Texas legislators want to let election officials carry guns. Bad idea.

([link removed])

Armed vigilantes stalked Arizona ballot drop boxes

([link removed])

during the 2022 election in a transparent bid to intimidate. It was a chilling reminder of the role that guns have historically played in terrorizing American voters. On Friday, the Texas House of Representatives passed a bill that completely ignores history — guns and voting do not mix.

The bill would permit election judges, early voting clerks, and deputy early voting clerks to carry handguns at polling places. The legislator responsible for the bill said it would ensure “law-abiding citizens who are election judges who want to carry to protect themselves” can do so “without fear of prosecution.”

He got one thing right: election officials around the country are afraid. But they’re not afraid of weapons charges — they’re afraid of armed conspiracy theorists and the risk of gun violence at polling locations. According to a Brennan Center poll, nearly one in three officials

([link removed])

has been harassed, abused, or threatened. One in five is worried about being physically assaulted on the job. And 45 percent are concerned for the safety of other election officials and workers.

Arming election officials is not the solution. The presence of guns risks escalating the increasingly fraught and hyperpartisan political climate of the modern era into potentially deadly conditions.

Weapons also scare voters away from the polls, particularly racial minorities who have been the historical targets of voter intimidation and violence. Armed nativists from the Know Nothing party chased immigrants and others from polling places in the mid-19th century. Guns were used to terrorize Black Americans who attempted to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote following the Civil War. It is a long and disgraceful history

([link removed])

, and you can draw a straight line from those eras to the vigilantes who used guns to menace would-be voters last year.

The rational response to these incidents is to keep guns away from polls. Last year, Congress considered but failed to pass legislation banning firearms near federal election sites. Because of that failure, gun advocates are reviving the old argument that more guns make us safer. More guns do not make schools safer, and history shows that guns do not make polling places more secure.

This fact has been recognized since the earliest days of the republic. Delaware’s 1776 constitution plainly stated, “To prevent any violence or force being used at the said elections, no person shall come armed to any of them.” I couldn’t put it any better.

There’s a better way to protect election officials than to hand them a weapon and wish them luck. An armed election official is not a trained security officer. Texas could, instead, increase funding for true election security and prohibit the intimidation of election officials. The federal government can help, providing expertise and its own funding to prevent attacks on election officials. (If Texas needs guidance in protecting the people who administer its elections, the Brennan Center’s April report, Securing the 2024 Election

([link removed])

, is a great place to start.)

Politicians can also stop lying about election fraud. In a letter

([link removed])

cosigned by the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the Brennan Center told Texas legislators that “false allegations of election fraud by politicians and others have dramatically raised tensions at the polls.” Drop the Big Lie, and many of these threats will go away without a shot being fired.

The Complex Reality of Recent Crime Trends

After murder and violent crime rose sharply in 2020 and 2021, some of these trends may have started to reverse last year. An updated explainer

([link removed])

by the Brennan Center shows it’s difficult to get a clear understanding of these important dynamics due to incomplete national crime data. But one thing we do know is that attempts to blame bail reform for crime spikes are misleading. “New research continues to show that bail reform, which makes it easier for people to remain in their communities while awaiting trial, was not a significant driver of post-2019 increases in crime,” Ames Grawert writes. Read more

([link removed])

North Carolina’s Revanchist Supreme Court

Last month, the North Carolina Supreme Court’s new conservative majority turned back the clock on the progressive expansion of North Carolinians’ rights. It overturned a lower court ruling

([link removed])

that had restored voting rights to 56,000 citizens with past felony convictions, arguing that the previous decision failed to presume that the state legislature acted in good faith when it adopted the felony disenfranchisement statute — even in the face of strong evidence of discriminatory intent, writes Eliza Sweren-Becker.

Robyn Sanders explains in her latest State Court Report piece that North Carolina's high court also shockingly reversed decisions it had handed down less than a year ago that struck down the state’s voter ID law as racially discriminatory under the state constitution and voided the state's congressional districts as unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders. To many observers, these exceedingly rare reversals signal intensifying partisan strife within the high court. With conservatives set to retain their majority on the court for at least the next six years, the enormity of this new jurisprudential era remains to be seen. Read more

([link removed])

A Challenge to Voting Rights Protections in Washington

On Thursday, Washington’s high court will hear arguments in a lawsuit claiming the state’s Voting Rights Act violates the 14th Amendment and the Washington Constitution by improperly considering race in redistricting. The case comes amid efforts to gut the federal Voting Rights Act, and its outcome could hinder minority voters from turning to state courts to challenge discriminatory election policies. In State Court Report, Yurij Rudensky and Sonali Seth write that the Washington case “demonstrates that state voting rights acts are not immune from efforts to expand principles of race-blindness under the federal Constitution and to eliminate critical voting rights safeguards.” Read more

([link removed])

The Election Deniers’ Playbook

Election denial remains a real and growing threat that could seriously undermine our democracy if left unchecked. A new Brennan Center resource provides an overview of the 14 tactics deployed by election deniers in 2022, such as spreading disinformation, attempting to win control of election administration, and refusing to concede defeat or certify results. We expect a number of these will continue to pose a significant threat in the upcoming election cycle. “Fortunately, there is still time to prepare for and prevent election denial efforts ahead of 2024,” Lauren Miller and Wendy Weiser write. Read more

([link removed])

The Truth About Domestic Terrorism Cases

The Department of Justice has long withheld information on the more than 2,000 domestic terrorism–related convictions it claims to have won over the past decade. After the Brennan Center filed a lawsuit to uncover the details of these cases, the DOJ released data showing that its reported prosecution numbers have been wildly inflated and its counterterrorism efforts have long been overstated. Given the hundreds of millions of dollars that Congress has devoted to these efforts over the years, “it is critical that policymakers and the public understand the actual extent, nature, and efficacy of these prosecutions,” Faiza Patel and Charles Kurzman write in Just Security. READ MORE

([link removed])


News

Elizabeth Goitein on the huge scale of warrantless searches // WASHINGTON POST

([link removed])

Michael Li on the “gerrymandering arms race” // NBC NEWS

([link removed])

Lawrence Norden on the need to fund election security // ASSOCIATED PRESS

([link removed])

Joanna Zdanys on New York’s budget for public financing of campaigns // SPECTRUM NEWS

([link removed])

Feedback on this newsletter? Email us at

[email protected]



([link removed])

Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law

120 Broadway, Suite 1750 New York, NY 10271

646-292-8310

tel:646-292-8310

[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Support Brennan Center

[link removed]

Want to change how you receive these emails or unsubscribe? Click here

[link removed]

to update your preferences.

([link removed])

([link removed])

([link removed])

([link removed])

([link removed])

([link removed])