Republicans at the state level have moved swiftly to either regain easy access to voting or put new obstacles in the way of voters after losing in the 2020 primary elections and the U.S. Senate .
More than 250 bills to ban or complicate access to polls were introduced in 43 state legislatures as of Feb. 19, according to the Brennan Justice Center, which oversees the bills – and bills were passed. since then in at least two additional states, North Carolina and Wisconsin, according to a CNN report.
Key states to watch: Florida, Arizona and Georgia were all battle states in 2020 and hosting the U.S. Senate races in 2022. A majority of Republican legislators and GOP regulators are moving to make it harder to vote in those states.
The Republican-led Georgia House of Representatives passed Thursday its draft sweeping election renewal bill, moving it one step closer to implementing electoral law changes and restricting voter access in the state.
Texas does not have a 2022 Senate race, but there will be a race for governor in 2022. A Republican currently controls all devices from the state government there.
There are proposals to make it harder to vote in other major states – Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – which have 2022 Senate races, but a divided government in those areas makes restrictions more difficult to enforce.
There is no Senate race in Michigan and there is a divided government as well. (See breakdown of state government control here.)
What’s happening in Congress: House Democrats have passed a sweeping bill that introduces a number of voting reforms, including automated national voter registration. Currently, 18 states and Washington, DC have automated registration. Expanding that requirement nationwide could inspire 50 million Americans, according to the Brennan Center.
The bill would do much more, including a ban on gerrymandering partisans, with which parties draw conference lines to protect their owners, ordering an early voting period of two weeks and more.
But it needed sovereignty – 60 votes – to overcome the GOP filibuster promised in the Senate. Democrats have proposed changing Senate rules specifically for this bill, but it is not clear that all Democrats would support the rule change.
CNN’s Kelly Mena, Dianne Gallagher and Pamela Kirkland covered this post.