Voting & Elections

MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart and Mother Jones reporter Ari Berman discuss new proposed voter suppression legislation in Georgia and Common Cause Georgia executive director Aunna Dennis' criticism of the bill as "Jim Crow with a suit and tie."

More than 150 bills proposing new voting restrictions have been introduced in state legislatures since the November election, according to Sylvia Albert, voting and elections director for good-government watchdog Common Cause. “What we saw in this election was record turnout, and Republican legislators have responded by saying, ‘We didn’t actually want you to come vote,’” Albert said. Albert said her group is particularly concerned about new restrictions in states where Republicans control the governorship and both houses of the legislature, such as Georgia, giving Democrats less chance to block them.

According to Common Cause Senior Counsel Stephen Spaulding, the implications of not getting H.R. 1 passed could be extremely serious. Spaulding, who helped write H.R. 1 while serving as Senior Elections Counsel to the Committee on House Administration, warned that the damage Republicans could inflict on democracy in the absence of federal action could be irreparable. “For democracy in general, the danger of not taking action is potentially catastrophic, given the precision and targeting and manipulation of the rules that some state legislators are doing to make it harder to vote,” he said. Spaulding explained that Republican efforts to restrict voting took off after the Supreme Court’s decision inShelby County v. Holder, which invalidated the 1965 Voting Rights Act’s requirement for states with a history of racial discrimination to submit changes in voting rules to the Justice Department for pre-clearance. But he added that establishing uniform standards for voting across all 50 states would not have a partisan tilt one way or another. Until Trump started attacking the validity of postal ballots, Republicans had made use of them in greater numbers than Democrats in many key states. “Ever since then, we know that there are elected officials at the state level who have been working tooth and nail to make it harder to vote, so this is an opportunity to really level the playing field,” he said. “I think these are basic, common-sense solutions to make voting more convenient no matter what party you’re in…. We just had the most the highest turnout election… in the middle of a global pandemic, and that’s because people took steps across the country to make voting more convenient. Now we need to lock those in.”

Today the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) unanimously adopted the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) 2.0. Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) are a set of specifications and requirements against which voting systems can be tested to determine if the systems meet required standards. The standards govern security of the voting systems, functionality and accessibility. The Help America Vote Act mandates that the EAC develop and maintain these requirements. While many states require voting systems to conform to these standards, not all states mandate that compliance.

There is cause for fresh alarm over voting rights in Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott revealed his priorities for the 2021 Texas Legislative session, designating “election integrity” as an emergency item that lawmakers can vote on within the first 60 days of session, potentially bypassing the due deliberation and public input this issue deserves. House Speaker Dade Phelan named Rep. Briscoe Cain as the chair of the House Elections Committee, despite his notoriety for traveling to Pennsylvania to help overthrow the results of the 2020 election. These actions signal an escalating attack on voting rights in a state that is infamous for being among the hardest in the nation to cast a ballot. It feeds and amplifies dangerously false rhetoric designed to undermine trust in our democratic system and prioritize partisan interests over the will of the people — exactly what fueled the failed white supremacist insurrection at the U.S. Capitol just weeks ago.

“It’s supremely ironic that something that gives rural, sparsely populated states so much power already would further kind of entrench minority rule and further make it difficult to access the ballot box,” said Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel for public policy and government affairs at Common Cause, a government watchdog group. Keeping the filibuster in place and not passing sweeping voting reforms would have “profound downstream effects”, Spaulding added. “The American people chose new leaders; they want a responsive government,” he said. “To have essentially a minority of senators exercising veto power over the entire legislative process is just not gonna be tenable.”