Dec.16

electoral-vote.com

Dem 47

   

GOP 53

Cleta Mitchell Is Working to Restrict Voting Even More

As noted above, state legislatures are important. If you think some states try to restrict voting now, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who helped Donald Trump try to steal the 2020 election, has big plans for future elections. With the help of a few billionaires and wealthy special interest groups, she has formed the Election Integrity Network (EIN). She is working with the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to get her ideas written into state laws. The key idea is to make it more onerous for some people to vote.

Here are just some of the items on her wish list:

• Require physical documents proving citizenship to register to vote.
• Only documents issued only to citizens may be used to vote (e.g., no student ID cards).
• Voter registration available only at election offices and DMV offices.
• Apportionment for the House and EVs based on citizens in the state, not on people in the state.
• Permissible voter ID must confirm all of: identity, residency, and U.S. citizenship.
• Voting by mail must use the same ID procedures as voting in person.
• No mail-in ballots will be accepted after the close of polls on Election Day
• Limit early voting to a maximum of 10 days.
• Establish clear and limited rules for who is allowed to vote absentee (e.g., only disabled people).
• No ballot curing for technical errors on ballots or envelopes (e.g., the voter forgot to write in the date).
• Repeated ongoing updating of voter rolls.
• Only paper ballots, no touchscreen machines or QR codes on ballots.
• Require third-party audits of election procedures.
• Eliminate risk-limiting audits.
• Require separate procedures for overseas military and overseas civilians.
• Allow overseas military voters to vote only for president unless previously registered in a state.
• Reduce the use of provisional ballots to a minimum.
• Make it much more difficult to get standing to challenge election laws.

ALEC will work with state legislators to accomplish these goals. "Work with" specifically means "write a bill, give it to a state legislator, and ask that person to toss it in the hopper unmodified." Bonus points and campaign contributions may be available for introducing the bill, having it be marked up in committee, being voted onto the floor by the committee, passing the chamber, passing the legislature, and being signed into law by the governor.

ALEC says that its top priority is to make it impossible for noncitizens to vote, something that almost never happens now. In reality, many of the items above have little to do with noncitizens voting. For example, how does reducing early voting from 30 days to 10 days reduce noncitizen voting other than by reducing all voting? However, ALEC is keenly aware that about 10% of the population has no documentary proof of citizenship, cannot acquire it easily, and these people tend to be poor and skew Democratic. For example, many do not have a driver's license and may have lost their birth certificate. The idea here is to make voting hard for someone with a job where they can't take off in the middle of the day to get a new birth certificate if: (1) the relevant office is open only 10 to 2 weekdays, (2) that office requires proof of who you are to get a certificate, and (3) charges $50 for a new certificate.

EIN has other goals as well, such as giving local officials more power to block election certification, repealing laws making it a crime to intimidate election officials, making it harder for overseas voters (including military personnel) to vote, and repealing blackout periods. That last one has to do with state laws that prohibit challenges to voters in the weeks before an election. If repealed, anti-voter activist groups could inundate election offices with challenges and demand that thousands of voters be purged from the rolls a few weeks before the election, with no time to verify if the challenges were valid. Then some offices may simply decide to purge all the challenged voters because there is no time to check. (V)