“If Republican leaders have had a change of heart about voting by mail, no one has told their lawyers or Republican-controlled legislatures. And a post-mortem review conducted by party elites is unlikely to sway their voters,” Marc writes in his latest on the Republican Party’s continued attack on mail-in voting.
|
“Republicans’ hostility to mail-in voting is not limited to the courtroom. At the same time that the RNC chair was telling the media that the GOP needed to stop vilifying mail-in voting, Republican legislatures continued vilifying it anyway,” he continues.
In today’s newsletter, we’re looking into the ways that Republican legislatures have waged a war not just on voting, but also on election administration. It’s not only voters who feel the burden of GOP laws, but election officials as well. We’re reviewing a range of proposed legislation across the country: What new themes emerged this year? What states are restricting citizen-led constitutional amendments? What is Texas up to? Where is pro-voting legislation moving?
|
|
|
“The Special Interests the Republicans Are So Afraid of Are Actually Just the Voters” |
On Wednesday, the Ohio Senate passed a resolution to raise the threshold to approve constitutional amendments from 50% to 60% of the vote, making it more difficult for Ohio voters to amend the state constitution. The bill passed 26 to 7, receiving the required three-fifths vote. It now heads to the Ohio House for another three-fifths vote. If passed by the House, the resolution would then go before voters for approval.
-
The approved resolution mirrors a previous proposal that failed to advance at the end of 2022. At that time, Republican sponsors directly linked the impetus for the resolution to ongoing efforts to enshrine abortion rights in the Ohio Constitution and limit partisan gerrymandering. The resolution is part of a broader trend of Republican leaders taking steps to prevent voters from enacting policy changes over their wishes.
|
“If you ask me, the special interests the Republicans are so afraid of are actually just the voters,” Democracy Docket contributor Katy Shanahan wrote this week. “In short, we’ve used [direct democracy] to make policy decisions that actually reflect our values and that address our biggest concerns in the face of a legislative body that refuses to do so. And now we might use it to legalize abortion because, as it turns out, that’s what the vast majority of us voters want.”
On the same day, the Ohio Senate passed a bill that would allow a special August 2023 election solely for the purpose of approving this resolution. (In December 2022, just a few months ago, the very same lawmakers outlawed August special elections due to their abysmally low turnout.) Placing the resolution before the voters in August would also allow legislators to possibly raise the threshold before an abortion rights amendment goes before the voters in November 2023 or sometime in 2024.
Also on Wednesday, a Florida committee advanced an even more outlandish bill cut from the same cloth. Florida already has one of the highest requirements for citizen-led constitutional amendments, requiring 60% of the vote to go into effect. The resolution heading to the House floor would raise that threshold to an unprecedented two-thirds or 66.7% of the vote.
|
In 2018, over 64% of Floridians voted in favor of restoring voting rights for most people with past felony convictions after release from incarceration. Despite Florida residents overwhelmingly supporting rights restoration, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and the Florida Legislature tried to undermine the outcome through litigation, legislation and arrests. The latest resolution is a continuation of that effort to reject the will of the voters.
|
New GOP Tactic: Placing Insurmountable Burdens on Election Officials |
In March, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) signed Senate Bill 250 into law, requiring poll workers to complete the counting of election results “within twenty-four (24) hours of the close of the polls, and with no significant breaks in the counting process.”
The bill leans into the right-wing rhetoric of the past few years that criticizes any delay in election results. Depending on the size of a jurisdiction, the number of mail-in ballots it receives and its processing procedures, confirming election results can take days or weeks.
There is a unique trend in the 2023 legislative session: proposed bills indulging this false narrative that counting every ballot slowly is fraudulent and wrong. In addition to the enacted Arkansas law: - Montana House Bill 196, as originally proposed, would require any official vote count to “continue without adjournment until it is completed.” Luckily, this portion was removed in an amendment before passing both chambers of the Montana Legislature.
|
Accelerated counting timelines is just one of many new burdens Republican state legislatures are throwing at election officials. |
There are 15 bills in eight states to prohibit electronic tabulators or expand hand counting, a costly, time-intensive and less accurate process. The only proposals that have moved forward are in Arizona, where Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) has already vetoed two of them.
|
Texas GOP Officials Target Houston’s Harris County |
Last week, the Texas Senate passed a bill that would allow the secretary of state — in Texas, a position appointed by the governor — to take over election administration and voter registration in Texas counties. It now heads to the Texas House. If you read between the lines, the bill is just one of many that target Harris County, home to Houston. Harris County is the state’s most populous county and a Democratic stronghold. -
The bill would specifically authorize this “administrative oversight” if the secretary of state has “good cause to believe that a recurring pattern of problems with election administration or voter registration exists in the county.” The broad categories listed as pretext for state oversight include delays in reporting election results, failure to comply with list maintenance procedures, voting equipment malfunctions and more. These are all technical issues that the populous Harris County has encountered in previous years.
|
-
If the state imposes oversight on a county, the county election office would be required to submit any voting or policy changes to the state for approval and allow staff from the secretary of state’s office to observe election proceedings. The state would also be empowered to appoint a conservator to take over election duties and recommend that a county suspend or terminate the current election administrator.
The bill is sponsored by state Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R), who represents parts of Houston. Bettencourt and other state officials have clashed with Democratic election administrators who aim to expand voting access in Harris County. “[T]he governor is trying to override voters to replace leaders he can’t control,” ACLU Texas tweeted about the recent legislation.
There are at least 17 other Texas bills proposed this session that would similarly wrest control from local administrators, including: - Senate Bill 1750, which would eliminate the position of election administrator in counties with a population of 3.5 million or more (Harris County is the only county with this many people).
|
Senate Bill 1993, which would give the secretary of state the authority to order an election to be rerun in counties with a population of more than 2.7 million (again, only Harris County would qualify) under certain circumstances. The second largest county in Texas, Dallas County, has 2.6 million residents.
|
Democratic-Controlled States Look To Improve Voting Access |
It’s not all bad news in statehouses across the country. Last Thursday, the Minnesota House passed the Democracy for the People Act. The bill would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register to vote, establish automatic voter registration at many state agencies, create publicly financed campaign dollars and more. Get a full breakdown of the omnibus pro-voting legislation here.
“I don’t think any one policy is a silver bullet to getting us to the inclusive, multiracial, multigenerational, regionally-diverse democracy that we’re trying to build,” Rep. Emma Greenman (DFL), a former voting rights lawyer and sponsor of the bill, told Democracy Docket in January. “We’re not going to nibble around the margins…It really is about this much more comprehensive approach to strengthening the freedom to vote, people’s belief in the system and their belief in democracy.”
-
The original bill also included rights restoration for people on felony probation or parole, but Minnesota already got that done earlier this spring!
Also last Thursday, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) signed a law which will expand the Washington Voting Rights Act (WVRA). In light of the U.S. Supreme Court weakening the federal Voting Rights Act (VRA) over the past decade, Washington enacted the WVRA in 2018 as a way for voters to challenge discriminatory voting practices in local government. H.B. 1048 builds upon this law to further empower voters and improve enforcement mechanisms in the Act.
-
In addition to Washington, four other states — California, New York, Oregon and Virginia — have enacted state-level VRAs. At least four more states are looking to enact one this session: Connecticut, Maryland, Michigan and New Jersey. Learn more here.
|
The Highest Court With the Lowest Ethical Standards |
The nine U.S. Supreme Court justices are the only members of the federal judiciary not bound by a code of conduct. All other federal judges adhere to a code that was composed in 1973 and has been updated in the years since then. The Supreme Court could internally adopt a code or Congress could impose one.
It’s been recorded that justices have routinely failed to recuse themselves from a case when there’s been a conflict of interest, even though federal statute requires recusal “in any proceeding in which [one’s] impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”
Now, ProPublica’s reporting on the depths of Justice Clarence Thomas’ gifts from a wealthy, well-connected donor in the right-wing legal sphere sheds new light on the urgency for Supreme Court reform. Experts confirmed that Thomas’ failure to disclose certain transactions, especially real estate, violated federal disclosure laws.
|
Tennessee officials will not appeal a decision that temporarily blocks an anti-democratic law that forces Nashville to cut the size of its city council in half. The Metro Council will keep its current size of 40 members for the next election. In a statement, the state attorney general implied that this effort isn’t over yet: “[T]he cap on the size of metropolitan councils has been delayed but not been defeated.”
|
An Arizona judge rejected a request from Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) to temporarily block Cochise County from transferring election authority to County Recorder David Stevens (R), a partisan, elected official with ties to failed GOP and election denying secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem. Mayes alleged that the county’s move violates state law and the state constitution.
|
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D) vetoed a bill that would have required mail-in ballots to be returned by 7 p.m. on Election Day, eliminating a three-day grace period enacted in 2017. Under current law, ballots can arrive up to three days after Election Day and still be counted. "That is unacceptable. We should be doing everything we can to make it easier – not harder – for Kansans to make their voices heard at the ballot box,” Kelly wrote. Republicans may be able to override her veto with their supermajorities.
|
Redistricting never ends. Yesterday, New York’s Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC) voted 9-1 to pass a new state Assembly map. The IRC had until April 28 to reconvene and pass a new Assembly map after the previous one was struck down for being enacted through an unconstitutional process. The new map will now go to the Legislature for approval.
|
In just a fraction of now-U.S. Rep. Jennifer McClellan’s (D-Va.) time in the Virginia Legislature, the state went from the second-hardest state to vote in to the 12th easiest state. Democracy Docket spoke with McClellan about her journey and how she's hoping to improve voting access on a national scale in her new role in Congress. Read the profile.
|
On Tuesday, a trial was set to begin in a defamation case filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News. Instead, a last minute settlement was reached. Learn more about the intense, right-wing focus on voting technology here.
|
|
|
OPINION: Abortion Rights Are at the Center of Ohio GOP’s Latest Attack on Democracy |
By Katy Shanahan, an attorney and activist in her home state of Ohio. As a contributor to Democracy Docket, Shanahan writes about the state of voting rights and redistricting in Ohio and across the country. Read more ➡️ |
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to release a decision on mifepristone, a medical abortion drug. As always, we’re supporting our local abortion funds as right-wing judges advance their radical agenda across the country.
The mifepristone ruling will likely come down on the U.S. Supreme Court’s emergency docket, nicknamed the “shadow docket,” where cases don’t go through the full briefing and argument process and orders are often unexplained or unsigned. To learn more about SCOTUS’ increased use of this opaque procedure, we’re pre-ordering law professor Steve Vladeck’s new book, “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic.”
For too long, our nation’s highest court has remained in the shadows from public accountability. Call your senators to support legislation this session: Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act of 2023, sponsored by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), and Supreme Court Ethics Act, sponsored by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Ct.). Plus, listen to our Defending Democracy podcast episode with Whitehouse as a special guest.
Introducing new Democracy Docket merch: Spring into action this season and show off your support for voting rights with our brand new Koozie, tie dye tee and dog toy. Shop here!
|
|
|
We depend on the support of our readers to keep bringing you the latest on the fight for democracy. You can support our work here to keep our content free and available for all. You can update your email preferences here. Email is the best way to keep in touch, but you may unsubscribe.
|
Democracy Docket
250 Massachusetts Ave NW
Washington, DC 20001
United States
|
|
|
|
