Tag: GOP only wants power

Senate voting and ethics overhaul stalls, but Democrats united in vote

Roll Call Logo

Klobuchar: ‘This is the beginning and not the end’

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin III voted with his party Tuesday in favor of debating Democrats’ signature overhaul of elections, campaign finance and ethics laws, but the measure’s path to enactment still remains improbable.  

Republicans, as expected, opposed a procedural vote that would have let the Senate begin debate and given Manchin a chance to change a sweeping bill he had said earlier this month he would vote against. Senators voted 50-50 along party lines, leaving the motion short of the needed 60 votes for adoption. 

GOP senators called the bill a power grab by the other side of the aisle and argued it would give too much control to the federal government over elections. Democrats said they planned to press ahead, as  allied outside interest groups mounted a fresh round of pressure campaigns, including to end the legislative filibuster.  Continue reading.

McConnell says companies should stay out of politics — unless they’re donating money

Washington Post logo

After the Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that companies could finance election spending, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) celebrated the prospect that corporate America would enter — and influence — the political fray.

“For too long, some in this country have been deprived of full participation in the political process,” he said in a statement at the time. He hailed the decision, Citizens United, as “an important step” in “restoring the First Amendment rights of these groups.”

But just over a decade later, McConnell has a different message for companies: Unless it involves money, they had better stay quiet. Continue reading.

In Statehouses, Stolen-Election Myth Fuels a G.O.P. Drive to Rewrite Rules

New York Times logo

Republican legislators want big changes to the laws for elections and other aspects of governance. A fight over the ground rules for voting may follow.

WASHINGTON — Led by loyalists who embrace former President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claims of a stolen election, Republicans in state legislatures nationwide are mounting extraordinary efforts to change the rules of voting and representation — and enhance their own political clout.

At the top of those efforts is a slew of bills raising new barriers to casting votes, particularly the mail ballots that Democrats flocked to in the 2020 election. But other measures go well beyond that, including tweaking Electoral College and judicial election rules for the benefit of Republicans; clamping down on citizen-led ballot initiatives; and outlawing private donations that provide resources for administering elections, which were crucial to the smooth November vote.

And although the decennial redrawing of political maps has been pushed to the fall because of delays in delivering 2020 census totals, there are already signs of an aggressive drive to further gerrymander political districts, particularly in states under complete Republican control. Continue reading.