The Horror
June 8, 2023, 4:00 AM MDT
By Adam Edelman
Legislators in 38 states have introduced nearly 200 bills this year that would allow state governments to "subvert" elections, according to a report by three nonpartisan groups tracking such bills.
The analysis by the States United Democracy Center, Protect Democracy and Law Forward found that legislators — predominantly Republicans — put forward 185 bills in their state legislative sessions from Jan. 1 through May 3 that would increase the risk of subversion by politicizing, criminalizing or interfering with elections.
That number is on pace with those from sessions in the past two years, which the groups also tracked. Fifteen of the bills introduced this year have so far been enacted.
NBC News obtained the report ahead of its public release Thursday morning.
Its findings suggest that the election denial movement is alive and well in statehouses across the U.S. — even though an overwhelming number of election deniers (candidates who have echoed former President Donald Trump’s continuing false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him) lost their races in pivotal battleground Senate and secretary of state elections in last year’s midterms — and that attempts to make it easier to overturn elections will persist if such legislation is left unchecked.
More
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/states-introduced-nearly-200-bills-2023-subvert-elections-report-finds-rcna88163
