Name: Fight to vote: why a new bill in Georgia will harm Black voters
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Fight to vote: why a new bill in Georgia will harm Black voters

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Republicans in the state legislature voted to make mail-in voting harder while the leading Democrat in the US House warned senators to find a way to pass voting rights legislationThe fight to vote is supported byLast modified on Thu 11 Mar 2021 10.01 ESTHappy Thursday,There’s been a whirlwind of voting rights stories over the last week. Republicans continue to advance a wave of restrictions in statehouses across the country while there is mounting pressure in Washington for Democrats to to pass significant federal voting rights legislation.This is an indication of how voting rights has only emerged as an escalating issue after the 2020 election.Here’s a look at some of the key developments:The Georgia senate on Tuesday that would make it significantly harder to vote by mail in the state after record turnout in 2020. The measure would do away with the no-excuse system Republicans implemented in the state and only allow people to cast a mail-in vote if they are aged 65 or older. The bill now heads over to the Georgia house of representatives, which last week passed its own sweeping restrictions to voting.New data shows how these policies would disproportionately harm Black voters.While the share of white voters who cast a mail-in ballot fell from 2016 to 2020, the share of Black voters increased from 23% to 31%, according to an by the Brennan Center for Justice. Despite those changes, white voters still made up a larger portion of the voters aged 65+ who voted by mail in 2020. also shows that Black voters in Georgia are more likely than white voters to cast their ballot on the weekend days that could be cut.It’s still unclear whether lawmakers will ultimately choose to get rid of no-excuse absentee voting in the final version of whatever bill they pass. Top Republicans in the state oppose requiring voters to give an excuse and several Republicans, including the lieutenant governor, Geoff Duncan, in the senate vote.Last week, my colleague Daniel Strauss and , one of the most powerful Democrats in the US House of Representatives, about how Democrats should approach the filibuster.The procedure stands in the way of blocking HR1, a bill passed by the House last week, that would require states to offer early voting as well as same-day and automatic registration, among other significant measures. It also stands in the way of blocking a new version of the Voting Rights Act that would require states with a history of voting discrimination to get changes pre-cleared by the federal government.Clyburn stopped short of saying the filibuster should be eliminated entirely, but said Democrats needed to find a workaround for voting and other civil rights legislation. He also offered a warning for two moderate Democratic senators, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, some of the staunchest advocates of keeping the filibuster in place.“There’s no way under the sun that in 2021 that we are going to allow the filibuster to be used to deny voting rights. That just ain’t gonna happen. That would be catastrophic,” he said. “If Manchin and Sinema enjoy being in the majority, they had better figure out a way to get around the filibuster when it comes to voting and civil rights.”Joe Biden issued an on Sunday that makes some modest, but potentially consequential, expansions .Two provisions in the executive order stood out to me. The first requires federal agencies to offer voter registration if a state requests that it do so. This measure – by civil rights groups – could make it significantly easier for vulnerable populations to register to vote. Requiring the federal Indian Health Service to offer voter registration, for example, could.The second significant piece involves directing the attorney general to provide voter registration information to eligible people with felony convictions in federal custody. That’s significant because people with felony convictions, and the officials who supervise them, often face a confusing maze of rules to figure out if they can vote again. In 2018, Crystal Mason, a Texas woman, to five years in prison for voting while she was on supervised release (similar to probation) for a felony offense. The federal officials supervising Mason that they never told her she was ineligible to vote. The guidance required under Biden’s order could help prevent that kind of confusion.

Republicans in the state legislature voted to make mail-in voting harder while the leading Democrat in the US House warned senators to find a way to pass voting rights legislationThe fight to vote is supported byLast modified on Thu 11 Mar 2021 10.01 ESTHappy Thursday,There’s been a whirlwind of voting rights stories over the last week. Republicans continue to advance a wave of restrictions in statehouses across the country while there is mounting pressure in Washington for Democrats to to pass significant federal voting rights legislation.This is an indication of how voting rights has only...

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Voting rights reporter @guardianus. Former reporter @huffpost. Listen to our podcast about the fight to vote http://apple.co/2BmP5cm sam.levine@theguardian.com

Sam Levine

TheGuardian.com, formerly known as Guardian.co.uk and Guardian Unlimited, is a British news and media website owned by the Guardian Media Group. It contains nearly all of the content of the newspapers The Guardian and The Observer, as well as a substantial body of web-only work produced by its own staff, including a rolling news service.

Fight to vote: why a new bill in Georgia will harm Black voters

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