After Record 2020 Turnout, State Republicans Weigh Making It Harder To Vote

After an election that saw record voter turnout, with many of those voters casting their ballots early and by mail, some GOP state lawmakers are proposing a wave of new voting laws that would effectively make it more difficult to vote in future elections.

The proposals come in the aftermath of the unprecedented onslaught of disinformation about the conduct of the 2020 election by former President Donald Trump and some of his allies in the Republican Party.

"Some folks bring these proposals forward and say, 'Well, we just need to address confidence in our election systems,' when it's some of those very same people, or at least their allies and enablers, [who] have denigrated our election system by either telling lies or at least leveraging or relying on other people's lies to justify some of these policies," said Steve Simon, Minnesota's Democratic secretary of state, at a news conference organized last week by the Voter Protection Program.

A recent analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice found 106 bills had been filed by Republican lawmakers in 28 states that would restrict voting (the group also found 406 bills in 35 states that would expand voting access). Many of the bills would limit voting by mail, add new voter ID requirements, make it more difficult to register voters, and would give states greater leeway to purge voter files if voters don't consistently cast ballots in every election.