In their Brnovich v. DNC decision this week, the conservative justices of the Supreme Court made the Voting Rights Act of 1965 even more difficult to enforce, furthering the attack on voting rights that they started in Shelby County v. Holder. This decision will have disastrous consequences nationwide.
The most immediate impact of those consequences is that it has emboldened Republicans to continue introducing dangerous restrictive voting bills and sustaining their assault on the fundamental American right to vote.
In addition to the Supreme Court defanging critical parts of the VRA, Republicans in state and local governments nationwide have maintained their attacks on American elections.
In Arizona, Governor Ducey signed a state budget that included provisions that would strip power from the Democratic Secretary of State. This would hand it to the Republican Attorney General, give third parties unchecked authority to purge voters from the voter rolls, and would use taxpayer money to make their sham election review process permanent.
In Georgia, state Republicans–even those who were victims of Trump’s lies about the 2020 election–doubled down on their restrictive new voting laws predicated on the Big Lie. The new restrictive voting law went into effect on Thursday and will have an immediate impact on the two Georgia House runoffs. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, Republicans passed a budget that attempted to establish their own sham election review process, thankfully vetoed by Governor Tom Wolf.
The Court’s decision this week put more urgency on the Senate to pass the For the People Act (H.R. 1/S.1). With support and protection from the right-wing Supreme Court, these attacks on our democracy will not stop unless this legislation is enacted into law.
Congress must act now and cannot let procedure stand in the way. As Senator Joe Manchin has said, inaction is not an option when it comes to protecting the freedom to vote.
See below for a state-by-state recap of the restrictive and dangerous election policies Republicans across the country advanced while the right-wing Supreme Court weakened America’s best defense against voter suppression:
Arizona
- Supreme Court Upholds Arizona Voting Restrictions: In a 6 to 3 vote, following the dissent of the Court’s three liberal members; the Supreme Court ruled in favor of upholding restrictions on voting, signaling that challenges to laws being passed by Republican legislatures that make it harder for minority groups to vote would face a hostile reception from a majority of the justices.
- New Arizona law strips power from Democratic Secretary of State, increases voter purges, and seeks to make sham election review permanent.
Georgia
- Georgia’s top elections official defends new voting law: Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who was pressured by President Trump to change the election results in his state in the 2020 presidential election, is now defending the state’s new, stricter voting lawagainst a lawsuit by the U.S. Justice Department. The new restrictive voting law went into effect on Thursday, July 1st, and will have an immediate impact on upcoming state House runoffs.
Kansas
- A set of controversial voting changes took effect in Kansas on Thursday, July 1. The two bills HB 2183 & HB 2332 limit the number of advance ballots an individual can bring to the polls on behalf of someone else. There were also other harmful provisions, including a mandate that election officials must match the signatures on an advance ballot to a person’s voter registration record, limits on out-of-state mailers, and a provision making it a felony to impersonate an election official.
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Voting rights groups, including League of Women Voters Kansas, are stopping voter registration and education drives out of fear of criminal prosecution under these voter suppression laws.
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Pennsylvania
- The state’s Republican-led General Assembly passed an election bill on Monday, that would would move the deadline for voter registration from 15 to 30 days before an election, require that mail-in ballots need to be requested 15 days before an election, limit drop boxes to 7 days before an election and expand voter identification requirements.month and pushed the bill through the state Legislature in under three weeks.
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Governor Tom Wolf vetoed the bill, but Republicans are now moving forward a bill to put barriers to voting in place via a constitutional amendment.
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Wisconsin
- Gov. Evers vetoed legislation that would prohibit local governments from accepting funds from private organizations to be used for elections. Republican legislators do not have the supermajority necessary to override the veto.
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