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Pallets filled with mail-in ballots for Washington and Oregon sit in a Portland, Ore., Postal Service processing and distribution center on Oct. 14, 2020.
Numbers tell the story: Last year's election rules should be the new normal
Apr 02 2021
McDonald is an associate professor of political science at the University of Florida and runs the U.S. Elections Project, which maintained a comprehensive database on 2020 voting methods and turnout in every state.
<p>
As the coronavirus pandemic raged across the country last year, several states worked diligently to make it easier for voters to cast mail ballots and to provide more access for in-person voters. And after the dust of the general election settled, we began to see major success stories — including the highest voter turnout rate for a general election in a century, with turnout increases in every state.
</p><p>
Now is not the time to pump the brakes on democracy.
</p><p>
Despite the success of last year's election — a monumental feat coordinated by election officials across the country — politicians in 30 states are pushing more than 150 bills to undo, slow down or reverse some of the very policies that secured a larger and more engaged voter base in 2020 and brought us closer to the American promise of a more inclusive democracy.
</p><p>
This is especially concerning because hidden in the administrative success of last year's general election is this fact: Despite the historic turnout nationwide, our progress as a democracy is based primarily on state-level policies, which still vary widely and have the biggest impact on how people actually vote.
</p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>
This point is clearly illustrated in the 2020 edition of "<a href="https://www.nonprofitvote.org/documents/2021/03/america-goes-polls-2020.pdf/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">America Goes to the Polls</a>." Out this month, it's the seventh biennial state-by-state report on voter turnout and turnout changes from the previous comparable federal election. It's a joint production of the U.S. Elections Project and <a data-linked-post="2638674286" href="https://thefulcrum.us/nonprofit-vote" target="_blank">Nonprofit VOTE</a>, a nonpartisan organization that works to help other nonprofits promote active civic participation and democracy.
</p><p>
The report gets under the hood of the last presidential election, looking at the detailed data to examine which policies had the biggest impact on voter participation.
</p><p>
One policy we examined was voting by mail. Overall, the states with the highest usage of mail voting saw turnout increase the most — as much as 9 percentage points. In the report's ranking of all 50 states (plus D.C.) by turnout, half of the top 10 states proactively mailed ballots directly to all registered voters. Conversely, eight of the bottom 10 required voters to overcome significant barriers to mail voting, such as excuse requirements or notary signatures, reducing how many voters could use the policy.
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And while such states as Hawaii, New Jersey, and Montana saw impressive voter turnout increases (14 points, 10 points, and 9 points, respectively) after expanding mail voting access, bills to reduce access and eligibility have already been introduced in those same states.
</p><p>
Another successful policy was same-day registration, also known as Election Day registration, which allowed eligible citizens to both get on the rolls and cast their ballots on Nov. 3 last year — overcoming the nearly four-week deadline many states employ.
</p><p>
Eight of the top 10 states for turnout had implemented the policy. On average, the same-day registration states had a 5 percentage point turnout advantage over states without it. This system has now been adopted by 23 states, roughly half the country — including eight that have implemented it since 2016.
</p><p>
However, legislatures in some of the states that saw turnout increase because of same-day registration are now pushing bills to eliminate the policy. And at least three others are looking to restrict or eliminate automatic voter registration — a policy that encourages registration whenever citizens do business with their departments of motor vehicles or other state government agencies.
</p><p>
By many measures, 2020 was a tough year on everyone — requiring massive, uncomfortable upheavals to our norms that most are ready to leave behind. However, it was an exemplary year for voting policy advances. It is a year we should consider the "new normal" for civic engagement, not just a consequence of extraordinary times.
</p><p>
It's important to recognize that, in the larger picture, our country continues to strive towards greater representation by increasing access to the levers of democracy to those routinely marginalized. But that progress is not guaranteed and cannot be sustained without real effort and often sacrifice.
</p>
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Demonstrators protest legislation placing new restrictions on voting in Georgia.
At a turning point for voting rights, direction signals point both ways
Mar 31 2021
The public's access to electoral democracy may be about to dangerously contract — or else expand dramatically.
So far, the movement to restrict access to the ballot box has gotten by far the most play. The Georgia law enacted to national headlines last week goes way beyond barring water deliveries at polling places, in part by setting a disturbing precedent in stripping administrative power from nonpartisan election officials and placing it in the hands of politicians. Broad new curbs on voting in Iowa, enacted three week ago, include criminal charges for local officials who skirt the new rules. Six other states are considering similar moves to take power from nonpartisan election administrators.
Less noticed, meanwhile, has been a parallel movement to expand voter access in states literally from coast to coast.
<p>The most widely cited statistic in this year's voting rights debate is that, as of a month ago, 253 bills to restrict access to the polls had been proposed in 43 states. Many take aim at early and absentee voting, automatic voter registration, ballot drop boxes and other practices that helped fuel last fall's record turnout.</p>
<p>But the same progressive think tank that made that calculation, the Brennan Center for Justice, <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/state-voting-bills-tracker-2021" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">has also tallied</a> 704 bills that set out to expand voting access — also in 43 states. These include Washington's <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/voting/washington-felon-voting-rights" target="_self">recent move</a> to restore voting rights to felons as soon as they're released from prison, a <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/voting/voter-suppression-laws" target="_self">Kentucky measure</a> to make permanent the early and mail-in voting rules rolled out last year in response to the pandemic, and bills in Vermont and Virginia that similarly institutionalize ballot drop boxes and prepaid postage on absentee envelopes.</p>
<p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>Republicans driving the restrictive legislation say the curbs are needed to restore voter confidence and combat fraud, despite zero evidence of the widespread cheating claimed by former President Donald Trump. Democrats from President Biden on down cast the GOP campaign as a return to Jim Crow and an assault on democracy. Voting rights groups have raised alarms that the Republican statehouse crusade is not only a deliberate effort to disenfranchise Black voters but also would threaten the principle of independent election administration that's long been a democratic norm.</p>
<p>The GOP-led push, moreover, has lit a fire under Democrats mobilizing behind the sweeping package of democracy reforms passed by the House under the label HR 1 and pending in the Senate as S 1. That legislation would significantly expand access to the polls by mandating nationally the easy registration, absentee ballot application and early in-person voting rules that vary significantly among the states.</p>
<p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>But it would also do much more, from prohibiting partisan <a href="http://thefulcrum.us/gerrymandering" target="_self">gerrymandering</a> to imposing broad new campaign financing and government ethics rules. Republicans are uniformly opposed and have cast the measure as a partisan power grab, while deep-pocketed <a href="https://apnews.com/article/legislature-voting-rights-ted-cruz-legislation-elections-6270306f67108ac16f4ee7b45a8afdb3" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">conservative groups</a> have turned the campaign to defeat the bill into a GOP rallying cry.</p>
<p>But recent polling concludes the measure, known as the For the People Act, is "one of the most popular legislative items in recent history, across party lines, demographic groups, and geographies." Almost three-quarters (74 percent) of Republicans support the bill, according to <a href="https://endcitizensunited.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/ECU-For-the-People-Act-Matching-Funds-Memo-F03.15.21.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a survey this month</a> by Global Strategy Group and ALG Research, as do 73 percent of independents and 96 percent of Democrats. </p>
<p>Senate support for the bill, which recently <a href="https://www.manchin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/manchin-pledges-bipartisan-efforts-on-voting-rights-legislation" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">secured</a> crucial albeit only partial backing from the most conservative Democratic senator, West Virginia's Joe Manchin, is also strengthening Democrats' determination to eliminate or substantially weaken the filibuster. The showdown over the future of what amounts to a 60-vote requirement for most policy changes, however, seems to be months away.</p>
<p>If enacted, the bill would invalidate much of the new wave of GOP voting restrictions and create broad new federal mandates for automatic and same-day voter registration, voting machines with paper trails and post-prison felon enfranchisement, among other provisions.</p>
<p>This, despite the fact that many of the voting practices that GOP state legislators have set out to scrap or curtail — most notably lengthy periods for early in-person voting and easy rules for voting absentee or by mail — are broadly popular with Republican voters. <a href="http://electionlab.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2020-12/How-we-voted-in-2020-v01.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Close to half</a> of all votes (46 percent) were cast absentee or by mail in the presidential election last year, more than double the share in 2016. No-excuse voting by mail is permitted in 29 states, many of them deep Republican red. Last year, several GOP governors and election officials <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/vote-by-mail-2646306822" target="_self">moved to expand</a> voting by mail, even as Trump assailed it as an invitation to massive cheating (and then casting his own ballot using Florida's permissive system.) </p>
<p>Several provisions in HR 1 originated as bipartisan initiatives, according to <a href="https://campaignlegal.org/sites/default/files/2021-01/01-25-21%20HR%201%20Bipartisan%20Memo%20330pm.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a white paper</a> released by the Campaign Legal Center, including modernizing registration and early voting, and putting the drawing of all House districts in the hands of 50 independent commissions.</p>
<p>The nonprofit, which promotes easier voting and stricter money-in-politics rules, is working with state and local partners to educate voters about how their franchise might be curtailed if many of the Republican statehouse bills get enacted. </p>
<p>"These are unpopular provisions," says Jonathan Diaz, the Campaign Legal Center's legal counsel for voting rights. "They run contrary to the security of our democracy." </p>
<p>Republican-aligned activist groups, from Heritage Action to Tea Party Nation, are raising and spending big money in the fight over voter access. But beyond fundraising, it's not clear that restricting voting will turn out to be a winning strategy for the GOP. Trump actually got more support in 2020 than in 2016 from Black and Latino voters — the very groups that many of the looming restrictions risk disenfranchising. </p>
<p>"What's surprising is how seemingly short-sighted they might be," Elise Wirkus, legislative affairs manager for the democracy reform advocacy group Issue One, said of the GOP-proposed voting curbs. "What I don't think we know yet is how limiting early voting or vote by mail could hurt Republican voter access down the line." </p>
<p>Issue One (which started but remains journalistically independent from The Fulcrum) has convened a bipartisan National Council on Election Integrity in hopes of finding common ground on election integrity. The group will host <a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Y2V9ZuFcQmGJVq9MTrr6GQ" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a forum</a> next week on "How State Voting Proposals Could Impact How Millions of Americans Vote."</p>
<p>Among the issues that could bring Republicans and Democrats together, says Wirkus, is the need to increase funding for election administration. Some democracy advocates joined Republicans in <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/big-picture/private-funding-for-elections" target="_self">raising questions about</a> the private funding from executives at Facebook and elsewhere that helped underwrite 2020 election administration and voting infrastructure. At the same time, some big businesses — including Coca-Cola and Home Depot, both headquartered in Atlanta — have expressed opposition to Georgia's new voter restrictions.</p>
<p>The more aggressively Republicans have moved to restrict ballot access, in other words, the more Democrats have stepped up their campaign to expand it. At the state level, the outcome may be a patchwork of laws that make it much easier to participate in democracy in some states but much harder in others. On Capitol Hill, the high-stakes fight over HR 1 has brought the voting wars to a crucial turning point. </p>
<p><em>Carney is a contributing writer.</em></p>
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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told Democrats that HR 1 includes "plenty you ought to be ashamed about."
Total and testy partisan standoff at Senate's first hearing on HR 1
Mar 24 2021
Partisan passions erupted on Wednesday at the Senate's first-ever hearing on HR 1, which has rapidly transformed from the democracy reform movement's longshot wish list into one of the topflight fights in Congress.
The session magnified the virtually total disagreement between the bill's Democratic proponents and Republican opponents. Not a glimmer of potential compromise surfaced, even about the need to do anything to fix the system.
"We have an existential threat to democracy on our hands," Majority Leader Chuck Schumer declared. Minutes later, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell derided the measure as "a solution in search of a problem" because "states are not engaging in efforts to suppress voters, whatsoever."
<p>After more than four hours of testimony and tart exchanges among senators, it was clearer than ever that enacting the package will require limiting or eliminating the filibuster and its effective 60-vote requirement for passage. That is not close to happening, but more and more Democrats say this bill would by the most appropriate venue for changing the Senate rules sometime this year — on the grounds that protecting minorities' civil rights across the nation is a cause much more important than protecting the rights of a minority on Capitol Hill to shape policy.</p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>The bill has generated a surge of attention mainly because it would create an expansive array of nationwide, liberalized ballot access rules, from required no-excuse absentee balloting to limits on voter ID requirements. Doing so would repel the potential wave of state efforts to make voting harder in the aftermath of a 2020 election that saw record turnout despite the pandemic. </p><p>But the measure, which the Democratic House passed over united GOP opposition three weeks ago, would also tamp down big money's secretive sway over campaigns, prevent partisan congressional <a href="http://thefulcrum.us/gerrymandering" target="_self">gerrymandering</a> and tighten government ethics rules — aspirations of good-government groups that in many cases predated their newly heightened concerns about election laws.</p><p>The divide over the election language is so stark that the two parties refer to it by different shorthand. Democrats almost always describe the provisions as assuring voting rights. Republicans almost always describe the same provisions as weakening election security.</p><p>The Rules and Administration Committee, which has jurisdiction over all legislation connected to elections and internal Senate operations and so counts both party leaders as members, conducted the hearing. Schumer and McConnell each asserted that a partisan power grab was motivating the HR 1 position of the party across the dais.</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>"Shame, shame, shame on them," Schumer said, his comments focused on the GOP's opposition to federalization of election rules.</p><p>"There's plenty you ought to be ashamed about," McConnell replied, emphasizing proposals to boost the regulation of campaign finance.</p><p>They departed after their dueling speeches, yielding to an unusual level of sniping between the two senators with the senior seats on the panel. Democratic Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and top Republican Roy Blunt of Missouri have a rare reputation for collaboration in the gridlocked Senate, but the flashpoint created by the 800-page bill is clearly testing their relationship. </p><p>At one point, they sparred for about five minutes about the allocation of a few seconds of time for witnesses to finish their answers.</p><p>One of the witnesses called by the Republicans was GOP Secretary of State Mac Warner of West Virginia, whose vocal opposition to the bill — it would "overrule the balance of powers" and "stomp on states rights," he said — is seen as crucial to swaying his state's senior senator, Joe Manchin. He is the only Democrat who has not sponsored S 1, the nearly identical companion to HR 1, and is also the most prominent opponent to weakening the filibuster.</p><p>The possibility of a middle ground on the legislation seems remote. The parties fundamentally disagree about whether the states should continue to have dominant control over how elections are run (the GOP view) or whether the need to shore up voting rights can be met only by the federalized standards the Democrats have proposed.</p><p>Beyond that, there are several emerging strategic disagreements within the world of democracy reform advocates. </p><p>Some say the best option may be to shrink the bill to only the nine or so second-tier provisions that have drawn GOP support, such as mandating the disclosure of who pays for political advertising online.</p><p>Others acknowledge the standoff on the election provisions and argue those should be handled separately from the rest of the bill — calling for independent commissions to draw House seats, making <a href="http://thefulcrum.us/super-pac" target="_self">super PACs</a> disclose big donors, starting a public financing system for House candidates who rely on small-dollar gifts, enhancing the Federal Election Commission's regulatory strength, and setting new codes of conduct for the Supreme Court and Congress. </p><p>Still others, including the prominent election law professors Edward Foley of Ohio State and Rick Hasen of the University California at Irvine, are advocating for the opposite — a bill narrowed to provisions that would prevent a retrenchment of voting rights and shore up confidence in the fairness and security of elections in the face of former president Donald Trump's baseless claims about fraud.</p><p>But for now the majority of advocacy groups agree with two of the most venerable voices in the democracy reform world, Lawrence Lessig of Harvard and Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21. They argue that the heightened attention to voter suppression and the new Democratic control of Washington have created a rare opening for pushing the entire package, that proponents should "stop arguing with themselves" and that aspiring to nothing short of total victory is both bad politics and bad policy.</p><p>The proponents point to an array of polling showing the public is behind most of HR 1's ideas. But on Tuesday a conservative group, The Honest Elections Project, released results of a survey it commissioned showings something of the opposite: broad support for such things as having to show a photo ID to vote, which the bill would disallow, and solid opposition to third parties collecting and delivering sealed ballot envelopes, which the bill would permit.</p>
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Republican lawmakers say New Hampshire's rules are "adequate."
New Hampshire Republicans stop no-excuse absentee voting
Mar 19 2021
Republican lawmakers have turned back efforts to make no-excuse absentee voting a permanent fixture in New Hampshire.
On Thursday, the GOP-led state Senate voted along party lines to reject a bill that would have eliminated the excuse requirement to vote by mail.
During the 2020 election, all 1.1 million New Hampshire voters were able to request an absentee ballot due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Democratic lawmakers had hoped to make voting by mail a fixed option in future voting.
<p>With the legislation now dead, New Hampshire will return to the absentee voting rules it employed prior to the pandemic. In order to qualify for a mail ballot, voters must have one of these excuses: an absence from their city or town on Election Day, a religious observance, a disability or illness, or an employment commitment, including caregiving, during the entire in-person voting period.<br></p>
<p>Expanding absentee eligibility to everyone last year gave voters the convenience and flexibility to choose whatever voting method was best for them, proponents of the bill said. One-third of the more than 814,000 ballots cast by New Hampshirites in the 2020 election were by mail.</p>
<p>Senate Democratic Leader Donna Soucy said because mail voting was so widely used, she's concerned some voters have come to expect the no-excuse policy as the norm.</p>
<p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>"Now that we experienced the largest election in our state's history, and have accommodated all of these voters, why would we now go back and tell them that this process doesn't make sense anymore?" she said.</p>
<p>But Republican lawmakers maintain that the state's current law is "adequate" and allows plenty of opportunities for people to vote absentee.</p>
<p>"Give me an example that we don't cover that isn't a person who is just too lazy to go to the poll on Election Day," said GOP Sen. James Gray.</p>
<p>Currently, 34 states and Washington, D.C., allow for no-excuse absentee voting, and during the 2020 election, all but five states expanded eligibility. Now, state lawmakers across the country are considering hundreds of bills to reform the election process, with Democrats largely in favor of expanding access and Republicans pushing for restrictions.</p>
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