State legislatures around the nation turn to election reform after contentious 2020 cycle
In Arizona, a Republican state senator worried aloud that his party’s proposed voter identification requirements might be too “cumbersome.” But he voted for the bill anyway. In Iowa, the state’s Republican elections chief put out a carefully worded statement that didn’t say whether he backs his own party’s legislation making it more difficult to vote early. And in Georgia, Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan left the room as Senate Republicans approved a bill to block early voting for all but the GOP’s most reliable voting bloc. Duncan instead watched Monday’s proceedings from a television in his office to protest. This is what amounts to dissent as Republican lawmakers push a wave of legislation through statehouses across the nation to make voting more difficult. The bills are fueled by former President Donald Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud and many are sponsored by his most loyal allies. But support for the effort is much broader than just Trump’s hard-right base, and objections from GOP policymakers are so quiet they can be easy to miss. “It’s appalling what’s happening,” said former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, who condemned the silence of the GOP’s elected officials. “There have been no provable, obvious, systemwide failures or fraud that would require the kind of ‘legislative remedies’ that Republican legislatures are embarking on. What the hell are you so afraid of? Black people voting?” Experts note that most changes up for debate would disproportionately affect voters of color, younger people, and the poor — all groups that historically vote for Democrats. But Republicans are also pushing restrictions with the potential to place new burdens on GOP-leaning groups. It’s a startling shift for a party whose voters in some states, such as Florida and Arizona, had embraced absentee and mail voting. Several Republican strategists note the party may be passing laws that only box out their own voters. “There are multiple states and in multiple demographics where Republicans consistently outperform Democrats in early voting and absentee voting, and they need to be very careful because they could be shooting themselves in the foot to restrict that and make it more difficult,,” said Terry Sullivan, a Republican strategist. If elected Republicans share these concerns, they have done little so far to slow the momentum of major legislation in competitive states like Georgia, Arizona, Florida, and Texas, where Republicans control the state legislature and the governor’s office. Democratic officials, civil rights leaders, and voting advocates are horrified. Martin Luther King III said he spent last weekend in Selma, Alabama, celebrating the 56th anniversary of his father’s bloody march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Instead of being a day of celebration, he said, there was a sense that the civil rights movement was sliding backward because of the Republican voting proposals. “There’s no question about this being a higher level of Jim Crow,” King said in an interview. He said he’s worried that little can be done to stop the Republican effort in the short-term. “I’m not sure what would make Republicans change other than they lose (in upcoming elections,” King added. “There has to be a maximum effort so that does happen. They’re going to get very few votes from community of color.” Republicans championing the changes insist they’re simply trying to help restore public confidence in the U.S. election system. There was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in 2020, but polls suggest that many Republicans doubted the outcome of the election after Trump repeatedly declared, falsely, that he was the victim of illegal voting. In an interview, Trump ally Ken Cuccinelli used an expletive to describe King’s suggestion that the new laws are designed to disenfranchise African Americans. “I take great offense to the idea that I’m trying to keep anybody from voting,” Cuccinelli said. “There’s no reason anybody, no matter what color they are, can’t access this system if they’re a legal and appropriate voter.” In Georgia, the state Senate has voted to limit access to absentee mail ballots to people 65 and over, those with a physical disability, and people out of town on Election Day. Legislation passed by the state House would also dramatically reduce early voting hours, limit the use of early-voting drop boxes, and make it a crime to give food or water to voters standing in line. During Monday’s Senate vote, several Republicans who represent competitive metro Atlanta districts didn’t vote, including Sen. Brian Strickland. He had tried to amend the bill in committee to remove provisions scrapping no-excuse absentee voting but was unable to muster enough support. If ultimately approved by both chambers of the legislature, the change would end broad no-excuse absentee voting put in place in 2005 by a Republican-led legislature, after more than 1.3 million people voted absentee by mail in November. In Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, Monday signed a GOP-backed bill that requires voting sites to close an hour earlier and shortens the early-voting period to 20 days from the current 29. Voters will be also removed from active voting lists if they miss a single general election and don’t report a change in address or re-register. Republican Secretary of State Paul Pate, who contradicted Trump’s references to widespread voter fraud last fall and expanded mail-in voting during the pandemic, did not oppose the new law, but he offered no ringing endorsement either after a Latino advocacy group sued Tuesday to stop it from taking effect. “My office will continue providing resources to help every eligible Iowan be a voter and understand any changes in election law,” Pate said. “Our goal has always been to make it easy to vote, but hard to cheat.” And in Arizona, Republicans introduced dozens of bills to impose new restrictions on voting, many of them targeting the vote-by-mail system that accounts for about 80 percent of Arizona’s ballots. Some of the most aggressive proposals have died unceremoniously. House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a Republican, quietly buried a bill that would have allowed the Legislature to overturn presidential election
Georgia again certifies election results showing Joe Biden won
Georgia’s top elections official on Monday recertified the state’s election results after a recount requested by President Donald Trump confirmed once again that Democrat Joe Biden won the state, and the governor then recertified the state’s 16 presidential electors. “We have now counted legally cast ballots three times, and the results remain unchanged,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said during a news conference at the state Capitol before the results were recertified. Georgia law allows a losing candidate to request a recount if the margin between the candidates is within 0.5%. Trump requested the recount after the results certified by Raffensperger showed that Biden led by a margin of 12,670 votes, or 0.25% of the roughly 5 million ballots cast. During the recount, which was done using scanners that read and tally the votes, there were discrepancies in vote totals in some counties. Since the results of a recount become the official results, those counties had to recertify their results. Once that was done the secretary of state recertified the statewide results, his office said in a news release. Brian Kemp then recertified the state’s slate of 16 presidential electors — all prominent Democrats — as required by state law, spokesman Cody Hall said. The recertification of results comes before the federal “safe harbor” deadline on Tuesday — electors named by that date in accordance with state law cannot be disregarded by Congress. The recount was the third tally of votes in the presidential race in the state. After the initial count following Election Day, Raffensperger selected the presidential race for an audit required by state law. The tight margin meant the audit required the roughly 5 million votes in that contest to be recounted by hand, he said. That count also affirmed Biden’s victory. The total number of votes in the recount results certified Monday and posted on the secretary of state’s website was 766 fewer than the number certified when the ballots were first tallied after the election. Biden’s lead dropped from 12,670 to 11,779. That appears to be largely due to a discrepancy in Fulton County, the state’s most populous county that includes most of Atlanta. Fulton County’s recount results showed 880 fewer votes than the results certified after election night, with an overwhelming majority of those votes coming from Biden’s total in the county. Gabriel Sterling, who oversaw the implementation of the state’s new voting system, called the discrepancy in the county “a little worrisome” but said it’s a big county that’s had managerial issues. He also noted the difference isn’t enough to change the overall outcome of the election. Also Monday, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed on behalf of would-be Republican presidential electors by former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell. The suit alleged widespread fraud and sought to decertify the results of the presidential race in Georgia, among other things. In the lawsuit, “the plaintiffs essentially ask the court for perhaps the most extraordinary relief ever sought in any federal court in connection with an election. They want this court to substitute its judgment for that of 2 and a half million Georgia voters who voted for Joe Biden and this I am unwilling to do,” U.S. District Judge Timothy Batten as he dismissed the suit following a hearing. Separately, an election challenge filed Friday by Trump, his campaign, and Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer was rejected by the Fulton County Superior Court because the paperwork was improperly completed and it lacked the appropriate filing fees. Even as lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies have been rejected around the country, the president has continued to make repeated baseless claims of widespread fraud. In Georgia, he has rained criticism on Raffensperger and Kemp, both fellow Republicans. Raffensperger, meanwhile, has been steadfast in his defense of the integrity of the election in the state and Kemp has said he has no power to intervene in elections. “I know there are people that are convinced the election was fraught with problems, but the evidence, the actual evidence, the facts tell us a different story,” Raffensperger said during the news conference Monday. Hours before coming to Georgia for a rally Saturday night, Trump called Kemp and asked him to call a special legislative session. The governor declined. In a tweet Sunday, Trump criticized Kemp and Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan for inaction and again called for a special session. After four Republican state lawmakers on Sunday also requested a special session, Kemp and Duncan put out a statement saying that convening a special session to select a different slate of presidential electors would not be allowed under state or federal law. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
