Vox reports:

President Joe Biden is the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state of Georgia in nearly three decades. He’s the first Democrat to win Arizona in nearly a quarter of a century. And both of these former Republican strongholds just sent two Democrats to the United States Senate.

So it’s probably not surprising that GOP lawmakers in these states and elsewhere want to rewrite election laws to prevent Democrats from repeating Biden’s success in the future. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, state lawmakers filed “253 bills with provisions that restrict voting access” in just the first seven weeks of 2021, with more likely to come in the future.

These bills include longtime staples of conservative anti-voting legislation. Georgia Republicans, for example, appear keen to restrict or even eliminate early voting on Sundays in that state. Why target Sunday? The most likely explanation is that Black churches frequently hold “souls to the polls” voter turnout drives on Sundays leading up to the election, so eliminating Sunday voting makes it less likely that Black Democrats will cast a ballot.

But Republicans in states like Georgia and Arizona also have a new target — they hope to limit or even abolish mail-in voting. According to the Brennan Center, lawmakers in Arizona introduced at least 11 bills that seek to restrict absentee voting in 2021 alone. [Continue reading…]