Delaware Business Now
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House and Senate Republicans have joined their counterparts in other states by introducing legislation aimed at dealing with voter fraud while stiffening identification requirements.
According to a release, the bills would:
Establish the Registered Voter List Improvement Task Force.
Review best practices to improve the verification of absentee ballot signatures.
Increase penalties for voter fraud.
Reform voter identification standards.
Reform the standards for absentee ballot requests.
“The registered voter list is often used by state lawmakers and many others to perform constituent mailings and conduct other public outreach,” said the prime sponsor of the bill, State Sen. Dave Wilson (R-Lincoln). “Any time I’ve done a mailing using it, I always get back a lot of undelivered pieces.”
Lawmakers are planning on updating protections for the LGBTQ community to make the law more inclusive.
Democratic lawmakers and advocates consider Delaware s non-discrimination laws, which include definitions of sexual orientation and gender identity, to be outdated and not inclusive of certain LGBTQ identities.
House Bill 155 by Rep. Kendra Johnson, D-Bear, cleared the House on Thursday and awaits a vote in the Senate. It would amend the law, written in 2009, which says that sexual orientation exclusively means heterosexuality, homosexuality, or bisexuality.
The bill replaces the phrase exclusively means with includes in order to include other sexualities.
The bill also strikes out the section of state law that says gender identity is demonstrated by consistent and uniform assertion of the identity or evidence that it is sincerely held as part of a person’s core identity unless it s asserted for any improper purpose.
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