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Democratic lawmakers are expected to introduce legislation on Tuesday (June 22) that would prevent state-level officials from overturning election results. The Preventing Election Subversion Act of 2021 would block efforts by Republican-led states to carry out Donald Trump’s efforts to change state election results. The bill comes as the fight to pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act comes to a head on Capitol Hill.
Following the 2020 election, hundreds of Republican-sponsored voting restriction bills have been introduced, and some passed, that implement barriers to the ballot. Some provisions of the laws place “local elections officials at risk of partisan subversion, interference, or control,” a statement by Sen. Raphael Warnock on the anti-election subversion bill reads.
Georgia’s voting restriction law, signed back in March, “allows partisan officials in the state legislature wide latitude to remove local election officials,” Warnock said in the statement, adding that officials have since been pressured to change results and have received death threats “in response to their work upholding the integrity of our elections.” The anti-subversion bill would be included in an amendment to the For the People Act when it returns to the Senate floor.
“The Preventing Election Subversion Act of 2021 will institute new safeguards to insulate state election administration from partisan pressure. It will limit the ability of state election board members to remove election officials to subvert an election; limit partisan observers’ access in polling sites and during the ballot counting process to avoid interference with and harassment of election officials during the count,” Warnock’s statement says. The Act will also “stop unfounded mass challenges to voters’ eligibility to register to vote.”
Sens. Amy Klobuchar, Jeff Merkley, Mark Warner, and Jon Ossoff along with Reps. Nikema Williams, John Sarbanes, and Colin Allred all helped introduce the bill.
“Republicans across the country continue to invent new tricks to give themselves control over our elections,” Williams said in a statement, per The Huffington Post. “Their latest efforts seek to remove protections for the non-partisan election officials who ensure the integrity of our democracy.”
The impact of election subversion was made clear in November after two Republican election officials in Michigan almost refused to certify the results of Wayne County, where Detroit is located. In recorded audio, Trump can be heard demanding Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to change the results in the state. Trump’s efforts eventually led up to the deadly January 6 attack on the Capitol.