June 4, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
An election official sorting ballots during a hand tally of votes in Georgia last November.Credit.Ben Gray/Associated Press
By Bob Bauer and Ben Ginsberg
Mr. Bauer, a Democratic lawyer, and Mr. Ginsberg, a Republican lawyer, were co-chairs of the 2013-14 Presidential Commission on Election Administration.
Tucked into many of the election laws Republicans are pushing or enacting in states around the country are pernicious provisions threatening punishment of elections officials and workers for just doing their jobs.
Laws like those already passed in Republican-controlled states like Georgia and Iowa, no matter their stated intent, will be used as a weapon of intimidation aimed at the people, many of them volunteers, charged with running fair elections at the local and state levels. By subjecting them to invasive, politically motivated control by a state legislative majority, these provisions shift the last word in elections from the pros to the pols. Th
Push for Voting Overhaul in Congress Falters
Opposition from Republicans and some of their own senators has left Democrats struggling to determine whether they should try to nix the filibuster to save a top priority.
Senators Chris Coons of Delaware and Joe Manchin of West Virginia in the Capitol last week. Mr. Manchin, the Democrats’ decisive swing vote, has repeatedly pledged to protect the filibuster. Credit.Erin Scott for The New York Times
June 1, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON In the national struggle over voting rights, Democrats have rested their hopes for turning back a wave of new restrictions in Republican-led states and expanding ballot access on their narrow majorities in Congress. Failure, they have repeatedly insisted, “is not an option.”
Unexpected receipts, driven in part by taxes on high earners riding a hot stock market, have prompted Republicans to push the president to spend on infrastructure instead.