What you need to know about voting rights and democracy in America

JUNE 14, 2021 || ISSUE NO. 5

Things Are Getting Awkward For The Texas Republicans Who No Longer Like Parts Of The Elections Bill They Were Trying Very Hard To Pass

In this issue...

Biden admin signals voting rights approach as Congress remains paralyzed//Texas Republicans don’t want to own up to election overhaul measures they almost passed//The legal drama over census data and redistricting continues

Written by Tierney Sneed

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?? Hello readers! Another week has passed us by without Democrats coming up with a plan to jumpstart their voting rights push in the face of Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s resistance.

But there was plenty of democracy news on the state level and the Biden administration gave us its own look at how the Justice Department wants to approach voting rights. So here we go...

Texas Republicans Disavow Parts Of Election Overhaul They Wanted Desperately to Pass

Texas Republicans are proving the value of aggressive pushback measures that may only temporarily stall efforts to pass voter restrictions. Since Democrats last month used a daring procedural move to block passage of the GOP elections overhaul, Republican lawmakers have distanced themselves from two measures in it — one that would have made it easier for judges to overturn elections, and another that would limit early voting on Sundays — making it likely those provisions will be removed when Republican try passing the legislation again.

A similar dynamic may be at play in Michigan, where Republicans are trying to do an end-run around the Democratic governor’s veto pen to pass restrictive voting laws. The gambit is a multi-step process, and as I reported Monday, the lack of speed and public organization around the effort suggests that Republicans may have to focus on a narrower set of measures rather than the broad package of election bills they floated earlier this year.

What Else Have States Been Up To When It Comes To Revamping Election Laws?

Vermont’s Republican Gov. Phil Scott signed a bill last Monday making permanent the state’s COVID-19 mail voting system that proactively sent every registered voter a mail ballot.
New limits on who can assist voters in Iowa with obtaining and delivering their mail ballots were signed into law by Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) Tuesday.
Republican lawmakers in New Hampshire have approved a bill that would let the state set up separate election rules for state vs. federal elections, so that it could avoid the ballot access requirements of the federal voting rights bill, which as this point does not look likely to pass.
GOP lawmakers in Delaware blocked the efforts by Democrats to enshrine no-excuse absentee voting into the state’s constitution, which requires a 2/3 legislative majority to change.

Illinois Faces Lawsuits For Using Non-Census Data In Redistricting

That was fast. The redistricting plans that Illinois adopted earlier this month are already being challenged in court because lawmakers used estimates to draw the maps rather than census data, which is being released on a delay because of the complications COVID-19 inflicted on the count. One lawsuit was brought by Republicans, while another was brought by immigrant rights groups who say the less accurate data stood to dilute the political power of minority communities. The litigation shows why voting rights experts have urged states to push back their redistricting schedules to accommodate the census delays. North Carolina’s legislature took a step in that direction last week with the state House passing a bill that will move back the entire electoral calendar to adjust to the late data release.

Besides the data delays, there’s another big legal question around the census and redistricting. The Census Bureau is using a new privacy tool that has come under scrutiny for how it makes the data less accurate, perhaps to the point that it is unusable for redistricting, and already the Bureau faces one lawsuit over its use. The Bureau last week announced the final details about how it will use the privacy tool, known as differential privacy, on redistricting data, but its plans could still be disrupted by the litigation.

AG Garland Previews Justice Department’s Voting Rights Approach

With Democrats’ big democracy overhaul bill not going anywhere in Congress for the foreseeable future, the question of what President Biden’s Justice Department does on voting rights has gotten only more important, and Friday, Attorney General Merrick Garland laid out how the DOJ would approach the issue. The top line news from his speech was a vow to double the voting rights enforcement staff at the Department within the next 30 days, and previews of new legal guidance the DOJ will be putting out on various democracy issues. But what stood out to me was Garland’s focus not just on the restrictive state voting measures — which had been ramping up well before Trump’s 2020 reversal crusade — but the bogus post-election “audits” and harassment of election workers, which feel unique to this current era.

Biden has another venue to influence voting rights protections: the federal judiciary. And last Monday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced he was recommending that Biden nominate two prominent voting rights attorneys — Brennan Center’s Myrna Perez and ACLU’s Dale Ho — to the bench. Time will tell whether Biden nominates those two lawyers and whether they can clear the 50-50 Senate, where Republicans fought tooth and nail (though unsuccessfully) to stop two civil rights attorneys with major voting rights credentials from taking positions atop the Department of Justice.

The Latest In Faux Audit-Mania

As the bogus Arizona “audit” gets closer to finishing one of its key steps, the pull of its MAGA magnet has grown stronger. Prominent Republicans from more than a half-dozen other states have traveled to Arizona to observe the partisan recount of Maricopa County’s results. At least some of them had their trips financed by the same OAN-tied group that has been fundraising for the audit itself.

And finally, don’t miss these two important stories about how Trump’s election fraud lies are still casting a shadow over the election officials charged with administering elections. Reuters took a deep and troubling dive into the threats and harassment Georgia election officials continue to face. The AP, meanwhile, took stock of the post-2020 exodus of election officials from their roles and the concerns that they’ll be placed with conspiracy theorists who believe the election was stolen.

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