Republican State Legislators Are Set To Make Some Sweeping New Election Laws & Democrats Are Freaking Out About It
In November Republicans won control of a record number of state legislators and those states are about pass sweeping new laws that Democrats are going to hate.
After all the controversy over the 2020 presidential election Republican controlled state legislators are preparing to pass new election laws. Many states are getting rid of the emergency mail in voting provisions and are changing out dated laws that don’t make sense anymore.
Arizona state Rep. Kevin Payne (R) has filed a new bill that has a lot of support that would end a law that allows absentee ballots to be automatically sent to 3.2 million “permanent early voters.” The bill would require each person to apply for an absentee ballot for every election and Payne wants a notary’s signature on any mail-in ballot, in a situation when the majority of voters would cast their ballot by mail.
Top Georgia Republicans are also getting ready to make some major changes after Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger created a mess.
“Many Georgians are concerned about the integrity of our election system. Some of those concerns may or may not be well-founded, but there may be others that are,” state House Speaker David Ralston (R) told the Georgia Chamber of Commerce earlier this month.
Lawmakers in Georgia are looking to close the loopholes on absentee voting and require photo ID for any absentee ballot.
Pennsylvania Republicans are also planning on making some big changes by eliminating the expansion of mail-in voting and preventing it from becoming the status quo like California.
Wisconsin is exploring legislation that would give presidential electoral votes to the winner of congressional districts, rather than 10 going to the statewide vote. According, to the state Biden won Wisconsin by 20,000 votes however, President Trump won six of the eight congressional districts in the State. Maine and Nebraska are the only other states that award electoral votes by congressional district.
Solid red states are also looking to shore up their elections laws, especially the ones being invaded by blue states fleeing coronavirus restrictions.
Montana Secretary of State Christi Jacobson is considering a measure to end same-day voter registration. Texas Republicans are preparing a bill that would require faster processing of death certificates in order to clean up voter rolls.
Democrats and Left wing voter advocacy groups are freaking out.
“In the last 10 years, we have seen some politicians try to enact changes to the rules of the game so that some people can participate and some people can’t,” said Myrna Pérez, director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Voting Rights and Elections Program. “Rather than competing for voters, there are some politicians that instead would prefer to lock people out of the process.”
In an op-ed, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, an appointee of Gov. Tom Wolf (D), called the GOP proposals “a clear ploy to continue to propagate false allegations that have already been debunked by independent fact-checkers and trusted election officials.”
Complaining Democrats need to remember – as they so often like to remind us – elections have consequences.