From what I understand, any bill passed now won't go into affect till January. I should double check that.
And all of these bills are being challenged in court.
Lots of groups sue states over these kinds of bills. But the ACLU is on the top of the list. I will have to find out if anyone keeps track. Like what is the ACLU's batting average. I do know that they won 28 suits in about that many states in 2020.
There is this one lawyer I saw being interviewed on MSNBC, I don't remember his name or what organization he works for but he was something like 9 for 9 so far.
And its not just the ACLU. The Florida bill has 3 different suits by a collection of groups.
The language in a lot of these bills are very similar. In some cases exactly the same. (the same group probably wrote all of them). Once the ACLU knows how to defeat one - they will all go down. If I remember correctly the Texan bill includes language from other bills that have already been overturned.
The Florida bill might even harm Republicans more than they help them. It is going to make it much harder to mail in votes. And in Florida the two groups that are well represented are service men and the elderly - both of those tend to vote Republican and rely on mail in votes.
I also don't see some of the aspects of the voter suppression bills to be legitimate threats. Some of these states are already pretty hard to vote in. Georgia for instance turned blue despite how hard it is to vote.
And... this kind of blatant voter suppression will mobilize activists. One group that is under represented at the polls is the 18- 25 crowd. Maybe this kind of stuff will get them activated.
some of the aspects I find very very troublesome. The extra powers they give to election officials and secretary of states if very scary. Combined with the number of experienced election officials who are quitting because of harassment makes this even more troublesome.
I'm a member of MoveOn and Indivisible. Both of my local chapters don't have a lot to do because my county and state are so blue. I expect to be relegated to contributions and some post card writing. But I hear from the other chapters and there are already a lot of stuff planned for the Red States.
For example.
Hundreds of demonstrators outraged with Sen. Joe Manchin’s opposition to a sweeping overhaul of U.S. election law marched through the state’s capital city on Monday evening.
apnews.com
And then there is this.
Rachel Maddow shares details from a new poll that shows West Virginia voters of all political stripes are very supportive of the For The People Act to protect voting rights, which makes it all the more odd that Senator Joe Manchin, who represents West Virginia, does not.
news.yahoo.com
Also maybe Manchin has a point about the HR 1 voting rights bill being too broad and messy. It contains the John Lewis Voting Rights Act which has passed the floor and has Manchin's support. maybe the dems can get that passed on its own.
