Voter suppression - election strategy

This is a one-sided partisan political argument.

Everyone just lines up on their predictable partisan sides on issue after issue.

I do wish that RealMusic and Lash and others would show more propensity for independent thought.

How many of these threads are you going to start Real Music? You already started a thread on this exact topic.

I am glad you like my posts RM. That is very kind of you.

Don't worry, I am not going away.

The Texas Democrats who blocked a Republican-backed voting restrictions bill from becoming state law at the eleventh hour last month will head to the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday to lobby senators as part of a broader, last-ditch effort to rally support for a major voter rights bill.

Nearly two dozen state Democrats plan to lobby senators in behalf of the (For the People Act), a broad bill that would create a federal floor of voting rights access and kneecap laws like the one proposed in Texas and already enacted in other Republican-led states.

The schedule is still in flux, but a source with knowledge of the plans said the Texas legislators are scheduled to meet with Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, both of Texas. They will also meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and hope to meet with Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., in their push for federal voting rights legislation.

They will head to the White House for a previously announced meeting Wednesday with Vice President Kamala Harris, who is leading the Biden administration's push to protect voting rights.

"This is, in my mind, a now-or-never moment. It's an all-hands-on-deck moment," state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer said Sunday. "On that last day" of the Texas House session, "on that gloomy Sunday, we knew we didn't have the votes, but we found a will, and we found a way."

Voting rights activists and Democrats in Washington and beyond have argued for months that it is time for the Senate to eliminate the filibuster — the 60-vote threshold needed to pass legislation — to get the (For the People Act) and other parts of President Joe Biden's agenda through the closely divided Senate.

But moderate Democrats, including Joe Manchin of West Virginia, have repeatedly said they aren't on board with changing Senate rules. The (For the People Act) isn't backed by any Republicans, and in a recent opinion piece, Manchin firmly opposed the legislation, citing its lack of bipartisan support. Without GOP votes and without eliminating the filibuster, the bill, filed as H.R. 1, is all but dead.

Even so, advocates who see the bill as their only hope of countering Republican-led election limits say they're not ready to throw in the towel.

"We can't take no for an answer," said Rahna Epting, executive director of MoveOn, a progressive group. "If anything, Manchin raised the stakes on how much energy we're putting into this."

In interviews, more than a half-dozen prominent advocates of the legislation promised more lobbying, marches and ad campaigns and a summer of pressure that would seek to persuade Manchin and others to defy Republican opposition, change the filibuster rules and pass the legislation.

Beto O'Rourke, the Texas Democrat who narrowly lost a Senate race in 2018 and has been hosting voting rights events around the state, said he believes the group will bring "much-needed courage and backbone" to the fight in Washington this week.

"I hope those Texas state House Democrats are able to show their colleagues in the U.S. Senate the way to fight," he said Sunday.

He said he plans to draw more than 10,000 voters for a rally Sunday night at the Texas Capitol in Austin, featuring the Texas legislators after their week of lobbying in Washington. The Senate is expected to vote on the (For the People Act) for the first time next week.

"It is absolutely clear that only Congress can definitively stop this vote suppression and restore fair elections," said Wendy Weiser, vice president of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.

Nsé Ufot, who leads the New Georgia Project and is working with advocates in West Virginia to pressure Manchin at home, said Manchin's op-ed was "a sign that it's time to escalate, not that the fight is over."

"I refuse to believe that one conservative Democrat is literally what is going to bring down the entire American government and the sort of 200-plus-year experiment in democracy," Ufot said.

Stacey Abrams' Fair Fight Action is reported to be planning a "Hot Call Summer" effort, with plans to text 10 million people in states with voting restrictions on the books or under consideration, to rally support for the (For the People Act).

In the 2020 election, we used our vote, whether it was cast early, by mail or on Election Day, to determine the future for our family, community and country. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, racial injustice and the confusion and sudden changes to the voting process thrown at us, we showed up and decided the outcome of a free and fair election.

Now, after showing our power as voters, some partisan politicians in state legislatures are pushing bills that would restrict our freedom to vote, while Congress is on the verge of passing laws to protect and strengthen it.

Already in 2021, more than 250 bills in 43 states have been introduced by Republican state legislators that create more unnecessary barriers to voting. From cutting early voting, to increasing purges of voter registration lists, to limiting absentee voting options, these bills are shameless, partisan attempts to silence us. It is not a coincidence that these bills are being introduced after a free, fair and secure election with record turnout. Americans exercised their right to vote, and these politicians’ response is “We don’t want you to vote.” Under the guise of “election integrity,” many of these bills target voters of color and young voters who already face many barriers to the ballot box. They have nothing to do with election integrity and are simply an attack on our freedom to vote.

Instead of erecting new barriers to voting, we should be working to build a democracy that is truly of, by and for the people, where all eligible Americans can vote and make their voices heard. That’s why Congress must pass, and President Joe Biden must sign into law, the For the People Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act.

Let’s start with the For the People Act, which the House is expected to vote on this week. It’s the boldest pro-democracy reform package introduced in Congress since the Watergate era. If enacted, it would strengthen our ethics and conflict-of-interest laws, stop unaccountable secret and special interest money from corrupting our politics, end partisan gerrymandering and protect voting rights and election security.

The For the People Act would set standards so every voter, regardless of their race, age or ZIP code, has equal access to the ballot box. The bill would improve our elections in several ways. First, it would streamline the voter registration process by allowing voters to register securely online or on Election Day. It would also stop the purging of voters from registration records and instead modernize the process by simply registering eligible voters when they interact with a state government agency.

Secondly, the bill would increase the security and integrity of our elections by requiring the use of paper ballots, increasing oversight of election vendors and encouraging states to conduct risk-limiting election audits, which help us have confidence in the election results. The For the People Act would also crack down on voter intimidation and the spread of disinformation by increasing penalties for promoting false information about the right to vote.

Finally, the For the People Act would ensure that there are more secure and accessible options to vote and reduce long voting lines by expanding early and absentee voting. It would also restore the right to vote to people who have completed their felony sentences and declare that Washington, D.C., residents deserve full voting rights and representation by supporting D.C. statehood.

The other bill Congress must pass to protect voting rights is the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act (introduced in the Senate as the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act). In 2013, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court eroded key parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which protected voters from racial discrimination and intimidation. This decision led to numerous states passing new anti-voter laws that restrict access to the ballot box and cut the number of polling places in our communities.

These changes have disproportionately restricted the freedom to vote for voters of color, often leading to long lines and less resources to run accessible elections in Black and brown communities. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act is our chance to reverse this trend by restoring the Voting Rights Act and strengthening the provisions in it to protect the freedom to vote for all Americans, particularly voters of color.

As more Republican state legislators seem focused on selling debunked conspiracy theories and lies about the integrity of our elections, we — the voters who determine the outcome of our elections — need to make sure our members of Congress know they must focus on delivering bold action to protect voting rights.

Nothing, including the filibuster, which is a relic of the Jim Crow era and subverts the basic notion of majority rule in our democracy, should stop Congress from passing comprehensive democracy reform to strengthen our elections like the For the People Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act.

In my opinion, having one party unlaterally change the voting rules in a way that is benefits them is not a good thing.

It is a bad thng for Democrats to do on a national level. It is also a bad thing for Republicans to do at a state or local level. On either level, a filibuster to prevent this is appropriate.

You are phrasing your questions in a sort of double negative "is it fundamentally wrong in stopping".

I don't believe that everyone should be pushed to vote. Everyone should be able to vote... but pushing people to register and vote doesn't seem right particularly if you are pushing people who you think should vote for you and especially if you are giving these people things for their support.