Brynn Anderson / AP
In this Nov. 3, 2020, file photo, a poll worker talks to a voter before they vote on a paper ballot on Election Day in Atlanta. The sweeping rewrite of Georgia’s election rules that was signed into law by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp Thursday, March 25, 2021, represents the first big set of changes since former President Donald Trump’s repeated, baseless claims of fraud following his presidential loss to Joe Biden.
Friday, May 21, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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Republican lawmakers in several states have launched yet another attack on voting access and fair elections, this time by proposing legislation restricting the rights of state courts and other public officials to protect voters from restrictions on casting ballots.
The Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University law school, which studies voter-suppression laws, reported this week that it had uncovered at least 93 such bills in 26 states. Those are in addition to dozens of related bills in several states curtailing early voting and mail balloting, restricting drop boxes, etc.
The proposals spotlighted by the Brennan Center take on several different basic forms, but all are aimed at reducing judicial independence in election cases. Some would change how judges are chosen for those cases, some would bar certain courts from hearing cases, some would change how judicial decisions are enforced. In each case, they aim at reducing the ability of voters to bring challenges of voting laws before an independent judge.
One example comes from Kentucky, where a new law gives the Legislature the exclusive ability to suspend or revise statutes related to elections. It’s aimed at handcuffing the courts from overturning election laws and reversing rules set by the Legislature.
In Georgia, part of that state’s infamous new collection of voter-suppression laws makes it more difficult for judges to extend polling-place hours — which happened last year in that state due to power outages, technological glitches in equipment that prompted delays in poll openings, etc. This comes in a state where voters of color deal with longer wait times than whites.
In Texas, lawmakers introduced a proposal to bar elected judges from hearing cases involving an election official in their region and instead give the region’s governor-appointed presiding judge the power to appoint a jurist in those cases. Given that Republicans have held the governor’s office in Texas since 1995, the bill is seen as a thinly veiled prohibition on judges in Democrat-leaning parts of the state from hearing voting cases.
Another example comes from Kansas, where the Legislature overrode a veto by the state’s Democratic governor on a bill that would categorically bar the governor, secretary of state or the courts from changing election rules. The bill puts that power in the hands of the Republican-dominated Legislature and was drafted in response to actions by Democratic leaders in several states last year to protect voters from COVID-19, such as postponing primaries, expanding mail balloting, etc.
These bills each weaken democracy and voting protections like the swing of an ax to a tree trunk.
“It’s a dangerous trend that leaves voting rights at risk and undermines a critical check against abuses of power during our elections,” two Brennan Center reps wrote in a guest column for The Washington Post.
We’ll say it again: State-level GOP voting assaults like this call out the need to pass the congressional For the People Act, which would establish national protections of voting rights. It would protect and expand early voting nationwide, allow same-day registration, require states to automatically register eligible voters for federal elections, and much more.
Senate Republicans, to their discredit, are opposing the act with everything they’ve got after it passed the House. But likewise, President Joe Biden and Senate Democratic leaders should give all they can to getting it passed.
We saw last year how close the nation came to the outcome of the presidential election being overturned. These GOP voter-suppression laws tear down the barriers that kept them from subverting the will of the people in 2020.
Unfortunately, while Nevada’s Legislature isn’t pursuing these destructive proposals, we can’t directly prevent other states from changing the rules to their favor.
But we can — and must — support the congressional bill while also financially supporting voter-rights advocacy groups and candidates elsewhere.
