Major legislative attempts are underway in several U.S. states, including key swing states, to undo major changes in voting rules and regulations and return to pre-2020 conditions. These efforts come after a historically chaotic election process that has left millions of Americans questioning the fairness, security, transparency and accountability of elections.
Changes to election rules – some of which were enacted before 2020 and others implemented in response to last year’s COVID-19 pandemic – include expanded mail-in voting, expanded early voting, relaxed verification rules, and extended deadlines for ballot collection, Just the News reported Feb. 28.
These rules likely contributed to the record 158 million-plus votes cast in the 2020 election. But the relaxation of various voting requirements has also led to a serious distrust of the electoral system. Nearly 40 percent of voters believe that fraud exists in U.S. elections, while an equal number claim that such concerns are not properly vetted by public agencies.
Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Arizona are all considering bills to undo the rule change.
Lawmakers in numerous states, all grappling with some of these issues, are pushing legislation to close loopholes that critics say have been created by loosening voting rules.
In blue-flipping Georgia, the Senate passed a bill that would require voters to submit “copies of voter identification for absentee ballot applications.
The bill would eliminate the signature-matching system currently in place for absentee ballots. Critics have accused fraud and abuse of the signature-matching system of being ubiquitous, especially after the state’s governor, Brian Kemp, made it more difficult for officials to reject controversial signatures by agreeing to activists’ requests last year.
In Pennsylvania, state lawmakers have signaled their intention to repeal the state’s “no reason” mail-in ballot system, which was first implemented in 2019.
State Senators Patrick Stefano (D-Pennsylvania) and Doug Mastriano (D-Pennsylvania), in a Senate memo in February, said they “intend to introduce legislation to repeal the no-excuse mail-in voting requirement that was implemented two years ago through the state’s Act 77.
The senators argued, “By removing the legal requirement that allows no-excuse mail-in ballots, we can regain some trust in the integrity of our elections.”
Stefano also vowed to repeal Act 77’s “annual mail-in voter list” and provide that “only the Pennsylvania Department of State may send mail-in ballot requests to eligible voters.”
He wrote, “By ensuring that eligible voters must apply for a mail-in ballot for every election and that only the State House can distribute applications for mail-in ballots, we can resolve much of the confusion and frustration surrounding our recent elections.”
Meanwhile, in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, Rep. Dan Moul (R-PA) vowed to codify into law “the only legal way for voters to utilize the vote-by-mail system,” i.e., through the postal service or by returning mail-in ballots in person. Critics have criticized Pennsylvania’s use of drop boxes during the 2020 election, claiming they pose a significant security risk, though the state’s Supreme Court ruled in a split decision that drop boxes are allowed.
In some cases, lawmakers are trying to catch up with changes to voting laws observed in certain states during the 2020 election. For example, a bill under consideration in Arizona would make it a felony for any public official to initiate sending a mail-in ballot to any voter who is not on the state’s early voting list.
Numerous states, such as California and New Jersey, have taken the initiative to mail mail-in ballots to every voter before the November election.
In Arizona, Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes tried to mail ballots to every registered voter there last March, but was ordered by a court to stop doing so shortly before he did so.
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