REX TILLERSON DID CORRECTLY CALL THE PRESIDENT AS HE SAW HIM

 STATE GOP LAWMAKERS ARE ROAD-BLOCKING EARLY VOTING & MAIL-IN VOTING

 

… Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Chair of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee and is totally against Republican’s blocking efforts

 

Democratic challenge to the Arizona laws says they disproportionately affect all minorities

 

Thanks to Trump’s months-long campaign of lies and falsehoods, plus the subsequent attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, the stakes for the 2022 midterm elections are very high.

Following Democrat victories in the 2020 election, many state Republican lawmakers across the country are proposing new laws that would restrict access to voting.

State GOP lawmakers are barreling ahead with major rollbacks of early voting, mail voting and other state provisions that Trump and other Republicans oppose.  All this while the conservative Supreme Court heard a challenge to Arizona’s election laws that could further curtail the federal government’s power to police elections.

House leaders anticipate near-unanimous Democratic support, but zero Republican backing, for their bill known as H.R. 1, or the “For the People Act,” that would overhaul elections.  Some liberal lawmakers are pushing to ditch Senate filibuster rules in order to pass it into law without Republican support.  The For The People Act, would overhaul elections, campaign finance and ethics laws. The legislation is expected to face opposition in the Senate.

The Democrats’ legislative answer to the GOP’s effort is the sprawling 791-page bill that establishes national standards for voter access, mandating online registration, voting by mail, at least 15 days of early voting and the restoration of voting rights for released felons. The bill also mandates congressional redistricting be done by independent commissions, requires the disclosure of “dark money” contributions to political groups, and creates a system of public financing for congressional campaigns, among dozens of other provisions.

In other words, to clean up the elections, which would be a potential death threat to the GOP being the minority party.

In the Democratic challenge to the two Arizona voting laws, they argue they disproportionately affect minorities and therefore runs totally afoul of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.

While the SCOTUS justices appeared inclined to let those laws stand, the bigger question is what standard the court will ultimately set to interpret the law in the future.  Democrats fear that the 6-to-3 conservative court could set a high bar for voting rights litigation, opening up the possibility that states could pursue even more restrictive measures that could harm minority voting.

A GOP lawyer made the matter clear when asked by Justice Amy Coney Barrett why Republicans intervened in the case to defend a law that would discount voters’ ballots if they are sent to the wrong precinct.

“Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats,” responded Michael Carvin, representing the Republican Party of Arizona. “Politics is a zero-sum game,”  which means “one person's gain is another's loss.”

Democrats, meanwhile, are preparing to litigate against any new state laws that they believe will curtail ballot access. The Department of Justice under Biden is also expected to take a leading role in policing alleged voter suppression across the country.

Democrats have taken the opposite lesson from the Republicans from the 2020 election, and Democratic party leaders say they are more determined than ever to act and create “national standards of ballot access.” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), chair of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee and a key advocate of the election package, said lawmakers had to counter the state-level Republican salvos on a national basis.

“Instead of redefining their party and figuring out what legislation and policies they can put forward that would appeal to more people, so they wouldn’t lose states like Georgia and Arizona, they have chosen to just resorting to changing the rules of the game,” Amy said.

While the For the People Act has near-universal buy-in from Democrats, it still faces a serious obstacle in the Senate, where the majority’s will could be frustrated by a minority filibuster, a roadblock that requires a 60-vote supermajority to clear.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) made clear in a floor speech last week that the GOP would fight hard to block the bill, accusing Democrats of trying to “tilt the playing field in their side’s favor” and “unilaterally rewrite and nationalize election law.”

Klobuchar would not concede that the measure would inevitably encounter a filibuster, and she laid out plans for advancing it through her committee and onto the Senate floor later this year.  Some Republicans, she said, have complained about election challenges that minimum national standards would fix.

While multiple Democratic senators have resisted a push from the left wing of their party to ditch the filibuster entirely, at least some lawmakers are laying the groundwork for a discussion about creating a limited exception for measures affecting civil rights and voting matters.

“Voting rights is preservative of all other rights, and we have to do everything we can to preserve the voices of the people in our democracy,” said Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.). “I think that the issues are urgent enough to leave all options on the table.”

Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.), H.R. 1’s lead author, said Democrats should feel a sense of urgency to bust through any roadblocks, especially given the scale of the GOP’s effort to curtail voting rights ahead of the 2022 midterms.  The GOP is also counting on a partisan redistricting effort for an additional Republican House advantage.

The GOP wants these new election changes to come as fast as they possibly can.  The states that they want to make sure there are voting changes are exhibit A: Georgia, exhibit B:Pennsylvania, exhibit C: Arizona.  And the list goes on and on from there.

The stakes could not be higher.

Copyright G. Ater 2021