National

Republicans care a whole lot about election security these days. Fueled in part by the “Big Lie,” the baseless claim that there was widespread fraud in last year’s election, Republican lawmakers around the country have made an aggressive push to pass new laws to prevent what they saw as a nightmare scenario from happening again. While the motivation to improve election security is spurious, the ostensible goal isn’t — everyone would agree that a secure election is important for democracy. Experts say there’s one very effective way for state legislatures to make the voting process more secure: pass legislation to update voting machines. But instead of prioritizing this effort, many Republicans are instead focused on limiting voter access. “It would be terrific to see the focus on election security lead to more investments in better, more trustworthy systems,” said Mark Lindeman, co-director of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan election security organization. The gold standard for voting security is hand-marked paper ballots, according to security experts. That’s because a paper ballot eliminates the risk of technical difficulties or certain kinds of malicious acts (think hacking) that could change or destroy your vote, and any concerns can be addressed with a recount. Because of that, most states currently use hand-marked paper ballots or have voting machines that generate paper records for verification. But in six states — Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, Tennessee and Texas — some or all voters still cast ballots on machines that have no paper record whatsoever, according to data from Verified Voting. While there’s no evidence that these machines have ever been hacked during an election, it’s technically possible, and they’re also prone to all kinds of undesirable malfunctions, including losing votes. With no paper backup to audit, these machines are the kind of election security liability that politicians say they’re invested in fixing.

Full Article: Republicans Say They Care About Election Fraud. Here’s How They Could Actually Prevent It. | FiveThirtyEight

National: White House appoints voting rights adviser in federal elections bill push | Dartunorro Clark/NBC

The White House named Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt to be its voting rights adviser Monday in its push for federal legislation that would make sweeping changes to the nation’s elections. “Levitt will assist the President in his efforts to ensure every eligible American has secure, reliable access to a meaningful vote; to provide equitable representation in federal, state and local government; to restore trust in a democracy deserving of that trust; and to shore up and expand the avenues by which all Americans engage in robust civic participation,” said a release announcing his appointment. Levitt, who began teaching at the school in California in 2010, worked on voting rights issues as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division during the Obama administration. Democrats are pushing to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act of 2021, a 791-page measure that would make sweeping changes to the electoral process. The legislation, a wish list of policies that voting rights advocates have urged lawmakers to adopt for years, rethinks the voting process: how people register to vote, how ballots are cast and how states conduct elections.

Full Article: White House appoints voting rights adviser in federal elections bill push

National: MyPillow Sues to Counter Dominion Voting Systems’ Defamation Claims | Alexa Corse/Wall Street Journal

MyPillow Inc. sued voting-machine maker Dominion Voting Systems on Monday, a counter move after Dominion sued the bedding company and its Donald Trump-supporting chief executive for defamation over his unproven claims that its voting machines had rigged the presidential election for Joe Biden. In a suit seeking more than $1.6 billion in damages, the privately held company said it is suing to protect freedom of speech and to rectify the injury the company said it has suffered from Dominion’s own legal campaign, which the complaint said included losing business and harassment and death threats against employees. “Dominion is using the legal process as a weapon to suppress free speech,” the suit in federal district court in Minnesota stated. “This lawsuit is brought in support of the marketplace of ideas and to remedy the grave harm that has been suffered by MyPillow as a result of Dominion’s suppression of speech and attacks on the Company.” The company also noted that it was its founder and CEO Mike Lindell, rather than the company, who spoke against Dominion. “In making these statements, Lindell spoke for himself, not MyPillow,” the suit said. “MyPillow has not engaged in discussion about the 2020 election. However, as an American company supporting American constitutional values, MyPillow unreservedly supports Lindell’s right to exercise his First Amendment freedoms concerning the matters of critical public concern, like election matters.” In February, Denver-based Dominion sued MyPillow and Mr. Lindell in federal court in the District of Columbia. Dominion’s suit alleged that Mr. Lindell had defamed the company with accusations that it had rigged the 2020 election for President Biden, and asked for more than $1.3 billion in damages.

Full Article: MyPillow Sues to Counter Dominion Voting Systems’ Defamation Claims – WSJ

National: As America embraces early voting, GOP hurries to restrict it | Anthony Izaguirre/Associated Press

Nearly seven of every 10 voters cast their ballots before Election Day in 2020. Republicans are moving to make it harder for that to happen again, potentially affecting the voting preferences of millions of Americans. The GOP’s campaign to place new restrictions on mail-in and early voting in certain states will force voters to contend with new rules on what have quickly become popular and proven methods of casting ballots. Though it is difficult to forecast how exactly the changes will affect voter turnout in the years ahead, critics argue that the proposals target a voting method that has had growing appeal for both Democrats and Republicans, and will add additional and needless bureaucratic hurdles to casting ballots before Election Day. In just Georgia and Iowa, states where sweeping new voting restrictions already have been signed into law, more than 5 million voters used absentee or early in-person voting last fall. Restrictive early voting bills also are advancing in other politically important states where Republicans are in control, including Arizona, Florida and Texas. Altogether, nearly 27 million voters in those five states cast ballots in advance of the 2020 presidential election. “They’re trying to make it a hassle to vote,” said Dixie Davis, a 33-year-old seamstress in Fort Worth, Texas, who voted early in the last election. “I feel like voting should be convenient — it’s like the most basic service a government should provide in a democratic society.” The explosion of both early and mail voting in the 2020 election came after state officials across the country relaxed rules around who could cast ballots before Election Day in a one-time effort to avoid coronavirus spread at crowded polling places. Officials and experts have said the result was one of the smoothest elections in recent memory, without any of the widespread fraud alleged by former President Donald Trump and his allies.

Full Article: As America embraces early voting, GOP hurries to restrict it

National: As voting fight moves westward, accusations of racism follow | Acacia Coronado and Nicholas Riccardi/Associated Press

The Arizona Legislature was debating one of several Republican proposals to overhaul voting when GOP Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita said she’d had enough. “I don’t like to be characterized as supporting discriminatory laws!” she told Democrats, who say the legislation will hurt Latino and Native American voters. But Democratic Sen. Martin Quezada, a Latino from Phoenix, didn’t back down. “This will hurt my community. This will hurt my neighborhood.” “And,” he continued, “we’re going to continue bringing this up.” Indeed, Democrats are escalating their charges that the Republican push for tighter state voting laws is designed to make it hard for people of color to vote. As the fight moves from the Deep South to the Southwest, that’s put increased focus on the impact the proposals would have on Latino and Native American voters — groups with distinct histories of fighting for voting rights. “Arizona, Texas and several states in the Southwest have a long, sordid history of voter suppression, not only against African Americans but Latinos,” said Domingo Garcia, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens. Fighting the new voting bills, he added, “is our No. 1 priority.”

Full Article: As voting fight moves westward, accusations of racism follow

Editorial: For 20 years, Republicans have groomed their voters to believe in fraud | Houston Chronicle

More than 80 percent of Texas Republicans think there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. Despite there being no evidence that President Trump “won in a landslide” or that voting machines “deleted” votes, millions of Texans believe otherwise. Nationwide more than half of GOP voters claim President Biden didn’t win fair and square. Are these folks so easy to dupe? Are they blinded by partisanship? Are they being “unreasonable,” as former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell now claims they must be if they believe her unhinged assertions? While allegations of fraud are false — Trump’s big lie in the face of a hard loss — it’s not difficult to see how Republican voters needed little reason to believe. After all, the GOP has been grooming them for the last 20 years. Suppression efforts couched in the language of voter fraud are nothing new. In Texas, they go back to post-Reconstruction and efforts to curtail minority voting, but the Republican Party’s modern obsession with fraud can be traced to the 2000 election. “Bush versus Gore was a turning point,” Professor Edward Foley, who directs the election law program at Ohio State University, told the editorial board. “Suddenly, the image was that every vote really does matter, and that even a presidential election might come down to 500 votes.”

Full Article: Editorial: The Big Lie – For 20 years, Republicans have groomed their voters to believe in fraud

National: U.S. to Sanction Russia, Expel Diplomats Over Alleged Election Interference, Hacking | Michael R. Gordon, Dustin Volz and Vivian Salama/Wall Street Journal

The Biden administration will impose a range of retaliatory measures against Russia on Thursday in response to Moscow’s alleged election interference, a widespread hacking campaign and other malign activity, according to people familiar with the matter. Using a new executive order, the measure will expand the existing prohibitions on U.S. banks trading in Russian government debt, two of the people said. Previous prohibitions targeting portions of Russian sovereign debt shook Russia’s markets and added to its economic woes. That order prohibits U.S. financial institutions from buying new bonds directly from Russia’s central bank, finance ministry and the country’s massive sovereign-wealth fund after June 14. Among other measures, 10 Russian diplomats will be expelled, including some due to allegations that Russia offered to pay bounties to militants in Afghanistan to kill U.S. military service members, the people said. Sanctions will be imposed for Russia’s cyber intrusions, election meddling and occupation of Crimea.

Full Article: U.S. to Sanction Russia, Expel Diplomats Over Alleged Election Interference, Hacking – WSJ

National: Hundreds of corporations, business leaders, celebs sign statement against voting restrictions | Hannah Miao/CNBC

Hundreds of corporations, executives and celebrities released a statement Wednesday in opposition to “any discriminatory legislation or measures” that would restrict ballot access. Signatories include corporations such as Amazon, BlackRock and General Motors and individuals such as Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, actor Leonardo DiCaprio and music star Ariana Grande. The statement is the latest and largest showing of corporate backlash to GOP-backed election bills in state legislatures across the country that civil rights advocates say will make it harder for minorities to vote. Ken Chenault, former American Express CEO, and Ken Frazier, chief executive of Merck, organized the statement, according to The New York Times, which first reported on the statement. The statement appeared in print advertisements Wednesday in the Times and The Washington Post. American Airlines, Apple, Bank of America, Cisco, Facebook, Microsoft, Netflix, Starbucks, Target, Twitter and Vanguard were among dozens of corporate names to sign the statement.

Full Article: Corporations, business leaders, celebrities sign statement against voting restrictions

National: Smartmatic Responds To Fox News Defense In $2.7 Billion Defamation Lawsuit | Ted Johnson/Deadline

Smartmatic said that Fox News cannot get a “Get Out Of Jail Free Card” to escape a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit, in which the company says that the network ruined its reputation when on-air personalities spread conspiracy theories and falsehoods about its role in the 2020 presidential election. “The Fox Defendants solicited and published calculated falsehoods about Smartmatic,” the company’s legal team said in a brief filed late on Monday in New York Supreme Court (read it here). “They enjoy no protection or immunity pursuant to the First Amendment or New York law.” Fox News and three on-air personalities, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Lou Dobbs, are seeking to dismiss the lawsuit, which Smartmatic filed in Feburary. Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who represented the Trump campaign and appeared numerous times on Fox News shows, also were named as defendants. Smartmatic and another voting systems company, Dominion, became the source of false claims that they played a role in rigging the results of the election in favor of Joe Biden. Dominion sued Fox News last month. In their brief, Smartmatic’s lawyers wrote that the Fox anchors “were not innocent bystanders and the disinformation generated during their interviews was no accident.”

Full Article: Smartmatic Responds To Fox News Defense In $2.7 Billion Defamation Lawsuit – Deadline

National: Research undercuts idea that changes to absentee voting in 2020 benefited Democrats | Philip Bump/The Washington Post

President Donald Trump’s dishonest explanation of his 2020 election loss has evolved slightly over time. He was assiduous (a generous way of saying obsessive) about claiming even before Election Day that expanded access to absentee voting posed a risk to him given that mailed ballots were rife with fraud. They were not, despite Trump’s insistences. A conservative organization’s database of purported fraud cases includes only one example of criminal charges centered on fraud in the general election last year: a case in which a father signed his daughter’s ballot while she was at college. The utter lack of credible evidence of fraud prompted Republicans broadly and Trump eventually to shift their complaints to center on how absentee ballot access was increased, conflating their claims that changing those rules violated the Constitution with broad, necessarily vague claims that something, somewhere went wrong, costing the incumbent a second term. For decades, Republicans have used similarly nebulous allegations of fraud to advocate for changing voting rules in ways that tend to disproportionately disadvantage Democratic voters. At times they have been explicit in trying to lock out more Democrats. In the current moment, though, the offered arguments are different, using the same vagueness that Trump is using to rationalize losing to provide their own rationalizations for changes to existing laws. Often, those are framed as being necessary to prevent purported “fraud”; at other times, the changes are instead offered as a way to address “concerns” voters have about election security, concerns Republicans and Trump themselves amplified. It’s become something of a legislative protection racket: claim that there’s a threat and then offer to address the threat. The result? Changes to laws that add restrictions to the ability to vote, particularly by mail.

Full Article: Research undercuts idea that changes to absentee voting in 2020 benefited Democrats – The Washington Post

National: Biden’s Choice for Civil Rights Post Has Worked to Defend Voting Rights | Katie Benner/The New York Times

When Alabama’s Shelby County sued nearly a decade ago to strike down key pieces of the Voting Rights Act, a civil rights lawyer named Kristen Clarke helped to argue that the entire law should be upheld. A district court agreed, reaffirming that local governments with a history of discriminatory voting practices needed federal permission to change their voting laws. Though the Supreme Court ultimately overturned the lower-court ruling, the case helped establish Ms. Clarke as one of the nation’s foremost advocates for voting rights protections. Nominated by President Biden to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, she would if confirmed be likely to play a key role on the issue for the administration, which has made defense of voting rights a priority as states including Georgia work to enact laws that restrict access to the ballot box. Mr. Biden called Georgia’s recently passed legislation “Jim Crow in the 21st century,” and he and Attorney General Merrick B. Garland have said that the government must preserve the right to vote. “I will follow their lead in ensuring that the Civil Rights Division, if I am confirmed, is using the tools in its arsenal — the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act, the Uniformed and Overseas Absentee Citizens Voting Act — to ensure that eligible Americans have access to the ballot in our country,” Ms. Clarke said on Wednesday during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Ms. Clarke, 46, who would be the first Senate-confirmed leader of the Civil Rights Division to be a woman of color, testified alongside Todd Kim, a Justice Department veteran and Mr. Biden’s choice to run its Environmental and Natural Resources Division. Mr. Kim told senators that protecting the nation’s “shared interest in the environment and our natural resources” was a calling.

Full Article: Biden’s Choice for Civil Rights Post Has Worked to Defend Voting Rights – The New York Times

National: Donations Surge for Republicans Who Challenged Election Results | Luke Broadwater, Catie Edmondson and Rachel Shorey/The New York Times

April 15, 2021

Republicans who were the most vocal in urging their followers to come to Washington on Jan. 6 to try to reverse President Donald J. Trump’s loss, pushing to overturn the election and stoking the grievances that prompted the deadly Capitol riot, have profited handsomely in its aftermath, according to new campaign data. Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas, who led the challenges to President Biden’s victory in their chamber, each brought in more than $3 million in campaign donations in the three months that followed the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia who called the rampage a “1776 moment” and was later stripped of committee assignments for espousing bigoted conspiracy theories and endorsing political violence, raised $3.2 million — more than the individual campaign of Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, and nearly every other member of House leadership. A New York Times analysis of the latest Federal Election Commission disclosures illustrates how the leaders of the effort to overturn Mr. Biden’s electoral victory have capitalized on the outrage of their supporters to collect huge sums of campaign cash. Far from being punished for encouraging the protest that turned lethal, they have thrived in a system that often rewards the loudest and most extreme voices, using the fury around the riot to build their political brands. The analysis examined the individual campaign accounts of lawmakers, not joint fund-raising committees or leadership political action committees. “The outrage machine is powerful at inducing political contributions,” said Carlos Curbelo, a former Republican congressman from Florida.

Full Article: Donations Surge for Republicans Who Challenged Election Results – The New York Times

National: How the corporate backlash to Georgia’s new voting law is shaping other fights around the country over access to the polls | Amy Gardner and Mike DeBonis/The Washington Post

Full Article: How the corporate backlash to Georgia’s new voting law is shaping other fights around the country over access to the polls – The Washington Post

Behind closed doors, aides to Georgia’s top Republicans and its leading business interests spent the final days of March hashing out new voting legislation in an effort to quell a growing outcry that GOP lawmakers were pushing measures that would severely curtail access to the polls. The Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and representatives of major corporations, including Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines, worked directly with legislative leaders and the office of Gov. Brian Kemp (R) to exclude some of the more controversial proposals, according to people familiar with the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Republicans agreed to drop, for instance, language barring most Georgians from voting by mail and curtailing early voting on weekends. They even expanded early-voting hours in the final bill. The hope of Republicans involved, according to a half-dozen people familiar with the process, was to pull off a delicate political balancing act: satisfying voters who believe former president Donald Trump’s false claims that he lost the 2020 election because of rampant fraud — while heading off accusations of voter suppression from the left.

National: GOP Undercuts Vote-Security Push by Going Light on the Security | Ryan Teague Beckwith/Bloomberg

Republican lawmakers in 47 states have proposed measures to tighten voting laws in the name of electoral integrity, but some of them omit steps that security experts say would do the most to protect elections from equipment malfunctions, fraud, hacking or terrorism. While state lawmakers are largely focused on limiting vote-by-mail, people who study and run elections say they should be considering steps such as automatically registering voters, expanding early voting, using ID numbers to verify mail-in ballots, distributing more ballot drop boxes and processing mail-in ballots before Election Day. “It’s unfortunate that so many administrative processes that really make elections go more smoothly and accurately have become so polarized on partisan lines,” said Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman, a Republican. Georgia recently passed a controversial law that cuts voting days and limits ballot drop boxes, two steps voting rights experts say are counterproductive. But they also enacted a more generous voter ID requirement for mail-in ballots and sped up processing of ballots, two steps that experts recommend. Meanwhile, Republican-led Kentucky has expanded early voting and sped up ballot processing, while Maine sped up ballot processing. But dozens of other bills are still being actively considered that would limit early and mail-in voting or make other changes to election laws that experts say either won’t work or is unnecessary.

Full Article: GOP Undercuts Vote-Security Push by Going Light on the Security – Bloomberg

National: Corporate leaders plan new push on U.S. voting rights, will reconsider campaign donations | Jessica DiNapoli/Reuters

Most CEOs on a call to discuss a new push against U.S. state voting restrictions said in a poll they will reassess donating to candidates who fail to support voting rights, while many will consider holding back investments in states that restrict voting access, according to people familiar with the matter. Some business executives are putting together a new statement calling for the protection of U.S. voting rights, the latest corporate backlash against moves by Republican politicians to change election rules in Georgia and other states, the sources said. About 100 chief executive officers, investors, lawyers and corporate directors participated in a private Zoom call on Saturday organized by Yale professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld to discuss a new response to Georgia’s election law and voting restrictions contemplated by other states such as Texas and Arizona, according to the sources. All CEOs who participated in a poll during the call agreed they will re-evaluate political donations to candidates based on their track records on voting rights, while 48% said they might reconsider or reduce investments in states that restrict access to voting. Some one-quarter of CEOs refrained from voting on several questions in the poll.

Full Article: Corporate leaders plan new push on U.S. voting rights, will reconsider campaign donations | Reuters

National: The great capitulation of Trump’s voter fraud crusade | Aaron Blake/The Washington Post

The 2020 election is a case study in how unproved claims can be weaponized. For decades, former president Donald Trump’s party warned of significant voter fraud while successfully pushing policies such as voter ID. In 2016, Trump laid a predicate for contesting an election by suggesting there was massive fraud, even in an election he had won. By 2020, when Trump lost, it culminated in a huge portion of the electorate believing a “stolen election” theory for which there is vanishingly little actual evidence. Some have done more than raise questions, though. They, like Trump and often in search of his allies’ support, have alleged actual massive fraud. But now they’ve been asked to account for it. And crucially and increasingly, they have backed down. The most recent example came Friday night — a time routinely used to bury bad news. In a statement, former Trump lawyer Joe diGenova apologized to Christopher Krebs, a Trump administration official who had debunked Trump’s fraud claims and whose execution diGenova had endorsed. DiGenova had said Krebs “should be drawn and quartered” and “taken out at dawn and shot.” “On November 30, 2020, I appeared on the ‘Howie Carr Show.’ During the show, I made regrettable statements regarding Christopher Krebs, which many interpreted as a call for violence against him,” diGenova said. He added that “today I reiterate my public apology to Mr. Krebs and his family for any harm my words caused. Given today’s political climate, I should have more carefully expressed my criticism of Mr. Krebs, who was just doing his job.” DiGenova’s apology refers to a past apology made on Newsmax’s airwaves, but back then he went even further in downplaying his comments. He maintained at the time that it was a poorly chosen joke and said that he apologized “for any misunderstanding of my intentions.” The statement very notably comes months after Krebs announced in December that he was suing diGenova for defamation.

Full Article: The great capitulation of Trump’s voter fraud crusade – The Washington Post

National: Amid a Wave of Hacks, Biden Moves to Fill Key Cyber Posts | Dustin Volz/Wall Street Journal

President Biden intends to nominate two former National Security Agency officials to high-level cybersecurity positions, the White House said Monday, rounding out the administration’s personnel on an issue it has said is a priority in the wake of two recent hacks linked to foreign governments. Mr. Biden is planning to nominate Jen Easterly, a former senior counterterrorism and cybersecurity official at NSA with experience at the Obama White House, to lead the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. CISA is an arm of the Department of Homeland Security responsible for election security and protecting civilian government networks from hackers, as well as securing the nation’s critical infrastructure from both physical and cyber threats. Chris Inglis, the former deputy director of the NSA, has been tapped to be nominated as the first-ever national cyber director. The position, housed within the Executive Office of the President, was created through a provision in the annual defense policy spending legislation that passed Congress in January. The role is intended to coordinate cybersecurity efforts across the federal government and will include its own office with up to 75 staff. The structure generally resembles that of the Office of the United States Trade Representative. “If confirmed, Chris and Jen will add deep expertise, experience and leadership to our world-class cyber team,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said. “We are determined to protect America’s networks and to meet the growing challenge posed by our adversaries in cyberspace—and this is the team to do it.” Mr. Biden will also name Rob Silvers, a partner at the international law firm Paul Hastings, as undersecretary for policy at DHS. Mr. Silvers, who focuses on cybersecurity and privacy issues in his practice and has experience with cybersecurity work at DHS during the Obama administration—including guarding the 2016 election from Russian interference—had for months been rumored to be in contention for the CISA job as well. His undersecretary job, if he is confirmed, will also focus heavily but not entirely on cybersecurity issues, the people said.

Full Article: Amid a Wave of Hacks, Biden Moves to Fill Key Cyber Posts – WSJ

National: First-of-its-kind meeting draws more than 100 corporate leaders to discuss state voting laws | Ed O’Keefe/CBS News

More than 100 of the nation’s top corporate leaders met virtually on Saturday to discuss ways for companies to continue responding to the passage of more restrictive voting laws across the country, a signal that the nation’s premier businesses are preparing a far more robust, organized response to the ongoing debate. With some CEOs chiming in from Augusta National Golf Club, site of the Masters golf tournament, attendees on the high-level Zoom call included leaders from the health care, media and transportation sectors and some of the nation’s leading law and investment firms. “The gathering was an enthusiastic voluntary statement of defiance against threats of reprisals for exercising their patriotic voices,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale University management professor who helped organize the confab. The corporate leaders “recognize that they need to step up to the plate and are not fearful of these reprisals,” he added. “They’re showing a disdain for these political attacks. Not only are they fortifying each other, but they see that this spreading of disease of voter restrictions from Georgia to up to possibly 46 other states is based on a false premise and its’ anti-democratic.”

Full Article: First-of-its-kind meeting draws more than 100 corporate leaders to discuss state voting laws – CBS News

National: How Voting Laws Suppress the ‘New South’ | Lisa Hagen and Susan Milligan/US News

Looking back in an election cycle or two, it may be that the political and economic fallout gripping Georgia today over its controversial new voter law proves to have been a sign of an inevitable march toward a very different electoral map. The next frontier in the battle over voting rights is already creeping toward other states across the South and the Sun Belt that have two things in common: They are all seeing a similar rapid demographic shift in their electorates that stands to reimagine the American political landscape. And they have entrenched political interests trying to stop it. After a year of record turnout, especially among voters of color in Southern states, and a barrage of unfounded fraud claims propagated by the former president, GOP-led state legislatures are leading the charge to challenge and amend voting laws. They saw their first big success last month in Georgia. That sweeping law among other things imposes identification requirements for absentee ballots, limits ballot drop boxes and shortens runoff elections. Measures with similar implications in Texas and Arizona, meanwhile, are now steadily gaining traction. Like Georgia, these once-reliably red strongholds have been dramatically reshaped in recent years and are likely to keep trending further away from Republicans. In 2020, Democrats clinched major victories at both the presidential and Senate levels in Georgia and Arizona last year, though Texas has moved toward them at a slower pace.

Full Article: How Voting Laws Suppress the ‘New South’ | The Report | US News

The next Georgia: Texas and Arizona emerge as voting rights battlegrounds | Sam Levine/The Guardian

As Georgia Republicans face backlash over new sweeping voting restrictions, activists in other states are escalating efforts to oppose similar restrictions advancing in other states. Texas and Arizona have emerged as two of the next major battlegrounds over voting rights. Texas Republicans last week advanced legislation that would limit early voting hours, prohibit drive-thru voting and give partisan poll workers the ability to record voters at the polls, among other measures. In Arizona, Republicans are moving ahead with an audit of ballots from the presidential race while also advancing legislation that would make it harder to vote by mail. Nationally lawmakers have introduced 361 bills to limit access to the ballot in some way, according to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice. Fifty-five of those bills are advancing in legislatures. After companies like Delta and Coca-Cola faced criticism for waiting too long to speak out against the Georgia legislation, advocates have been heartened by swift corporate condemnation of the Texas measure. American Airlines, which is based in Texas, said on Thursday it was “strongly opposed” to the Texas legislation. Microsoft and Dell also spoke out against the measures. Major League Baseball announced on Friday it was moving the All-Star Game out of Atlanta in response to Georgia’s sweeping new law. Joe Straus, the former speaker of the Texas house of representatives, also came out against the measures on Thursday, tweeting that businesses had “good reason” to oppose the bill. “Texas should not go down the same path as Georgia. It’s bad for business and, more importantly, it’s bad for our citizens,” he said.

Full Article: The next Georgia: Texas and Arizona emerge as voting rights battlegrounds | US voting rights | The Guardian

Protecting American Democracy Is No Crime – New Laws Could Make Election Officials Legal Targets | Lawrence Norden/Foreign Affairs

In the past 12 months, American election officials have been heralded for their courage and commitment in carrying out the most logistically challenging election in modern times—with record turnout, no less. They have also been attacked as villains by those who believe the Big Lie, that the election was somehow stolen from then President Donald Trump. Election officials—who before 2020 had been largely ignored by the Twittersphere and conspiracy theorists—became the targets of thousands of false accusations, protests at their workplaces, and even harassment and threats. Such mistreatment is now taking a new and possibly even more sinister form. Legislation in several states proposes to strip election officials of their power to act on behalf of voters and to criminalize various actions they might take in the course of performing their duties. These bills add the danger of arrest and prosecution to already challenging working conditions. They should be beaten back by all who are committed to preserving American democracy. The recently passed law in Georgia is just one example. The law has rightly been criticized for its suppressive provisions, such as one that makes it a crime for volunteers to provide in-person voters with water, even when they’ve been waiting in line for hours. Less noticed are provisions that take key powers away from election officials. SB 202 removes Georgia’s secretary of state—who stood up to Trump’s efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 results—from the position of chair of the state election board and turns control of the board over to the state legislature. That newly constituted board is in turn given more power to intervene in the activity of local election boards, including by removing and replacing local board members. Reasonable people can disagree as to what is the best structure of a state election board, but all should be opposed to retaliating against an office for its holder’s refusal to bend to inappropriate and extreme political pressure.

Full Article: Protecting American Democracy Is No Crime | Foreign Affairs

National: How some states are expanding voting rights amid sweeping push to restrict access | Kendall Karson/ABC

The GOP’s rush to impose hundreds of voting restrictions in the aftermath of a bruising electoral loss comes as a burgeoning number of states are pressing ahead with an alternative ambition: making voting easier. The effort might seem like an outlier at a time when Republicans are scaling back voting access across the country and being condemned by Democrats for ushering in a new era of “Jim Crow.” In the aftermath of former President Donald Trump and his allies spreading falsehoods about the 2020 election, at least 361 bills aimed at restricting ballot access have been introduced as of March 24, according to the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice. But the push to embrace broadening access to the voting booth isn’t few and far between. In fact, lawmakers in at least 47 states are putting forward more than 800 bills to expand the right to vote. As the nation seems bitterly fractured over election rules, in the heart of Trump country, one red state appears to be the lone exception so far. Kentucky lawmakers agreed on a bipartisan and modest expansion of voting rights, melded with some new restrictions to address election security. The new law, which was signed by Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear on Wednesday, sets tighter restrictions on who is eligible to vote-by-mail compared to the 2020 election, but it also provides three days for early voting, establishes vote centers to increase options for casting a ballot in-person, and creates an online portal for voters to request mail-in ballots.

Full Article: How some states are expanding voting rights amid sweeping push to restrict access – ABC News

National: Nation Has Georgia on Its Mind but Many States Are Making Voting Easier | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline

During the waning days of the presidential election, Vermont Democratic state Sen. Cheryl Hooker got a desperate call from one of her constituents: The woman said she had forgotten to sign her name on the absentee ballot, it had been rejected by the town clerk and she couldn’t fix it. This was a familiar story around the country, as the pandemic forced voters and election administrators to take a crash course in mail-in voting. “People make mistakes,” said Hooker, who couldn’t help her constituent at the time. “They don’t sign the outside envelope, or they forget to put their name on it. Their vote would not count.” When Vermont’s legislative session began earlier this year, Hooker introduced a measure that would create a process for voters to “cure” signatures or other technical mistakes on mail-in ballots. Lawmakers added provisions that would allow the state to mail ballots to every active voter before general elections. The bill passed the state Senate, is on track to pass the state House, according to Hooker, and has support from Republican Gov. Phil Scott. The national conversation around voting rights this year has focused on new ballot restrictions in states such as Arizona and Georgia. Less noticed have been efforts by states such as Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Vermont and Virginia to expand voting by mail, early voting and voter registration. Lawmakers, mostly in heavily Democratic states, aim to loosen restrictions on the voting process, hoping to continue the trend of record turnout that most states saw last year. Lawmakers in 47 states have introduced nearly 850 bills to expand early voting, restore voting rights for people with felony convictions and set up automatic voter registration, among other measures, according to a late March count by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School. This is more than twice the number of restrictive voting bills introduced this session.

Full Article: Nation Has Georgia on Its Mind but Many States Are Making Voting Easier | The Pew Charitable Trusts

National: Fifteen years ago, Smartmatic was drummed out of the United States by Lou Dobbs—but now he’s off the air and the voting machine company is attempting an American foothold once more. | Madeline Berg/Forbes