The GOP-led effort to curb voting rights has accelerated in nearly every state house across the country in what a new report calls a “backlash to 2020’s historic voter turnout.”
In a roundup published Thursday morning, The Brennan Center For Justice highlights the ubiquity and break-neck speed of legislation designed to make voting more difficult:
As of March 24, legislators have introduced 361 bills with restrictive provisions in 47 states. That’s 108 more than the 253 restrictive bills tallied as of February 19, 2021 — a 43 percent increase in little more than a month.
The Brennan Center’s fast-growing tally reveals that Georgia’s controversial new law limiting voting opportunities is a sort of canary in the coal mine. In an effort to slow the anti-voting momentum, activists – including a growing number of Black business leaders – have called for boycotts of companies that fail to condemn the bevy of initiatives. But GOP officials at the state level are pushing forward.
In the early morning hours on Thursday, Texas legislators advanced Senate Bill 7, “which would limit extended early voting hours, prohibit drive-thru voting and make it illegal for local election officials to proactively send applications to vote by mail to voters, even if they qualify,” according to The Texas Tribune.
In Florida, SB-90 “would ban ballot drop boxes, limit assistance with ballot delivery to immediate family members, and shorten the length of time that a person can stay on the absentee voter list,” according to the Brennan Center.
The Brennan Center also highlights eight of the thirty-nine Michigan legislative proposals introduced on the same day that “would establish a photo ID requirement for both in-person and mail voting, make it harder to request a mail ballot by eliminating online requests and barring election officials from affirmatively sending out applications, and limit the use of mail ballot drop boxes.”
In Arizona seven restrictive bills are advancing through the legislature. Two of the bills – AZ HB 2793 & AZ HB 2811 – seek to prohibit policies that the state does not even have, according to the Brennan Center.
The above bills in Georgia, Texas, Florida, Michigan, and Arizona are reflective of an effort to make voting more difficult in swing states Republicans need if they want to take back the White House or either chamber of Congress.
The ACLU asserts that voter suppression laws “make it harder for Americans—particularly black people, the elderly, students, and people with disabilities—to exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot.”
