‌‌‌‌‌Thousands Of Texas Votes In Danger

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Texas Republicans got what they wanted last year, implementing sweeping new voting restrictions that were bound to disenfranchise voters. Last week, the state held its primaries, and the law bore its terrible fruit.

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Republican Restrictions Leading To Thousands Of Ballot Rejections In Texas

Thousands of TEXAS voters have had their ballots rejected as a result of SB1, Texas Republicans’ package of voting restrictions that includes an onerous new ID requirement for both absentee ballot applications and the ballots themselves.

As we’ve reported, the law requires not only that voters provide an ID number, but also that the form of the ID number — such as a driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number — match what they used to register with their county, sometimes decades earlier. In other words: If you registered using your driver’s license number, and listed your Social Security number on your 2022 primary ballot, your ballot would be rejected — even if both numbers were correct.

Nearly 12,000 ballots in Harris County, Texas (home to Houston) had been marked for rejection for SB1-related reasons as of last Wednesday, a spokesperson for the county told me.

Voters had until today to “cure” those rejections, but at this rate, it’s difficult to see how the state will bring this year’s rejection rate down to anything close to what it was in prior years.

This is yet another example of Republicans’ efforts to “restore trust” in the election process disenfranchising huge numbers of people, including Republican voters.

Partisan Wisconsin Investigator Produces Partisan Report

Michael Gableman, the former WISCONSIN Supreme Court justice tasked by GOP legislators with “investigating” the 2020 election, has produced a report that traffics in months-old GOP bugaboos about the vote that have been dismissed and debunked over and over and over again. 

In a hearing Tuesday, Gableman reiterated his report’s assertion that there are “very significant grounds” not just to believe something fishy happened in 2020, but to decertify the election. This, of course, is legally impossible and, in effect, nothing more than a fringe talking point.

Much of the report focuses on grant money from the Center for Tech and Civic Life that went to election offices in several states in 2020, funded by donations from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. It was intended to help those offices deal with administering an election amid a pandemic. Though most of Wisconsin’s counties received grant money, Gableman focused on the five largest recipients — which he called the “Zuckerberg Five,” and which also happen to be the largest cities in the state — and alleged that the money in fact represented a bribe to get Democrats to the polls.

It’s worth noting: Gableman hasn’t tried to hide his political beliefs. He attended MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s conspiracy-minded “symposium” last year, acknowledged Tuesday that he voted for Trump, and has campaigned for Republicans in Wisconsin while conducting his investigation. More dramatically, he’s urged judges to jail Democratic officials who refuse to sit for closed-door interviews. 
 

Also notable: Gableman has shown little regard for supposed deadlines imposed by the legislature, blowing past his initial October deadline by several months. Even this latest development is not the end. “It's not going to end until we go through this entire process,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) said last month, referring to outstanding subpoenas. 

Around The States

The Supreme Court has refused to stay congressional maps drawn by the state Supreme Courts in PENNSYLVANIA and NORTH CAROLINA, rebuffing Republicans in those states who'd hoped to emulate what happened in Alabama. 

A federal judge in GEORGIA said two important things this week: First, plaintiffs are likely to ultimately succeed in demonstrating that the state’s gerrymandered congressional districts, drawn by Republicans to pit two Democrats against each other, are discriminatory against Black voters. Second, it’s apparently too close to primary day to do anything about it for now. Legal scholars say this second point, which follows something called the Purcell principle, amounts to a temporary free pass for gerrymandering. The Georgia judge cited a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision about the situation in Alabama. 
 

The ARIZONA Republican Party is fighting a long-shot legal battle to kill early voting in the state, even though the vast majority of Arizona residents vote that way. 

The FLORIDA Supreme Court has given its stamp of approval to state legislative maps, but the potential for lawsuits remains. On the congressional side, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has said he will veto the map approved by both legislative chambers. DeSantis has been pushing for a map that favors Republicans even more dramatically than those produced by the legislature.
 

The state’s senate also approved a new election police force.
 

The WISCONSIN Supreme Court approved congressional and legislative maps submitted by Gov. Tony Evers (D), but, due to an earlier ruling holding that maps shouldn’t differ much from the status quo, the maps maintain Republican majorities at all levels. Evers called the maps “a vast improvement from the gerrymandered maps Wisconsin has had for the last decade and the even more gerrymandered Republicans maps that I vetoed last year.”

The ALASKA Public Offices Commission has, for now, basically lifted candidate donation limits. 

The Latest In Election Sabotage

The Denver Post has a troubling deep dive about the supporters of Mesa County, COLORADO clerk Tina Peters. They’ve gone to election officials across the state, pressuring them for access to voting machines. “We will either do this with you or through you,” the Big Lie influencer and Peters supporter Shawn Smith told one clerk.
 

Also in that state, former Trump legal adviser John Eastman — who we now know advocated for a violation of the law on Jan. 6 — is representing a group of Colorado voters who want to turn the states open primaries into closed ones.
 

One NEW MEXICO county commission — including the founder of “Cowboys for Trump” who faces Jan. 6 charges — voted to contract a $50,000 so-called “audit” of the 2020 election. Now, state officials are warning people of yet another case of door-to-door canvassers asking about voting patterns. 

NBC News: 'We're very concerned': Black voters fearchanges to Georgia voting laws
 

WaPo: Democracy May Depend on a New Partisan Battleground: Races for State Secretary of State

NPR: Georgia's race to oversee voting pits an election denier against an election defender
 

ABC News: New restrictions causing roadblocks for voters with disabilities

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