GOP Laws Aim To Erase, Not Just Suppress, Votes

Everyone’s vote is at risk in a democracy now under siege

With voting-rights legislation stalled in the Senate, Democrats and civil-rights groups vow to build grassroots pressure on lawmakers and to educate people about how to counter voter-suppression laws.

What’s missing is an obvious strategy on how to tackle the over 216 bills filed in 48 states that would allow state legislatures to politicize, criminalize or interfere with elections. At least 24 have been enacted into law, according to the bipartisan States United Democracy Center.

Some political-action group should launch a national education campaign about these efforts at voter nullification. There also should be targeted federal legislation to void them, especially since no state has discovered any significant voting fraud.

President Joe Biden recently promised to clarify that voting rights is about more than ID laws or who can give water to people in lines. “This is about who gets to judge whether your vote counted after it’s been cast,” he said. “That’s never happened before. It’s wrong.”

A focus on voter nullification could broaden support for the voting-rights cause, now mostly cast as a racial-justice issue. Most Americans — regardless of race or political party — would resent their votes being reversed or ignored based on the political whims of who is in office.

“The strength of democracy rests on the acceptance of election results, win or lose,” former Reagan administration official Linda Chavez recently wrote in The Bulwark. “Laws currently under consideration that would throw election results into question and allow state legislatures to reject them are a serious problem that undermines the future of our democracy.”

No fraud, but punitive laws

For example: Georgia laws allow the takeover of over four “underperforming” county election boards and permits a poll watcher to challenge the eligibility of an unlimited number of voters. An Iowa law makes it a criminal offense for an election official to obstruct a watcher’s activities.

Arizona, Georgia, Montana, Kansas and Florida restricted the powers of elected secretaries of state, many of whom stood firm against political pressure to overturn the 2020 presidential election. A Texas bill would allow an election to be overturned, even if fraud is not fully proven.

Efforts to erase votes fall into four categories, according to an analysis by States United Democracy Center. They aim to:

• Allow legislatures to change election results after the voters have already spoken.
• Seize the power to appoint state and local election officials and to administer elections.
• Restrict local authority in favor of micromanagement by state legislatures.
• Create additional criminal and civil penalties for election administrators and public officials.

Besides the political interference, election officials still face violent threats, online disinformation campaigns and problems keeping and hiring workers and volunteers, according to The Brennan Center for Justice. States such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are struggling to fill vacancies for election officials, reports The Associated Press.

Opposition fighting uphill

Federal law enforcers plan to crack down on threats to election officials, based on a June 25 memorandum from Deputy U.S. Attorney General Lisa Monaco. DOJ is also suing Georgia for intentional discrimination against Black voters. That challenge became more difficult with the July 1 U.S. Supreme Court decision that essentially said some voter suppression is OK to prevent voter fraud.

In Congress, Democrats are hamstrung by the Senate filibuster in getting voting reform bills passed. The bill that would have immediate impact on these state laws, the For the People Act, includes changes in redistricting and campaign-finance reform that are controversial within both parties.

But there may be the opportunity to quickly pass a few laws about election security and the role of legislatures in federal elections. Casting them in racially neutral terms may attract enough GOP votes to avoid a filibuster.

In no way should this distract from the multi-front battle that business and civil rights group plan to wage against laws aim at reducing minority-voter turnout. It simply opens up another front in the war to save our democracy.

As Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, recently summed up the situation: “Our backs are against the wall.”