‌‌‌‌‌Fighting For Abortion With One Hand Tied Behind Their Backs

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SPONSORED MESSAGE FROM THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF WISCONSIN*

Franchise readers, Wisconsin is ground zero in the fight for voting rights: whether we beat back far-right attacks on the freedom to vote could determine the future of our democracy. Add your name to help us fight back.

Hello readers!

Kansas voters will decide in August whether the state’s constitution should continue to protect the right to an abortion, or whether it should be amended to remove that protection and allow the practice to be criminalized. But activists are struggling to register people to vote on the question due to a new anti-voter law passed by Republicans last year.

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Voter Registrations Sidelined Ahead Of Kansas Abortion Vote

After the Supreme Court last week ended the constitutional right to an abortion, attention turned to the states that forbid the procedure outright — and the states that might soon do so.

In KANSAS, the state’s Supreme Court decided in 2019 that abortion was protected by the state’s constitution. So, post-Roe, Republican state legislators are trying to change the state constitution. There’s a statewide vote to amend it on Aug. 2. If the amendment is approved by voters, the state’s legislature would have a clear path to criminalize abortion rights out of existence.

Naturally, pro-choice activists in the state are organizing to oppose the amendment. But here’s where it gets complicated: Last year, Republican legislators passed HB 2183 over Gov. Laura Kelly’s (D) veto. The law makes it a crime to impersonate an election official — or simply to engage in conduct “that would cause another person to believe a person engaging in such conduct is an election official.”

As we reported in April, the law moved the Kansas League of Women Voters to pause its in-person voter registration efforts, for fear volunteers could face criminal charges.

That pause is ongoing today, the state League’s co-president Jacqueline Lightcap told me, and it’s hurting the effort to oppose the anti-abortion constitutional amendment.

“We will never know how many future voters weren’t able to register to vote, or how many current voters didn’t get to change their address, because we have limited our work in this way,” Lightcap said in an email Monday. “Registering voters would allow us to be even more effective with this campaign and while we’re doing everything we feel we can, we always wish we could do more. The law is definitely not helping our efforts.”

Supreme Court Silent On ‘Independent State Legislature’ Question For Now

We reported earlier this month that the Supreme Court seemed poised to take up the case of Moore v. Harper, a dispute over gerrymandering in North Carolina that, more broadly, would serve as a vehicle to determine the fate of the “Independent State Legislature” theory, or the idea that state courts are not permitted to have any say over state legislatures’ voting rights-related decisions.

The decision would have sweeping implications for voting rights and gerrymandering, and could also make it easier for legislatures to subvert voters’ will in national elections.

The court’s current term is about to end, and we still haven’t heard anything about the fate of the case. Why?

Rick Hasen, the UC Irvine law professor, speculated that this is because the court sees Moore v. Harper as an imperfect vehicle, and may be in search of another case that poses the same questions in a slightly cleaner scenario, legally. Hasen has memorably referred to ISLT as “an 800-pound gorilla brooding in the background of election law cases.” 

Around The States

SPONSORED MESSAGE FROM THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF WISCONSIN*

Franchise readers, Wisconsin is ground zero in the fight for voting rights: whether we beat back far-right attacks on the freedom to vote could determine the future of our democracy. Add your name to help us fight back.

The Supreme Court will decide in the fall whether ALABAMA should have two majority-Black congressional districts rather than just one. But the consequences of the court’s decision could go far beyond that one district, potentially making it tougher to prove racial discrimination cases under the Voting Rights Act. 
 

A state court judge in NEW YORK ruled Monday that New York City may not allow non-citizens who are nonetheless legally documented residents to vote in municipal elections. 
 

The Supreme Court held Thursday that Republican legislators in NORTH CAROLINA can intervene to defend the state’s restrictive voter ID law in court, though the state’s Democratic attorney general is already doing so.
 

SOUTH DAKOTA Republicans opted to deny their incumbent Secretary of State Steve Barnett another term in favor of Monae Johnson. The Sioux Falls Argus Leader reported that Johnson “ran a vigorous campaign by tapping into Republican fears about election security and integrity.” The Associated Press reported that among other things Johnson is opposed to online voter registration, though as far as I can tell that’s already not allowed in South Dakota. 

The Latest In Election Sabotage

Correction: An earlier version of this article misidentified the charges against Mesa County, Colorado Clerk Tina Peters as federal rather than state charges. We regret the error.

WISCONSIN’s 2020 election investigator Michael Gableman told a judge he routinely deleted investigatory records. (Another judge recently referred Gableman for potential professional consequences after aggressive, sexist comments during a hearing.)
 

A coterie of extremely motivated Big Lie millionaires is helping fuel the effort to breach voting machines nationwide. And that’s evident in Mesa County, COLORADO, where the New York Times reported that a former professional surfer bankrolled by ex-Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne was allowed into a closed voting machine software update using a nametag belonging to someone else.

Mesa County’s clerk, Tina Peters, currently faces several felony charges including identity theft for allegedly using an ID she’d had printed for a local man to allow someone else into the software update. That local man, Gerald Wood, spoke out publicly for the first time on Friday and Saturday, telling the Colorado Sun, “I am considered a victim in this. I wasn’t there and I wasn’t part of this.”

Fair Vote: This is What Nine Years Without the Voting Rights Act Looks Like
 

New Yorker: The “Gap” in the Constitution That Led to January 6th

*Paid for by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, Wisdems.org. Not authorized by any candidate’s campaign or committee. Donations to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin are not tax deductible.

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