Salon: GOP using new laws to drive out local Democratic election officials — and not just in Georgia

Congressional Democrats have introduced a bill aimed at preventing “election subversion” after Republican state lawmakers wasted no time in using newly passed voting laws to seize control of local elections, replacing existing officials with their own appointees.

Democrats have rallied around the For The People Act, also known as HR 1 and S 1, a sweeping voting rights bill that would codify voter protections, create new election administration standards and crack down on dark money in politics. But while the bill could prevent state crackdowns on mail-in voting, driven by false claims about their security by former President Donald Trump and his allies, it would do nothing about the wide range of new state laws that strip power from election officials and will make it easier to overturn future elections.

A group of Senate and House Democrats this week introduced the Preventing Election Subversion Act, aimed at protecting election officials from political pressure by barring unjust removal of local election officials, making it a federal crime to intimidate election workers and restricting poll watchers. …

Democrats worry that the removal of Black election officials could further disenfranchise voters of color and that if the new laws had been in place last year Republicans could have found legal avenues to overturn legitimate election results, according to the Times article.

“What’s driving these efforts is anti-democratic sentiment,” Sylvia Albert, executive director of the nonprofit good government group Common Cause, said in an interview with Salon. “These individuals attempted to overturn an election and they were unable to do so. So they are now attempting to change the rules so that next time they can overturn the will of the people.”

While the obvious primary concern is that Republican partisans will now have methods they could use to overturn an election simply because they don’t like the outcome, replacing local election officials could have more insidious effects in election administration.

Depending on the state, “these individuals might now have the power to close polling stations or limit voting machine access,” Albert warned. “This is part and parcel of a very anti-democratic push to make sure that people who vote against you don’t get to vote and if they accidentally do, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll throw out their votes.'”