Republicans Brazenly Gut Voting Rights in Lame Duck Before They Lose Power -4 states

Four states are taking unprecedented steps to strip power from Democrats and make it harder to vote.

The 2018 election saw historic victories for voting rights. Seven states passed ballot initiatives that will make it easier to vote and harder to gerrymander. And some of the biggest cheerleaders for restricting access to the ballot, such as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, lost their gubernatorial races.

But now Republicans in four key swing states—Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and North Carolina—are undertaking unprecedented efforts in lame-duck legislative sessions to strip newly elected Democratic officials of their power to oversee state voting laws and rushing to pass new laws that will make it harder to vote.

On Friday afternoon, Wisconsin’s Republican-held Legislature introduced a 141-page bill to strip two newly elected Democratic officials, incoming Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul, of core powers before they take office. In addition, the bill would make it harder for Wisconsinites to vote by cutting early voting and preventing Evers from making the state’s voter ID law less restrictive.

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In Michigan, voters expanded voting rights last month by overwhelmingly passing a ballot initiative enacting automatic and Election Day registration. They also elected Jocelyn Benson, an election law expert, as the first Democratic secretary of state since 1994.

But a new bill introduced by Michigan Republicans would cut off voter registration 14 days before the election, effectively overturning the Election Day registration initiative. A separate proposal would strip power from Benson by removing oversight of campaign finance laws from the secretary of state’s office, instead giving the authority to a state panel composed equally of Democrats and Republicans. Benson said the proposal would “lead to more gridlock and less enforcement of our already weak campaign finance laws” and called the lame-duck moves an “insult” to voters.

The Ohio Legislature is going a step further and introducing legislation to make it nearly impossible for citizen-led groups to amend the state’s constitution. In May, Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment that will make it more difficult for legislators to gerrymander congressional districts during the next redistricting cycle. Ohio is one of the most heavily gerrymandered Republican states in the country.

In response, the Republican-controlled Legislature is fast-tracking a bill that would require 60 percent support from voters to change the state’s constitution, instead of a simple majority. It also states that signatures gathered for a citizen-led initiative are valid for only 180 days—previously they didn’t expire—and must be submitted by the beginning of April before a November election, instead of July, meaning that signature drives will have to take place during the frigid winter months in Ohio, when it’s toughest for groups to organize. The proposed changes “would make it nearly impossible for grassroots activists to amend the constitution at the ballot,” tweeted Mike Brickner, Ohio state director for All Voting Is Local, a voting rights group.



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Now the North Carolina Legislature is at it again. It originally passed a voter ID law in 2013 that the federal courts said targeted black voters “with almost surgical precision.” After that law was struck down in court, the Republican Legislature put a constitutional amendment on the ballot in 2018 requiring government-issued photo ID to vote. It passed with 60 percent support on Election Day, but because Republicans lost their legislative supermajority in 2018, they’re rushing to pass a bill implementing the amendment in the lame-duck session so Cooper will be unable to veto it.