Lawsuits Challenge New Voting Laws in Texas, Georgia, Other States - The Wall Street Journal

In a handful of states, there is a new push to impose criminal penalties for a broader range of activities that goes beyond traditional voter fraud and affects not only individual voters but also volunteer groups and election officials.

Under a new Texas law, an election official could go to jail for encouraging citizens to vote by mail. In Kansas, volunteers could be charged with a felony if they impersonate an election official. In Georgia it is now a misdemeanor to hand out food or water to voters waiting in line.

“That’s not unheard of in the American past but it really strikes me as something of a new twist in laws of election administration,” said Alex Keyssar, a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School who has studied the history of voting rights.

Supporters of these bills said that interfering with the election process is a threat to democracy and that some infractions warrant criminal penalties.

“This is a serious thing. We have seen instances where either through deliberate fraud or simple sloppiness [voters] are disenfranchised,” said Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, a nonprofit conservative group that intervenes in election lawsuits.

Liberal groups including the American Civil Liberties Union say these laws will chill participation by voters, volunteer groups and election officials fearful they could face criminal penalties.

“We’re not going to have older women, our volunteers arrested,” said Celina Stewart, chief counsel at the League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan group that assists voters and advocates around voting issues.

The League of Women Voters has suspended voter registration activity in Kansas, where state lawmakers passed a bill in March that makes it a felony to knowingly provide education or assistance that might lead someone to believe the person is an election official. In legal filings, the state said the law helps ensure public confidence in the electoral process.

The League has sued Kansas state officials in state court over the new law, alleging that it will chill speech in violation of the First Amendment and is overly vague because it is unclear what types of activities could be criminal under this law.

Shawnee County District Court Judge Teresa Watson, a Republican appointee, denied the League of Women Voters’ request to temporarily stop the law from taking effect earlier this month. She echoed state officials’ claims that the requirement that prosecutors show that someone “knowingly” impersonated an election official guards against a well-meaning volunteer inadvertently running afoul of the law and undercuts the plaintiffs’ free speech and vagueness claims. The state, she noted, has an interest in protecting the integrity of the electoral process.

A law enacted earlier this month in Texas creates several new voting-related crimes, including making it a felony punishable by up to two years in jail for election officials to solicit mail-in ballot applications from voters who didn’t request them. It also makes it a felony for anyone to receive compensation for assisting a voter with a mail-in ballot and makes it a misdemeanor for an election official to refuse to accept a poll watcher—partisan volunteers who observe ballot stations and report potential voting irregularities to their respective parties.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

What impact will the new laws have on voting in 2022? Join the conversation below.

A range of plaintiffs, including a poll worker from the 2020 election and the Harris County elections administrator, have sued Texas since the bill was passed. These suits allege that in some instances these new crimes violate the First Amendment, the Americans With Disabilities Act, the Voting Rights Act and criminal due-process protections. The state hasn’t yet responded to these suits.

When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed the bill into law in early September, he said it makes it easier for people to vote in that state. “It does also, however, make sure it is harder for people to cheat at the ballot box in Texas,” he said.

Mr. Snead said that during the 2020 election, local officials were encouraging voters to send mail-in ballots even if they didn’t meet Texas’s requirements, putting them at risk of wasting their votes. “At bottom we have to keep in mind that some of what these officials were doing or attempting to do was imperiling people’s right to vote,” he said.

The New Georgia Project is suing its home state in part over the provision criminalizing handing food and water out in line. “The real danger is you still have to defend yourself even if the charges are nonsense,” said Nsé Ufot, the chief executive officer of the New Georgia Project.

In a motion to dismiss the suit, Georgia Attorney General Christopher Carr said, the “plaintiff’s rhetoric does not match the reality of what is in the legislation,” which he described as “well within the mainstream” of other state election laws.

Write to Laura Kusisto at [email protected]

source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/lawsuits-challenge-new-voting-laws-in-texas-georgia-other-states-11632929935

Your content is great. However, if any of the content contained herein violates any rights of yours, including those of copyright, please contact us immediately by e-mail at media[@]kissrpr.com.