The next AG should aggressively attack voter suppression.

[RicROC]

First place would be limited voting places. The next Attorney General (my choice Glenn Kirschner) should aggressively attack those in authority who suppress voting. No slaps on the hands, no 3 year delay in results.

Any places where lines are longer than 45 minutes will be under federal scrutiny.

Those state attorneys general who do not provide proper voter environments should be arrested for federal felonies.

[stillcool]

1. My Secretary of State runs elections in my state..

The Voters of my state have elected him. My state has its own constitution, and election laws, and why would Bill Barr or anyone else from the federal government have the right to interfere?

[csziggy]

4. A number of states who had lost cases about voting were monitored for years

When the Voting Rights Act was crippled by Shelby County v. Holder, those were among the first states that then passed restrictive voting laws. The federal government still can monitor elections, but Bill Barr's DOJ isn't about to do it.

Here is what the DOJ website has to say:

The Civil Rights Division conducts monitoring of polling places on election day using federal observers, and as well as monitoring using Division attorneys and staff, to help assess compliance with the federal voting rights laws around the country.

The Voting Rights Act permits federal observers to monitor procedures in polling places and at sites where ballots are counted in eligible political subdivisions. The Division determines whether federal observers are needed in an eligible jurisdiction. If so, the Division notifies the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that federal observers are needed, which OPM recruits, and then, in cooperation with Division attorneys, supervises federal observers. Federal observers write reports of the activities they witness in polling places and provide those reports to the Division.
https://www.justice.gov/crt/about-federal-observers-and-election-monitoring

How Shelby County v. Holder Broke America

In the five years since the landmark decision, the Supreme Court has set the stage for a new era of white hegemony.
Vann R. Newkirk II
July 10, 2018

Thurgood Marshall spent much of his career dissenting. Tasked with helping the Supreme Court bridge the gap between Jim Crow and whatever came next, the first black justice and the man whom President Lyndon B. Johnson once called “an advocate whose lifelong concern has been the pursuit of justice for his fellow man” was often forced to write that road map to justice in opposition to his colleagues.

The dissent became Marshall’s canvas, and none was more essential than his partial dissent in the famous 1978 University of California v. Bakke ruling, which upheld affirmative action and the use of race in college decisions, but struck down more radical measures such as quotas. “The experience of Negroes in America has been different in kind, not just in degree, from that of other ethnic groups,” Marshall wrote. “These differences in the experience of the Negro make it difficult for me to accept that Negroes cannot be afforded greater protection under the Fourteenth Amendment where it is necessary to remedy the effects of past discrimination.” Marshall envisioned a Court whose mandate necessitated that it reach through time, destroying the foundation of white supremacy on which the Court itself had been built.

Marshall never truly got the Court he wanted. But his vision did help pull the body into its modern role as an institutional check on white power. Last month, however, the Supreme Court finally closed the book on that vision. Just five years after the landmark Shelby County v. Holder decision, it’s become clear that the decision has handed the country an era of renewed white racial hegemony. And we’ve only just begun.

Shelby County has been discussed constantly in The Atlantic, and in my work especially. That’s for good reason. In that 2013 decision, the Supreme Court invalidated a decades-old “coverage formula” naming jurisdictions that had to pass federal scrutiny under the Voting Rights Act, referred to as “preclearance,” in order to pass any new elections or voting laws. Those jurisdictions were selected based on their having a history of discrimination in voting. The decision also left it to Congress to come up with new criteria for coverage, which hasn’t happened and probably won’t happen soon. In practice, the decision means that communities facing new discriminatory voting laws have had to file suits themselves or rely on Justice Department suits or challenges from outside advocates—sometimes after the discriminatory laws have already taken effect. Under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the department hasn’t been interested in filing such suits, meaning that citizens have been on their own.

More: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/07/how-shelby-county-broke-america/564707/

[stillcool]

5. yes, I know... the same states..

pull the same crap every election cycle, and now it's their god-given-right to suppress the vote. There is no way this U.S. Congress could pass any meaningful voting rights legislation. Instead the GOP would use the opportunity to provide us with another Help America Vote Act, and require extra hoops to jump through. While the court systems in those states can't be counted on, and the Federal Government can not be counted on, there has to be enough people in each state to put pressure on their Secretary of State without fear of repercussion. Or, maybe not.

[Sancho]

2. Stacy Abrams...

[RicROC]

3. Yes, I'd smile if Stacy was AG

[uponit7771]

6. This is more important than climate change cv-19 or even black lives matter

... because if we can't vote none of those issues matter to Republicans

[Hortensis]

7. Of course. But Democrats plan big changes to federal laws

that the AG will be working under. Our house Democrats' very first bill, ready to pass and passed right after becoming the majority on January 3, 2019, was a giant democracy rescue package. Our senators' are of course ready to run when voters finally make them the majority also.

[DFW]

8. Congress should direct federal penalties for state Secretaries of State, too

Refusing to provide ways for all eligible voters who want to vote to be able to, putting undue burdens on voters trying to vote (e.g. requiring IDs that many voters may not have, such as a driver's licenses).

Sentence upon conviction a MINIMUM two years, up to fifteen, and no country club prisons allowed. Any state Secretary of State who thinks his or her job is to PREVENT eligible voters from voting, or to make it difficult for them to register, needs to either look for another job, or else be fitted for prison clothes.

One thing would be entertaining--watching the verbal contortions of Republicans while they try to vote down such measures, explaining they only want to prevent "fraud." Sort of like, "we are all for free speech as long as it's what you read in the Wall Street Journal or heard on National Hate Radio or saw on Fox Noise."