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A sign sits outside of the State Hygienic Laboratory in Coralville, a polling place during the Iowa primary election, June 2, 2020. Emma McClatchey/Little Village
At least 33 state legislatures around the country, most of them controlled by Republicans, are working on bills that restrict voting. Iowa is one of them.
“These bills are an unmistakable response to the unfounded and dangerous lies about fraud that followed the 2020 election,“ the Brennan Center for Justice said in a report on the bills published earlier this month.
Republican leaders in the Iowa Legislature are fast-tracking SSB 1199, a Senate bill imposing new restrictions on voting and stripping local control over elections, as well the identical bill in the House, HSB 213. The House and Senate bills were introduced on Tuesday, and approved by a subcommittees that next day. The Senate State Government Committee and the House State Government Committee approved the bills on Thursday.
House panel OKs criminal sentencing changes
State lawmakers took the first steps February 3 to reversing decades of tough-on-crime policies.
Without a single dissent, members of the House Committee on Criminal Justice Reform voted to restore some of the discretion taken away from judges more than four decades ago to determine what is an appropriate sentence.
HB2673 does not scrap all of the mandatory sentencing laws.
In order to divert from the code, a judge would need to find that a mandatory sentence would be an injustice to the defendant, that it is not necessary to protect the public, and that the person was not convicted of a serious or dangerous offense. And judges would have to explain their decision on the record.
By Howard Fischer
PHOENIX State lawmakers took the first steps Wednesday to reversing decades of tough-on-crime policies.
Without a single dissent, members of the House Committee on Criminal Justice Reform voted to restore some of the discretion taken away from judges more than four decades ago to determine what is an appropriate sentence.
HB 2673 does not scrap all of the mandatory sentencing laws.
In order to divert from the code, a judge would need to find that a mandatory sentence would be an injustice to the defendant, that it is not necessary to protect the public, and that the person was not convicted of a serious or dangerous offense. And judges would have to explain their decision on the record.