WASHINGTON, D.C. – Last week, the Senate Rules Committee held an eight hour markup of the urgently needed democracy restoration bill, the For the People Act. Oregon’s U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley, the lead sponsor of the legislation, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), the Chair of the Senate Rules Committee and the Senate co-lead of the For the People Act, participated in the markup and countered right-wing misinformation about the bill, underscoring the attacks on voting rights across the nation.
Just days later, leaked video showed the executive director of the right-wing dark money group Heritage Action—a former Trump administration official, Jessica Anderson—bragging about the organization’s writing of voter suppression bills across the country. “We did it quickly and we did it quietly,” she boasted to a room of mega donors at the private meeting last month.
The revelation underscores how billionaire-fueled special interests and national conservative politicians are conspiring to corrupt the electorate—exactly the problem that would be solved by the For the People Act, which would protect Americans’ right to vote, tackle partisan gerrymandering, and stop billionaires from buying elections.
Here’s what they’re saying:
Leaked Video: Dark Money Group Brags About Writing GOP Voter Suppression Bills Across the Country (Ari Berman and Nick Surgey, Mother Jones)
…The leaked video reveals the extent to which Heritage is leading a massive campaign to draft and pass model legislation restricting voting access, which has been swiftly adopted this year in the battleground states of Georgia, Florida, Arizona, and Iowa. It’s no coincidence that so many GOP-controlled states are rushing to pass similar pieces of legislation in such a short period of time.
Republican legislators claim they’re tightening up election procedures to address (unfounded) concerns about fraud in the 2020 election. But what’s really behind this effort is a group of conservative Washington insiders who have been pushing these same kinds of voting restrictions for decades, with the explicit aim of helping Republicans win elections. The difference now is that Trump’s baseless claims about 2020 have given them the ammunition to get the bills passed, and the conservative movement, led by Heritage, is making an unprecedented investment to get them over the finish line… CLICK HERE TO READ MORE.
Who wrote the Arkansas vote suppression legislation? Here’s a clue (Max Brantley, Arkansas Times)
…Most if not all of the legislation outlined in Georgia (except Arkansas has no drop boxes and Arkansas Republicans make clear they’d never allow them) passed expeditiously through the Republican-controlled Arkansas legislature. Arkansas is no swing state, it’s true. But Republicans figure you can’t be too careful. They’ve implemented partisan control, root and branch, of the election system in Arkansas and made it much harder for people on the margins to vote…
Auf wiedersehen Democracy. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE.
Yes, Mitch McConnell, Republicans Are Trying to Restrict Voting (Peter Wade, Rolling Stone)
“Nobody’s votes are being suppressed anywhere across America, in any of the states,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said this week of the Democrats’ H.R. 1 For the People Act to ensure voting rights, but leaked footage obtained by Mother Jones reveals the opposite is true. The head of the conservative group Heritage Action for America boasted to donors that Republican lawmakers are using the organization’s language in a slew of restrictive voting bills across the nation, according to footage obtained by watchdog group Documented and shared with Mother Jones…
Anderson also gloated that Heritage has been doing some of this work in the shadows, referring to Iowa’s recently signed restrictive voting bill. “Iowa is the first state that we got to work in, and we did it quickly and we did it quietly,” she said, adding, “Honestly, nobody even noticed. My team looked at each other and we’re like, ‘It can’t be that easy.’
Their goal, Anderson said, is to “right the wrongs of November” 2020, when Biden won. And the way they plan to do that is to disenfranchise American voters in as many states as possible… CLICK HERE TO READ MORE.
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