Ron Brownstein: “Democrats may have only a brief window in which to block these state-level GOP maneuvers. Typically, the president’s party loses House and Senate seats in the first midterm election after his victory. Democrats will face even worse odds if Republicans succeed in imposing restrictive voting laws or gerrymandering districts in the GOP’s favor across a host of red states.”

“If Democrats lose their slim majority in either congressional chamber next year, they will lose their ability to pass voting-rights reform. After that, the party could face a debilitating dynamic: Republicans could use their state-level power to continue limiting ballot access, which would make regaining control of the House or the Senate more difficult for Democrats—and thus prevent them from passing future national voting rules that override the exclusionary state laws.”

“A Republican attorney defending Arizona’s voting restrictions in front of the Supreme Court told justices Tuesday that the GOP was defending the measures because they disadvantage Democrats,” NBC News reports.

“The Supreme Court is hearing arguments over Arizona voting restrictions in a pair of consolidated cases challenging a state law banning ballot collection and a policy that tosses ballots cast in the wrong precinct. Democrats have sued, saying the rules discriminate against minorities and violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.”

The Washington Post and the New York Times report that justices “seemed inclined” to allow the voting restrictions.

“As Congress begins debate this week on sweeping voting and ethics legislation, Democrats and Republicans can agree on one thing: If signed into law, it would usher in the biggest overhaul of U.S. elections law in at least a generation,” the AP reports.

“House Resolution 1, Democrats’ 791-page bill, would touch virtually every aspect of the electoral process — striking down hurdles to voting erected in the name of election security, curbing partisan gerrymandering and curtailing the influence of big money in politics.”

“The North Dakota Senate this week passed a bill which aims to forbid election officials from disclosing how many actual votes are cast for each candidate in upcoming presidential elections,” Law & Crime reports.

“The total tallies would only be disclosed after future Electoral Colleges convene to select an official victor.”

“Led by loyalists who embrace former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of a stolen election, Republicans in state legislatures nationwide are mounting extraordinary efforts to change the rules of voting and representation — and enhance their own political clout,” the New York Times reports.

“At the top of those efforts is a slew of bills raising new barriers to casting votes, particularly the mail ballots that Democrats flocked to in the 2020 election. But other measures go well beyond that, including tweaking Electoral College and judicial election rules for the benefit of Republicans; clamping down on citizen-led ballot initiatives; and outlawing private donations that provide resources for administering elections, which were crucial to the smooth November vote.”

“The national battle over voting restrictions was, for one sluggish February afternoon, waged in a cramped hearing room of Arizona’s House of Representatives. Separated by plexiglass barriers, Republican lawmakers steadily plowed ahead on bills that, put together, could make it harder for Arizonans to vote,” the Los Angeles Times reports.

“Similar scenes are playing out in statehouses across the country, with a barrage of voting restriction measures snaking through the legislative process.”

“Leading the way is Arizona, which has seen dozens of bills introduced this year, the most of any state.”

Greg Sargent: The GOP’s strategy for retaking power is uglier than you think.

Associated Press: “Angered by a blitz of Republican-backed legislation that would roll back voting access, Georgia Democrats are taking hostages — withholding their support on pieces of legislation that need bipartisan backing to pass.”

“The first potential casualty appears to be a House bill that would legalize online sports betting. The bill was set to receive a vote on the House floor Thursday but was pulled at the last minute.”

“Conversations with House Democrats revealed the reason why the bill didn’t get a vote: They withdrew support because of GOP efforts to enact restrictive voting laws.”

“A bill shortening Iowa’s early voting period, reducing Election Day voting by an hour and creating a stricter deadline for returning absentee ballots is a step closer to becoming law after it passed the Iowa Senate on Tuesday,” the Des Moines Register reports.

“The legislation would shorten Iowa’s early voting period by nine days, taking it from 29 days to 20.”

“Rudy Giuliani spent a week dodging service of a $1.3 billion lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems after publicly declaring he was ready for the legal fight,” the New York Daily News reports.

“Dominion hired the process servers to hand Giuliani its mammoth 107-page lawsuit after the former mayor ignored requests to simply accept it via email.”

“One of the largest makers of voting machines in the U.S. on Monday sued a prominent supporter of former President Donald Trump, alleging that the businessman had defamed the company with false accusations that it had rigged the 2020 election for Joe Biden,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Dominion Voting Systems sued Mike Lindell, chief executive of Minnesota-based MyPillow Inc., and his company in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking more than $1.3 billion in damages.”

Georgia Today: “The Georgia Senate Ethics committee approved a number of elections bills Thursday, including a measure adding an ID requirement to absentee applications and a proposal to require counties to process mail-in ballots earlier, as more extreme bills wait in the wings.”

Nathaniel Rakich: “From the 27 states, plus Washington, D.C., where we were able to obtain data, only 297,347 out of 47,999,299 absentee ballots cast in the 2020 general election were rejected — a rejection rate of 0.6 percent. And in 20 of the 23 jurisdictions that provided data for the last two presidential elections, the 2020 rejection rate was lower than 2016’s.”

“What’s behind this remarkable success? Election-administration experts cite several factors, but a big one was that voters submitted their absentee ballots early. That’s important because, in a normal election, the number-one reason that absentee ballots are not counted is that they arrive too late.”