Democrats search for a strategy to combat Republican voting laws
A small group of civil rights leaders gathered at Vice President Kamala Harris’ ceremonial office last week, discussing how to combat a wave of new Republican-backed laws restricting voting in several states. Among the ideas floated were continuing political organizing against the proposals, recruiting more corporations to the fight and suing to block the laws.
But the conversation kept circling back to the most effective — and possibly the most difficult — strategy on the table: passing Democrats’ sweeping federal overhaul of elections, the For the People Act, commonly known as HR 1.
“We strongly believe that HR1 is viable and essential if we’re going to move to address some of these concerning laws,” said Janet Murguia, executive director of the Latino group UNIDOS, who attended the meeting.
Seeking a defense
The strategy session highlighted Democrats’ difficult search for a strong defense against laws they say are designed to make it harder to vote. Democrats lack the numbers in many statehouses to block the GOP from passing the tighter rules. Corporate statements and street protests have made Republicans uncomfortable and softened some of the legislation but have not stopped it. And lawsuits amount to a slow-motion game of whack- a- mole that may not be resolved before next year’s midterm elections.
That leaves much riding on a federal rewrite of election and voting laws that could gut many of the GOP-backed state rules. But a Senate hearing on the legislation this week was a display of united GOP opposition, leaving Democrats with no easy path.
“We’re gonna push hard to pass this bill. I do think that there are a number of other things we should be doing at the same time,” Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said Tuesday.
State lawmakers have proposed more than 250 bills that make it harder to vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which promotes wider ballot access. Several Republicancontrolled states, including Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Florida and Montana, have recently enacted laws that add restrictions, such as limiting access to drop boxes for mail ballots or cutting early voting hours. On Tuesday, Arizona enacted a law that requires regular purges of its mail voting list.
Some states have also expanded voting — largely Democratic-controlled ones but also Oklahoma, which added a day of in-person early voting in legislation signed Tuesday.
The Republican push is spurred by former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen — a claim now widely embraced, despite all evidence to contrary, by many in his party. State election officials across the country and judges of both parties found no evidence to support Trump’s assertions, but Republican lawmakers argue the new, tighter rules are needed to restore confidence in the election system.
Lawsuits fly
The laws have triggered more than a dozen lawsuits from Democrats and civil rights groups seeking to block them. The lawsuits generally allege the new laws violate the First, 14th and 15th Amendments of the U. S. Constitution by limiting people’s ability to engage in politics and vote.
Marc Elias, the leading Democratic lawyer in the voting fight, called litigation “not the optimal way to go.”
That’s because lawsuits can take months or years to resolve, and it’s far from clear the courts will be friendly to Democrats’ arguments. Some of the federal appeals courts likely to end up hearing the cases shifted to the right in recent years as Trump named conservative judges.