“Arizona Republicans passed a law on Tuesday that will sharply limit the distribution of mail ballots through a widely popular early voting list, the latest measure in a conservative push to restrict voting across the country,” the New York Times reports.
“The legislation will remove voters from the state’s Permanent Early Voting List, which automatically sends some people ballots for each election, if they do not cast a ballot at least once every two years.”
“We all learned early in life if you can write the rules you can win the game.”
— Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), quoted by HuffPost, discussing his opposition to Democrats’ election reform and voting rights legislation known as the For the People Act.
“A key Senate committee is expected to vote as soon as Tuesday to advance Democrats’ sweeping elections overhaul, stamping its approval on a landmark voting rights expansion as Washington tries to blunt ballot restrictions by Republican-controlled statehouses,” the New York Times reports.
“If enacted, it would effectively override laws emerging in states like Georgia and Florida that raise barriers to vote with national requirements — like automatic voter registration, no-excuse early and mail-in voting and the re-enfranchisement of former felons — meant to lower them.”
Washington Post: “Seated at the tables are several dozen people, mostly Republicans, who spend hours watching ballots spin by, photographing them or inspecting them closely. They are counting them and checking to see if there is any sign they were flown in surreptitiously from South Korea. A few weeks ago they were holding them up to ultraviolet lights, looking for a watermark rumored to be a sign of fraud.”
“This is Arizona’s extraordinary, partisan audit of the 2020 election results in the state’s most populous county — ground zero for former President Donald Trump and a legion of his supporters who have refused to accept his loss in Arizona or in other battleground states. These ballots have been counted before and certified by the Republican governor. Much of the country has moved on.”
FiveThirtyEight: “Georgia is hardly the only state that’s made it harder to vote this year. Republican lawmakers have now enacted new voting restrictions in a total of 11 states — Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, Utah and Wyoming.”
“As we wrote in March, Republican state legislators — inspired by Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud — have introduced hundreds of bills this year that would make it harder to vote. Based on the latest data from the Brennan Center for Justice and our own research, at least 404 voting-restriction bills have now been introduced in 48 state legislatures. What’s more, nearly 90 percent of them were sponsored primarily or entirely by Republicans.”
“The entire left-leaning political world has spent the months after the 2020 election obsessed over the fairness of elections, and conservative attempts to rig the vote through gerrymandering and voter suppression. This is for good reason, of course…,” the Washington Monthly reports.
“But there’s another even more sinister trend among conservative politicians that deserves greater attention: an unwillingness to concede any electoral victory by a Democrat as legitimate, and an eagerness to punish any Republican elected official who concedes the will of the voters. The Big Lie that Trump really won the election is now canon among a majority of Republican voters. Any Republicans who refuses to toe the line is branded a heretic, and elections officials who dared to certify Biden’s win are being censured or stripped of their power.”
Earlier for members: The Danger of the GOP Embracing the Big Lie
“It makes us look like idiots. Looking back, I didn’t think it would be this ridiculous. It’s embarrassing to be a state senator at this point.”
— Arizona state Sen. Paul Boyer (R), quoted by the New York Times, on the election “audit” being undertaken by state senate Republicans.
“Lawmakers in Texas approved Republican-sponsored election legislation early Friday, after an all-night debate,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Republicans characterized the bill, which would increase penalties for some voting irregularities, as a way to protect against voter fraud. Democrats said it would disenfranchise voters. It passed in an 81-64 party-line vote at 3 a.m.”
“As voters have installed Democrats in the state’s top offices, conservative activists have increasingly turned to recalls to reverse the blue tide,” Colorado Public Radio reports.
“Now, as part of a larger election law ‘clean up’ bill, lawmakers could change some of the rules for future recalls.”
“If the bill becomes law, recall petitions would be required to include an estimated cost of conducting a special election, as well as a statement from the official being targeted for recall, if they provide one.”
“A member of the Arizona election audit team that has been heavily touted by former President Donald Trump revealed that its examination of the 2020 vote in Maricopa County will include a ‘forensic’ analysis of ballots to determine if the paper is made of bamboo—in order to determine whether or not China delivered tens of thousands of fraudulent ballots to tip the state to Joe Biden,” Slate reports.
“If that sounds much too crazy for an audit that was initiated by the Republican-led Arizona legislature and whose communications are being spearheaded by Republican former secretary of state, Ken Bennett, it very much is not.”
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a controversial bill that makes it harder to vote, in an event Thursday morning that excluded all media except for Fox News,” the Orlando Sentinel reports.
Associated Press: “The U.S. Department of Justice expressed concern Wednesday about ballot security and potential voter intimidation arising from the Republican-controlled Arizona Senate’s unprecedented private recount of the 2020 presidential election results in Maricopa County.”
Vox: “It’s not at all clear what exposing the ballots to UV light is supposed to accomplish — a coalition of election experts wrote the Justice Department asking it to send observers to monitor this quizzical audit, and one of their concerns is that ‘ultraviolet light causes not only paper to deteriorate, but also leads to the deterioration of marks on paper ballots.'”
“Nevertheless, Trump reportedly talks ‘constantly’ about how these UV lights might reveal — something — that will undercut Biden’s victory.”
“A group of major companies and business organizations came out Tuesday against a Texas voting bill, after debating how aggressively they should be involved in state legislation,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Nearly 50 companies, including Microsoft, Unilever PLC, and American Airlines Group, signed a letter opposing ‘any changes that would restrict eligible voters’ access to the ballot’ in Texas, days ahead of an expected vote in the state legislature on a voting bill.
“Georgia election officials plan to start canceling voter registrations as soon as this week, on a smaller scale than in past years and, for the first time, exchanging information with other states to identify invalid voters,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
Washington Post: “Virtually every narrow Republican victor of the past generation — and there have been many, including two of the state’s current top officeholders, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Rick Scott — owes their victory, at least in part, to mail voting.”
“Now, some Florida Republicans are reacting with alarm after the GOP-dominated state legislature, with DeSantis’s support, passed a far-reaching bill Thursday night that puts new restrictions on the use of mail ballots.”
Said one Florida Republican consultant: “The main law that we pass when we pass election bills in Florida is the law of unintended consequences.”
“Senate Democrats made a major commitment to muscle through Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s ethics and voting reform bill. Yet many say they have no idea how to pass it and wonder what exactly the end game is for a signature Democratic priority,” Politico reports.
“Democrats are preparing to kick off a sensitive internal debate over the issue this month as the Senate Rules Committee takes up the sprawling House package. But no Republicans support it, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) hasn’t signed on and at least a half-dozen Democrats have issues with the bill, according to senators and aides. That’s not to mention the constraints of the filibuster in a 50-50 Senate.”
“What’s at stake is not only the party’s promise on a key issue, but also potentially the future Democratic majorities.”
New York Times: “As Republican lawmakers in major battleground states seek to make voting harder and more confusing through a web of new election laws, they are simultaneously making a concerted legislative push to grant more autonomy and access to partisan poll watchers — citizens trained by a campaign or a party and authorized by local election officials to observe the electoral process.”
“This effort has alarmed election officials and voting rights activists alike: There is a long history of poll watchers being used to intimidate voters and harass election workers, often in ways that target Democratic-leaning communities of color and stoke fears that have the overall effect of voter suppression.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.