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After Democrats Surged in 2018, Republican-Run States Focus on New Voter Suppression Laws
Republicans took the wrong message from being trounced in November 2018 by the largest margins in midterm history. So many important reasons why they were crushed but instead of reflecting on any of the hundreds of them and adjusting their platform to work on behalf of the good of our people and country, their response is to attempt to suppress votes in order to maintain power. This is disgusting, evil, illegal in many cases, and just flat out infuriating.
After high turnout in last year's midterm elections propelled Democrats to a new House majority and big gains in the states, several Republican-controlled state legislatures are attempting to change voting-related rules in ways that might reduce future voter turnout.
....the policies are designed to dampen turnout among younger, nonwhite and poorer voters, who are less likely to back Republicans. The bills in Republican-controlled states that could curb voting come as many Democratic-run states are heading further in the opposite direction by expanding access to early and absentee voting and adopting automatic voter registration
DEMOCRACY for Republicans means stopping people from voting.
In Texas, state lawmakers are considering adding criminal penalties for people who improperly fill out voter registration forms. Arizona Republicans are proposing new voting rules that could make it more complicated to cast an early ballot. In Tennessee, GOP lawmakers are considering a bill that would fine groups involved in voter registration drives that submit incomplete forms.
This on top of decades of Republican push for requiring IDs to vote.
The stated basis that Republican lawmakers gave for many of those [Voter ID] laws was to reduce the incidence of in-person voter fraud. Repeated research has unveiled scant evidence of anything more than a small number of instances of voters attempting to cast multiple ballots. But the repeated message that voter fraud was rampant has become a powerful motivator for Republican campaigns to turn out their own voters.
But the impact of that push has been to increase partisanship and conflict around voting, the centerpiece of a democratic system.