Manchin/Sinema Vote To Help The GOP Suppress Voting

Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema have been threatening to help Republican maintain their filibuster against the Democratic bill to protect the right of all citizens to vote. On Wednesday night, they followed through on their threat.

Both of the senators claim they support the bills that would protect voting, and indeed, they voted yes on the motion to end the Gap filibuster. But it's easy to vote that way when you know there is no chance of the bill being considered. And sure enough, 50 Republican voted to maintain the filibuster against the voting rights bill (9 more than was needed to maintain the filibuster).

Then another vote was held. This vote was on whether to change the filibuster rules and allow a majority vote on the voting rights bill. It would not end the filibuster, It would just change the rule for only the voting rights bill. That would happen only if the Democrats got 50 votes and the vote of Vice-President Harris.

If Manchin and Sinema really supported the voting rights bill, this was their chance to show it -- and still maintain the filibuster. But they voted to kill the voting rights bill by voting to not change the filibuster. They voted to allow the Republicans to continue to filibuster the bill -- meaning it could not be passed without 60 votes.

Manchin and Sinema will probably still claim to support the bill, but that would be a lie. They had their chance to help pass it, and they refused to do it. They still consider an archaic Senate rule to be more important that the right of every U.S. citizens to vote.

They should be ashamed of themselves, but they aren't. I am left to wonder why they continue to call themselves Democrats.

The Republicans Are A Minority Party - And They Don't Care

The Republican Party currently appeals only to a minority of voters. That's because the agenda they have is not supported by a majority of voters.

In the past, when a party realized they were not supported by most voters, they would alter some of their positions to appeal to a greater number of voters.

But that is not what the Republican Party is doing. They have doubled down on their unpopular positions, because they know those positions are liked by most of their base.

They have chosen instead to suppress the votes of Democrats and Independents. They think if they can keep the vote total low enough, then their supporters can cast a majority of votes. Are they wrong?

Here is part of an opinion piece on this by Dean Obeidallah for MSNBC.com:

A Fox News poll released last week found that 67 percent of voters support requiring teachers and students to wear masks in schools. Even in the “reddish” state of Florida, a Quinnipiac University poll last month found that 60 percent of people there favor school mask mandates. This makes great sense given that Covid-19 hospital admissions for children recently reached their highest levels since the start of the pandemic, and the American Academy of Pediatrics reported more than 240,000 pediatric Covid cases between Sept. 2 and Sept. 9.

But Republican lawmakers like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis don’t appear to care what the majority of voters want; instead, many are singularly concerned with what keeps the GOP base happy. So while 60 percent of Floridians support school mask mandates, 72 percent of Republicans in the Sunshine State oppose it, according to that same Quinnipiac poll. Nationally, only 42 percent of Republicans are on board with school mask requirements, the Fox poll found.

The GOP is giving us a master class in the tyranny of the minority. Republicans across the nation are enacting polices on issues from Covid safeguards to restrictions on abortion and voting rights that are opposed by a solid majority of Americans — but are supported by the much smaller GOP base. . . .

Same goes for the new brutally oppressive GOP law in Texas that deprives women of reproductive freedom after six weeks of pregnancy — even in the case of rape or incest. The law empowers private citizens to sue anyone who helps a woman secure an abortion. A Monmouth University poll released Monday found that 70 percent of Americans oppose this central provision of the law — but only 41 percent of Republicans feel the same. That helps explain why numerous GOP-controlled states are considering enacting similar laws. . . .

This is another attempt by the GOP to impose tyranny of the minority. Sixty-two percent of Americans — per the Monmouth poll released Monday — believe Roe should remain the law of the land. But — and you knew there would be a “but” — only 37 percent of Republicans agree. Again, it’s not the views of all voters that matter to GOP elected officials; it’s only what their base wants. The rest of us are meaningless. . . .

Before Trump, American presidents at least made the effort to appear concerned with “all Americans.” President Joe Biden indicated a potential return to this when he declared in his inaugural address, “I will fight as hard for those who did not support me as for those who did.”

But today’s GOP has turned its back on that American principle, and nowhere is it more apparent than in their voter suppression efforts since Trump lost the 2020 election. A panicked GOP has already enacted 30 laws in 18 states that make it harder to cast a ballot — especially for people the GOP views as not supporting it. The Texas GOP recently banned 24-hour in-person voting after it became popular with people of color, who tend to vote Democratic.

But making it harder to vote flies in the face of what a majority of Americans want, per poll after poll. Yet again, we see the partisan divide, such as on the issue of automatic voter registration, which is supported by 61 percent of Americans but only 38 percent of Republicans, according to the Pew Research Center. This explains why Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., recently came out against the Freedom to Vote Act, which includes instituting automatic voter registration and creating a national standard for election access.

The GOP gets that it’s a shrinking party — hence the voter suppression laws and the nonstop red meat to keep the Republican base happy at the expense of the rest of us.

Texas Dems Flee The State To Stop Voter Suppression Laws

The Texas legislature is getting in a special session right now. The purpose of that special session is to pass several GOP voter suppression laws, which the Republicans failed to get done in their regular legislative session.

The Democratic legislators have tried what they could to stop the odious new laws. And they have offered numerous amendments to those laws -- none of which were accepted by the Republican majority. That only leaves the Democrats with one option -- leave the state. Their absence will mean the laws could not be passed, because according to Texas law a quorum of 2/3 must be present to pass a law. The Democrats don't have enough legislators to block the law, but they have enough to prevent a quorum.

They are taking that option. Rumor has it they are going to the District of Columbia (although some may opt for a blue state). 

Texas law allows the Republican legislators to ask the Texas Rangers to find and arrest them, and bring them back to the legislature (where they would be locked in the building until the law is passed). Will they try to do that? They might. But there is also the question of whether the Rangers have the authority to arrest them out of state. And whether D.C. or blue state courts would allow them to be extradited back to Texas.

The special session is scheduled to last for 30 days. That means the Democrats must stay gone for another three weeks. Republicans also have the option of letting the governor call another 30-day special session when this one expires. The governor can call as many special sessions as he wants.

The odds are against the Democratic legislators, but I give them credit. They are doing everything they can to protect the right to vote in Texas. 

It will be interesting to see how this all comes out.

Following Trump's Example, McConnell Lies To Americans

Truth no longer means much to today's Republicans. When they are confronted with it, they simply respond with a lie -- usually a whopper. The biggest lie being spread by Republicans is Trump's lie that he won the election (but was unseated by massive fraud). But there is another lie being spread right now that is almost as outrageous. It is Mitch McConnell's assertion that Republican legislatures in the states are not trying to suppress the vote.

Here's what Steve Been had to say about this at MSNBC.com:

As Senate Democrats advanced the For the People Act, Republican opponents turned to a series of rather predictable talking points. GOP critics said, for example, that the effort represented a "federal power-grab," which made a degree of sense since the legislation would curtail state-level schemes to undermine democracy. Other Republicans complained that the bill is "partisan," which was really just a lazy way of saying GOP politicians don't like it.

But the most unnerving talking point came, once again, from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

McConnell accused bill proponents of misconstruing election laws in Georgia and other states to justify a federal proposal he described as unnecessary. "The biggest lie being told in American politics in recent weeks has been that the states are involved in a systematic effort to suppress the vote," the Kentucky Republican said Tuesday.

If this sounds at all familiar, it's because McConnell pushed the same line in March, telling reporters, "States are not engaging in trying to suppress voters whatsoever."

All things considered, the word "gaslighting" is probably used a bit too much in our political discourse, but for the Senate GOP leader to justify the Republican Party's voter-suppression initiative by denying its existence is a classic example of the phenomenon.

This isn't a matter of subjectivity. As regular readers may recall, FiveThirtyEight recently published a striking tally, noting that while much of the country learned of Georgia's new voting restrictions, it's just one of 11 states in which Republicans have acted this year to make it harder for Americans to cast ballots.

Relying in part on data from the Brennan Center for Justice, FiveThirtyEight reported that "at least 404 voting-restriction bills have now been introduced in 48 state legislatures." Many of those proposals will go ignored, but plenty will not: FiveThirtyEight's report highlighted 25 voter-suppression bills that have already become law this year -- and there are still several dozen related measures pending in states where Republicans have some power. . . .

It's rare to see a don't-believe-your-lying-eyes moment this brazen.

No Voter Should Have To Wait Over 30 Minutes To Vote

Much has been made of Republican attempts to pass new laws to suppress the votes of those who might vote against them (minorities, young people, etc.).

But little has been said recently about a voter suppression effort by Republicans that is already in place, and affected many voters in the 2020 election -- having to wait in line for hours to vote.

This primarily affected minorities. In White precincts, there were lots of voting machines and no one had to wait very long to vote. But in minority areas, there were few precincts and few voting machines, and people were forced into lengthy waits to be able to vote.

This mostly happened in states where Republicans controlled the voting process, and although they deny it, seems to be an obvious effort to suppress the votes of minorities. This needs to be rectified. A federal law should be passed to mandate that no voter have to wait in line over 30 minutes to vote -- and any state violating that law should be severely punished (and required to fix the problem before the next election happens).

Here is some of what Jennifer Rubin had to say on this subject in The Washington Post:

The Democracy Fund’s Voter Study Group completed a voluminous study of the 2020 election. Among its most stunning findings: “Sixty-two percent of white, 47 percent of Black, and 51 percent of Hispanic voters waited 10 minutes or less to vote; 7 percent of white, 13 percent of Black, and 8 percent of Hispanic voters waited an hour or more.” Put differently, “Almost twice as many Black (31 percent) as white (18 percent) or Hispanic voters (17 percent) reported waiting 31 minutes or more.”

The Brennan Center for Justice’s study of the 2018 midterms also showed: “Latino and Black voters were more likely than white voters to wait in the longest of lines on Election Day: some 6.6 percent of Latino voters and 7.0 percent of Black voters reported waiting 30 minutes or longer to vote. ... More generally, Latino voters waited on average 46 percent longer than white voters, and Black voters waited on average 45 percent longer than white voters.”

Similarly, a Georgia study of the June 2020 primary found that “the average wait time after 7 p.m. across Georgia was 51 minutes in polling places that were 90% or more non-White, but only 6 minutes in polling places that were 90% white.”

The 30-minute mark is critical. The bipartisan Presidential Commission on Election Administration declared in a 2014 report that no voter should have to endure more than a 30-minute wait. The causes for the excessive wait times in Black precincts include fewer polling places, misallocation of resources and older machines.

Several measures might address the problem. The Justice Department could start filing suit against states with significant disparities in waiting times between White and Black voters. Congress could pass a law requiring states to adhere to the 30-minute rule. Voting rights litigator Marc Elias explains how this might work in a post for Democracy Docket: “If the state or a locality fails to meet this time limit, it must pay the affected voter for the time the voter spent waiting in line in excess of 30 minutes. Voters could seek the actual cost to them of waiting in line (lost wages, childcare, etc.) or accept an hourly minimum that each state could set by law.” Alternatively, states could be mandated in subsequent elections to increase the number of polling places or increase early voting and mail-in options.

Reduction of wait times should theoretically be agreeable to both parties and all voters. It has nothing to do with “voter security,” and everything to do with eliminating barriers to voting. If Senate Republicans will not agree to even reduction-in-waiting-time measures, perhaps Manchin will finally lose patience and agree to prioritize voting rights over Senate procedures.

Right-Wing Group Is Writing GOP's Voter Suppression Laws

 

State Republican legislatures across the nation are trying to pass new voter suppression laws -- laws aimed at trying to keep Democratic voters from being able to cast a ballot. But the Republican legislators aren't even writing the laws themselves. They are just trying to pass laws written for them by an ultra-right conservative group -- one that is funded largely by dark money. In other words, a few secret right-wingers are writing the laws that will affect the nation's voters. That is about as anti-democratic as it can get!

Here is part of how Ari Berman and Nick Surgey describe what is happening for Mother Jones:

In a private meeting last month with big-money donors, the head of a top conservative group boasted that her outfit had crafted the new voter suppression law in Georgia and was doing the same with similar bills for Republican state legislators across the country. “In some cases, we actually draft them for them,” she said, “or we have a sentinel on our behalf give them the model legislation so it has that grassroots, from-the-bottom-up type of vibe.”

The Georgia law had “eight key provisions that Heritage recommended,” Jessica Anderson, the executive director of Heritage Action for America, a sister organization of the Heritage Foundation, told the foundation’s donors at an April 22 gathering in Tucson, in a recording obtained by the watchdog group Documented and shared with Mother Jones. Those included policies severely restricting mail ballot drop boxes, preventing election officials from sending absentee ballot request forms to voters, making it easier for partisan workers to monitor the polls, preventing the collection of mail ballots, and restricting the ability of counties to accept donations from nonprofit groups seeking to aid in election administration.

All of these recommendations came straight from Heritage’s list of “best practices” drafted in February. With Heritage’s help, Anderson said, Georgia became “the example for the rest of the country.”

The leaked video reveals the extent to which Heritage is leading a massive campaign to draft and pass model legislation restricting voting access, which has been swiftly adopted this year in the battleground states of Georgia, Florida, Arizona, and Iowa. It’s no coincidence that so many GOP-controlled states are rushing to pass similar pieces of legislation in such a short period of time. 

Republican legislators claim they’re tightening up election procedures to address (unfounded) concerns about fraud in the 2020 election. But what’s really behind this effort is a group of conservative Washington insiders who have been pushing these same kinds of voting restrictions for decades, with the explicit aim of helping Republicans win elections. The difference now is that Trump’s baseless claims about 2020 have given them the ammunition to get the bills passed, and the conservative movement, led by Heritage, is making an unprecedented investment to get them over the finish line. . . .

To “create this echo chamber,” as Anderson put it, Heritage is spending $24 millionover two years in eight battleground states—Arizona, Michigan, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Nevada, Texas, and Wisconsin—to pass and defend restrictive voting legislation. Every Tuesday, the group leads a call with right-wing advocacy groups like the Susan B. Anthony List, Tea Party Patriots, and FreedomWorks to coordinate these efforts at the highest levels of the conservative movement. “We literally give marching orders for the week ahead,” Anderson said. “All so we’re singing from the same song sheet of the goals for that week and where the state bills are across the country.”. . .

The Heritage Foundation was co-founded in 1973 by Paul Weyrich, a well-connected conservative activist on a mission to create more aggressive conservative infrastructure to rival more liberal think tanks like the Brookings Institution. Weyrich, who was also Heritage’s first president, went on to co-found the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which pairs corporations with conservative state legislators to draft model legislation, and the Moral Majority with Jerry Falwell, which mobilized evangelical voters behind GOP causes and candidates. Heritage received major funding from leading right-wing donors such as Charles and David Koch, Richard Mellon Scaife, and Joseph Coors. 

Speaking in 1980 at a meeting of evangelical leaders in Dallas, Weyrich bluntly articulated his radical views on voting rights. “I don’t want everybody to vote,” he said. “Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”. . .

It remains one of the best-funded organizations in GOP circles. It raised more than $76 million in 2020, according to its most recent annual report. More than $1.6 million of that was raised from corporations, most of which chose to remain anonymous.

GOP's Proposed Voting Laws Are Based On "The Big Lie"

Republicans have proposed new voting laws in at least 43 states -- laws aimed at reducing the number of people who can vote (especially people of color). They think it will give them a better chance to win when fewer people vote. The excuse they use for these new laws is that the 2020 election was rampant with massive voter fraud.

Of course, that's not even remotely true. The claim is based on the "big lie" told by Donald Trump. He claimed that he actually won the election -- until fraudulent votes were allowed to be counted in many states. The truth is there was virtually no voter fraud in the election, and Trump lost because over 7 million more voters preferred Biden.

That did not keep Republican officials and Trump lawyers from accept Trump's big lie though. They took the lie to court several dozen times (and lost). Now they are using the same lie to pass voter suppression laws. They know the lie is not true, but it doesn't matter. The GOP base believes it, so officials are going to use it for their own advantage.

The following is part of an op-ed in The Hill by Juan Williams:

A joke?

Now she says it was just a joke.

Well then, who is going to tell Republicans?

Last week, lawyers for Sidney Powell, a leading voice claiming November’s election was stolen from former President Trump, said “reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact.”

But polls show most Republicans didn’t get the memo — they still think the election was stolen.

In an ‘Alice In Wonderland’ moment of truth falling through a rabbit hole into a twisted fantasy, Republican politicians now claim that because so many Republicans did take Powell’s joke seriously, they need to act to restore confidence in elections.

To get back to reality, there is no evidence of any election fraud.

But nonsense about restoring trust among people who fell for a joke is being cited in eight states where Republicans hold the majority in legislatures and are pushing new laws to give them control of vote counting.

In the real world, that is called a brazen, partisan power grab to give the GOP the edge in every future election.

The same inane claim to be fixing elections to reassure Republican voters is also being used in 43 states where Republican politicians are acting to cut down on absentee and early voting, and to limit hours for voting on Election Day itself, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Those efforts are based on what Powell’s lawyers now dismiss as a joke. And her joke is based on Trump continuing to spout the “Big Lie” that he didn’t lose the presidential election — it was stolen as a result of “large scale election fraud,” after he won by “historic numbers.”

The voter suppression efforts in these state legislatures is “fueled by the Big Lie of widespread voter fraud and often discriminatory in design,” according to the Brennan Center. The attempts “have the potential to dramatically reduce voting access, especially for Black and brown voters.”

In Georgia, the Republican governor signed a bill last week to allow the Republican majority in the legislature to take control of local election boards. It even makes it illegal for a stranger to hand a bottle of water to a person waiting in line to vote.

This sad joke can be heard echoing in Congress, too.

In the Senate, Republicans are fighting to stop a new bill from Democrats that would provide national protection for mail-in voting, early voting and same-day voter registration. The bill would also introduce automatic voter registration across the country. . . .

Trump’s lie and Powell’s joke took a violent turn on Jan. 6. Trump fired up his supporters by telling them “we will stop the steal,” before a mob attacked the Capitol to try to stop Congress from certifying Biden as the winner. People died.

Again, Republicans argue they are taking these steps to protect the integrity of elections without mentioning that those Republicans believe a twisted, baseless message from Trump and his allies, including Powe

Now Powell is saying in court that “reasonable people” knew it was not true.

That’s the real election fraud.

Republicans Aren't Even Trying To Hide Their Racism Now

 

Last week, Georgia Republicans passed a law to suppress the vote of those they expect to vote for Democrats -- primarily voters of color. And the law was signed by the Republican governor in front of a painting of a slave plantation. They aren't even trying to hide their racism anymore. And it's not just in Georgia either -- as racist voter suppression laws have been introduced in many other states.

The post below is much of an op-ed by by Will Bunch in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Sometimes America’s legacy of white supremacy is hiding in plain sight, literally. When Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a hastily passed voter suppression law that many are calling the new, new Jim Crow on Thursday night, surrounded by a half-dozen white men, he did so in front of a painting of a plantation where more than 100 Black people had been enslaved.

The fitting symbolism is somehow both shocking and unsurprising. In using the antebellum image of the notorious Callaway Plantation — in a region where enslaved Black people seeking freedom were hunted with hounds — in Wilkes County, Ga., as the backdrop for signing a bill that would make it a crime to hand water to a thirsty voter waiting on Georgia’s sometimes hours-long voter lines, the GOP governor was sending a clear message about race and human rights in the American South.

The portrait of the plantation was the starkest reminder of Georgia’s history of white racism that spans slavery, Jim Crow segregation, the rebirth of the modern Ku Klux Klan, and today’s voter purges targeting Black and brown voters — but it wasn’t the only one. At the very moment that Kemp was signing the law with his all-white posse, a Black female Georgia lawmaker — Rep. Park Cannon — who’d knocked on the governor’s door in the hopes of watching the bill signing was instead dragged away and arrested by state troopers, in a scene that probably had the Deep South’s racist sheriffs of yesteryear like Bull Connor or Jim Clark smiling in whatever fiery hellhole they now inhabit.

Indeed, Twitter was on fire Thursday night with posters drawing the straight line from notorious past segregationists like George Wallace to the 2021 actions of Kemp and the GOP-led Georgia Legislature in passing — at great speed and with little debate — a lengthy bill that also limits easy-access drop boxes for ballots and places onerous voter-ID restrictions on voting by mail, and which the New York Times reports “will have an outsized effect on Black voters.”

On one level this new voter-suppression law — “voter integrity,” in the modern GOP’s Orwellian branding — is inspired by the current and possible future events of ex-President Donald Trump’s Big Lie about fraud in the 2020 election, the narrow upset wins in Georgia for President Biden and two new Democratic senators, and the threat that voting icon Stacey Abrams poses to Kemp in the 2022 election. But there’s also a powerful pull back to Georgia past. That link is made clear by the history hanging right behind Kemp on Thursday. . . .

In 2021, it’s tempting to call Kemp signing the bill in front of the plantation painting “ironic,” when in fact it’s all too fitting. Understanding the symbolism here helps us to understand what’s really important, that the voting law is the latest cruel iron link in an unbroken chain of white supremacy that extends all the way back to 1619, when the first slave ship arrived in North American soil. But familiarity shouldn’t deaden our sense of outrage.

If you grew up shocked and angered by the photos of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, of state troopers clubbing John Lewis near the Edmund Pettus Bridge or police torturing young Black marchers with fire hoses in the streets of Birmingham, whatever you would have done back then is what you are doing now to fight this new Jim Crow era today.

In Washington, it’s more imperative than even that the Senate ditch the filibuster to pass the two federal voting laws that could potentially block or roll back suppression efforts not just in Georgia but a number of other GOP-led states with bills in the hopper. As for Georgia, Major League Baseball needs to strip metro Atlanta of the 2021 All-Star Game immediately, and stronger steps — including a boycott — need to be on the table. This is an all-hands-on-deck situation to save democracy and end systemic racism. Brian Kemp has reminded us that — just like in Faulkner’s Mississippi — that “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Abbott And Texas Republicans Strategy Is Cheat-To-Win!

Spurred on by Donald Trump's big lie (that he lost the election due to voter fraud), Republican legislatures across the country are trying to pass new laws to make it harder for American citizens to vote.Most of these new laws are aimed at suppressing the vote among minorities and young people -- those the GOP thinks are most likely to vote against them.

Texas is joining the other Republican states in this effort to keep American citizens from exercising their right to vote. Several new bills have been introduced in the legislature, and they all have one purpose -- to suppress the vote.

The following is a statement from Matt Angle, director of the Lone Star Project on this subject. I thought his statement deserved to be read by as many voters as possible. He writes:

"Today, shamefully, Governor Abbott, Senator Bettencourt and Representative Cain laid out a plan to attack Democracy at its core – our basic right to vote.  It’s a cheat-to-win approach that is fundamentally un-American and shows utter disrespect for our laws and the Constitution itself.  

Cheating is always the first tool Greg Abbott reaches for during elections. As both Texas Attorney General and as Governor, Abbott has shown that even the notion of high turnout and fair elections terrifies him and the Republicans still clinging to power in Texas.

The 2020 elections in Texas went smoothly while Texans voted in record numbers.  In fact, the only disruptions were caused by Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton filing frivolous lawsuits when they felt things slipping away.

In an attempt to distract Texans from his spectacular failure during the recent ice storm, Greg Abbott showed his fear and his hand today.  Abbott doesn’t trust Texas voters, doesn’t trust fair elections, and doesn’t think Republicans can win under a fair and legal democratic system. Their plan is to cheat-to-win."

Supreme Court May Allow More GOP Voter Suppression

Since they lost the presidential election by more than 7 million votes, Republican legislators across the country are trying to pass laws to prevent voting by those they believe would vote for Democrats -- minorities, young people, etc.

Some of the hundreds of new voter suppression laws proposed have already been passed. And two of those new laws have reached the Supreme Court. One would restrict who can collect and deliver absentee ballots, and the other would throw out the votes of people who voted in the wrong precinct (even though it shouldn't matter what precinct they voted in for a presidential or senatorial election).

Those two cases came before the Supreme Court this week, and it looks like the 6-3 conservative majority on the court is poised to let state Republican legislatures suppress votes.

Here is just part of how CNN.com covered the court hearing:

Chief Justice John Roberts has singlehandedly slowed a conservative revolution at the Supreme Court in recent years, but he has for even longer -- 40 years -- opposed racial remedies and narrowly construed the landmark Voting Rights Act. 

During oral arguments Tuesday in an Arizona voting rights case with national implications, Roberts sounded ready to hew to that latter path. The court's ruling could diminish the ability of Native American, Latino and Black voters to claim discrimination under the 1965 law. 

In 2013, Roberts led a narrow high court majority to eliminate separate Voting Rights Act coverage related to states with a history of bias. They no longer are required to obtain federal approval for new voting districts, poll closings or other electoral change -- which prompted some states to enact new voter ID requirements and polling changes.

Tuesday's case, tied to a section of the law covering claims of intentional discrimination once a regulation is in place, could have greater repercussions arising as several states consider new voter restrictions, some based on lingering and unproven allegations of fraud from the 2020 election.

Lawyers for the Democratic National Committee and Arizona Secretary of State told the justices wide swaths of Native Americans and other minorities could be disenfranchised by Arizona laws requiring ballots cast by people at the wrong precinct to be tossed and prohibiting most third parties -- beyond a relative or mail carrier -- from collecting absentee ballots, for example, at a nursing home. 

Roberts focused on potential voter irregularities, highlighting a finding from a 2005 bipartisan commission on absentee ballot fraud. Countering arguments that rural Native Americans and Latinos rely disproportionately on third parties to collect their ballots, Roberts questioned whether that should force states "to tolerate" possible fraud.

The justices to Roberts' right appeared even readier to back the Arizona regulations. In the past as the justices wrestled with difficult social dilemmas, Roberts has inched to the center, sometimes with other conservatives, for a moderate ruling in these polarized times. Based on the tenor of oral arguments, the court majority appeared headed to the hard right.

The new 6-3, conservative-liberal bench seemed to have sufficient votes to reverse a US appellate court and uphold the Arizona restrictions. The crucial additional question that would affect future litigation nationwide is what standard the majority adopts to resolve claims of voter discrimination based on race.

GOP Lost Fair Election - So They're Rigging Future Elections

The Republican Party doesn't believe in democracy, and they haven't believed in it for quite a while.

They lost the last presidential election by more than 7 million votes. A party that believes in democracy would alter their policies to reflect those the voters want. But the GOP is not doing that. 

Instead they are trying to rig future elections so they can return to power. They don't care what the voters want. They only care about seizing and remaining in power -- and for them that means changing the rules to keep millions of people from exercising their right to vote. And that have a whole bag of dirty tricks to accomplish that.

The following is part of an article by Michael Wines in The New York Times on the nasty GOP efforts:

Led by loyalists who embrace former President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claims of a stolen election, Republicans in state legislatures nationwide are mounting extraordinary efforts to change the rules of voting and representation — and enhance their own political clout.

At the top of those efforts is a slew of bills raising new barriers to casting votes, particularly the mail ballots that Democrats flocked to in the 2020 election. But other measures go well beyond that, including tweaking Electoral College and judicial election rules for the benefit of Republicans; clamping down on citizen-led ballot initiatives; and outlawing private donations that provide resources for administering elections, which were crucial to the smooth November vote.

And although the decennial redrawing of political maps has been pushed to the fall because of delays in delivering 2020 census totals, there are already signs of an aggressive drive to further gerrymander political districts, particularly in states under complete Republican control.

The national Republican Party joined the movement this past week by setting up a Committee on Election Integrity to scrutinize state election laws, echoing similar moves by Republicans in a number of state legislatures.

Republicans have long thought — sometimes quietly, occasionally out loud — that large turnouts, particularly in urban areas, favor Democrats, and that Republicans benefit when fewer people vote. But politicians and scholars alike say that this moment feels like a dangerous plunge into uncharted waters.

The avalanche of legislation also raises fundamental questions about the ability of a minority of voters to exert majority control in American politics, with Republicans winning the popular vote in just one of the last eight presidential elections but filling six of the nine seats on the Supreme Court.

The party’s battle in the past decade to raise barriers to voting, principally among minorities, young people and other Democrat-leaning groups, has been waged under the banner of stopping voter fraud that multiple studies have shown barely exists.

Most Of Public Supports Allowing Mail-In Voting Nationally

The chart above is from the AP / NORC Poll -- done between April 16th and 20th of a national sample of 1,057 adults, with a 4 point margin of error.

It shows that the voting public disagrees with Donald Trump (and his Republican cohorts) about voting by mail. Trump and the Republicans are blocking efforts to allow all voters to vote by mail in the November election. But 60% of the public supports allowing anyone to vote by mail without giving a reason. That includes 73% of Democrats and 46% of Republicans.

And nearly half of the public (48%) would support voting ONLY by mail (and eliminating in-person voting), with only 31% opposing that.

The public wants voting rights protected without forcing voters to expose themselves to the Coronavirus. If the Republicans continue to oppose allowing mail-in voting, they could hurt their chances in the coming election.

The Truth About GOP Claims Of Massive Voter Fraud

Donald Trump, and Republicans across the country, claim there is massive voter fraud in United States elections. It's not true. What they really mean is that too many people who tend to favor Democrats are voting -- and they want to prevent that.

At his own blog, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich (pictured) tells the truth about those Republican claims. He writes:

Donald Trump and his enablers have been making claims of widespread voter fraud, alleging millions of people are voting illegally in order to rig our elections.

Baloney. Let’s look at the facts and debunk their myths once and for all.

They claim millions of Americans are voting twice, using multiple registrations in different districts.

So how often does double voting really occur? An analysis of the 2012 presidential election found that out of 129 million votes cast, 0.02% – that’s two one hundredths of one percent – were double votes – which were likely the result of measurement error. This is a far cry from Donald Trump’s claims that millions of people were registered in two different states in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump and his enablers claim non-citizens are voting in droves. Trump himself said that thousands of undocumented immigrants voted in 2016.

Another lie. According to the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice, of 23.5 million votes cast in districts with high populations of non-citizens only 30 – I repeat, thirty – possible incidents of improper non-citizen voting were referred for further investigation.

They claim voter impersonation is rampant at the polls.

False. A 12-year study of election data found only 10 cases of voter impersonation out of 146 million registered voters. Ten. 

So if voter fraud really isn’t a problem, why do Trump, Republicans in Congress, and their allies at Fox News keep perpetuating this myth? For one simple reason: To enact restrictive voting laws intended to keep voters from the polls.

Policies established in the name of election security – including voter ID laws, needless registration deadlines, limited access to polling places, and purges of the voter rolls – make it harder for Americans to vote. It is the same tactic that has been used throughout our history to disenfranchise low-income Americans and people of color.

Luckily, many of these laws have been struck down in the courts. In 2016, a district judge in Wisconsin found “utterly no evidence” of widespread voter fraud justifying its voter ID law. In Texas, another judge found their voter ID law violated the Voting Rights Act, making it harder for African-Americans and Latinos to vote.

But many of these laws are still on the books because in 2013 the Supreme Court gutted crucial aspects of the Voting Rights Act. 

Congress needs to update the Act to prevent states from suppressing votes.

Meanwhile, Trump and Republicans in Congress are turning a blind eye to the real threats facing our democracy: election fraud, and foreign interference. 

In 2018, a Republican operative stole votes from Democrats in a North Carolina congressional race with a quote, “coordinated, unlawful, and substantially resourced absentee ballot scheme.” After the ballots were counted, the Republican candidate appeared to have won by about 900 votes. But the fraud was so glaring that the state board of elections refused to certify the results and called for a special election.

The other real threat is foreign interference in our elections, as Russia did in 2016. 

We now know for a fact that Trump is encouraging foreign leaders to interfere in our elections — asking the President of Ukraine to investigate his political opponents in exchange for military aid and publicly calling on Russia and China to also interfere.

In the Senate, Mitch McConnell continues to block common-sense legislation to protect our elections against future foreign interference, such as requiring all voting machines to have backup paper ballots and imposing automatic sanctions for nations that interfere in elections. To have safe and secure elections in 2020 and beyond, we need to pass this legislation.

The next time you hear Trump and his enablers claim widespread voter fraud, know the truth. Their lies are intended to make it harder for millions of Americans to vote, while they ignore the real threats to our democracy.