"Crackdown on democracy": Republican lawmakers across the country are trying to overrule voters

[marmar]

“Crackdown on democracy”: Republican lawmakers across the country are trying to overrule voters
Republicans are trying to reverse or undermine voter-approved measures on Medicaid, marijuana, schools and more

By IGOR DERYSH
MAY 7, 2021 10:00AM


(Salon) Amid growing concerns that Republicans will try to use new voting laws to overturn elections in the wake of a campaign of lies stoking unfounded fears about vote-rigging, GOP-led state legislatures across the country are already trying to reverse popular ballot initiatives approved by majorities of voters.

Missouri voters last year passed a ballot initiative to expand Medicaid. Arizona approved a new tax on the wealthy to fund schools. South Dakota legalized marijuana. But Republicans are trying to block those measures from being implemented and dozens of state legislatures are pushing new bills to make it harder to get voter initiatives on the ballot in the first place.

"As more progressive issues are winning at the ballot, from Medicaid expansion to legalization and decriminalization of marijuana to raising the minimum wage, paid family and sick leave, increasing access to the voting process, we have seen concerted efforts by state legislators to undermine the will of the people," Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, executive director of the progressive Ballot Initiative Strategy Center (BISC), said in an interview with Salon.

BISC is tracking 125 bills to change the ballot measure process in 28 states, including measures that would increase the thresholds to get initiatives on the ballot or approved. Other proposals would require ballot initiatives to pass multiple times, increase filing fees and change the signature requirements. Republican lawmakers have also introduced more than 300 bills to restrict voting, dozens of anti-protest bills, and numerous measures that would undermine or snatch power from state courts and local election boards.

The effort to reverse voter-led ballot measures is "deeply connected to what we're seeing across the country after yet another election where people of color and young people turn out in record numbers demanding a different future," Figueredo said. "We see all of this as a concerted effort to limit and reduce people-led and people-initiated power." ..........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2021/05/07/crackdown-on-democracy-republican-lawmakers-across-the-country-are-trying-to-overrule-voters/

[malthaussen]

1. The funny thing is, the worst tyrants in our history would probably be appalled by this.

I doubt half-a-dozen politicians in the years leading up to the present century would have embraced an ideology that suppressed democracy, yet suddenly hundreds have come out of the weeds and are trying to do just that. Where the hell did these jackasses come from?

-- Mal

[dalton99a]

2. Republicans are the real enemies of the people.

[marmar]

4. Yep.

[2naSalit]

3. The body-slammer governor is trying to kill off the courts and...

remake them in his own image here in Montana.