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And so have national advocacy groups. Common Cause runs weeknight phone banks recruiting backers for the bill, and says it has generated 700,000 text messages supporting it. “It’s been a pretty incredible outpouring of support, because we all know what this moment means,” said Izzy Bronstein, the group’s national campaigns manager.

On Jan. 6, a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The attack was fueled by a constant stream of disinformation and hate speech President Donald Trump and other bad actors flooded across social media platforms before, during and after the election. Despite their civic integrity and content moderation policies, platforms have been slow to take action to limit the spread of content designed to disrupt our democracy.

Also Wednesday, Common Cause, a government-accountability watchdog group, called on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate whether Trump and others broke federal laws by communicating with officials in Georgia “in an effort to fraudulently and corruptly overturn 2020 presidential election results in Georgia,” according to a letter sent to Acting U.S. Attorney Kurt Erskine in Atlanta and Merrick Garland, who was confirmed Wednesday by the Senate to serve as U.S. Attorney General.

Paul S. Ryan, vice president for litigation and policy at Common Cause, said it became apparent months ago that Trump's interest came first. After losing the election last November, Trump amassed millions of dollars for his own political action committee as he promoted falsehoods about election fraud -- instead of plowing funds into twin US Senate races in Georgia. In the end, the Republicans lost the runoffs in early January, along with their majority in the chamber. "The party needed the money in Georgia in December," Ryan said. "He diverted it with his lies about the election." "He's all about himself. He's not about building or supporting the party."

"We're talking purple states, where legislatures feel a little bit of voter suppression can guarantee them an election," Sylvia Albert, director of the voting and elections program at Common Cause, told Newsweek. "We're talking states with Republican trifectas for the most part, because while there might be some concern over what's happening in Michigan, we feel that the Democratic governor would veto bills that would infringe on people's right to vote." "The challenge that we're seeing is an overhaul of our election system without critical foresight into what the impact could be," Aunna Dennis, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, told Newsweek. "Right now, we see that Republicans are trying to find a solution to a problem that literally does not exist here."