prison for 10 months for violating her supervised release. If Ms. Mason loses her appeal, she will have to serve her five-year prison sentence, Ms. Grinter said.

Mr. Rogers and Ms. Mason could meet in the coming weeks, Ms. Grinter said.

“They share a bond that neither of them wanted at the time,” said Ms. Grinter. “She really feels for him and knows what it feels like to be made out of such a political sport.”

On Friday, Ms. Mason expressed her support for Mr. Rogers.

“I wish this had never happened to you,” wrote Ms. Mason on Twitter. “I’m sorry you’re going through this. Welcome to the fight. “

Michael Levenson contributed to the coverage.

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How G.O.P. Legal guidelines in Montana Might Complicate Voting for Native People

How G.O.P. Laws in Montana Could Complicate Voting for Native Americans

STARR SCHOOL, Mont. — One week before the 2020 election, Laura Roundine had emergency open-heart surgery. She returned to her home on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation with blunt instructions: Don’t go anywhere while you recover, because if you get Covid-19, you’ll probably die.

That meant Ms. Roundine, 59, couldn’t vote in person as planned. Neither could her husband, lest he risk bringing the virus home. It wasn’t safe to go to the post office to vote by mail, and there is no home delivery here in Starr School — or on much of the reservation in northwestern Montana.

The couple’s saving grace was Renee LaPlant, a Blackfeet community organizer for the Native American advocacy group Western Native Voice, who ensured that their votes would count by shuttling applications and ballots back and forth between their home and a satellite election office in Browning, one of two on the roughly 2,300-square-mile reservation.

But under H.B. 530, a law passed this spring by the Republican-controlled State Legislature, that would not have been allowed. Western Native Voice pays its organizers, and paid ballot collection is now banned.

“It’s taking their rights from them, and they still have the right to vote,” Ms. Roundine said of fellow Blackfeet voters who can’t leave their homes. “I wouldn’t have wanted that to be taken from me.”

The ballot collection law is part of a nationwide push by Republican state legislators to rewrite election rules, and is similar to an Arizona law that the Supreme Court upheld on Thursday. In Montana — where Gov. Greg Gianforte, a Republican, was elected in November to replace Steve Bullock, a Democrat who had held veto power for eight years — the effects of that and a separate law eliminating same-day voter registration are likely to fall heavily on Native Americans, who make up about 7 percent of the state’s population.

It has been less than a century since Native Americans in the United States gained the right to vote by law, and they never attained the ability to do so easily in practice. New restrictions — ballot collection bans, earlier registration deadlines, stricter voter ID laws and more — are likely to make it harder, and the starkest consequences may be seen in places like Montana: sprawling, sparsely populated Western and Great Plains states where Native Americans have a history of playing decisive roles in close elections.

In 2018, Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat, won seven of eight Montana counties containing the headquarters of a federally recognized tribe and received 50.3 percent of the vote statewide, a result without which his party would not currently control the Senate. (One of the eight tribes wasn’t federally recognized at the time but is now.) In 2016, Mr. Bullock carried the same counties and won with 50.2 percent. Both times, Glacier County, which contains the bulk of the Blackfeet reservation, was the most Democratic in the state.

In recent years, Republicans in several states have passed laws imposing requirements that Native Americans are disproportionately unlikely to meet or targeting voting methods they are disproportionately likely to use, such as ballot collection, which is common in communities where transportation and other infrastructure are limited. They say ballot collection can enable election fraud or allow advocacy groups to influence votes, though there is no evidence of widespread fraud.

On the floor of the Montana House in April, in response to criticism of H.B. 530’s effects on Native Americans who rely on paid ballot collection, the bill’s primary sponsor, State Representative Wendy McKamey, said, “There are going to be habits that are going to have to change because we need to keep our security at the utmost.” She argued that the bill would keep voting as “uninfluenced by monies as possible.”

Ms. McKamey did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Geography, poverty and politics all create obstacles for Native Americans. The Blackfeet reservation is roughly the size of Delaware but had only two election offices and four ballot drop-off locations last year, one of which was listed as open for just 14 hours over two days. Many other reservations in Montana have no polling places, meaning residents must go to the county seat to vote, and many don’t have cars or can’t afford to take time off.

Advocacy groups like Western Native Voice have become central to get-out-the-vote efforts, to the point that the Blackfeet government’s website directs voters who need help not to a tribal office but to W.N.V.

Ms. LaPlant, who was one of about a dozen Western Native Voice organizers on the Blackfeet reservation last year, said she couldn’t begin to estimate how far they had collectively driven. One organizer alone logged 700 miles.

One of the voters the team helped was Heidi Bull Calf, whose 19-year-old son has a congenital heart defect. Knowing the danger he would be in if he got Covid-19, she and her family barely left their home in Browning for a year.

Asked whether there was any way she could have returned her ballot on her own without putting her son’s health at risk, Ms. Bull Calf, the director of after-school programs at an elementary school, said no.

The ballot collection law says that “for the purposes of enhancing election security, a person may not provide or offer to provide, and a person may not accept, a pecuniary benefit in exchange for distributing, ordering, requesting, collecting or delivering ballots.” Government entities, election administrators, mail carriers and a few others are exempt, but advocacy groups aren’t. Violators will be fined $100 per ballot.

In May, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Native American Rights Fund sued the Montana secretary of state, Christi Jacobsen, a Republican, over the new laws. The lawsuit alleges that the ballot collection limits and the elimination of same-day voter registration violate the Montana Constitution and are “part of a broader scheme” to disenfranchise Native voters. It was filed in a state district court that struck down a farther-reaching ballot collection ban as discriminatory last year.

A spokesman for Ms. Jacobsen did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement shortly after the lawsuit was filed, Ms. Jacobsen said, “The voters of Montana spoke when they elected a secretary of state that promised improved election integrity with voter ID and voter registration deadlines, and we will work hard to defend those measures.”

The state-level legal process may be Native Americans’ only realistic recourse now, because on Thursday, the Supreme Court upheld a ballot collection law in Arizona, signaling that federal challenges to voting restrictions based on disparate impact on voters of color were unlikely to succeed.

Voting difficulties are acute not just for the Blackfeet but also for Montana’s seven other federally recognized tribes: the Crow and Northern Cheyenne, based on reservations of the same names; the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation; the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre of the Fort Belknap Reservation; the Assiniboine and Sioux of the Fort Peck Reservation; the Chippewa Cree of Rocky Boy’s Reservation; and the Little Shell Chippewa in Great Falls.

On the Crow and Northern Cheyenne Reservations, many residents have no internet. Often, the only way to register to vote is in person at election offices in Hardin and Forsyth, 60 miles or more one way from parts of the reservations.

The Battle Over Voting Rights

After former President Donald J. Trump returned in recent months to making false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, Republican lawmakers in many states have marched ahead to pass laws making it harder to vote and change how elections are run, frustrating Democrats and even some election officials in their own party.

    • A Key Topic: The rules and procedures of elections have become central issues in American politics. As of May 14, lawmakers had passed 22 new laws in 14 states to make the process of voting more difficult, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a research institute.
    • The Basic Measures: The restrictions vary by state but can include limiting the use of ballot drop boxes, adding identification requirements for voters requesting absentee ballots, and doing away with local laws that allow automatic registration for absentee voting.
    • More Extreme Measures: Some measures go beyond altering how one votes, including tweaking Electoral College and judicial election rules, clamping down on citizen-led ballot initiatives, and outlawing private donations that provide resources for administering elections.
    • Pushback: This Republican effort has led Democrats in Congress to find a way to pass federal voting laws. A sweeping voting rights bill passed the House in March, but faces difficult obstacles in the Senate, including from Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia. Republicans have remained united against the proposal and even if the bill became law, it would most likely face steep legal challenges.
    • Florida: Measures here include limiting the use of drop boxes, adding more identification requirements for absentee ballots, requiring voters to request an absentee ballot for each election, limiting who could collect and drop off ballots, and further empowering partisan observers during the ballot-counting process.
    • Texas: Texas Democrats successfully blocked the state’s expansive voting bill, known as S.B. 7, in a late-night walkout and are starting a major statewide registration program focused on racially diverse communities. But Republicans in the state have pledged to return in a special session and pass a similar voting bill. S.B. 7 included new restrictions on absentee voting; granted broad new autonomy and authority to partisan poll watchers; escalated punishments for mistakes or offenses by election officials; and banned both drive-through voting and 24-hour voting.
    • Other States: Arizona’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed a bill that would limit the distribution of mail ballots. The bill, which includes removing voters from the state’s Permanent Early Voting List if they do not cast a ballot at least once every two years, may be only the first in a series of voting restrictions to be enacted there. Georgia Republicans in March enacted far-reaching new voting laws that limit ballot drop-boxes and make the distribution of water within certain boundaries of a polling station a misdemeanor. And Iowa has imposed new limits, including reducing the period for early voting and in-person voting hours on Election Day.

This made same-day voter registration a popular option for people who could make the trip only once. But under a new law, H.B. 176, the registration deadline is noon on the day before the election.

Keaton Sunchild, the political director at Western Native Voice, said that last year, hundreds of Native Americans had registered to vote after that time.

Lauri Kindness, a Western Native Voice organizer on the Crow Reservation, where she was born and lives, said: “There are many barriers and hardships in our communities with basic things like transportation. From my community, the majority of our voters were able to gain access to the ballot through same-day voter registration.”

State Representative Sharon Greef, the Republican who sponsored H.B. 176, said its purpose was to shorten lines and reduce the burden on county clerks and recorders by enabling them to spend Election Day focusing only on ballots, without also processing registrations. She said that if people voted early, they could still register and cast their ballot in one trip.

“I tried to think of any way this could affect all voters, not only the Native Americans, and if I had felt this in any way would have disenfranchised any voter, discouraged any voter from getting to the polls, I couldn’t in good conscience have carried the bill,” Ms. Greef said. “Voting is a right that we all have, but it’s a right that we can’t take lightly, and we have to plan ahead for it.”

At a community organizing training in Bozeman in early June, Western Native Voice leaders framed voting rights within the broader context of self-determination and political representation for Native Americans.

With the State Legislature adjourned for the year and the lawsuit in the hands of lawyers, organizers are turning their focus to redistricting.

Montana will get a second House seat as a result of the 2020 census, and Native Americans want to maximize their influence in electing members of Congress. But arguably more important are the maps that will be drawn for the State Legislature, which could give Native Americans greater power to elect the representatives who make Montana’s voting laws.

Redistricting will be handled by a commission consisting of two Republicans, two Democrats and a nonpartisan presiding officer chosen by the Montana Supreme Court: Maylinn Smith, a former tribal judge and tribal law professor who is herself Native American.

Ta’jin Perez, deputy director of Western Native Voice, urged the group’s organizers to map out communities with common interests in and around their reservations, down to the street level. W.N.V. would send that data to the Native American Rights Fund, which would use it to inform redistricting suggestions.

“You can either define it yourself,” Mr. Perez warned, “or the folks in Helena will do it for you.”

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Proving Racist Intent: Democrats Face Excessive New Bar in Opposing Voting Legal guidelines

Proving Racist Intent: Democrats Face High New Bar in Opposing Voting Laws

The Supreme Court’s 6-to-3 ruling on Thursday that upheld the Arizona voting restrictions effectively raised the bar for voting lawyers for filing federal cases under the Voting Rights Act: demonstrating discriminatory intent.

This burden is causing civil rights and electoral groups to reshuffle their approach in court to challenge the series of new restrictions imposed by Republican-controlled lawmakers this year following Donald J. Trump’s electoral defeat in November. You can no longer rely on the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, to act as a backbone to prevent racially discriminatory electoral restrictions.

“We have to remember that the Supreme Court doesn’t save us – it will not protect our democracy in those moments when it is most needed, ”said Sam Spital, the head of litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, on Friday.

The Supreme Court in a 2013 ruling gutted the core protections of the Voting Rights Act, and on Thursday the court further narrowed the law’s scope in combating discriminatory laws by setting tough new guidelines for demonstrating the effects of the law on colored voters thus litigation parties to overcome the much higher bar for the evidence of a specific intention to discriminate.

Mr Spital said his group must carefully weigh their next steps and “think very carefully” before bringing up new cases that, if defeated, could set harmful new precedents. The Arizona case, filed by the Democratic National Committee in 2016, was seen as a weak tool to challenge new electoral laws; even the Biden administration acknowledged that Arizona law was non-discriminatory under the electoral law. Choosing the wrong cases in the wrong jurisdictions could lead to further setbacks, said Mr. Spital and other proxies.

At the same time, according to Mr. Spital, it is imperative that the election restrictions imposed by the Republicans do not remain unchallenged.

“It will force us to work even harder in the cases we bring,” he said. “Once the rules of the game are in place, even if they’re against us, we have the resources – we have exceptional lawyers, exceptional clients, and we have the facts on our side.”

Thursday’s ruling also revealed an uncomfortable new reality for Democrats and electoral activists: Under current law, they can expect little help from the federal courts with electoral laws passed by the party that controls a state government. Republican lawmakers in Georgia, Florida, and Iowa have been aggressive to enforce electoral laws, brushing aside protests from Democrats, constituencies, and even big corporations.

The Arizona Republicans were open about the partisan nature of their efforts when the Supreme Court heard the case in March. An Arizona Republican Party attorney told judges that the restrictions were necessary because, without them, Republicans in the state would have “a competitive disadvantage compared to the Democrats.”

“It’s a lot harder to prove these things – it takes a lot more evidence,” said Travis Crum, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who specializes in voting rights and reassignment cases. “Courts are often reluctant to label lawmakers as racist. That is why the effect standard was added in 1982. “

The High Court’s decision also increases stakes for the 2022 gubernatorial competitions in major swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, where Democratic governors stand ready to block measures proposed by Republican-controlled lawmakers. If a Republican won the governor’s seat in any of these states, lawmakers would have a clear way of enforcing new electoral laws.

Republicans on Friday praised the Supreme Court ruling, calling it an affirmation of the need to tackle electoral fraud – although no evidence of widespread fraud emerged in President Biden’s victory.

Justin Riemer, chief counsel for the Republican National Committee, argued that the new majority opinion Judge Samuel Alito “guides” would be welcome and would force recognition of the wider choice in a state.

“It affirmed, for example, that states have an incredibly important interest in protecting themselves from electoral fraud and in strengthening voter confidence,” said Riemer. “When the court looked at Arizona law, it found how generous the voting rules were.”

Riemer noted that Democrats would also find it harder to meet new standards to show that laws place undue burdens on voters.

“I don’t want to say that it completely excludes them from Section 2, but it will make it very difficult for them to remove laws that are really minimal, if any, onerous,” said Riemer, referring to the sections of the Voting Rights Act dealing with racially discriminatory practices.

Major rulings by the Supreme Court confirming a new restriction on the right to vote have been followed in the past by waves of new law at the state level. In 2011, 34 states introduced some form of new voter identification laws after the court upheld the Indiana Voter Identification Act in 2008.

The first immediate test of a newly encouraged legislature will take place next week in Texas, where the legislature is due to hold a special session in a second attempt by Republicans to pass an election revision bill. The first attempt failed after the Democrats staged a controversial night strike in the state legislature and temporarily halted proposals that were among the most restrictive in the country.

These proposals included bans on new voting methods, shortening Sunday elections, and provisions that would facilitate the cancellation of elections and greatly empower partisan election observers.

The uncertain litigation will be played out in a federal justice system reshaped during Mr. Trump’s tenure, and Democrats in Congress have failed to enact federal voter protection.

The Legal Defense Fund, which Mr. Spital represents, sued Georgia in May over its new voting laws, arguing that the laws had a discriminatory effect. Other lawsuits, including one filed by the Justice Department last week, argue that Georgia acted with intent to discriminate against colored voters.

However, some Democrats complained about the Supreme Court decision, but noted that they still have many constitutional tools to challenge repressive electoral laws.

“Obviously, litigation is getting harder now,” said Aneesa McMillan, deputy general manager of Super PAC Priorities USA, which oversees the organization’s voting efforts. “But most of the cases we contest we contest based on the first, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution.”

One of the guidelines that Judge Alito formulated was an assessment of the “standard practice” of voting in 1982 when Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was amended.

“It is relevant that in 1982 the states generally obliged almost all voters to cast their ballots in person on election day, and only allowed narrow and well-defined categories of voters to cast postal ballots,” wrote Judge Alito.

The court did not address the purpose clause in Section 2. However, these cases are often based on racist statements by lawmakers or irregularities in the legislative process – elements of a legal dispute that are more difficult to prove than the effects.

“You won’t get any evidence of this smoking gun,” said Sophia Lakin, the ACLU’s deputy director of the Voting Rights Project. “Much evidence is being brought together to show that the purpose is to take away the rights of colored voters.”

In Texas, some Democrats in the Legislature had hoped they could work towards a more moderate version of the bill in the special session beginning next week; It remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court decision will lead Republicans to adopt an even more restrictive law.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and State Representative Briscoe Cain, both Republicans, did not respond to requests for comment. Speaker Dan Phelan and State Senator Bryan Hughes, both Republicans, declined to comment.

However, whether the Supreme Court decision will open the floodgates for more restrictive electoral laws in other states remains an open question; more than 30 state legislatures adjourned for the year, and others have already passed their voting laws.

“It is hard to imagine what an increase in election restrictions would look like now because we are already seeing such a dramatic increase, more than ever since the reconstruction,” said Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a research institute. “But the passing of new waves of laws has certainly been the answer in recent years.”

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers is one of the Democratic governors withholding voting actions passed by Republican-led lawmakers. On Wednesday, he vetoed the first of several Republican electoral process laws.

In an interview, he said that the Republicans’ months of efforts to revive the 2020 elections have made voting at the health and education level a top priority for voters in Wisconsin.

“People are realizing more and more that it’s an important issue,” said Evers. “Frankly, the Republicans have taken it upon themselves. I don’t think the Wisconsin people thought the election was stolen. You understand it was a fair choice. And so the Republicans’ inability to accept the loss of Donald Trump makes it more of a bread-and-butter problem here. “

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Biden Justice Division suing Georgia over new voting restrictions

Biden Justice Department suing Georgia over new voting restrictions

The Justice Department is suing Georgia, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Friday that a recently passed electoral law violates the protection of the voting rights law for minority voters.

“Wherever we see federal law violations, we will act,” Garland said at a press conference.

Garland said Georgia’s electoral reform law was “enacted with the aim of denying or restricting black Georgians the right to vote on the basis of race or color.”

He called the Justice Department’s new lawsuit “the first of many steps we are taking to ensure that all eligible voters can cast a vote,” that all legitimate votes are counted and that every voter has access to accurate information.

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Garland quit the federal lawsuit about three months after Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp signed the GOP-controlled state legislature passed the electoral revision bill.

The law has reportedly enacted a range of restrictive and potentially confusing measures that critics claim will affect voter turnout, especially in democratic and minority urban and suburban counties.

The changes sparked a national outcry among Democrats and constituencies. Large corporations and organizations such as Coca-Cola and the NCAA also protested the Peach State’s actions.

Kemp later disrupted the DOJ’s lawsuit on Friday, accusing Democrats, including President Joe Biden and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, of “armed” the agency.

“This lawsuit is born out of the lies and misinformation that the Biden government urged against Georgia’s electoral integrity law from the outset,” Kemp said in a statement.

“Joe Biden, Stacey Abrams and their allies tried to force an unconstitutional takeover of power by Congress – and failed to overwhelm our democracy.”

The governor insisted that the electoral law he signed should ensure that “it is easy to vote in Georgia and difficult to cheat”.

Kemp’s state isn’t the only one putting voting restrictions in place. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a similar bill in May, while other state parliaments across the country are considering legislation.

In Texas, the Democrats recently thwarted the passage of a restrictive voting law. Republican Governor Greg Abbott has vowed to revive it.

Garland promised Friday that the Biden government’s Justice Department would “look into new laws aimed at restricting voter access”.

Garland said it was cause for celebration that Georgia had a record turnout in the 2020 election. But SB 202, signed in March, contains numerous provisions that “make it difficult for people to vote,” he said.

The historically republican state fell apart for Biden over former President Donald Trump, an angry victory that Trump still rejects.

Trump’s conspiracy theories that widespread fraud were costing him re-election helped fuel restrictive voting laws across the country.

As part of the DOJ’s efforts to protect and expand access to voting, Garland also urged Congress to restore a federal provision that the Supreme Court placed in the landmark Shelby County v. Holder from 2013 defused.

That measure, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, required that certain jurisdictions’ proposed changes to their electoral rules could not be enforced until they demonstrated to federal authorities that those changes did not deny or restrict voting rights based on race, color, or minority status.

“If Georgia had still been covered by Section 5, SB 202 would likely never have taken effect,” Garland said. “We urge Congress to restore this invaluable tool.”

Garland also said his division’s civil rights division will publish new guidance to ensure post-election audits – several of which are controversial examples running in key states – comply with federal law.

The department is also working on guidelines for early voting and mail-in voting, as well as guidelines clarifying protections for districts when redesigning their maps, Garland said.

The attorney general also noted a “dramatic increase in threats and violent threats” against election officials at all levels, “from senior administrators to volunteer electoral workers”.

Assistant Attorney General Lisa Monaco will issue an order directing federal prosecutors to prioritize investigations into these threats, Garland said.

The Democratic leaders and the Biden government have pushed for the passage of a comprehensive bill to revise the electoral rules. They argue that legislation known as the “For The People Act” provides a variety of safeguards to protect voters from repression and other attacks on the right to vote.

Republicans have criticized the “radical” law as a naked seizure of power that would overturn all elections in favor of the Democrats.

The Republicans in the Senate blocked the submission of the bill in their chamber on Tuesday.

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Justice Dept. to Sue Georgia Over Voting Legislation

Justice Dept. to Sue Georgia Over Voting Law

The Justice Department is suing Georgia over a comprehensive electoral law passed by the state’s Republican-led legislature, a Congressional official said Friday, a key move by the Biden administration to counter state-level electoral restrictions in place since the 2020 election.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland was expected to announce the lawsuit late Friday morning.

The lawsuit is among the highest-profile enforcement actions launched under the Voting Act since the Supreme Court gutted a key provision in 2013 that allowed the Justice Department to prevent states from passing laws that facilitate discrimination against voters.

The lawsuit shows that the Justice Department, under the von Biden administration, intends to use the remaining tools at its disposal to aggressively oppose government actions it regards as potentially disenfranchised minority voters.

Mr Garland said earlier this month that the ministry would use all available tools to tackle voter discrimination.

The lawsuit comes days after Republicans in Congress blocked the most ambitious federal voting law in a generation, which dealt a blow to Democrats’ efforts to get the vote. President Biden and the Democratic leaders pledged to continue working to enforce state voting laws.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit is expected to accuse Georgia law of effectively discriminating against non-white voters and is intended to show that Georgia lawmakers intended to do so.

Georgian law introduced a number of new restrictions on electoral access and dramatically changed the balance of power in the electoral administration. The bill followed an election in which Georgia, a once reliably red state, turned blue in the presidential race for the first time in nearly 40 years, followed by two quick consecutive Senate seats, moving from Republicans to Democrats.

Georgia was the epicenter of former President Donald J. Trump’s months of efforts to overturn the election results. Picking up on numerous false conspiracy theories about the Georgia elections, he went on to claim that despite three separate recounts and audits – including one entirely manual – it reconfirmed the results, was fraudulent.

Critics were quick to cry that the law was rooted in the former president’s falsehoods and intended to reverse the democratic wave in Georgia, targeting the state’s absentee voting scheme, which was approved by Republicans in 2005, but the preferred method was voting for Democrats in the 2020 election amid the pandemic.

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Democrats and Activists Deal with the Filibuster After a Defeat on Voting Rights

Democrats and Activists Focus on the Filibuster After a Defeat on Voting Rights

For Democrats, the only way to break their voting rights legislation free of Republican opposition is by changing the Senate’s filibuster rules — an institution-shaking step that so far remains out of reach. But while the filibuster is proving hard to kill, it has been wounded.

The unanimous Republican refusal to allow the Senate to open a debate sought by every Democrat on the expansive elections and ethics measure — coupled with the recent filibuster of other legislation with bipartisan support — has armed opponents with fresh evidence of how the tactic can be employed to give the minority veto power over the majority.

Democrats and activists say the increasing Republican reliance on the filibuster will only intensify calls to jettison it and potentially bring about critical mass for a rules change as Democrats remain determined to pass some form of the elections measure and other parts of their agenda opposed by Republicans.

“I think as people see them stopping more things, minds might change,” Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota and one of the chief sponsors of the voting bill, said on Wednesday.

Ms. Klobuchar, who leads the Rules Committee, is planning to conduct a field hearing on voting rights in Georgia to build public support for the legislation, choosing a state where Republican lawmakers have put in place restrictive voting rules after sustaining election losses.

The White House, which has been criticized for not engaging aggressively enough on voting rights, is promising more from President Biden on the issue next week, though Mr. Biden, a senator for 36 years, has not explicitly endorsed eliminating the filibuster.

But to curb the power of the filibuster through a rules change, all 50 Democrats would have to agree to do so on the floor, and so far Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have expressed strong public opposition to doing that. Ms. Sinema’s latest pronouncement came in a Washington Post op-ed published just before this week’s procedural vote, much to the frustration of some of her colleagues.

Other Democrats also remain reluctant to make significant changes to the filibuster, though they are much less outspoken than their two colleagues. One of them, Senator Angus King, a Maine independent who votes with Democrats and has previously voiced openness to changing the filibuster rule, said on Wednesday that doing so still felt premature.

“I don’t think we are done trying to find a solution,” Mr. King said, referring to long-shot attempts to lure Republicans to support a compromise on voting legislation. “We need to give them another chance to see how they feel about democracy.”

As they regroup, Democrats involved in shaping the voting rights measure agreed the next step was to produce a narrower version incorporating some of the changes sought by Mr. Manchin that their party could then rally around. That willingness to accept elements of Mr. Manchin’s proposal won his support on Tuesday for beginning debate on the legislation, allowing Democrats to present a unified front.

Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon and a chief author of the elections bill, said Democrats and Mr. Manchin could then try anew to recruit Republicans behind the revised bill — a prospect he acknowledged was unlikely to succeed.

Multiple Republicans have said they cannot see themselves backing any Democratic proposal imposing new voting rules on states. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, has drawn a firm line against cooperating with Democrats and most Republicans will be very reluctant to cross him, counting on Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema to keep their commitment not to alter the filibuster rules requiring 60 votes to proceed on legislation.

“If that fails,” Mr. Merkley said on Wednesday about new outreach to Republicans, “then the 50 of us who want to defend our Constitution, defend the right to vote, stop billionaires from buying elections have to be in a room and figure out how do we get around Mitch McConnell obstructing this.”

Though he was not specific, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said on Tuesday after the vote that Democrats “have several serious options for how to reconsider this issue and advance legislation to combat voter suppression.”

“We will leave no stone unturned,” he said on Wednesday. “Voting rights are too important.”

But Mr. Schumer has other items on his to-do list, notably an infrastructure proposal prized by the White House that will consume much, if not all, of July, detracting from efforts to highlight both the voting rights measure and the drive to rein in the filibuster.

Pressed on how they can hope to convert Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema considering how strongly they have registered their opposition, Democrats and antifilibuster activists noted that Mr. Manchin only a few weeks ago had been dead set against the expansive voting rights bill. Democrats appeared to have lost his vote only to see him come forward with his own plan and join them on Tuesday.

The Battle Over Voting Rights

After former President Donald J. Trump returned in recent months to making false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, Republican lawmakers in many states have marched ahead to pass laws making it harder to vote and change how elections are run, frustrating Democrats and even some election officials in their own party.

    • A Key Topic: The rules and procedures of elections have become central issues in American politics. As of May 14, lawmakers had passed 22 new laws in 14 states to make the process of voting more difficult, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a research institute.
    • The Basic Measures: The restrictions vary by state but can include limiting the use of ballot drop boxes, adding identification requirements for voters requesting absentee ballots, and doing away with local laws that allow automatic registration for absentee voting.
    • More Extreme Measures: Some measures go beyond altering how one votes, including tweaking Electoral College and judicial election rules, clamping down on citizen-led ballot initiatives, and outlawing private donations that provide resources for administering elections.
    • Pushback: This Republican effort has led Democrats in Congress to find a way to pass federal voting laws. A sweeping voting rights bill passed the House in March, but faces difficult obstacles in the Senate, including from Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia. Republicans have remained united against the proposal and even if the bill became law, it would most likely face steep legal challenges.
    • Florida: Measures here include limiting the use of drop boxes, adding more identification requirements for absentee ballots, requiring voters to request an absentee ballot for each election, limiting who could collect and drop off ballots, and further empowering partisan observers during the ballot-counting process.
    • Texas: Texas Democrats successfully blocked the state’s expansive voting bill, known as S.B. 7, in a late-night walkout and are starting a major statewide registration program focused on racially diverse communities. But Republicans in the state have pledged to return in a special session and pass a similar voting bill. S.B. 7 included new restrictions on absentee voting; granted broad new autonomy and authority to partisan poll watchers; escalated punishments for mistakes or offenses by election officials; and banned both drive-through voting and 24-hour voting.
    • Other States: Arizona’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed a bill that would limit the distribution of mail ballots. The bill, which includes removing voters from the state’s Permanent Early Voting List if they do not cast a ballot at least once every two years, may be only the first in a series of voting restrictions to be enacted there. Georgia Republicans in March enacted far-reaching new voting laws that limit ballot drop-boxes and make the distribution of water within certain boundaries of a polling station a misdemeanor. And Iowa has imposed new limits, including reducing the period for early voting and in-person voting hours on Election Day.

At the same time, some Democrats who had been reluctant to tinker with the filibuster, like Senators Jon Tester of Montana and Chris Coons of Delaware, have expressed some willingness to do so now if Republicans maintain their blockade against the voting rights bill, though they have not taken a definitive stance.

“Time will tell,” Mr. Tester said on Wednesday about what his position would be if it came to a filibuster showdown.

After already investing heavily in campaigns in the news media, antifilibuster activists intend to use the coming two-week Senate recess to build more support for the voting rights bill and put pressure on Democrats to change the filibuster to enact it.

“This is going to be a huge motivating factor for grass-roots activists across the country to take this procedural loss and turn it into a legislative win,” said Meagan Hatcher-Mays, the director of democracy policy for the progressive group Indivisible, one of several organizations planning events while senators are back home.

Past confrontations have shown that building to significant changes in Senate rules can take some time. In 2013, Harry Reid, then the Senate Democratic leader, spent months making the case on the Senate floor that Republicans led by Mr. McConnell were unfairly using the filibuster to impede President Barack Obama from filling important judicial vacancies with highly qualified nominees.

For most of that time, Mr. Reid appeared to lack the support to institute a rules change with Democratic votes. But by November 2013, most Senate Democrats had had enough and voted to eliminate the 60-vote threshold to advance most executive branch nominees over strenuous Republican objections.

Mr. Reid, watching from afar in Nevada, said he believed something similar would eventually happen when Democratic frustration with Republican filibusters boiled over.

“The filibuster is on its way out,” Mr. Reid said in an interview. “There is no question in my mind that the filibuster is going to be a thing of the past shortly. You can’t have a democracy that takes 60 percent of the vote to get things done.”