Leubsdorf: GOP returns to familiar playbook with efforts to restrict mail-in voting

Over the past dozen years, voting rights has become one of the most heated battlegrounds in the nation’s increasingly polarized politics. Republicans, sometimes acknowledging their reliance on white voters is a handicap in an increasingly diverse country, have sought to erect new barriers to turnout, often in the name of combating alleged fraud.

Though the evidence is mixed, Democrats have often said they would benefit from expanding the electorate. But they also contend that making voting easier is the right thing to do. It’s a major goal of the sweeping legislation the House passed in 2019 and Democratic leaders have scheduled for action again next month.

Their bill would create a nationwide internet voter registration system; require states to allow mail ballots in all circumstances and provide two weeks of early voting; require paper ballots; allow voting by felons who have served their time; and restore and update provisions of the Voting Rights Act which the Supreme Court threw out as outdated in 2013.

While House approval is again likely, Democratic backers face an uphill fight in the Senate, unless they can attract 10 Republican votes to reach the 60-vote threshold or eliminate the filibuster that requires more than a simple majority to act.

Republicans oppose federal action to override state voting requirements or other measures to increase the size of the electorate, such as expanding use of mail ballots.

As they did after capturing many state governorships and legislatures in 2010, GOP state lawmakers are pressing for added restrictions after their success last year in rebuffing Democratic efforts to regain majorities at the state level.

According to New York University’s nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, legislators in 28 states have proposed more than 100 restrictive bills this year, three times as many as a year ago. At the same time, lawmakers in 35 states have introduced more than 400 bills to expand voting access, nearly a quarter of them in New Jersey or New York.

Two of the main states in which GOP lawmakers seek renewed restrictions are Pennsylvania and Georgia, which were at the center of Trump’s post-election efforts to overturn Biden victories with unproven allegations of widespread fraud in mailed ballots.

Other Republican targets include Texas, where Republicans have repeatedly sought greater restrictions in recent years, and New Hampshire, where Republicans regained legislative majorities though Biden won the presidential vote.

Some actions relate directly to the post-election controversies.

In Pennsylvania, three bills seek to eliminate the permissibility of no-excuse mail voting, which the GOP-controlled legislature enacted just two years ago. Biden had a big majority in votes cast by mail. Republicans would also increase poll watcher access to absentee ballot processing, tighten restrictions on absentee ballot eligibility and bar counting ballots received after Election Day. Most measures, even if they pass, face a likely veto by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf.

In Georgia, the effort to tighten voting procedures has set off renewed Republican squabbling.

Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, two Republicans who repeatedly defended the state’s 2020 results against Trump’s efforts to invalidate them, now favor limiting mail-in voting and stricter identification for absentee ballot applicants.

Other prominent Georgia Republicans, including Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and House Speaker David Ralston, favor retention of no-excuse absentee voting, albeit with increased screening of applicants.

In Texas, pending Republican proposals would transfer voter registration authority from county clerks to the secretary of state, codify last year’s State Supreme Court decision barring Harris County (Houston) from sending absentee ballots to all registered voters, and make it easier to purge voter rolls of nonvoters.

Democrats, meanwhile, seek to expand no-excuse absentee ballots and early voting, implement same-day registration and restore voting rights of those with past convictions.

Calculating the impact of voting law changes is complicated. Until Democrats pushed mail-in voting amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Republicans were seen as the main beneficiaries of absentee balloting.

But four of five states with all-mail voting – Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington – have been predominantly Democratic in recent years. And some Republicans have openly claimed expanded voting would hurt their party, none more outspokenly than Trump.

If Democrats can expand mail voting, Trump said last year on “Fox and Friends,” “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

But the most recent election provided conflicting evidence about which party added voters would help. The same record turnout that elected Joe Biden produced GOP congressional and legislative gains.