By Jonathan Weisman
June 16, 2021
Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, showing some flexibility on major voting rights legislation, indicated on Wednesday that he opposed the blanket prohibition on all voter identification laws in the Senate Democrats’ current version and would not support public financing of elections.
But he expressed support for statutory expansions of early and mail-in voting that would turn back dozens of voting restriction laws that have passed or are nearing passage in Republican legislatures in key states like Georgia, Florida and Texas.
He also suggested privately this week that he was working to alleviate pressure to end the legislative filibuster — a move that he has publicly promised to oppose — even though not even his version of a voting rights measure could overcome a Republican blockade.
For weeks, fellow Democrats have complained that Mr. Manchin would not say precisely what he needed — or needed to jettison — to get his signature as the 50th co-sponsor of the voting legislation, also known as S1. Instead, he simply said that he wanted a Republican to back the bill, thus making it bipartisan.
On Wednesday, he responded to that criticism with an exhaustive list of provisions for a voting rights, ethics and campaign finance bill that he could support. For Democrats, there was much to like. Mr. Manchin said he wanted Election Day to be a public holiday. He wants at least 15 consecutive days of early voting, including two weekends; a ban on partisan gerrymandering and the use of computer models to tailor House districts to a candidate’s political party; and a requirement that states send mail-in absentee ballots to eligible voters if they are unable to vote in person, among several other provisions to expand ballot access.
His provision would scale back the For the People Act’s mandated “no excuse” absentee ballot access, but remains broad.
On ethics, he would maintain many of S1’s efforts to address the abuses of President Donald J. Trump, including the mandatory release of presidential and vice-presidential tax returns, and the divestiture of all presidential business and financial interests within 30 days of taking office.
His campaign finance changes are not as far-reaching as those in the Democratic bill, but he would mandate disclosure of donors to “dark money” political committees and stronger rules to expose who is paying for social media advertising.
Together, Mr. Manchin’s proposals would make a significant bill, perhaps the biggest expansion of voting rights since passage of the Voting Rights Act.
“A good voting bill has to be accessible. It has to be fair and it has to be secure,” the senator told reporters on Wednesday.
But as long as 10 Republicans would be needed to break a filibuster, the Manchin version would have no chance of passage.
In a Zoom call reported by The Intercept, Mr. Manchin told the affluent financial supporters of the centrist group No Labels that he still hoped to preserve the filibuster, but that he needed some Republicans to help him prove that bipartisanship could still survive the toxic atmosphere in Congress.
Focusing on the filibuster of a bill to create a bipartisan commission to examine the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, he told the group he needed help persuading three more Senate Republicans to join Democrats to allow it to move forward. He appeared to suggest that some of the business people on the call dangle job opportunities before Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, who is retiring, to entice him to change his position.
“Roy Blunt is a great, just a good friend of mine, a great guy,” Mr. Manchin was heard saying. “Roy is retiring. If some of you all who might be working with Roy in his next life could tell him, ‘That’d be nice and it’d help our country,’ that would be very good to get him to change his vote. And we’re going to have another vote on this thing. That’ll give me one more shot at it.”
Jonathan Weisman is a congressional correspondent, veteran Washington journalist, and author of the novel “No. 4 Imperial Lane” and the nonfiction book “(((Semitism))): Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump.” His career in journalism stretches back 30 years.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/us/p ... ights.html
Manchin presents his wish list for a voting rights and ethics bill.
Re: Manchin presents his wish list for a voting rights and ethics bill.
Joe Manchin and the Magic 50th Vote for Democrats’ Voting Rights Bill
Democrats know that their election overhaul has no chance as long as the filibuster exists, but they are eager to show that all that stands in its way are Republicans.
By Carl Hulse
June 17, 2021
Democrats and progressive activists who have been working for months on a sweeping voting rights bill quickly embraced on Thursday a new, far narrower plan suddenly put forward by Senator Joe Manchin III, their party’s sole holdout on the issue.
Their decision to do so did nothing to improve the chances that the legislation could get through the Senate, but it reflected another significant goal for Democrats: uniting the party around what it has billed as its highest priority and showing that, were it not for Republican opposition and the filibuster, the elections overhaul would become law.
Much to the growing consternation of Senate Republicans, the alternative ideas put forward by Mr. Manchin — a centrist from West Virginia and the only Democrat who has refused to support what is known as S. 1 — quickly gained traction with progressive Democrats and activists, most notably Stacey Abrams, the voting rights champion in Georgia.
On Thursday, she praised his plan, even though it is more limited in scope than the original Democratic measure. The proposal would make Election Day a holiday, require 15 days of early voting and ban partisan gerrymandering, among other steps.
“What Senator Manchin is putting forward are some basic building blocks that we need to ensure that democracy is accessible, no matter your geography,” Ms. Abrams, a former candidate for Georgia governor, said on CNN.
Given her national standing on the issue, her endorsement was a huge boost for Mr. Manchin’s approach — though it only hardened Republican opposition to a measure they have made clear that they intend to block at all costs. They see Ms. Abrams as both a lightning rod with conservatives and a real threat on election policy, whose efforts helped President Biden win her state’s electoral votes and hand Democrats two crucial Georgia Senate seats that gave them the majority.
Senator Roy Blunt, the Missouri Republican who is a leading opponent of the Democratic bill, said at a news conference on Thursday that her enthusiasm for Mr. Manchin’s proposal transformed it into the Abrams alternative.
But as far as Senate Democrats are concerned, it is Mr. Manchin whose support is most important. The reason is the magic number of 50.
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, has hesitated to bring top Democratic priorities to the floor this year without the backing of all 50 senators. Given the Senate’s even partisan split, it takes every Democrat and Democratic-leaning independent, plus the tiebreaking power of Vice President Kamala Harris, to guarantee a majority. Then, if Republicans mount a filibuster, Democrats can point out that they had the votes to approve legislation, bolstering their argument that the Senate rules are being abused by Republicans and unfairly impeding highly popular policy changes.
With a test vote on the measure looming next week, Mr. Manchin’s opposition to the voting rights measure threatened to be a major embarrassment for Democrats. Republicans were eager to pounce and proclaim that with Mr. Manchin on their side of the vote tally, it was the opposition to the bill that was bipartisan, not the legislation itself.
So if Mr. Manchin could be brought on board by granting him some pride of authorship on provisions Democrats deemed reasonable and worthwhile, they appeared more than ready to agree. As Mr. Schumer took procedural steps to set up a vote on the elections bill as early as Tuesday, a spokesman was quick to note that the measure being put on the floor could “act as the vehicle for the voting rights legislation being discussed with Senator Manchin.”
With Mr. Manchin’s support, Democrats could then claim at least a symbolic victory, if not a legislative one, when Republicans block the bill through a filibuster.
And a filibuster there will be. With Mr. Manchin suddenly within reach for the Democrats, Republicans on Thursday escalated their attacks on the voting rights bill, portraying it as a power-grabbing abomination. They were not impressed by the West Virginian’s tinkering.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, assailed Mr. Manchin’s approach, pointedly noting in a statement that it was backed by Ms. Abrams.
“It still retains S. 1’s rotten core,” he said.
Though some Republicans had previously expressed willingness to talk to Mr. Manchin about a potential elections compromise, it seemed impossible to imagine even a few — let alone 10 — of them siding with Democrats on a measure that was eliciting such wrath. Mr. Blunt indicated there was no conceivable Democratic bill he could support.
In a show of the depth of the party’s opposition and outrage, 15 other Republicans joined Mr. McConnell at a news conference on Thursday. One by one, they impugned the measure and the Democrats for backing it, vowing to defeat it.
“The mother of all power grabs is going to fail,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who like most of his colleagues denounced the legislation as a transparent attempt by Democrats to gain advantage in elections and permanently install themselves in power.
The Battle Over Voting Rights
After former President Donald J. Trump returned in recent months to making false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, Republican lawmakers in many states have marched ahead to pass laws making it harder to vote and change how elections are run, frustrating Democrats and even some election officials in their own party.
“It is radical,” said Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican. “It is extreme. It is dangerous. It is scary.”
All year long, Mr. McConnell has privately urged Senate Republicans to “take care of Joe,” according to people who have heard him, to help keep Mr. Manchin — his party’s leading opponent of eliminating the filibuster — on board against weakening the procedural tool. But that solicitude evidently extends only so far.
Mr. McConnell angered Mr. Manchin by employing the filibuster against the proposal to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the Capitol riot. Now, he is promising to use the tactic against what could become Mr. Manchin’s voting measure.
For Democrats who only a week ago had been down over Mr. Manchin’s declared opposition to S. 1, his sudden involvement in shaping a compromise was a very welcome turn of events.
“I’ve been so impressed by the work that Senator Manchin has put into this the last couple of weeks,” Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon and a chief author of S. 1, told reporters on a conference call organized by progressive activists backing the legislation. “He is deeply engaged.”
With Democrats willing to incorporate Mr. Manchin's ideas into the legislation and excise parts to which he objects, they now hope that he will join his colleagues next week in support of a procedural vote to open debate on an elections bill. Republicans are on record saying they do not want the bill to see a minute of floor time and intend to block even that initial step.
Democrats will then need to decide how to proceed. While Mr. Manchin has expressed new openness to backing a broad elections bill, he has also said repeatedly that he will never vote to change the filibuster rules. That presents a problem, since no elections bill is likely to escape a Republican filibuster, leaving that measure and others essentially dead at the hands of the procedural tactic.
The hope of top Democrats and activists is that the Republican opposition to the election measure, the Capitol riot commission and a blockaded pay equity bill then helps persuade Mr. Manchin and a handful of other reluctant Democrats that the party’s agenda and possibly its electoral future are imperiled by the filibuster. And they want to be able to note that the stalled bills all earned a majority of 50 votes or more.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/17/us/p ... e=Homepage
Democrats know that their election overhaul has no chance as long as the filibuster exists, but they are eager to show that all that stands in its way are Republicans.
By Carl Hulse
June 17, 2021
Democrats and progressive activists who have been working for months on a sweeping voting rights bill quickly embraced on Thursday a new, far narrower plan suddenly put forward by Senator Joe Manchin III, their party’s sole holdout on the issue.
Their decision to do so did nothing to improve the chances that the legislation could get through the Senate, but it reflected another significant goal for Democrats: uniting the party around what it has billed as its highest priority and showing that, were it not for Republican opposition and the filibuster, the elections overhaul would become law.
Much to the growing consternation of Senate Republicans, the alternative ideas put forward by Mr. Manchin — a centrist from West Virginia and the only Democrat who has refused to support what is known as S. 1 — quickly gained traction with progressive Democrats and activists, most notably Stacey Abrams, the voting rights champion in Georgia.
On Thursday, she praised his plan, even though it is more limited in scope than the original Democratic measure. The proposal would make Election Day a holiday, require 15 days of early voting and ban partisan gerrymandering, among other steps.
“What Senator Manchin is putting forward are some basic building blocks that we need to ensure that democracy is accessible, no matter your geography,” Ms. Abrams, a former candidate for Georgia governor, said on CNN.
Given her national standing on the issue, her endorsement was a huge boost for Mr. Manchin’s approach — though it only hardened Republican opposition to a measure they have made clear that they intend to block at all costs. They see Ms. Abrams as both a lightning rod with conservatives and a real threat on election policy, whose efforts helped President Biden win her state’s electoral votes and hand Democrats two crucial Georgia Senate seats that gave them the majority.
Senator Roy Blunt, the Missouri Republican who is a leading opponent of the Democratic bill, said at a news conference on Thursday that her enthusiasm for Mr. Manchin’s proposal transformed it into the Abrams alternative.
But as far as Senate Democrats are concerned, it is Mr. Manchin whose support is most important. The reason is the magic number of 50.
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, has hesitated to bring top Democratic priorities to the floor this year without the backing of all 50 senators. Given the Senate’s even partisan split, it takes every Democrat and Democratic-leaning independent, plus the tiebreaking power of Vice President Kamala Harris, to guarantee a majority. Then, if Republicans mount a filibuster, Democrats can point out that they had the votes to approve legislation, bolstering their argument that the Senate rules are being abused by Republicans and unfairly impeding highly popular policy changes.
With a test vote on the measure looming next week, Mr. Manchin’s opposition to the voting rights measure threatened to be a major embarrassment for Democrats. Republicans were eager to pounce and proclaim that with Mr. Manchin on their side of the vote tally, it was the opposition to the bill that was bipartisan, not the legislation itself.
So if Mr. Manchin could be brought on board by granting him some pride of authorship on provisions Democrats deemed reasonable and worthwhile, they appeared more than ready to agree. As Mr. Schumer took procedural steps to set up a vote on the elections bill as early as Tuesday, a spokesman was quick to note that the measure being put on the floor could “act as the vehicle for the voting rights legislation being discussed with Senator Manchin.”
With Mr. Manchin’s support, Democrats could then claim at least a symbolic victory, if not a legislative one, when Republicans block the bill through a filibuster.
And a filibuster there will be. With Mr. Manchin suddenly within reach for the Democrats, Republicans on Thursday escalated their attacks on the voting rights bill, portraying it as a power-grabbing abomination. They were not impressed by the West Virginian’s tinkering.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, assailed Mr. Manchin’s approach, pointedly noting in a statement that it was backed by Ms. Abrams.
“It still retains S. 1’s rotten core,” he said.
Though some Republicans had previously expressed willingness to talk to Mr. Manchin about a potential elections compromise, it seemed impossible to imagine even a few — let alone 10 — of them siding with Democrats on a measure that was eliciting such wrath. Mr. Blunt indicated there was no conceivable Democratic bill he could support.
In a show of the depth of the party’s opposition and outrage, 15 other Republicans joined Mr. McConnell at a news conference on Thursday. One by one, they impugned the measure and the Democrats for backing it, vowing to defeat it.
“The mother of all power grabs is going to fail,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who like most of his colleagues denounced the legislation as a transparent attempt by Democrats to gain advantage in elections and permanently install themselves in power.
The Battle Over Voting Rights
After former President Donald J. Trump returned in recent months to making false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, Republican lawmakers in many states have marched ahead to pass laws making it harder to vote and change how elections are run, frustrating Democrats and even some election officials in their own party.
“It is radical,” said Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican. “It is extreme. It is dangerous. It is scary.”
All year long, Mr. McConnell has privately urged Senate Republicans to “take care of Joe,” according to people who have heard him, to help keep Mr. Manchin — his party’s leading opponent of eliminating the filibuster — on board against weakening the procedural tool. But that solicitude evidently extends only so far.
Mr. McConnell angered Mr. Manchin by employing the filibuster against the proposal to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the Capitol riot. Now, he is promising to use the tactic against what could become Mr. Manchin’s voting measure.
For Democrats who only a week ago had been down over Mr. Manchin’s declared opposition to S. 1, his sudden involvement in shaping a compromise was a very welcome turn of events.
“I’ve been so impressed by the work that Senator Manchin has put into this the last couple of weeks,” Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon and a chief author of S. 1, told reporters on a conference call organized by progressive activists backing the legislation. “He is deeply engaged.”
With Democrats willing to incorporate Mr. Manchin's ideas into the legislation and excise parts to which he objects, they now hope that he will join his colleagues next week in support of a procedural vote to open debate on an elections bill. Republicans are on record saying they do not want the bill to see a minute of floor time and intend to block even that initial step.
Democrats will then need to decide how to proceed. While Mr. Manchin has expressed new openness to backing a broad elections bill, he has also said repeatedly that he will never vote to change the filibuster rules. That presents a problem, since no elections bill is likely to escape a Republican filibuster, leaving that measure and others essentially dead at the hands of the procedural tactic.
The hope of top Democrats and activists is that the Republican opposition to the election measure, the Capitol riot commission and a blockaded pay equity bill then helps persuade Mr. Manchin and a handful of other reluctant Democrats that the party’s agenda and possibly its electoral future are imperiled by the filibuster. And they want to be able to note that the stalled bills all earned a majority of 50 votes or more.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/17/us/p ... e=Homepage
Re: Manchin presents his wish list for a voting rights and ethics bill.
Blount and McConnell basically insulted Manchin.
And played the race card, typical GOP.
And played the race card, typical GOP.
Re: Manchin presents his wish list for a voting rights and ethics bill.
Yep. This is all deeply personal, fueled by Republican arrogance and intransigence.
They want to rule us, not govern us. Manchin needs to get this through his dense cranium before it's too late and he goes down with the rest of us Democrats.
Re: Manchin presents his wish list for a voting rights and ethics bill.
TrumpReich:
NYT 6/19
LaGRANGE, Ga. — Lonnie Hollis has been a member of the Troup County election board in West Georgia since 2013. A Democrat and one of two Black women on the board, she has advocated Sunday voting, helped voters on Election Days and pushed for a new precinct location at a Black church in a nearby town.
But this year, Ms. Hollis will be removed from the board, the result of a local election law signed by Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican. Previously, election board members were selected by both political parties, county commissioners and the three biggest municipalities in Troup County. Now, the G.O.P.-controlled county commission has the sole authority to restructure the board and appoint all the new members.
“I speak out and I know the laws,” Ms. Hollis said in an interview. “The bottom line is they don’t like people that have some type of intelligence and know what they’re doing, because they know they can’t influence them.”
Ms. Hollis is not alone. Across Georgia, members of at least 10 county election boards have been removed, had their position eliminated or are likely to be kicked off through local ordinances or new laws passed by the state legislature. At least five are people of color and most are Democrats — though some are Republicans — and they will most likely all be replaced by Republicans.
Ms. Hollis and local officials like her have been some of the earliest casualties as Republican-led legislatures mount an expansive takeover of election administration in a raft of new voting bills this year.
G.O.P. lawmakers have also stripped secretaries of state of their power, asserted more control over state election boards, made it easier to overturn election results, and pursued several partisan audits and inspections of 2020 results.
Republican state lawmakers have introduced at least 216 bills in 41 states to give legislatures more power over elections officials, according to the States United Democracy Center, a new bipartisan organization that aims to protect democratic norms. Of those, 24 have been enacted into law across 14 states.
G.O.P. lawmakers in Georgia say the new measures are meant to improve the performance of local boards, and reduce the influence of the political parties. But the laws allow Republicans to remove local officials they don’t like, and because several of them have been Black Democrats, voting rights groups fear that these are further attempts to disenfranchise voters of color.
The maneuvers risk eroding some of the core checks that stood as a bulwark against former President Donald J. Trump as he sought to subvert the 2020 election results. Had these bills been in place during the aftermath of the election, Democrats say, they would have significantly added to the turmoil Mr. Trump and his allies wrought by trying to overturn the outcome. They worry that proponents of Mr. Trump’s conspiracy theories will soon have much greater control over the levers of the American elections system.
“It’s a thinly veiled attempt to wrest control from officials who oversaw one of the most secure elections in our history and put it in the hands of bad actors,” said Jena Griswold, the chairwoman of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State and the current Colorado secretary of state. “The risk is the destruction of democracy.”
Officials like Ms. Hollis are responsible for decisions like selecting drop box and precinct locations, sending out voter notices, establishing early voting hours and certifying elections. But the new laws are targeting high-level state officials as well, in particular secretaries of state — both Republican and Democratic — who stood up to Mr. Trump and his allies last year.
Republicans in Arizona have introduced a bill that would largely strip Katie Hobbs, the Democratic secretary of state, of her authority over election lawsuits, and then expire when she leaves office. And they have introduced another bill that would give the Legislature more power over setting the guidelines for election administration, a major task currently carried out by the secretary of state.
Had Republican voting bills been in place during the aftermath of the election, Democrats and voting rights groups say, they would have significantly added to the turmoil Mr. Trump and his allies wrought by trying to overturn the results.
Under Georgia’s new voting law, Republicans significantly weakened the secretary of state’s office after Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who is the current secretary, rebuffed Mr. Trump’s demands to “find” votes. They removed the secretary of state as the chair of the state election board and relieved the office of its voting authority on the board.
Kansas Republicans in May overrode a veto from Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, to enact laws stripping the governor of the power to modify election laws and prohibiting the secretary of state, a Republican who repeatedly vouched for the security of voting by mail, from settling election-related lawsuits without the Legislature’s consent.
And more Republicans who cling to Mr. Trump’s election lies are running for secretary of state, putting a critical office within reach of conspiracy theorists. In Georgia, Representative Jody Hice, a Republican who voted against certifying President Biden’s victory, is running against Mr. Raffensperger. Republican candidates with similar views are running for secretary of state in Nevada, Arizona and Michigan.
“In virtually every state, every election administrator is going to feel like they’re under the magnifying glass,” said Victoria Bassetti, a senior adviser to the States United Democracy Center.
More immediately, it is local election officials at the county and municipal level who are being either removed or stripped of their power.
In Arkansas, Republicans were stung last year when Jim Sorvillo, a three-term state representative from Little Rock, lost re-election by 24 votes to Ashley Hudson, a Democrat and local lawyer. Elections officials in Pulaski County, which includes Little Rock, were later found to have accidentally tabulated 327 absentee ballots during the vote-counting process, 27 of which came from the district.
Mr. Sorvillo filed multiple lawsuits aiming to stop Ms. Hudson from being seated, and all were rejected. The Republican caucus considered refusing to seat Ms. Hudson, then ultimately voted to accept her.
But last month, Arkansas Republicans wrote new legislation that allows a state board of election commissioners — composed of six Republicans and one Democrat — to investigate and “institute corrective action” on a wide variety of issues at every stage of the voting process, from registration to the casting and counting of ballots to the certification of elections. The law applies to all counties, but it is widely believed to be aimed at Pulaski, one of the few in the state that favor Democrats.
The author of the legislation, State Representative Mark Lowery, a Republican from a suburb of Little Rock, said it was necessary to remove election power from the local authorities, who in Pulaski County are Democrats, because otherwise Republicans could not get a fair shake.
“Without this legislation, the only entity you could have referred impropriety to is the prosecuting attorney, who is a Democrat, and possibly not had anything done,” Mr. Lowery said in an interview. “This gives another level of investigative authority to a board that is commissioned by the state to oversee elections.”
Asked about last year’s election, Mr. Lowery said, “I do believe Donald Trump was elected president.”
A separate new Arkansas law allows a state board to “take over and conduct elections” in a county if a committee of the legislature determines that there are questions about the “appearance of an equal, free and impartial election.”
In Georgia, the legislature passed a unique law for some counties. For Troup County, State Representative Randy Nix, a Republican, said he had introduced the bill that restructured the county election board — and will remove Ms. Hollis — only after it was requested by county commissioners. He said he was not worried that the commission, a partisan body with four Republicans and one Democrat, could exert influence over elections.
“The commissioners are all elected officials and will face the voters to answer for their actions,” Mr. Nix said in an email.
Eric Mosley, the county manager for Troup County, which Mr. Trump carried by 22 points, said that the decision to ask Mr. Nix for the bill was meant to make the board more bipartisan. It was unanimously supported by the commission.
“We felt that removing both the Republican and Democratic representation and just truly choose members of the community that invest hard to serve those community members was the true intent of the board,” Mr. Mosley said. “Our goal is to create both political and racial diversity on the board.”
In Morgan County, east of Atlanta, Helen Butler has been one of the state’s most prominent Democratic voices on voting rights and election administration. A member of the county board of elections in a rural, Republican county, she also runs the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, a group dedicated to protecting the voting rights of Black Americans and increasing their civic engagement.
Helen Butler, who has been one of the state’s most prominent voices on voting rights and election administration in Atlanta, on Saturday. Ms. Butler will be removed from the county board at the end of the month.But Ms. Butler will be removed from the county board at the end of the month, after Mr. Kemp signed a local bill that ended the ability of political parties to appoint members.
“I think it’s all a part of the ploy for the takeover of local boards of elections that the state legislature has put in place,” Ms. Butler said. “It is them saying that they have the right to say whether an election official is doing it right, when in fact they don’t work in the day to day and don’t understand the process themselves.”
It’s not just Democrats who are being removed. In DeKalb County, the state’s fourth-largest, Republicans chose not to renominate Baoky Vu to the election board after more than 12 years in the position. Mr. Vu, a Republican, had joined with Democrats in a letter opposing an election-related bill that eventually failed to pass.
To replace Mr. Vu, Republicans nominated Paul Maner, a well-known local conservative with a history of false statements, including an insinuation that the son of a Georgia congresswoman was killed in “a drug deal gone bad.”
Back in LaGrange, Ms. Hollis is trying to do as much as she can in the time she has left on the board. The extra precinct in nearby Hogansville, where the population is roughly 50 percent Black, is a top priority. While its population is only about 3,000, the town is bifurcated by a rail line, and Ms. Hollis said that sometimes it can take an exceedingly long time for a line of freight cars to clear, which is problematic on Election Days.
“We’ve been working on this for over a year,” Ms. Hollis said, saying Republicans had thrown up procedural hurdles to block the process. But she was undeterred.
“I’m not going to sit there and wait for you to tell me what it is that I should do for the voters there,” she said. “I’m going to do the right thing.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/19/us/p ... e=Homepage
NYT 6/19
LaGRANGE, Ga. — Lonnie Hollis has been a member of the Troup County election board in West Georgia since 2013. A Democrat and one of two Black women on the board, she has advocated Sunday voting, helped voters on Election Days and pushed for a new precinct location at a Black church in a nearby town.
But this year, Ms. Hollis will be removed from the board, the result of a local election law signed by Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican. Previously, election board members were selected by both political parties, county commissioners and the three biggest municipalities in Troup County. Now, the G.O.P.-controlled county commission has the sole authority to restructure the board and appoint all the new members.
“I speak out and I know the laws,” Ms. Hollis said in an interview. “The bottom line is they don’t like people that have some type of intelligence and know what they’re doing, because they know they can’t influence them.”
Ms. Hollis is not alone. Across Georgia, members of at least 10 county election boards have been removed, had their position eliminated or are likely to be kicked off through local ordinances or new laws passed by the state legislature. At least five are people of color and most are Democrats — though some are Republicans — and they will most likely all be replaced by Republicans.
Ms. Hollis and local officials like her have been some of the earliest casualties as Republican-led legislatures mount an expansive takeover of election administration in a raft of new voting bills this year.
G.O.P. lawmakers have also stripped secretaries of state of their power, asserted more control over state election boards, made it easier to overturn election results, and pursued several partisan audits and inspections of 2020 results.
Republican state lawmakers have introduced at least 216 bills in 41 states to give legislatures more power over elections officials, according to the States United Democracy Center, a new bipartisan organization that aims to protect democratic norms. Of those, 24 have been enacted into law across 14 states.
G.O.P. lawmakers in Georgia say the new measures are meant to improve the performance of local boards, and reduce the influence of the political parties. But the laws allow Republicans to remove local officials they don’t like, and because several of them have been Black Democrats, voting rights groups fear that these are further attempts to disenfranchise voters of color.
The maneuvers risk eroding some of the core checks that stood as a bulwark against former President Donald J. Trump as he sought to subvert the 2020 election results. Had these bills been in place during the aftermath of the election, Democrats say, they would have significantly added to the turmoil Mr. Trump and his allies wrought by trying to overturn the outcome. They worry that proponents of Mr. Trump’s conspiracy theories will soon have much greater control over the levers of the American elections system.
“It’s a thinly veiled attempt to wrest control from officials who oversaw one of the most secure elections in our history and put it in the hands of bad actors,” said Jena Griswold, the chairwoman of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State and the current Colorado secretary of state. “The risk is the destruction of democracy.”
Officials like Ms. Hollis are responsible for decisions like selecting drop box and precinct locations, sending out voter notices, establishing early voting hours and certifying elections. But the new laws are targeting high-level state officials as well, in particular secretaries of state — both Republican and Democratic — who stood up to Mr. Trump and his allies last year.
Republicans in Arizona have introduced a bill that would largely strip Katie Hobbs, the Democratic secretary of state, of her authority over election lawsuits, and then expire when she leaves office. And they have introduced another bill that would give the Legislature more power over setting the guidelines for election administration, a major task currently carried out by the secretary of state.
Had Republican voting bills been in place during the aftermath of the election, Democrats and voting rights groups say, they would have significantly added to the turmoil Mr. Trump and his allies wrought by trying to overturn the results.
Under Georgia’s new voting law, Republicans significantly weakened the secretary of state’s office after Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who is the current secretary, rebuffed Mr. Trump’s demands to “find” votes. They removed the secretary of state as the chair of the state election board and relieved the office of its voting authority on the board.
Kansas Republicans in May overrode a veto from Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, to enact laws stripping the governor of the power to modify election laws and prohibiting the secretary of state, a Republican who repeatedly vouched for the security of voting by mail, from settling election-related lawsuits without the Legislature’s consent.
And more Republicans who cling to Mr. Trump’s election lies are running for secretary of state, putting a critical office within reach of conspiracy theorists. In Georgia, Representative Jody Hice, a Republican who voted against certifying President Biden’s victory, is running against Mr. Raffensperger. Republican candidates with similar views are running for secretary of state in Nevada, Arizona and Michigan.
“In virtually every state, every election administrator is going to feel like they’re under the magnifying glass,” said Victoria Bassetti, a senior adviser to the States United Democracy Center.
More immediately, it is local election officials at the county and municipal level who are being either removed or stripped of their power.
In Arkansas, Republicans were stung last year when Jim Sorvillo, a three-term state representative from Little Rock, lost re-election by 24 votes to Ashley Hudson, a Democrat and local lawyer. Elections officials in Pulaski County, which includes Little Rock, were later found to have accidentally tabulated 327 absentee ballots during the vote-counting process, 27 of which came from the district.
Mr. Sorvillo filed multiple lawsuits aiming to stop Ms. Hudson from being seated, and all were rejected. The Republican caucus considered refusing to seat Ms. Hudson, then ultimately voted to accept her.
But last month, Arkansas Republicans wrote new legislation that allows a state board of election commissioners — composed of six Republicans and one Democrat — to investigate and “institute corrective action” on a wide variety of issues at every stage of the voting process, from registration to the casting and counting of ballots to the certification of elections. The law applies to all counties, but it is widely believed to be aimed at Pulaski, one of the few in the state that favor Democrats.
The author of the legislation, State Representative Mark Lowery, a Republican from a suburb of Little Rock, said it was necessary to remove election power from the local authorities, who in Pulaski County are Democrats, because otherwise Republicans could not get a fair shake.
“Without this legislation, the only entity you could have referred impropriety to is the prosecuting attorney, who is a Democrat, and possibly not had anything done,” Mr. Lowery said in an interview. “This gives another level of investigative authority to a board that is commissioned by the state to oversee elections.”
Asked about last year’s election, Mr. Lowery said, “I do believe Donald Trump was elected president.”
A separate new Arkansas law allows a state board to “take over and conduct elections” in a county if a committee of the legislature determines that there are questions about the “appearance of an equal, free and impartial election.”
In Georgia, the legislature passed a unique law for some counties. For Troup County, State Representative Randy Nix, a Republican, said he had introduced the bill that restructured the county election board — and will remove Ms. Hollis — only after it was requested by county commissioners. He said he was not worried that the commission, a partisan body with four Republicans and one Democrat, could exert influence over elections.
“The commissioners are all elected officials and will face the voters to answer for their actions,” Mr. Nix said in an email.
Eric Mosley, the county manager for Troup County, which Mr. Trump carried by 22 points, said that the decision to ask Mr. Nix for the bill was meant to make the board more bipartisan. It was unanimously supported by the commission.
“We felt that removing both the Republican and Democratic representation and just truly choose members of the community that invest hard to serve those community members was the true intent of the board,” Mr. Mosley said. “Our goal is to create both political and racial diversity on the board.”
In Morgan County, east of Atlanta, Helen Butler has been one of the state’s most prominent Democratic voices on voting rights and election administration. A member of the county board of elections in a rural, Republican county, she also runs the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, a group dedicated to protecting the voting rights of Black Americans and increasing their civic engagement.
Helen Butler, who has been one of the state’s most prominent voices on voting rights and election administration in Atlanta, on Saturday. Ms. Butler will be removed from the county board at the end of the month.But Ms. Butler will be removed from the county board at the end of the month, after Mr. Kemp signed a local bill that ended the ability of political parties to appoint members.
“I think it’s all a part of the ploy for the takeover of local boards of elections that the state legislature has put in place,” Ms. Butler said. “It is them saying that they have the right to say whether an election official is doing it right, when in fact they don’t work in the day to day and don’t understand the process themselves.”
It’s not just Democrats who are being removed. In DeKalb County, the state’s fourth-largest, Republicans chose not to renominate Baoky Vu to the election board after more than 12 years in the position. Mr. Vu, a Republican, had joined with Democrats in a letter opposing an election-related bill that eventually failed to pass.
To replace Mr. Vu, Republicans nominated Paul Maner, a well-known local conservative with a history of false statements, including an insinuation that the son of a Georgia congresswoman was killed in “a drug deal gone bad.”
Back in LaGrange, Ms. Hollis is trying to do as much as she can in the time she has left on the board. The extra precinct in nearby Hogansville, where the population is roughly 50 percent Black, is a top priority. While its population is only about 3,000, the town is bifurcated by a rail line, and Ms. Hollis said that sometimes it can take an exceedingly long time for a line of freight cars to clear, which is problematic on Election Days.
“We’ve been working on this for over a year,” Ms. Hollis said, saying Republicans had thrown up procedural hurdles to block the process. But she was undeterred.
“I’m not going to sit there and wait for you to tell me what it is that I should do for the voters there,” she said. “I’m going to do the right thing.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/19/us/p ... e=Homepage
Re: Manchin presents his wish list for a voting rights and ethics bill.
I just posted this in your "TrumpReich" thread about an hour ago, Steve!
Still, I'm always glad to know we agree on what's important!
Re: Manchin presents his wish list for a voting rights and ethics bill.
Democrats Unite Behind Voting Rights Bill as It Faces a Senate Roadblock
With Republicans set to filibuster, Democrats are focusing on staying unified in the face of defeat. But the path ahead for the legislation is murky at best.
By Nicholas Fandos
June 21, 2021
WASHINGTON — A push by Democrats to enact the most expansive voting rights legislation in generations is set to collapse in the Senate on Tuesday, when Republicans are expected to use a filibuster to block a measure that President Biden and his allies in Congress have called a vital step to protect democracy.
Despite solid Republican opposition, Democrats plan to bring the voting rights fight to a head on the Senate floor, by calling a test vote to try to advance the broad federal elections overhaul, known as the For the People Act. As Republican-led states rush to enact restrictive new voting laws, Democrats have presented the legislation as the party’s best chance to undo them, expand ballot access from coast to coast and limit the effect of special interests on the political process.
“We can argue what should be done to protect voting rights and safeguard our democracy, but don’t you think we should be able to debate the issue?” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said on Monday in a last-ditch appeal to Republicans to let the debate proceed.
But in the hours before the vote, Democrats conceded they were facing defeat — at least for now. Even if they succeeded in securing the votes of all 50 senators in the Democratic caucus, party leaders were expected to fall well short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster and begin debating the bill.
Instead, they focused on Monday on rallying the party around a more limited alternative proposed by Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, who had been the only Democratic holdout on the voting rights measure. Both the White House and former President Barack Obama said his suggestions would address many of the most urgent issues. President Biden and Mr. Manchin also spoke directly about the need to find a legislative solution, according to an official familiar with their conversation who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.
Leaders hope that, given the support for his proposal, Mr. Manchin will vote with the rest of the Senate’s Democrats and Democratic-aligned independents to allow the debate to proceed, allowing his party to present a unified front on the bill.
“What we are measuring, I think, is, is the Democratic Party united? We weren’t as of a couple of weeks ago,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said before acknowledging the vote would fail.
Mr. Obama offered a tepid endorsement, saying it would address many of his concerns about elections, but “doesn’t have everything I’d like to see in a voting rights bill.”
Regardless, Mr. Schumer appeared to have only one remaining option to try to pass the legislation: eliminating or altering the Senate rule that sets a 60-vote threshold for breaking a legislative filibuster. Progressives have clamored to do so since Democrats won a narrow majority in January, and argued before Tuesday’s vote that it would help make their case. Yet a handful of key moderates led by Mr. Manchin insist they will never go along.
One of them, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, dug in further Monday night on the eve of the vote, warning her party in an op-ed in The Washington Post that it would “lose much more than we gain” by eliminating the 60-vote threshold.
“To those who want to eliminate the legislative filibuster to pass the For the People Act (voting-rights legislation I support and have co-sponsored), I would ask: Would it be good for our country if we did, only to see that legislation rescinded a few years from now and replaced by a nationwide voter-ID law or restrictions on voting by mail in federal elections, over the objections of the minority?” Ms. Sinema wrote.
With the path forward so murky, top Democrats began framing Tuesday’s vote as a moral victory, and potentially a crucial step in building consensus around eventually blowing up the filibuster.
The outcome, Ms. Psaki said, “may change the conversation on the Hill” around the filibuster, but she offered no clear next steps.
Mr. Manchin had opposed key planks in the original For the People Act as too intrusive into the rights of states to regulate their own elections. His proposal would eliminate a provision neutering state voter identification laws and strip out a public campaign financing program.
But it preserves other key measures, like an end to partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts and the creation of tough new ethics rules. It would also expand early voting, make Election Day a federal holiday and make it easier to vote by mail.
A Monmouth University Poll released on Monday indicated that Mr. Manchin’s position may be more in line with public sentiment, particularly his support for some kinds of voter identification requirements.
The poll found, for instance, that seven in 10 Americans supported making early in person voting easier and were in favor of the federal government creating national guidelines for mail-in and early in person voting. But eight in 10 said they generally supported voter identification requirements that the For the People Act would effectively neuter.
Republicans are united in their opposition both to Democrats’ original bill and to Mr. Manchin’s changes, describing them as overly prescriptive and geared toward giving their own party an advantage in future elections.
“The real driving force behind S. 1 is the desire to rig the rules of American elections permanently — permanently — in Democrats’ favor,” said Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, referring to the legislation by its bill number. “That’s why the Senate will give this disastrous proposal no quarter.”
Reid J. Epstein and Catie Edmondson contributed reporting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/21/us/p ... -bill.html
With Republicans set to filibuster, Democrats are focusing on staying unified in the face of defeat. But the path ahead for the legislation is murky at best.
By Nicholas Fandos
June 21, 2021
WASHINGTON — A push by Democrats to enact the most expansive voting rights legislation in generations is set to collapse in the Senate on Tuesday, when Republicans are expected to use a filibuster to block a measure that President Biden and his allies in Congress have called a vital step to protect democracy.
Despite solid Republican opposition, Democrats plan to bring the voting rights fight to a head on the Senate floor, by calling a test vote to try to advance the broad federal elections overhaul, known as the For the People Act. As Republican-led states rush to enact restrictive new voting laws, Democrats have presented the legislation as the party’s best chance to undo them, expand ballot access from coast to coast and limit the effect of special interests on the political process.
“We can argue what should be done to protect voting rights and safeguard our democracy, but don’t you think we should be able to debate the issue?” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said on Monday in a last-ditch appeal to Republicans to let the debate proceed.
But in the hours before the vote, Democrats conceded they were facing defeat — at least for now. Even if they succeeded in securing the votes of all 50 senators in the Democratic caucus, party leaders were expected to fall well short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster and begin debating the bill.
Instead, they focused on Monday on rallying the party around a more limited alternative proposed by Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, who had been the only Democratic holdout on the voting rights measure. Both the White House and former President Barack Obama said his suggestions would address many of the most urgent issues. President Biden and Mr. Manchin also spoke directly about the need to find a legislative solution, according to an official familiar with their conversation who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.
Leaders hope that, given the support for his proposal, Mr. Manchin will vote with the rest of the Senate’s Democrats and Democratic-aligned independents to allow the debate to proceed, allowing his party to present a unified front on the bill.
“What we are measuring, I think, is, is the Democratic Party united? We weren’t as of a couple of weeks ago,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said before acknowledging the vote would fail.
Mr. Obama offered a tepid endorsement, saying it would address many of his concerns about elections, but “doesn’t have everything I’d like to see in a voting rights bill.”
Regardless, Mr. Schumer appeared to have only one remaining option to try to pass the legislation: eliminating or altering the Senate rule that sets a 60-vote threshold for breaking a legislative filibuster. Progressives have clamored to do so since Democrats won a narrow majority in January, and argued before Tuesday’s vote that it would help make their case. Yet a handful of key moderates led by Mr. Manchin insist they will never go along.
One of them, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, dug in further Monday night on the eve of the vote, warning her party in an op-ed in The Washington Post that it would “lose much more than we gain” by eliminating the 60-vote threshold.
“To those who want to eliminate the legislative filibuster to pass the For the People Act (voting-rights legislation I support and have co-sponsored), I would ask: Would it be good for our country if we did, only to see that legislation rescinded a few years from now and replaced by a nationwide voter-ID law or restrictions on voting by mail in federal elections, over the objections of the minority?” Ms. Sinema wrote.
With the path forward so murky, top Democrats began framing Tuesday’s vote as a moral victory, and potentially a crucial step in building consensus around eventually blowing up the filibuster.
The outcome, Ms. Psaki said, “may change the conversation on the Hill” around the filibuster, but she offered no clear next steps.
Mr. Manchin had opposed key planks in the original For the People Act as too intrusive into the rights of states to regulate their own elections. His proposal would eliminate a provision neutering state voter identification laws and strip out a public campaign financing program.
But it preserves other key measures, like an end to partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts and the creation of tough new ethics rules. It would also expand early voting, make Election Day a federal holiday and make it easier to vote by mail.
A Monmouth University Poll released on Monday indicated that Mr. Manchin’s position may be more in line with public sentiment, particularly his support for some kinds of voter identification requirements.
The poll found, for instance, that seven in 10 Americans supported making early in person voting easier and were in favor of the federal government creating national guidelines for mail-in and early in person voting. But eight in 10 said they generally supported voter identification requirements that the For the People Act would effectively neuter.
Republicans are united in their opposition both to Democrats’ original bill and to Mr. Manchin’s changes, describing them as overly prescriptive and geared toward giving their own party an advantage in future elections.
“The real driving force behind S. 1 is the desire to rig the rules of American elections permanently — permanently — in Democrats’ favor,” said Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, referring to the legislation by its bill number. “That’s why the Senate will give this disastrous proposal no quarter.”
Reid J. Epstein and Catie Edmondson contributed reporting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/21/us/p ... -bill.html
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