Tag: in order to win GOP has to stop people from voting

More Than 100 Companies Sign Letter Against Harsher Voting Restrictions

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More than 100 U.S. companies including Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Ford Motor Co and Starbucks Corp have declared their opposition to voting curbs that a number of states are considering implementing.

Activist groups say the restrictions – outlined in voting rights bills already passed in Georgia and being weighed in, among others, Texas and Arizona – are specifically targeting Black people and other racial minorities.

“We all should feel a responsibility to defend the right to vote and oppose any discriminatory legislation or measures that restrict or prevent any eligible voter from having an equal and fair opportunity to cast a ballot,” the companies said in a letter published as a two-page advertisement (https://nyti.ms/3e0fvnL) in Wednesday’s New York Times. Continue reading.

Hundreds of Companies Unite to Oppose Voting Limits, but Others Abstain

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Amazon, Google, G.M. and Starbucks were among those joining the biggest show of solidarity by businesses over legislation in numerous states.

Amazon, BlackRock, Google, Warren Buffett and hundreds of other companies and executives signed on to a new statement released on Wednesday opposing “any discriminatory legislation” that would make it harder for people to vote.

It was the biggest show of solidarity so far by the business community as companies around the country try to navigate the partisan uproar over Republican efforts to enact new election rules in almost every state. Senior Republicans, including former President Donald J. Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell, have called for companies to stay out of politics.

The statement was organized in recent days by Kenneth Chenault, a former chief executive of American Express, and Kenneth Frazier, the chief executive of Merck. A copy appeared on Wednesday in advertisements in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Continue reading.

Top private law firms plan ‘SWAT teams’ to fight voting restrictions in court

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Top private law firms plan ‘SWAT teams’ to fight voting restrictions in court

First, it was the businesses. Now, it’s the bar.

More than a dozen of the country’s top law firms have committed to join forces to challenge voting restrictions across the country, adding legal might to the corporate pressure campaign opposing Republican-led attempts to overhaul elections in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s loss.

One of the effort’s leaders, Brad Karp, chairman of the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison of New York, said Monday that 16 firms had signed on so far, including his. The lawyers will act like “SWAT teams” for legal action, he said. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale School of Management professor who is working to help mobilize corporate America against the restrictions, described the legal coalition as an “army of election law experts ready to dispatch at a moment’s notice.”

The group came together from conversations among major law firms about publicly taking a stand against restrictive voting laws like the one enacted in Georgia last month, as well as bills under consideration in Texas, Arizona, Florida and other states. Continue reading.

As Michigan G.O.P. Plans Voting Limits, Top Corporations Fire a Warning Shot

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State Republicans pushing a new voting law are threatening to use a rarely invoked option to circumvent a promised veto by the governor. And Michigan businesses are trying to get out ahead of the issue.

At first glance, the partisan battle over voting rights in Michigan appears similar to that of many other states: The Republican-led Legislature, spurred by former President Donald J. Trump’s lies about election fraud, has introduced a rash of proposals to restrict voting access, angering Democrats, who are fighting back.

But plenty of twists and turns are looming as Michigan’s State Senate prepares to hold hearings on a package of voting bills beginning Wednesday. Unlike Georgia, Florida and Texas, which have also moved to limit voting access, Michigan has a Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, who said last month she would vetoany bill imposing new restrictions. But unlike in other states with divided governments, Michigan’s Constitution offers Republicans a rarely used option for circumventing Ms. Whitmer’s veto.

Last month, the state’s Republican chairman told activists that he aimed to do just that — usher new voting restrictions into law using a voter-driven petition process that would bypass the governor’s veto pen. Continue reading.

How Voting Laws Suppress the ‘New South’

GOP-backed proposals to restrict voting are steadily gaining traction across the Sun Belt, aiming to slow the effects of ongoing demographic shifts that favor Democrats.

LOOKING BACK IN AN election cycle or two, it may be that the political and economic fallout gripping Georgia today over its controversial new voter law proves to have been a sign of an inevitable march toward a very different electoral map.

The next frontier in the battle over voting rights is already creeping toward other states across the South and the Sun Belt that have two things in common: They are all seeing a similar rapid demographic shift in their electorates that stands to reimagine the American political landscape. And they have entrenched political interests trying to stop it.

After a year of record turnout, especially among voters of color in Southern states, and a barrage of unfounded fraud claims propagated by the former president, GOP-led state legislatures are leading the charge to challenge and amend voting laws. They saw their first big success last month in Georgia. That sweeping law among other things imposes identification requirements for absentee ballots, limits ballot drop boxes and shortens runoff elections. Continue reading.

Video shows Texas GOP official seeking ‘army’ of volunteers to monitor polls in mostly Black and Hispanic Houston precincts

A leaked presentation from the Harris County Republican Party shows an official citing widespread voter fraud in a call for 10,000 poll watchers in Texas. (Common Cause Texas)

Texas faith leaders condemn new election bills as Jim Crow dressed up in a ‘tuxedo’

Faith leaders in Texas are accusing Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republicans of using ‘election integrity’ as an excuse to enact restrictive laws that target voters of color.

Faith leaders in Texas condemned a pair of controversial election bills Wednesday (April 7) working their way through the state Legislature, accusing lawmakers of trying to “dress up Jim and Jane Crow in a tuxedo.”

An array of clergy and other religious leaders assembled outside the Capitol in Austin to express opposition to the bills, known as SB 7 and HB 6. They invoked their respective faiths while criticizing provisions of the proposed legislation such as banning drive-thru voting, shortening early voting hours, sending mail voting applications only to voters who request them and requiring disabled voters to prove their disability with documentation from a physician or the federal government.

“We have those in leadership — in Texas government — (people) who have in their ideological DNA the same mindset of those slave masters who denied the humanity of Black people,” said the Rev. Frederick Haynes III, pastor of Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas. “The same mindset of those individuals who upheld Jim and Jane Crow segregation.” Continue reading.

McConnell in tricky spot with GOP, big biz

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a longtime ally of the business community, now finds himself in a tricky position of having to manage the GOP’s increasingly awkward relationship with corporate America. 

McConnell, in a major break from character, earlier this week slammed companies such as Major League Baseball, Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola for criticizing Georgia’s new election law, which President Biden called “Jim Crow in the 21st century.” 

The GOP leader called that a complete mischaracterization and has repeatedly pointed to a Washington Post analysis giving Biden “four Pinocchios” for “falsely” claiming Georgia’s statute ends voting hours earlier.  Continue reading.

Texas GOP move to overhaul voting laws: What you need to know

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The war over voting access that has roiled Georgia is headed next to Texas, where Republican legislators are working through an omnibus elections overhaul package that would dramatically change the way some voters cast a ballot in future contests.

The measure has been labeled a priority by both Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R), who controls the state Senate. It follows on the heels of election overhauls that passed in 2017 and failed in 2019, but after a chaotic election held amid a pandemic, it aims to crack down on several practices that supporters say ran afoul of current state law.

“We want a system that people can trust, we want it to be accurate, and we want folks to know that it’s accurate,” said state Sen. Bryan Hughes (R), the measure’s prime sponsor. “If folks don’t trust the system, they’re not going to vote.” Continue reading.

Republican battle with MLB intensifies

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Republicans are spoiling for a high-profile fight with MLB as they ramp up pressure on the league’s commissioner to reverse a decision to pull the All-Star Game from Atlanta over Georgia’s new voting law.

GOP lawmakers are publicly scrutinizing Commissioner Rob Manfred’s membership at Georgia’s exclusive Augusta National Golf Club and threatening to take away MLB’s long-held antitrust exemption.

The fight is quickly spreading to other states as well, with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) saying he won’t throw out the first pitch at the Texas Rangers’ home opener after MLB adopted “what has turned out to be a false narrative about Georgia’s election law reforms.” Continue reading.