Voting rights are under attack in state legislatures, and Federal action is needed.

Congress has the opportunity to pass two important bills that will safeguard the freedom to vote and protect underserved communities from further attacks:

• The For The People Act
• The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act

The Arizona legislature is considering:

SB 1485, which will purge the highly-popular Permanent Early Vote List. Advocates estimate this could purge up to 200,000 voters—including 50,000 Latinx voters.

SB 1713, which would force Arizona voters to include personal information on their ballot envelopes, exposing them to unnecessary identity risk and making it harder for people to vote by mail. These new burdens will disproportionately jeopardize voters of color, Native voters, seniors voter, low-income voters, voters with disabilities, and military voters. Seniors are most likely to be among the 60,000+ registered voters who lack a driver’s license number on their voter registration; 1 in 5 people over 70 lacks a driver’s license. The bill does not appropriate funds to help these voters obtain the necessary identification.

SB 1106, which would create new ways to remove eligible voters from the rolls, including eliminating the requirement that counties “take the necessary steps to contact the voter at the voter’s new residence” when mail is returned as undeliverable. Instead, they would automatically be removed from the registration list. This bill also makes it a felony to forward a ballot to the voter, including family members forwarding ballots to students.

SB 1068, which will shift authority over elections from the Arizona Secretary of State (D) and the Governor (R) to the state legislature.

What’s in the Georgia voter suppression bill, SB 202?

The tremendous activism and push back made this bill less harmful than it was at the beginning, but this bill is largely focused on intimidation and election administration power, and it creates processes to disrupt local control and certification.

Wins:

• Early vote and weekend voting maintained in general election
• No fault absentee by mail preserved
• Automatic voter registration preserved
• Drop boxes preserved, but they must be inside, must be surveilled, only 1/100,000 voters
• Allows vote tabulation to begin in advance, third Monday before Election Day
• Signature match repealed

Suppressive new policies:

• Shortened absentee ballot request period
• Shortened absentee application return deadline
• Banned out of precinct voting except for 5-7pm on Election Day
• Additional ID requirements for voting by mail: required submission of a photocopy of ID for those without state ID/Driver’s License 
• Date of birth requirement on absentee ballots
• Outlaws private funding for elections administration
• Truncated runoff period
• Encouragement of mass voter challenge “caging”, with sanctions for counties in noncompliance
• Elections boards takeovers at the state and local level 
• Bans mobile voting except under limited emergency circumstances
• New restrictions on polling location hours extensions
• Giving water/snacks by hand to voters in line criminalized
• New misdemeanors related to voter privacy, third party apps

The Florida State Legislature is considering: 

SB 90, which would ban drop boxes for mail ballots. Of the 67 county elections supervisors who run Florida’s elections, 66 opposed this bill. Drop boxes are a safe and useful way to deposit a ballot for seniors, at-risk communities, people of color, and those who work jobs with hours that make it difficult to turn their ballot in during normal business hours.

This bill also makes possession of mail ballots restricted to immediate family members. The current system allows a voter to designate someone to pick up or return a ballot. This proposed change would make it much harder for some people, like seniors, to vote.

HB 7041, which forces voters to file new absentee requests every election cycle, makes signature matching requirements stricter, limits ballot return collection, and requires ID for dropbox. 

A new report from All Voting Is Local also shows that Florida’s younger voters, voters of color, and newly registered voters were disproportionately more likely to have their mail-in ballots flagged for rejection.

The Michigan GOP has introduced a package of 39 voter suppression bills that would restrict our freedom to vote, including by:

• SB 285 makes it harder to vote using an absentee ballot by forcing you to show a specific type of photo ID in order to request an absentee ballot. If you are requesting a ballot by mail, you need a printer with color ink just to make a copy of your ID.
• SB 286 removes your right to return your absentee ballot to a drop box after 5pm the day before election day.
• SB 287 forces you to pay to return your absentee ballot by mail by banning clerks  from providing prepaid postage on return envelopes
• SB 296 creates new supermajority rules for local election certification in larger counties to create more deadlock and disruption in the election certification process. 
• SB 297 creates unnecessary red tape that makes it harder for clerks to conduct their work by creating a partisan board to review and approve who the clerks hire to help them.
• SB 303 forces voters to carry a specific type of ID to vote in person. If a voter cannot provide that ID, they are forced to cast a provisional ballot.
• SB 304 places extreme burdens on voters who cast a provisional ballot
• SB 310 bans the Secretary of State from sending absentee ballot applications to all voters or from providing a link to the online application on the Secretary’s website.

Thanks to your advocacy, HB 429, which would have revoked college IDs as a valid form of identification at the polls in addition to requiring that colleges offer in-state tuition to students who vote in NH, was defeated. It’s a great start, and we could use your help to defeat the following bills:

• SB 54, which would require voters to provide their driver’s license number or non-driver ID number and the last four digits of their SSN with their absentee ballot applications.
• HB 292, which establishes new ID requirements for voters requesting mail ballots: if the ballot is being sent to any address different from the one the voter has on file, they will be required to provide additional identification documentation — either a copy of a photo ID that meets state requirements, or a notarized signature on the mail ballot application.
• HB 523, which requires any same-day Election Day registrants who do not have a photo ID to have their photos taken at their polling place. HB 523 also would eliminate previous religious exemptions for some voters who were not required to show photo ID when registering.

And the following bills, which were retained in committee but will be picked up this summer:  

• HB 86, which would eliminate same-day voter registration and effectively ban out-of-state college students from voting by requiring students who wish to vote in NH to prove they receive in-state tuition.
• HB 531, which would introduce unconstitutional provisional ballots and target new Americans by requiring extensive citizenship documentation at the polls.
• HB 554, which similarly tries to intimidate young people by introducing confusing residency requirements.

The North Carolina State Legislature is considering:

• SB 326, which will directly assault North Carolinians’ freedom to vote by mail. It requires all absentee ballots to be received by elections officials by 5 p.m. on Election Day, regardless of when the voter mailed the ballot. Right now, existing law allows ballots to be counted that are postmarked by Election Day and received no later than three days after Election Day.
• It will move the absentee ballot request window from 1 week before Election Day to 2 weeks before election day. Existing law sets the deadline at the Tuesday immediately before Election Day.
• Moreover, it will strip funding away from local election administrators creating financial challenges that will impact already under-resourced communities, specifically  Black, brown, and indigenous populations, older adults in residential living facilities, and voters with disabilities. NC’s counties will have to bear the financial burden alone to pick up the tab. This would mean that programs such as North Carolina’s Multipartisan Assistance Teams, which help seniors in congregate living facilities submit their absentee ballot securely, would be jeopardized.

The Texas State Legislature is aggressively advancing several voter suppression bills. Two of the worst bills introduced are Senate Bill 7 and House Bill 6. SB 7 was voted out of the full Senate after over 7 hours of debate in the middle of the night/early morning hours of April 1st and now heads to the House. HB 6 was voted out of the House Committee on April 8th.

Combined these two anti-voter omnibus bills would:

• Allow partisan poll watchers to video record voters; 
• Increase burdens on voters with disabilities by requiring them to provide proof to receive a mail-in ballot; 
• Limit early voting hours by banning expanded hours as seen in Harris County in 2020;
• Ban local elections officials from proactively sending mail ballot applications to voters;
• Restrict voters from dropping off completed absentee ballots; 
• Dangerously hyper criminalize voting, including criminalizing small mistakes for people assisting voters to register; 
• Discourage volunteers from driving voters, including the elderly, to polling places by requiring paperwork for drivers of curbside voters; 
• Ban drive-through and outdoor voting;
• Put new restrictions on polling place locations in large counties and eliminate large voting sites meant to make voting quicker; and 
• Mandate overzealous and voter roll purges that would disqualify many eligible voters. 

See more: SB 7 – TCRP section-by-section summary

See more: HB 6 – TCRP section-by-section summary

Additional voter suppression bills include: 

• HB 3080, which criminalizes individuals with a class A misdemeanor charge for providing an application for an absentee ballot to someone who didn’t specifically request it (the same class of misdemeanor as assault). It also forces voters who wish to vote-by-mail to submit a thumbprint for verification, putting the burden and expenses for voters to acquire fingerprinting services.
• SB 1111 / HB 3974, which would require voters who receive an address confirmation notice to provide documentation of their residence when returning the notice or risk being purged from the rolls. 
• SB 1115, which would severely restrict the hours counties are allowed to offer early voting, making voting harder for those who work extended hours during the day 
• HB 25, like the provision seen in SB 7, which, would prohibit election officials from proactively sending voters an absentee ballot application.
• HB 3281, which shortens the deadline when you can return mail ballots to 5pm on the FOURTH day before Election Day.
• HB 2321, which requires election administrators to verify mail voters’ signatures against all voters’ signatures on file in the Department of Public Safety and the county election administrator. If the signatures don’t match perfectly, the ballot could be thrown out and with no recourse to appeal. 
• HB 1026, which removes local authority over voter registration and list maintenance and establishes the Secretary of State as the voter registrar of every county and sole authority for those duties statewide. It also would make registering harder by eliminating the volunteer deputy registrar system and instead requiring all applications to be submitted by mail or in person to the Secretary of State.

Statement from Texas Civil Rights Project President, Mimi Marziani:

“Rather than attend to the needs of Texans the people leading this state are seeking to distract us with bills manufactured by Trump allies. Lawmakers are filing complex bills they don’t even understand, without inviting safe virtual testimony from the groups most affected by future suppression. These bills echo conspiracy theories that stoked voter intimidation and violence on a national level this past year.”