The voting wars come to Capitol Hill: Democrats eye national elections overhaul amid GOP crackdown - The Washington Post

The turbulent debate over the nation’s elections reached Congress’s doorstep this week, with House Democrats poised to pass sweeping nationwide standards for voter access Wednesday just as Republican lawmakers in dozens of states move to restrict polling access after Donald Trump’s November loss.

But it appears unlikely that the matter will be quickly settled at the federal level, with the narrow Democratic Senate majority and firm GOP opposition spelling apparent doom for any type of new voting rights legislation in the near term.

Meanwhile, state lawmakers are barreling ahead with major rollbacks of early voting, mail voting and other state provisions that Trump and other Republicans oppose, while the Supreme Court on Tuesday heard a challenge to Arizona’s election laws that could further curtail the federal government’s power to police elections.

The opposing efforts have created a remarkable split screen between the hurried GOP drive underway in state capitals and the significant Democratic push in Washington — with both parties seeing election laws as a crucial factor in determining outcomes and as a motivating issue for their base supporters.

Some liberal lawmakers are pushing to ditch Senate filibuster rules to pass it into law without Republican support.

Meanwhile, GOP-controlled state legislatures around the country have been proposing laws that would restrict absentee balloting, early voting and other aspects of election administration that critics say represent a cynical ploy to make it harder primarily for Democratic voters to participate.

Among the dozens of state legislatures considering sweeping new laws that would restrict voting options, Georgia’s has garnered outsize attention in part because of the state’s leading role in the 2020 election.

Trump fixated on his narrow loss there, and while state Republican leaders rebutted accusations that fraud had played a role in the outcome, GOP lawmakers say their proposals are needed to restore faith in the election process among Trump supporters.

The state’s House approved a sweeping measure Monday that would limit the use of ballot drop boxes, beef up ID requirements for mail voting and restrict early voting on weekends — the latter a direct assault, critics said, on Democrats’ long-standing “Souls to the Polls” program to encourage Black voters to cast ballots after church on Sundays.

Trump’s campaign of misinformation built on years of quiet GOP efforts to curtail voting expansion and make election laws a top-tier issue for Republican voters, whose opinion of early voting, mail-in ballots and other provisions to expand access sharply deteriorated last year.

The Republican National Committee, meanwhile, has started a Committee on Election Integrity, which began meeting in recent weeks and will act as a clearinghouse for suggestions to state GOP committees on how to change U.S.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday heard a Democratic challenge to two Arizona voting laws that they argue disproportionately affect minorities and therefore run afoul of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Democrats, meanwhile, are preparing to litigate against any new state laws that they believe will curtail ballot access.

The Democrats’ legislative answer to the Republican effort is a sprawling 791-page bill that establishes national standards for voter access — mandating online registration, voting by mail, at least 15 days of early voting and the restoration of voting rights for released felons.

Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), chair of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee and a key advocate of the election package, said lawmakers had to counter the state-level Republican salvos on a national basis.

1’s lead author, said Democrats should feel a sense of urgency to bust through any roadblocks given the scale of the Republican effort to curtail voting rights ahead of the 2022 midterms — for which the GOP is also counting on a partisan redistricting effort for an additional House advantage