What next?

Provisions designed to reduce turnout aren’t even “the most alarming” part of Republican legislation, said Max Boot in The Washington Post. Both Georgia and Texas are putting partisans in charge of supervising elections, making it easier to declare fraud and overturn election results. Similar efforts are underway in other “key swing states.” If the House and Senate tip to GOP control in 2022, we could see “a nightmare scenario” in 2024: A GOP-controlled Congress overturning election results “to install Trump or a Trump mini-me in the White House.” That “would spell the end of American democracy.”

The Texas Democrats’ victory is a temporary one, said Paul Weber in the Associated Press.

The voting bill’s passage is all but certain when Gov. Greg Abbott brings the legislature back for a special session—the only question is when it will happen. Democrats are “betting their dramatic flight” from the statehouse “will make Republicans think twice about some provisions,” particularly the ban on early voting Sunday morning. There has been some talk of compromise, but “bare-knuckled Republican governing is a way of life” in Texas and nothing has been promised. Republican legislators have introduced nearly 400 voting bills in 48 states, and many are still pending, said Elise Viebeck in The Washington Post. States “to watch in the coming weeks” include Arizona, where proposed measures would tighten ID requirements for mail-in voters and set earlier postmarking deadlines, and Michigan, where “a stream of proposals” include limiting the use of drop boxes and “empowering partisan election challengers.”

If “democracy is dying,” Democrats need to act like it, said Luke Savage in TheAtlantic.com. H.R. 1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act—which would restore parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act struck down in 2013—will die in the Senate unless Democrats use their 51 votes to eliminate the filibuster. Centrist Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema both insist they won’t take that step, which means that Republicans will determine the election rules in 2022 and 2024. Biden and Democrats must do “whatever it takes to bring holdout senators onside, in private or in public.”