These GOP-sponsored bills would 'restrict voting' by imposing harsh 'criminal penalties': report

17 January 2023

Although Democrats generally performed much better than expected in the 2022 midterms, many civil libertarians and Democratic strategists have been warning that Republicans in state legislatures haven’t given up on voter suppression. Laws designed to intimidate voters, they warn, haven’t gone away.

Journalist Kira Lerner, in an article published by The Guardian on January 17, takes a look at some of the voter suppression activities coming from Republicans at the state level in 2023.

“Republican lawmakers across the country have already filed dozens of bills that would restrict voting, including proposals in Texas that would increase criminal penalties on people who violate voting laws and enact a new law enforcement unit to prosecute election crimes,” Lerner reports. “The 2023 legislative session comes in the wake of an election that was described by many voting rights advocates as a triumph of democracy, despite the restrictive voting laws that were in place in 20 states for the first time last year.”

Lerner continues, “Before this session, at least 26 states enacted, expanded or increased the severity of 120 election-related criminal penalties. This year, Republican-controlled legislatures plan to continue pressing for laws that they say would help prevent widespread voter fraud, a problem that voting advocates say does not exist but nonetheless continues to be alleged by Donald Trump and his allies. Several pre-filed bills would further criminalize voters and election officials, a trend that has been occurring across the U.S. in the past few years.”

Liz Avore, a senior adviser for the Voting Rights Lab, believes that many of the voting bills coming from Republicans in state legislatures are heavy-handed.

Avore told The Guardian, “We started seeing states introducing and moving and passing legislation that creates new criminal penalties or expands existing penalties for election-related crimes, in particular against election officials. A lot of these bills would criminalize good-faith errors by election officials. In other cases, they criminalize conduct that was previously legal or otherwise encouraged.”

Lerner notes that in Texas, “at least five pre-filed bills” would “raise the penalty for illegal voting from a Class A misdemeanor to a second-degree felony, punishable by up to two years in prison.”

“Under pre-filed bills in both chambers,” Lerner reports, “Texas would also launch an election police force similar to the one created by Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, which has so far come up short of producing convictions or any evidence of widespread voting offenses. Texas’ law enforcement unit, led by state ‘election marshals,’ would be dedicated to prosecuting election and voting crimes…. Other bills in Texas would expand the attorney general’s authority to prosecute election crimes. One bill would allow the attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor for criminal voting cases, and another would allow the attorney general to issue civil penalties to local prosecutors who do not investigate voting crimes.”

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