Democratic voting bill would make biggest changes in decades


By BRIAN SLODYSKO
Yesterday

WASHINGTON (AP) — 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.

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.


Republicans see those very measures as threats that would both limit the power of states to conduct elections and ultimately benefit Democrats, notably with higher turnout among minority voters.

The stakes are prodigious, with control of Congress and the fate of President Joe Biden's legislative agenda in the balance. But at its core, a more foundational principle of American democracy is at play: access to the ballot.

“This goes above partisan interests. The vote is at the heart of our democratic system of government,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of the nonpartisan good government organization Democracy 21. “That’s the battleground. And everyone knows it.”


Barriers to voting are as old as the country, but in more recent history they have come in the form of voter ID laws and other restrictions that are up for debate in statehouses across the country.

Rep. John Sarbanes, a Maryland Democrat who sponsored the bill, said that outside of Congress “these aren't controversial reforms.” Much of it, he noted, was derived from the recommendations of bipartisan commissions.

Yet to many Republicans, it amounts to an unwarranted federal intrusion into a process that states should control.

“It imposes from Washington, D.C., a one-size-fits-all regulatory scheme on each state,” Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., said Monday during a hearing on the bill. “What’s worse, it does this even though states have been traditionally allowed to generally run elections however they see fit.”

Citing Congress’ constitutional authority over federal elections, Democrats say national rules are needed to make voting more uniform, accessible and fair. The bill would mandate early voting, same-day registration and other long-sought changes that Republicans reject.

It would also require so-called dark money political groups to disclose anonymous donors, create reporting requirements for online political ads and appropriate nearly $2 billion for election infrastructure upgrades. Future presidents would be obligated to disclose their tax returns, which former President Donald Trump refused to do.


Debate over the bill comes at a critical moment, particularly for Democrats.

Acting on Trump's repeated false claims of a stolen election, dozens of Republican-controlled state legislatures are pushing bills that would make it more difficult to vote. Democrats argue this would disproportionately hit low-income voters, or those of color, who are critical constituencies for their party.

The U.S. is also on the cusp of a once-in-a-decade redrawing of congressional districts, a highly partisan affair that is typically controlled by state legislatures. With Republicans controlling the majority of statehouses the process alone could help the GOP win enough seats to recapture the House. The Democratic bill would instead require that the boundaries be drawn by independent commissions.

Previous debates over voting rights have often been esoteric and complex, with much of the debate in Congress focused on whether to restore a “preclearance” process in the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court invalidated in 2013. For decades, it had required certain states and jurisdictions with large minority populations and a history of discrimination to get federal approval for any changes to voting procedures.

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But Republicans say that Trump's repeated attacks on the 2020 election have electrified his supporters, even as courts and his last attorney general, William Barr, found them without merit.

“This is now a base issue,” said Ken Cuccinelli, a former Virginia attorney general and Trump administration official in the Department of Homeland Security who is leading a conservative coalition opposed to the bill. “Democratic leadership is willing to sacrifice their own members to pass radical legislation. They are cannon fodder that Nancy Pelosi doesn’t care about.”

Cuccinelli is overseeing a $5 million campaign aimed at pressuring Senate Democrats to oppose the bill.

Democrats say their aim is to make it easier for more people to vote, regardless of partisan affiliation. And they counter that Republican objections are based more in preserving their own power by hindering minorities from voting than a principled opposition.

“The anti-democratic forces in the Republican Party have focused their energy on peddling unwarranted and expensive voter restriction measures,” said Stacey Abrams, who narrowly lost her 2018 Georgia bid to become the first Black female governor in U.S. history. “We all have a right to take our seat at the table and our place at the ballot box.”

The bill was an object of intense focus at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, over the weekend, a gathering where Trump’s lies about mass election fraud took center stage.

In a speech Sunday, Trump branded the bill as “a disaster" and a “monster” that “cannot be allowed to pass."

Meanwhile, CPAC organizer Matt Schlapp told attendees that if they could internalize one thing from this year's conference, it was to “do all you can” to stop “this unconstitutional power grab” from becoming law.

"What we saw this election will be what you will see every single election. And we have to fight it,” Schlapp warned ominously.

Trump and his allies have made false claims that the 2020 election was marred by widespread voter fraud. But dozens of legal challenges they put forth were dismissed, including by the Supreme Court.

Ultimately, though, the biggest obstacle Democrats face in passing the bill is themselves.

Despite staunch GOP opposition, the bill is all but certain to pass the House when it's scheduled for a floor vote Wednesday. But challenges lie ahead in the Senate, which is split 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats.

On some legislation, it takes only 51 votes to pass, with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tiebreaker. On a deeply divisive bill like this one, they would need 60 votes under the Senate’s rules to overcome a Republican filibuster — a tally they are unlikely to reach.

Some have discussed options like lowering the threshold to break a filibuster, or creating a workaround that would allow some legislation to be exempt. Democratic congressional aides say the conversations are fluid but underway.

Many in the party remain hopeful, and the Biden White House has called the bill “landmark legislation” that “is urgently needed to protect the right to vote.” But the window to pass it before the 2022 midterms is closing.

“We may not get the opportunity to make this change again for many, many decades,” said Sarbanes, the bill’s lead sponsor. “Shame on us if we don’t get this done.”

___

Associated Press writer Jill Colvin in Orlando, Florida, contributed to this report.

 

And as a counterpoint...

Georgia House passes GOP bill rolling back voting access


By BEN NADLER and ANILA YOGANATHAN
Yesterday

ATLANTA (AP) — Republican lawmakers in Georgia muscled legislation through the state House on Monday that would roll back voting access, over the objection of Democrats and civil rights groups gathered at the Capitol to protest.

The bill comes after record turnout led to Democratic wins in Georgia’s presidential election and two U.S. Senate runoffs.

House Bill 531 passed the lower legislative chamber by a vote of 97-72. It now goes to the state Senate for more debate.

The far-reaching bill would require a photo ID for absentee voting, limit the amount of time voters have to request an absentee ballot, restrict where ballot drop boxes could be located and when they could be accessed, and limit early voting hours on weekends, among many other changes.


It is one of a flood of election bills being pushed by GOP lawmakers across the country this year that would add new barriers to voting.

Republicans say the measure is needed to restore the public’s confidence in elections, after former President Donald Trump and his allies relentlessly pushed false claims about fraud.

“House Bill 531 is designed to begin to bring back the confidence of our voters back into our election system,” said Republican Rep. Barry Fleming, the measure’s chief sponsor.


Democrats say the legislation furthers Trump’s lies and would disproportionately affect voters of color.

“It’s pathetically obvious to anyone paying attention that when Trump lost the November election and Georgia flipped control of the U.S. Senate to Democrats shortly after, Republicans got the message that they were in a political death spiral,” Democratic Rep. Renitta Shannon said. “And now they are doing anything they can to silence the voices of Black and brown voters specifically, because they largely powered these wins."

Dozens of protesters gathered just outside the Capitol on Monday in opposition to the bill, chanting “say no to voter suppression” and “protect the vote.”

“Today, before the eyes of this country, Georgia is poised to pass some of the most egregious, dangerous and most expensive voter suppression acts in this entire nation, rolling back years of hardball progress and renewing our own reputation for discrimination,” the Rev. James Woodall, president of the Georgia NAACP, said at the rally.

Alaina Reaves, the president of the Clayton County Young Democrats, was among the protesters.

“We take one step forward and then you know these legislators are trying to bring us up to two steps back,” Reaves said.

Later Monday, the state Senate Ethics Committee approved a Republican-backed bill that would limit who can vote absentee in Georgia to those 65 and older, people with a disability and people who will be away from their precinct on Election Day.

That bill would do away with no-excuse absentee voting adopted by a Republican-controlled legislature in 2005. It could soon move to the full Senate for a vote.

AP News

 

No political party should be able to write the rules on who is edible to vote. One of the fundamental rules is that every citizen has a right to vote, it is not unreasonable to ascertain that the voter is a citizen.
Vote by mail is not a new thing, it has been used by virtually every state in the union, without undue hardships. The question come on how it is administered and monitored. Electronic voting is also not new, however, monitoring the process needs to be transparent.
Gerrymandering needs to be curtailed, both parties have been guilty of customizing districts to fit their demographics. Districts should be largely geographic, not demographic.

 

Voting by mail and electronically is Wide open to voter fraud, chain of custody must be put in place, we dont want bags of paper ballots being found in a closet after the election

 

After the Roberts court gutted the voting rights act federal legislation is the only solution to the just rampant conservative/Republican voter suppression and Gerrymandering that has been going on for decades but has now reached a fever pitch. And it is primarily still a white supremacist endeavor to try and keep Black and Brown people from voting because they tend to vote Democratic. And for proof of that we need look no further than the totally racist attacks behind Trump's big lie that the election was stolen. Almost every suit, complaint, and attack was against areas with large Black and Brown populations because that is where Trump lost.

So Congress needs to step in and protect voting rights from the conservative/Republicans that don't believe in the United States of America, our Constitution, or even democracy itself.

Republicans roll out “tidal wave of voter suppression”: 253 restrictive bills in 43 states

GOP is using Trump’s “big lie” to push a historic “contraction of voting rights," says Democratic lawyer Marc Elias

https://www.salon.com/2021/02/27/re...ppression-253-restrictive-bills-in-43-states/

 

Hmm, that sounds like something from someone who’s feeling empowered.

 

I agree that all states should have the same voting laws. It should be simple.
1. No mail in ballots. All voters will vote at a local polling place.
2. All voters should have an ID to be able to vote.
3. If a person is in jail they should forfeit their voting rights until they are free from jail.
4. All voters should be a citizen of the U.S.


See, it is simple.

 

No, it isn't. Some folks are disabled and without reliable transportation, or military stationed overseas, or civilian contractors working overseas, all of whom rely on mail in, absentee ballots. That shoots number one down right there. Three and four are already law. Two amounts to a poll tax, as long as anyone has to pay for any kind of ID.

 

Well that didn't take you long. And what I would add is like Rachel Maddow always says don't watch what they say watch what they do. Saying everyone should have an ID to vote sounds good. But let's look at what Wisconsin for an example actually did. When they passed voter ID laws it immediately impacted inner city voters because many of them don't drive and therefore don't have a drivers license for a picture ID. Wisconsin conservative/Republicans said that would not be a problem because if people don't have a driver's license they can get a state issued ID. That is what they said. But what they actually did was pass the voter ID law and then close most the places near metropolitan areas where the state ID's are issued. That created an incredible burden on people that would have to travel long distances and wait in line for hours if not days to actually get a state issued ID. It was all designed to make it so hard for Black and Brown people living in cities they would get discouraged and just not vote.

And those conservative/Republican voter suppression efforts are going on coast to coast and are successful as suppressing minority votes.

 

This is another reason why they need to pass a new voting rights act for everyone.

US Supreme Court justices finish arguments in voting rights case
In the wake of Trump’s 2020 election loss, Republican officials are proposing new measures to restrict voting access.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021...mulls-power-of-landmark-voting-rights-act-law

 

What could go wrong here??????

 

States have the rights to create their own legislation, taking that away from the States would be a terrible idea and that can never be taken back...thus eliminating all representation.

 

Just for clarification why is the voting age 18 in all 50 states?

 

Because of the draft age.

 

It hasn't always been 18.

 

LISTEN: RNC lawyer makes admission to Supreme Court Justices that GOP needs voter suppression laws to win

https://www.rawstory.com/listen-rnc...that-gop-needs-voter-suppression-laws-to-win/

 

And the propaganda begins, drowning out reasoned discussion.
Same thing with immigration reform; the propaganda gets in the way of reasoned discussion.

 

Of course the flip side of that statement is, it puts the Democrats at an advantage.

 

Not abiding by the 15th by a few selective States also gives the Leftists clear advantage of winning some elections.

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

As it's told, this gives approximately 2.2 million illegals the right to vote.

Which brings the attention to other practices that the leftists enjoy:

Then that will lead us to another potentially dangerous threat to a secure election for the people, that the leftists enjoy.

In which then leads us to another illicit practice that the leftists cherish.

Essentially, there are no attempts by the Republicans to create voter suppression laws...as your selectively loaded title may suggest, however there are attempts to create legislation to maintain integrity asnd security in the voting process's Country wide.

Hack fuck loses again.

 

All the left has is changing rules and throwing shit against a wall and hope it sticks....
...I still maintain, Not everything is provable in court, remember OJ....this election had so many irregularities, the nation needed exlax to make it through, and look who won, the shit throwers!